“The same victim also testified that the ring of priests groomed their victims with gifts. The priests would mark their “favorite boys” with gold cross necklaces.”
By Carol Kuruvilla
The HuffPo (8/15/18)
For decades, stories about clerical sexual abuse committed by Pennsylvania Catholic priests were reportedly locked away in the church’s secret archives.
These old secrets exploded into the light Tuesday with the publication of a grand jury report into six of Pennsylvania’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses.
The jurors’ 884-page report allowed Pennsylvania Catholics to finally grasp the extent of the abuse ― and cover-up ― in six dioceses: Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Scranton. Over the course of two years, jurors identified 301 “predator priests” and more than 1,000 victims.
Jurors heard stories of boys and girls being groped. They heard about cases of kids becoming victims of child pornography, being made to masturbate with assailants, and being raped orally, vaginally and anally.
Underpinning the horrific alleged crimes in the report are hundreds of pages of documents from the church’s secret archives that the jurors claim show that senior church officials knew the abuse was happening and failed to act properly. Catholic leaders, including former bishops, actively worked to protect abusers and the church’s public reputation, while brushing aside victims’ reports, the jurors claim. …
(Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )
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A Culture Of Catholic Church Secrecy That Perpetuated Abuse
“You were lucky, you were only abused fifteen times.”
The New York Times / The Daily (8/16/18)
A grand jury report found that Roman Catholic priests had abused more than 1,000 children in Pennsylvania over a period of 70 years. Some church officials say the report reiterates issues that have already been addressed, but details suggest otherwise. Guest: Laurie Goodstein, a national religion correspondent for The New York Times.
Caution: This episode contains descriptions of abuse.
- How The Catholic Church Still Fails To Train Its Own About Sexual Abuse — How does the Catholic Church prepare its seminarians to deal with questions of sexual abuse and celibacy? NPR’s Jennifer Ludden talks to Paul Blaschko, who attended seminary from 2008 until 2011. Link to Audio and 7-Minute Audio
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Lawmakers Worked Long & Hard To Protect & Shield Catholic Church From Sexual Abuse Scandal
By Matthew Rozsa
Salon (8/19/18)
If the Catholic Church wasn’t a religious institution, would we be handling the situation differently?
“That’s a real possibility,” Rozzi told Salon. “There’s no doubt that the Catholic Conference, the legislative arm of the Catholic Church, is out there spending millions. The last time the bill passed the House with the retroactive component in it and went to the Senate, they hired 39 lobbyists to work 50 Senators. How do victims even compare to that?” …