More Child Sex Charges Against RI Boy Scout Chaplain
By Rachel Nunes, Patch Staff
EXETER, RI — A former Boy Scout chaplain is facing three additional sexual assault and child molestation charges, Rhode Island State Police said Wednesday. James Glawson, 74, of Exeter has been charged with a total 16 child molestation and sexual assault-related crimes since February. On Wednesday, Glawson was charged with one count of first-degree sexual assault, one count of first-degree child molestation and one count of second-degree child molestation.
Glawson was first arrested on February 14 following reports that he had sexually assaulted a disabled 18-year-old man over the course of several years. In April, state police announced nine additional charges.
"These new charges resulted from interviews with additional alleged victims who have come forward since Mr. Glawson was initially arrested," Rhode Island State Police Colonel Manni said in a statement.
From 1980 until 2018, Glawson was a part of the Boy Scouts of America, serving as a chaplain and Eucharistic minister at the St. John Bosco Catholic Chapel at the Yawgoog Boy Scout camp in Hopkinton from 2012 through 2018. Glawson was also an active member of the St. Bernard Church in North Kingstown and the Immaculate Conception Church in Westerly.
As with the previous announcement, Col. Manni stressed that the investigation is ongoing. The new charges came after several witnesses came forward.
"This is an active, ongoing investigation," Manni said. "We continue to pursue all leads and will bring additional charges, if warranted. We strongly encourage anyone who may have information and/or additional complaints related to this individual and/or this investigation to call the Rhode Island State Police Detective Division at 401-764-5346."
In Rhode Island, there is no statute of limitations for reporting first-degree sexual assault and first- or second-degree child molestation. State Police say several of the victims reported the abuse happened during the 1980's, when the victims met Glawson through his Boy Scout involvement.
Glawson faces a total of 16 charges: 12 counts of first-degree sexual assault, two counts of second-degree sexual assault, one count of first-degree child molestation and one count of possession of child pornography.
If convicted, Glawson could face a life sentence. He was arraigned for the additional charges on Wednesday in Fourth Division District Court in Wakefield during a status hearing on the past charges. He was ordered to continue to be held without bail at the ACI in Cranston.
State Police said the Boy Scouts of America and the Diocese of Providence are cooperating with the investigation.
Anyone with information related to the investigation is encouraged to contact the State Police Detective Division at 401-764-5346. Day One, a group for victims of sexual assault, has been offering support to the victims. Anyone in need of help can call 401-421-4100 ext. 138.
Long-time Regina pastor charged with physical and sexual abuse in Scotland
CTV Regina
A long serving Regina pastor has been charged with physical and sexual abuse, according to the Archdiocese of Regina.
Robert MacKenzie has been charged by Scottish authorities with abuse which allegedly happened at boarding and day schools in Scotland.
On March 22, Scottish authorities got a surrender order from Canada’s Minister of Justice, authorizing the extradition of MacKenzie to Scotland for trial.
The charges relate to his position in two schools in the 1950’s to the 1980’s, while a member of a religious order in Scotland.
Originally was a Benedictine priest in Scotland – taught at Carlekemp and Fort Augustus Abbey School in Scotland before moving to Canada in 1988.
Investigations into MacKenzie began several years ago, and two years ago the Archdiocese of Regina was made aware that criminal proceedings were underway against the pastor.
In a letter sent to local parishes, the Archbishop Donald Bolen said MacKenzie was moved from the rectory where he had retired to a home where his activities were further restricted. One year ago his faculties to minister as a priest were suspended.
To date no allegations have surfaced against MacKenzie from the Regina community.
“While we understand and respect the legal presumption of innocence, our primary duty in every case of suspected abuse is the protection and care of the alleged victims,” Bolen said in the letter.
The Archdiocese of Regina advises that child sexual abuse should be immediately reported to the police. The Archbishops delegate for clergy sexual abuse Fr. Brad Fahlman is available to speak to anyone with concerns of sexual abuse at 306-400-3655.
N.J. Priest Pleads Guilty to Child Sexual Assault After Victim Calls Clergy Abuse Hotline
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
(TRENTON, N.J.) — A New Jersey priest has pleaded guilty to a child sexual assault dating back almost three decades.
The charge against the Rev. Thomas Ganley was the first sexual assault case brought by the state’s clergy abuse task force, which was established last September. Ganley was charged in January, just two days after the victim had called the state’s clergy abuse hotline.
Ganley entered his plea Monday. The state attorney general’s office has recommended that he get a four-year prison term when he’s sentenced July 2.
The 63-year-old Ganley most recently was a parochial vicar at St. Philip and St. James Catholic Church in Phillipsburg.
Prosecutors say Ganley was a priest at Saint Cecelia Church in Woodbridge when the alleged assaults took place between 1990 and 1994. They say the victim was between the ages of 14 and 17.
David Joseph Perrett granted conditional bail in NSW Supreme Court on 131 historical sex abuse charges
Angus Thompson
A former Catholic priest facing trial on more than 130 sexual abuse charges has been bailed after being described as a "spent volcano" who may have only six months to live.
Standing trial: Former Catholic priest David Joseph Perrett outside Armidale Local Court in 2017.
Armidale church
With a walking stick across his lap, a wheelchair-bound David Joseph Perrett, 82, faced the NSW Supreme Court via audio-visual link from Long Bay prison hospital after being charged with abusing 37 children over more than 20 years.
The court heard the retired clergyman's treating doctor had given him between six and 12 months to live due to a number of health conditions, but Crown prosecutor Brendan Campbell said that, according to notes, Perrett was faring better than he had in recent years.
He urged Justice David Davies against bailing the former Armidale priest, who left the church after pleading guilty to similar allegations in 1996 in a separate case.
The charges - which include indecent assault, aggravated sexual assault and carnal knowledge - relate to Perrett's time working as a priest in Armidale, Walgett and Guyra between 1969 and 1993.
Japanese Catholic Church opens investigation into child sex abuse allegations
Agence France-Presse
The Catholic Church in Japan said on Tuesday it will launch an internal probe into claims of sexual abuse against children by its clergy, after a wave of paedophilia revelations worldwide.
The standing committee of the bishops’ conference last week decided to investigate all 16 dioceses in Japan, a spokesman for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan said.
Japan is home to a small community of Roman Catholics, believed to number around 450,000.
The decision comes a month after a landmark summit at the Vatican on the protection of minors, where Pope Francis vowed to tackle sexual abuse by priests. Francis plans to visit Japan in November, the first visit by a pontiff since John Paul II, nearly 40 years ago.
At least five reports of sexual abuse were made when the Japanese Catholic authorities conducted surveys in 2002 and 2012 throughout its dioceses.
Japanese people are not likely to volunteer information that they have been abused, especially by a priest. An investigation, especially if it is very public, may help reluctant survivors to come forward. Indeed, that should be one of the aims of the investigation.
The fresh probe will first review how bishops dealt with those cases, including “punishment of those who were involved, and response to victims,” the spokesman said.
Details of the investigation “including the specific process and to what extent the result will be made public” will be decided later, he said. A second stage of the probe is planned to investigate additional abuse allegations.
The probe was announced after a group of people who claim abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy met in Tokyo on Sunday, among them a 62-year-old man who reported being sexually abused as a child at a Catholic boys’ school in western Tokyo.
The Mainichi daily said Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki attended the Sunday gathering and told the man he felt “sorry for having been unable to do enough” to uncover and resolve abuse.
Local media has previously reported allegations of abuse at a different Catholic school in Tokyo, and the scale of the problem nationwide remains unclear.
A slew of abuse scandals involving the church has spanned the globe, from Australia to Chile and the United States.
In February, Pope Francis addressed top bishops and described sexual abuse of minors as “a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies”, while denouncing priests who prey on children as “tools of Satan”.
Or should that be "fools of Satan"!
Priest accused of child sex abuse is still missing
- but criminal investigations end
Robert Krankvich, right, and attorney Jeffrey Anderson announce the filing in April 2018 of a lawsuit alleging that the Rev. Richard McGrath, the former Providence Catholic High School president, sexually abused Krankvich when he was a student there in the 1990s. (Zak Koeske/Daily Southtown)
Anna Kim, Elyssa Cherney, Alicia Fabbre
Chicago Tribune
In the 15 months since the Rev. Richard McGrath abruptly retired from Providence Catholic High School amid a probe into “potentially inappropriate material” on his phone, the priest was the subject of two criminal investigations, accused in a lawsuit by a former student of sexual abuse and deemed AWOL from his religious order.
Authorities have now closed both investigations without filing any criminal charges against McGrath, who led the New Lenox school for three decades until a student reported that she saw what she thought was an image of a naked boy on the priest’s phone.
Yet McGrath is still considered “illegitimately absent” from his order, its leaders said, and his current whereabouts are unclear.
New Lenox police said they ended the cellphone investigation after McGrath “steadfastly refused” to turn over the device.
!???? They couldn't get a subpoena?
In the other criminal probe, involving the sexual abuse claims by a former student, Will County prosecutors said there was “insufficient evidence to bring charges.” But a civil case stemming from the same claim is still pending.
If police investigated that case as rigorously as they investigated his phone, it's not surprising they did not find sufficient evidence. Good grief!
And police reports newly filed in that case reveal that after McGrath left Providence Catholic in late 2017, authorities interviewed three other male former students who all said McGrath touched or massaged them on their shoulders or torsos in ways that made them uncomfortable.
The revelation of those claims coincide with the release in March of a study that says nearly 400 Illinois priests have been accused of child sexual misconduct over several decades — a report that has brought renewed attention to a clergy sex abuse crisis that has scandalized the Roman Catholic Church for years.
McGrath’s case also underscores the difficult question of what church leaders and society should do about priests who have claims against them that have not been, or cannot be, substantiated.
Robert Krankvich, the former Providence student who said he was abused by McGrath in the 1990s and is the plaintiff in a sexual abuse lawsuit against the school and the Augustinian order that runs it, told the Tribune he wishes he had come forward sooner.
“I regret the years that I didn’t do anything about it,” said Krankvich, who consented to being named. He added that he wonders “how many other people had been affected. It hurts a lot.”
Priest ‘freaked out’ when student saw something on his phone
Krankvich has said he decided to come forward after reading news reports about McGrath’s sudden retirement.
That happened after a Providence student reported that while attending a wrestling match at the school, she saw McGrath sitting alone on the bleachers, approached him to say hello and saw on his phone a photograph that she told police appeared to be a naked teenage boy, shown from neck to knees.
Though she said she “wasn’t completely certain if she saw male genitalia” in the photo, the girl told police that when McGrath saw her, he “‘freaked out, like when someone saw something that you don’t want them to see’ and pulled his phone close to his body,” according to a police report.
New Lenox police said McGrath’s attorney, Patrick Reardon, declined their initial request to discuss the girl’s claims with McGrath, and he refused multiple requests to turn over his school-issued cellphone.
“Mr. Reardon indicated that he doesn’t believe that (the) cellular phone exists and that it would be huge waste of time looking for the cellular phone,” police wrote in a report. “Mr. Reardon explained that he does not think the cell phone will surface or ever turn up.”
In other words, it has almost certainly been destroyed.
Providence officials cited the phone investigation when they announced Dec. 22, 2017, that they were “sincerely saddened” to report McGrath was retiring after 32 years as principal and then president of the school.
“This action is in response to an investigation by civil authorities of an allegation of potentially inappropriate material on (McGrath’s) mobile device,” the school wrote in a message to parents and an online post.
What school officials didn’t say in that message is that, around the same time, they apparently had been contacted by a former Providence student and football player who said McGrath “would talk to and stare at the naked boys while they took showers” after games and “would regularly come into the lunchroom and rub the shoulders and pectoral area of the male students,” according to police report written after New Lenox authorities interviewed the man in Florida, where he lives.
The man first contacted police about his claims by phone on Dec. 17 and said he also had made contact with a Providence officials “at the same time.”
The former student told police, according to the police report, that he was told that the Augustinian order that runs Providence “would pay for any counseling that he wanted” and “was removing Fr. McGrath from the student population due to the nature of his complaint.”
‘A good boy or a bad boy?’
The former Providence football player was among three former students who told authorities in New Lenox that they had received unwanted touching from McGrath while attending the school, police reports show.
One of the students, who attended Providence starting in the late 1990s, said McGrath once approached him as he was collecting tennis balls from a secluded area on the school grounds, where the priest “put his hands up the (student’s) shirt and groped his stomach, side and chest area,” according to a police report. Authorities also interviewed the student’s high school girlfriend, who said he had told her about unwanted touching from McGrath while they were enrolled at Providence, the report states.
The Rev. Richard J. McGrath. (Courtesy of Providence Catholic)
The same male student, along with a fourth former Providence pupil, both said McGrath had asked them during their high school years if they were “a good boy or a bad boy.”
One former student, who also attended Providence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, told police that once while he was retrieving a book from his locker during class, McGrath “came up behind (him) while his arms were raised and grabbed (his) ribs underneath his armpits (and) … forcefully massaged his ribs under his armpits and it was very uncomfortable and painful.”
The same former student told police that he was once paged over the intercom and told to report to the main office, where he said McGrath asked about his family and then took a picture of the teen to “remember him over the summer,” the report states. Another time, the student said, McGrath once asked him to follow him into the locker room, where the priest asked the student to remove his shirt — the student kept on his undershirt — and commented about the teen’s posture.
That student also said that McGrath’s “routine (shoulder) massages in the hallway and cafeteria were a well-known joke amongst (the student’s) peers” and that he “was teased by fellow members of the hockey team for the unwanted attention from Father McGrath.”
None of the students told police that the claimed touching was sexual or involved genital contact.
But the former football player called McGrath’s claimed actions “awkward, creepy and unacceptable” and said they “weighed on him heavily throughout his life,” according to the police report.
Reardon, the attorney who represented McGrath during the cellphone investigation, declined to comment on the claims by former students.
Where is Father McGrath?
After McGrath’s retirement, the Midwest Province of Our Mother of Good Counsel, the Augustinian order that runs Providence Catholic, removed him from all public ministry and he was assigned to live at an Augustinian friary in Chicago, “an environment that allowed the Augustinians to supervise him and ensure that he had no unsupervised access to minors,” according to a release from the order’s leader.
A spokeswoman for the Chicago Archdiocese said late last year that the Augustinians had not informed Chicago church officials that McGrath had been accused of sexual abuse. When the archdiocese became aware of that, he was asked to relocate outside the archdiocese.
According to the Augustinian province, arrangements were made to move McGrath “to another supervised location” but that, “without permission,” he did not go along with the move. Order officials said in a March statement that, under church law, he is considered “illegitimately absent from the Augustinian community.”
Because of that, McGrath is “no longer an agent of the Augustinians,” the statement said. Though he is still a priest, McGrath is “without the faculties to function as one,” the order said.
Officials with the Midwest Augustinians said they could not comment further because of the pending lawsuit filed against them and Providence regarding McGrath. It’s unclear whether officials in the order know McGrath’s whereabouts.
But Reardon disputed the notion that McGrath has disappeared. “It’s not like he’s some kind of fugitive or something,” Reardon said.
In fact, McGrath has been engaged in regular discussions with the Augustinians about his future in the community, Reardon said, adding that McGrath is considering whether to return to or leave the priesthood all together.
It’s difficult for clergy to continue in their roles after allegations of sexual misconduct have been raised, even if, as in McGrath’s case, investigations did not yield any criminal charges, Reardon said.
“The guy is trying to live his best on his own,” the attorney said. “He is trying not to burden the order at all, and at some point, I’ll probably hear what his final decision is, but it’s not mine to make for him.”
A man reached at a phone number believed to belong to McGrath declined to comment. “I’m sorry ... I have nothing to say,” he said.
Krankvich, the former Providence student who is suing the order and the school, saying they failed to protect him from what he claims was sexual abuse by McGrath, said he’s relieved that at least McGrath was removed from Providence.
“It’s better than him being in charge of a school,” Krankvich said. “The whole point was to get him away from kids.”
The Augustinians recently filed a motion seeking to have Krankvich’s lawsuit dismissed, arguing that he has not provided evidence that the Augustinians had or concealed prior knowledge of any claims of abuse against McGrath.
Lawyers for Providence have also resisted Krankvich’s request to furnish any information the school might have regarding any previous claims of misconduct against any Augustinian.
In a court filing, the school attorneys said such information is “not relevant to Providence’s liability for the (alleged) acts of Fr. McGrath” and that the request was “overbroad.”
This is Catholic 'Circling the Wagons', as per normal. No real interest in the truth or transparency.
The order also has declined so far to release publicly a list of all its priests who have substantiated claims of abuse against them. All of the Catholic dioceses in Illinois, as well as some other Catholic orders, have released such lists.
In 2004, the order settled claims by 13 people who said they had been molested by another Augustinian priest, the Rev. John D. Murphy. The order acknowledged at the time the suit was filed that it had received an allegation against Murphy in 1981 but returned him to ministry after he received treatment. Murphy left the priesthood in 1993 after more abuse claims came to light, the order has said.
’If my mum knew what happened to me,
she wouldn’t believe Pell’
One Survivor's Story
A victim of child sex abuse has penned an emotional plea to the public in the wake of convicted child sex offender George Pell’s sentencing.
news.com.au
The sentencing of Cardinal George Pell garnered mixed reactions last month, as the convicted child sex offender was handed a six-year prison sentence for his horrific child sex crimes.
Some celebrated. Others were outraged. But for one man, who wishes to remain anonymous, the case hit much too close to home.
In a news.com.au exclusive, he shares his harrowing story.
***
It’s been a tough few months for those of us sexually abused as kids.
The final dark moments of George Pell’s life as a free man were unmissable; plastered across newspapers, computer screens and TVs.
Watching Pell’s sentencing was quite something.
The way he abused those boys was similar to my own experiences. It was molestation betrothed with power.
Paedophilia is a funny word because in the minds of the public it can be both a verb and a noun. An act as well as the name of a desire. I believe Pell’s lust — like my own abuser’s — was for power, not little boys.
In short, Pell is a paedophile in that he sexually abused children, but I doubt he is a paedophile in the sense of maintaining sexual desire for children.
When the abuse occurred, Pell had just been promoted to Archbishop of Melbourne, he was a young man at the top of his game with only ascension ahead of him. Ascension through an organisation that is inherently about control and power.
Inevitably, the 'power' has more to do with spitting in the Face of God than exercising authority over boys. It is the ultimate rebellion - the destruction of innocence and the violation of the sacred!
He’d heard about child sexual abuse allegations made against his fellow priests. Why shouldn’t he give it a try? No one could touch him.
This is my read of the abuse, on the evidence available anyway. And I think it’s supported by the fact that there’s no further claims of abuse and that he didn’t ejaculate during the abuse.
I doubt he enjoyed it at a primal sexual level.
For him, it was all about exerting power over the weak.
My partner said I should stop following the coverage so closely. It obviously affected me. I let work slip, I was detached from friends and family. I cried profusely in the toilet after the sentencing. It was the first time I’d cried in years.
But although it hurt, it was cathartic too. Hearing Judge Kidd’s syllables form words and sentences that damned this particular evil man also damned my own evil man. Even if that man only really lives in my head.
He lives on in real life too, but I don’t know him now.
That which I do know of him lends me to believe he suffered at the hands of others far worse than I did at his. In abusing me he was a copycat.
Which is why Judge Kidd treating Pell as a human was so important. Here was a man, removed from the church, being sentenced for very human, very intimate acts.
Because my abuser too is a human, not a monster. Because he suffers just as I did. I feel remorse for what I could have been without the weight I carry, but also feel pity for him.
My abuse wasn’t in an institutional setting, so no redress scheme for me. Although navigating that particularly secretive, bureaucratic and cold process doesn’t sounds like much fun anyway.
Some friends know about it. My brother knows. My parents do not know.
If my mum found out, it would break her. She’s suffered a lot of loss over the last few years and any time she has left would be so darkened by shadow it wouldn’t be worth it.
So, I have this secret.
It doesn’t define me most of the time. But sometimes unprompted, although normally in predictable ways, it turns me inside out. Like someone tightening a knot in my gut: pulling all my pain and fears into a spot right below my sternum towards my spine. It can be paralysing.
Which is awkward during sex. Flashbacks are a real mood killer. The sex life my partner and I should have isn’t there, because sometimes sex is the last thing I want to think about or do.
And this hurts her, and it hurts our relationship. And that’s really what’s been taken from us. The ability to live a simple life of sex and love. It’s not the be-all and end-all, but it can feel like it sometimes.
And the sad thing is, no one knows how many people are like me. People who suffer in relative silence because public confrontation, on balance, wouldn’t be worth it.
There might be thousands of us, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? Quietly getting on with our slightly more dysfunctional than usual lives. Just wanting to live an existence defined by our own choices, not someone else’s.
When I spoke to Mum about Pell a few weeks ago, she said she didn’t believe he was an abuser. It wasn’t an unpopular opinion across some media at the time. I try to take a dialectic view of most things, but this stumped me. Maybe it was just too close to home.
Two ex-prime ministers — men my mum admires — wrote references for Pell, one of which said, “None of these matters alter my opinion of the Cardinal.”
There is a malaise in society. It manifests itself in many ways, one of which is sexual abuse of children.
But it runs deeper. It is the abuse of power by men and the willful ignorance of those unaffected.
Men who see themselves as winners and who only know how to practice winning by punishing the weak. And most everyone else just plays along because confrontation and change are hard. The weak are liars in the eyes of the powerful and the rest of you just tend to agree.
The willfully ignorant are complicit. They give tacit endorsement to abusive powerful men to continue unchanged. Why would an Archbishop change if he knew an ex-prime minister would always be there to jump to his defence, no matter the evidence?
And those of us keeping quiet? We too are guilty. Because if my mum knew what happened to me, she wouldn’t believe Pell. And if enough mums and dads were confronted with abuse as a reality, not just a concept, they too would change.
And I want so much to contribute to changing the culture of willful ignorance of abuse by men in power. But to do so would irreparably change my relationship with family and friends. It would ruin what’s left of my Mum’s life.
So, this is my plea, anonymous though it is.
Please seek out those abusing power, please will yourselves out of ignorance.
Just because it didn’t happen to someone you love doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
— If you or someone you know is in need or crisis, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit www.lifeline.org.au/gethelp
Child sexual abuse in the institutional Church
In the Philippines it is still too frightening to tell anyone
about clerical child sex abuse
BY FR. SHAY CULLEN, SSC
There are serious and profound changes taking place in the Catholic Church to acknowledge and prevent child sexual abuse by clerics and lay people, prosecute the perpetrators and help the victims in their healing process. It is the belated result of generations of historical clerical child sexual abuse and the denial and cover-up of their crimes by some bishops and cardinals around the world. It has become a crisis for the Church as an institution.
Pope Francis approved recently a new law to protect child victims and prosecute any clerical suspects accused in the Vatican State. Before this, there was no such law protecting children in the Vatican. But the new law is a model for others and is a zero-tolerance law. Every complaint of child abuse must be reported and investigated immediately.
In the Philippines, the arrest and detention of an American priest, Fr. Kenneth Hendricks, 78, in Naval, a town in Biliran province, on Dec. 5, 2018 for allegedly sexually abusing dozens of boys has focused attention on the culture of silence, cover-up and inaction by fellow clergy, officials and Catholic townspeople.
The alleged crimes were first reported to authorities in the United States who carried out a quiet investigation and filed charges against Hendricks in Ohio, where a judge issued an arrest warrant.
The fact that no local people dared accuse the priest despite local knowledge and complaints by several alleged victims indicates the fear of retribution of going up against a priest of the Catholic Church. That era of fear and impunity is coming to a close in many countries, but not yet in the Philippines.
Most cases of child sexual abuse by clergy are rarely exposed, and Archbishop Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle says they are investigated internally. So no civil punishment for the abusers and no justice for the victims. Impunity reigns it seems and that will have to change.
For some Catholics, the worldwide shame and widespread history of clerical child abuse has weakened and challenged their faith. Some have even left the Church. The nonabusing clergy are deeply ashamed by the terrible crimes against children that many of them allowed to happen either by their ignorance, inaction or silence. They were afraid or ashamed to report a fellow priest and cowardly shied from protecting the child victim. That silence is a form of consent. Now, dioceses have strict rules and regulations to report child abuse and prosecute the offender in civil courts.
Are we shocked by the serious wrongdoing by clergy, bishops and cardinals around the world? They are supposed to give good examples of Christian living by a life of virtue, love of justice and protecting children. But many of them have failed. Is our faith shaken, weakened and rendered useless? For some, the answer is yes. For others, no, because their faith is not primarily belief in the Church as a human institution but in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and his Gospel values.
It is a time of challenge for all us, Christian Catholics, especially bishops and priests, to examine our faith and ask if it is faith in the person of Jesus and if we have a personal relationship with him. Do we have a strong commitment to his simple but profound teaching?
Is our faith in his moral principles, in the human dignity of every person? Do we believe and live out his values on social justice, human rights, compassion and love, and especially in the innocence and protection of the child and the stranger? Does our faith express itself daily in action for justice and protection of the child and the stranger? If it doesn’t, then as St. James says, our so-called faith is dead. (Letter of James 2:26)
The Church as founded by Jesus is a community. It is the People of God, all believers and nonbelievers of goodwill gathered in the one faith and practice of what Jesus has taught and done, his principled way of life, which we are called upon to imitate and follow.
As an institution, the Church is a human creation with a hierarchy; a chain of command, a bureaucracy; a system of law; discipline, rules and regulations; and a sacramental practice from which salvation flows, we are told. But faith in action is what brings us closer to Jesus Christ in daily life.
This institutional, very human, Church has in many incidents betrayed Jesus and his teachings. From Chile, to Brazil, the US, Ireland, France, UK, Germany, Austria and elsewhere, scandals of child sexual abuse and other serious failings of clergy and bishops are evident. Some have failed to listen to victims and respond immediately. They have failed to have compassion and care for child victims and get healing and justice for them. Some priests and bishops hid the crimes, transferred priests, allowing them to abuse children again. That is a crime in itself.
Many bishops have resigned for their failure to act according to the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 18:1-8. Jesus says a child is the greatest in the Kingdom of God, not the adults.
That kingdom may also be here on earth. Justice must be delivered for the child victim, and Jesus said that a symbolic millstone be tied around the neck of a convicted abuser and he or she be thrown into the ocean. Strong words indeed, yet Jesus underlines the innocence of children and how serious it is to abuse them. To accept and protect one is to accept Him. That is why healing and justice are so important for victims of abuse.
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