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It's Not Just the Press (Tue Mar 15, 2005 1:22 am) The Vatican/Curia and the American Bishops have been very fond of saying that the clerical sexual abuse crisis is peculiar to the United States and, further, that it is largely the product of an aggressive anti-Catholic (read Jewish) media and a plethora of greedy (read Jewish again) lawyers eager to line their pockets and better yet, build their mansions and buy their yachts, at the expense of the poor maligned American clergy. An innocent expression of affection by a loving priest 30 or 40 years ago is turned into a violation. A routine transfer of that same priest is made into a nefarious plot. The attempt to protect the good names of priests is twisted into episcopal malfeasance. These Americans exaggerate everything! Well, it would appear that the Canadians, Mexicans, Irish, Austrians, Australians, Indians, Africans and Greeks all suffer from the same maladies of exaggeration and greed. Take off the blinders and rose-colored glasses! See what has been happening for centuries and continues to happen today: there have been and still are priests who embezzle from their churches' collections, grope (or worse) their altar boys, proposition or coerce laywomen and religious; there have been and still are priests, brothers and sisters who beat and abuse children entrusted to their care; there have been and still are bishops who protect all of these miscreants and transfer them away from the law that could punish them; there have been and still are religious orders and their cardinal protectors who transfer pedophiles to other countries; there have been and still are Curial officials who bury reports of hundreds or thousands of African nuns being raped and sometimes forced to abort by their priests; there have been and still are Curial officials protecting the founder of the Pope's favorite religious order from prosecution for pedophilia and abuse of the sacrament of confession. These incidents and thousands more like them all over the world are not the creations of money-hungry lawyers or vindictive journalists: they are the product of the abuse of the Church's power -- the power we gave it to require unquestioning obedience and silence. Enough! Christine M. Roussel
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