More helpful journalism on the Catholic abuse scandal
December 12, 2019
Some of the best recent reporting on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and on how the church is responding has been coming from the Associated Press.
For instance, last month, in this blog post, I noted two major AP pieces about all of this.
And today I guide you to this AP article about all of the pressures that the dwindling number of Catholic priests are facing in the wake of the abuse scandal.
It describes a wearied priesthood struggling to stay afloat.
"Weighing on the entire Catholic clergy in the U.S.," the piece notes, "is the ripple effect of their church’s long-running crisis arising from sex abuse committed by priests. It’s caused many honorable priests to sense an erosion of public support and to question the leadership of some of their bishops. That dismay is often compounded by increased workloads due to the priest shortage, and increased isolation as multi-priest parishes grow scarce. They see trauma firsthand. Some priests minister in parishes wracked by gun violence; others preside frequently over funerals of drug-overdose victims."
Had I been the reporter on this story, I'd have added this phrase after "sex abuse committed by priests. . .": ". . .and the willingness of some bishops to cover up for those priests." After all, the scandal never would have grown as huge as it became without bishops who were willing to look the other way or actively try to protect guilty priests.
One of the priests quoted in this latest AP work makes the point well. The Rev. Philip Schmitter, 74, who has served for 50 years in Flint, Mich., put it this way:
“This cover up, this ‘Let’s protect the institution’ was just a heinous, utterly unchristian kind of behavior.”
As the Catholic population in the U.S. grows (mostly thanks to immigration) and the number of priests shrinks, the AP piece says, many priests are overwhelmed: "Stress, burnout, depression and addictions are among the conditions treated at St. Luke Institute, a residential treatment center for Catholic clergy and lay leaders, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
"St. Luke’s president, the Rev. David Songy, is a psychologist who has worked extensively with troubled priests. One growing problem, he says, is that new priests are now often assigned their own parish within three years, instead of 10 or more in the past, and may be ill-prepared to oversee finances and personnel as well as pastoral duties."
This Catholic story that the AP is chronicling is in many ways a self-inflicted wound. The children are the most important of the innocent victims, of course, but it's worth noting that good priests fall into the innocent-victim category, too. The bishops who permitted this sore to fester have a lot for which to atone.
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WHAT CHURCH DEATH LOOKS LIKE
Here's a sad story about the decline of Mainline Protestant churches told by a journalist who was married in one of them and then recently went back to visit it. She concludes that some of those churches have simply abandoned hope for a more vibrant future. Well, some may have, but not all. I know quite a few such congregations, including mine, that are working hard to offer hope to their neighborhoods and to the world.
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