Penn State sends a message. US bishops, take notice.

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 11, 2011

At Penn State, a month after the revelation of a sex-abuse scandal, four top executives have been ousted. In the American Catholic hierarchy, a decade after the exposure of hundreds of sex-abuse cases, just one bishop has resigned.

So now the American bishops know what it looks like when an institution takes its responsibilities seriously—its responsibility not only to curb abusers, but also to hold accountable those leaders who allowed the abuse to go unchecked.

A university president, a vice-president, an athletic director, and a legendary football coach have been dismissed for doing once what many American bishops did multiple times. The trustees of Penn State have sent out a clear message: The sexual abuse of children is a heinous crime, and those who cover up the abuse share the guilt. The American Catholic bishops have very clearly grasped the first part of that message, and just as clearly failed to come to terms with the second part.

The students who noisily protested the firing of Joe Paterno also failed to grasp the point about holder leaders accountable. They admire Paterno for his coaching prowess, and understandably so. They say that he has made enormous contributions to Penn State, and they are right; there is already a statue of the man on campus. But even great men can do bad things. By failing to take appropriate action against an abuser, Paterno wrote his own sad ending to what should have been a stellar career.

The angry students at Penn State are showing a very natural human tendency. They admire “Joe Pa,” and don’t want to think ill of him. They recognize that he made a major mistake, but don’t think he should be punished for it. Couldn’t we just cut the man some slack?

Perhaps Paterno himself was thinking along similar lines when he first heard the complaints against Jerry Sandusky. Presumably the old coach liked his assistant, and didn’t want to make trouble for him. So he handled the matter quietly—and the abuser went unpunished, and more children were put at risk.

No doubt the same sort of sentimental thinking took place in chanceries all around the country (all around the world, it seems), when Church officials learned that Father X had been accused. “Father X has done wrong, but he’s fundamentally a good man,” the bishops and monsignors might have said. “Let’s help him to work his way out of this problem gracefully.” So the priest was quietly removed from his parish, given a few weeks of therapy, and then returned to a new assignment, where he had new opportunities to molest young people.

We all tend to make excuses for the people closest to us. Apparently that tendency affects even the most vociferous critics of clerical abuse. But even if it is a very natural weakness, it remains a weakness. If we want to eliminate the abuse of children, we must get tough with abusers. Sometimes that might mean fighting off the temptation to make excuses for them—in effect, getting tough with ourselves.