Letter to the editor: Wallin

Letter to the editor:

I listened to an NPR talk show Tuesday - January 24 - Neil Conan Talk of the Nation about the present conditions of the Catholic church. Google it under NPR - Catholic Church, if you want to read the whole thing.

I found that the "statistics" put out by the church that "only" 7% of priests abused children are from 2002 and since then has gone up so dramatically that 2002 was the last time the church put out that statistic! This figures since other rapists go to prison while the church pays lots of hush money to keep its clergy out of newspapers and jails.

It was as if 7% was perfectly acceptable to the church since this is the same rate as in any other aspect of society - a childish defense of: everyone-else-does-it-too, implying that priests are only expected to be morally average as far as committing heinous crimes. I know where the church can find men to solve their priest shortage - off the streets - no moral training necessary. But the church would be way better off promoting its women to first class citizenship by including them fully into the clergy. Right now the Catholic church is right down there with the Muslims and Mormons repressing women's rights and equality. And this is 2012. I believe, for what little it is worth, that women clergy at all levels is the only way to salvation (change) of this totally corrupt men's pedophile club. Otherwise the club continues on its merry, and horrific, way with a little temporary cosmetic here and there.

The hush money and other settlements paid so far by the Church is up to 2 billion dollars now! I was amazed. The last I knew it was "only" 200 million. You have to keep up with this. And these experts uniformly say that this is still just the beginning.

Conan's guests included one of the Boston Globe reporters who wrote the story 10 years ago that finally stirred public interest after years of other similar stories, since they now had proof from church documents (obtained only after a court order and years of obstruction and legal maneuvering by the church) proving priest abuse of children (well -rape) and the movement of priests to other parishes by Cardinal Law who purposely and knowingly protected the priests and endangered more and more children.

OH - Cardinal Law after resigning in disgrace in Boston was immediately promoted by the Pope to a cushy job in the Vatican - a reward from the pedophile club leader and of course an absolute indication, a proof, of the pervasiveness of the corruption, which includes the "Infallible" and arrogant Popes.

Reporter, Michael REZENDES: "not in our wildest dreams did we suspect that it was as big in Boston as it turned out to be. And I think all of us have been repeatedly thrown back on our heels as this story has spread throughout the country and indeed around the world. None of us foresaw how big this story really is."

CONAN: And we should be reminded about how difficult it was to find out in the first place.

REZENDES: Yeah, it's very, very difficult to get records from the church. "But what we accomplished in 2002 was to prove that high officials in the Archdiocese of Boston, including Cardinal Law, actually knew for decades that priests were molesting children and nevertheless, transferred those priests from parish to parish, which enabled them to continue molesting still more children."

CONAN: So have - some of them are still in office, some still enjoying great power?

REZENDES: Well, exactly. I mean, for instance, the auxiliary bishops who worked under Cardinal Law here in Boston, many of them were given their own diocese. For instance, John McCormack runs his own diocese in New Hampshire. William Murphy runs a diocese in Long Island. Alfred Hughes runs a diocese in New Orleans, ect. So the bishops really were not held to account in any way for allowing abusive priests to continue to abuse children, but it's only started to happen recently in the United States. A bishop in Kansas City has been indicted for not reporting child sex abuse to police, and there's a monsignor in Philadelphia who I believe is scheduled to stand trial for endangering children because he also oversaw priests who were known abusers who were assigned to other churches.

REZENDES: I think for a lot of victims, they have found justice. I mean, part of what happened over the last decade is victims who previously believed that they were alone or somehow responsible for what happened to them, which is a very common phenomenon, I think literally thousands of these victims suddenly realized hey, it's not my fault, hey, this is happening to other people, wow, there's a systemic problem here. And I think a lot of victims have found a sense of liberation in that sense. On the other hand, I think many victims still feel the damages of their abuse and continue to be troubled and continue to lead lives that are characterized by a lot of pain.

The Catholic governor of Oklahoma, Frank Keating, also found how difficult the Church officials can be after he was appointed head of the "Catholic Review Board" to investigate the church scandals. Keating resigned after only a few months because of non cooperation of the clergy. He said that the church was operating "like the mafia." Later when criticized for this he said:

"My remarks, which some Bishops found offensive, were deadly accurate. I make no apology.... To resist Grand Jury subpoenas, to suppress the names of offending clerics, to deny, to obfuscate, to explain away; that is the model of a criminal organization"

Another NPR radio guest, Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who specializes in sexual abuse cases, has represented hundreds of victims in suits against the Catholic Church.
After asked if the church was reforming:
"No, not at all. It's business as usual. .....
 "To put this in focus, you have to realize you have - you are dealing with an institution that got caught. They did not volunteer their guilt. They got caught, and they fought it tooth and nail. They got caught allowing thousands of children to be sexually molested by thousands of priests over the course of centuries. They're not going to change on a dime. They have no reason to.....

"You have to remember Canon law states child sexual abuse matters when looked into shall be kept in secret. So there's a secret society there.

"When the priest molested the child, the priest would threaten the child to keep the matter a secret or, for instance, their mother would burn in hell. Then, the supervisors when they receive the report of the sexual abuse by a parent would tell the parent - and this is all documented - to keep this matter a secret.
"So you have this secrecy within an entity that has started to circle the wagons, and they play upon people's faith and morality. You have purportedly the most moral institution in the world acting the most immorally and using for leverage the fact that they tell little children if you tell anybody, your parents are going to burn in hell.

"It takes decades for victims to gather the strength and courage to come forward to report the abuse. I have individuals in their 80s reporting abuse for the very first time. One man has been carrying it around for 81 years, and I'm the first person he told. ....

"So in another 30 years or so, you're going to have children coming forward who will be saying, you know, I was sexually molested in 1995 or 2002 or whatever. It's going to take time for those individuals to come forward."

                Gary Wallin
                Mantorville