Defective record keeping, anyone?

By Diogenes ( articles ) | May 08, 2003

The Arizona Republic carries a bruising editorial on the Diocese of Phoenix's kid-glove treatment of child abusing priests. Some excerpts:

An infamous history. A history of shame. But only now, decades later, as a local prosecutor digs into mountains of testimony, can we appreciate the pervasiveness of evil, evil committed by men of God, evil protected by their bishops, the successors of the Apostles. ... In so many cases, priests who were accused of sexual misconduct were not disciplined or defrocked. They were reassigned -- to three area high schools, the Newman Center at Northern Arizona University and to 17 parishes with elementary schools attached. How could these things happen? What logic on Earth would direct these troubled priests to the very places where they could - and did - find scores of new and vulnerable victims? ... It was worse than a pattern. It was a sin.

The Arizona Republic opposes the Catholic Church on all contested points of sexual teaching. It is not a desire to see her flourish that prompts this editorial interest. All the more humiliating that, first, the criticisms are largely deserved and, second, secular journalists should beat the bishops to the punch in naming the failure a sin.