Welcome to the United States. May your visit be blessed and productive.
Also, please take into consideration the VOTF's reasonable petitions.
1. Treat survivors of sexual abuse with the justice and compassion our faith demands.
2. Hold bishops accountable to the people they serve.
3. Embrace full participation of Catholic men and women in Church decision-making.
4. Require full financial transparency and accountability in all governance matters.
We believe these steps will produce:
- An open, transparent and accountable Church
- A participative Church embracing the gifts and talents of the baptized
- A Church governed by compassion, informed by justice, empowered by equality, and animated to act collegially
12 comments:
So say we all!
Been in dissertation hell, but did I hear something on NPR this morning about how he's apologizing for the abuse? Or was I dreaming?
Amen.
I doubt he'll meet with them, but hope I'm wrong. I did see he stated he was "ashamed" of the clergy abuse scandal.
He did speak of being ashamed, and vowed to root out pedophiles, but there was no word about the responsibility of the hierarchy over this. I'm not sure we'll ever hear that.
As far as meeting with victims goes, I don't know if I'd rule that out. B16 is a very perceptive guy. He was much more clear-headed and decisive, for example, on the matter of the founder of the Legionaires of Christ than JPII was.
"No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse," he said in the sermon of a Mass at Nationals Park, a new stadium hosting its first non-baseball event.
"It is important that those who have suffered be given loving pastoral attention. Nor can I adequately describe the damage that has occurred within the community of the Church," he said during Mass.
But he said great efforts had been made to deal "honestly and fairly" with the aftermath of the scandal.
Yesterday, he said the sexual abuse situation was "sometimes very badly handled."
Maybe it's the because of the primaries, or Benedict being in Washington and standing next to Bush, but so far, he sounds to me like just another politician, saying things on the campaign trial that he knows most of his voters want to hear.
With Bernard Law continuing to serve in several positions of authority in Rome, I find these statements empty and meaningless.
And I can't believe he won't meet with victims but has the gall to tell people who've been sexually abused by a priest that they need "loving pastoral attention." They already got pastoral attention. That's the problem.
William,
I share your concern about his laying the blame solely at the feet of "the degrading manifestations and crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today", and not on the problems associated with a celibate clerical subculture, but on the other hand, in his defense...
EXCLUSIVE: Pope meets with Boston abuse victims.
See, I had a feeling he would.
Well, your plea was answered:
Pope meets with victims of clergy sex abuse.
That's at least a step in the right direction.
Hey, not fair, you responded to me before I could even finish my new comment! :-)
Howdy!
Jeff,
Thanks for your comment on my blog. I thought I'd answer over here instead of there :)
When I read that Benedict held their hands, I was really touched. I usually think the worst of him so I'm surprised when he seems to do something that proves me wrong.
btw, I don't know if you saw my comment at Jen's, but can't blocked blogs still be read through Google Reader?
Hi Crys,
Regarding Benedict, credit needs to be given where credit is due. It was the right thing to do.
As for the other matter...
Is he being rude? I don't know much about Google Reader and how feeds work, but all the blocking script does is to redirect someone away from your web page when it tries to load. If the blog content can be extracted and viewed anywhere else, under a different URL, I imagine that it would be viewable. If, on the other hand, the URL of the original blog post is embedded in the feed, the redirect would probably work.
Is that making any sense?
If you want to experiment, feel free to use my IP.
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