…keep your eye on it.
From The Guardian:
Australia is to hold a wide-ranging judicial inquiry into child sex abuse in the country, including investigations into religious organisations, state care facilities, schools, not-for-profit groups and the responses of child services agencies and the police.
The royal commission follows growing pressure for a national inquiry after a senior police officer last week alleged that the Catholic church had covered up evidence involving paedophile priests. However, the inquiry’s scope is expected to cover a wide range of institutions involved in the care of children.
“Child abuse, child sex abuse is a vile thing – it’s an evil thing done by evil people,” said prime minister, Julia Gillard, announcing the royal commission on Monday.
“It’s not just the evil of the people who do it. There has been a systemic failure to respond to it. The allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse have been heartbreaking. These are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject. There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil.”
The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference released a statement saying it supported the royal commission and that child abuse was an issue for the entire community, not just the Catholic church. While the statement acknowledged there were significant problems in some Catholic dioceses and religious orders, it rejected suggestions there were systemic problems of sexual abuse in the church.
“It is unacceptable, because it is untrue, to claim that the Catholic church does not have the proper procedures, and to claim that Catholic authorities refuse to co-operate with the police,” the statement said.
The most senior figure within the Catholic church in Australia, Cardinal George Pell, also welcomed the royal commission. “Public opinion remains unconvinced that the Catholic church has dealt adequately with sexual abuse. Ongoing and at times one-sided media coverage has deepened this uncertainty,” he said.
Perhaps some of my Australian readers can provide further background on this, and what’s transpired since the original publication of the article (from Nov 2012).
This development, of course, got at least this states-side Catholyc all excited:
[...]
Also surprisingly, in one fateful and unprecedented week last month, Catholic laity concerned about children in different parts of the world directly rejected clear Vatican signals by supporting the re-election of President Barack Obama in the USA, and the establishment of a special national child sexual abuse investigation commission by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Australia. And now the Philippine legislature has just approved a very popular law to make contraception affordably accessible there, despite strong Vatican opposition.
[...]
If you understand these considerations, you will realize reforms are not only possible, but almost inevitable as more external pressure builds on the Vatican. It seems clear to me as an experienced lawyer observing the Vatican’s continuing evasive behavior, often masked by religious rhetoric, that reforms to the flawed child protection strategy will happen mainly and probably soon as a result of subjecting the Vatican to the modern rule of law mandated by constitutional democracies, such as Australia, the USA and Ireland. You can make a difference in influencing how soon the reforms are made by supporting the application of the rule of U.S. law to the Vatican by clicking on and signing the petition to President Obama accessible at
Please avoid being distracted by the seemingly unending “mystical smokescreens” about papal “tweets”, papal saint-making, papal books, even about the papal butler and the other obvious papal rhetorical ploys that Pope Benedict XVI’s well funded Vatican media team, now headed by an ex-FOX News reporter, spins out on an almost daily basis. Disappointingly, some Vatican based media reporters apparently under deadlines and beholden at times to their onoing sources too often just rehash this typical trivia, instead of either pressing their sources on the really important questions or thinking through the real significance of the dissembling and corruption they see with their own eyes, as the butler has recently confirmed to the world at great personal risk. Apparently, it took a simple, but brave, butler just to get much of the international media to pay close attention, for awhile at least. Now the butler’s fate has been decided, while the corruption he sought to expose apparently goes on seemingly unabated and too often unchallenged by the world’s media.
PLEASE CLICK on to the above link and read and sign the short online petition. It calls on President Obama to promptly establish a U.S. national investigation commission comparable to Australia’s. All of the good reasons for establishing the commission in Australia apply here in the USA as well. There are no good reasons for President Obama not to set up the commission in the USA soon. He has repeatedly acknowledged the need to protect children from violence and abuse. You need to take this unique opportunity to encourage him to act decisively now by your signing this petition promptly; otherwise the petition may be disregarded for insufficient public interest.
And there was insufficient public interest, because the petition has long since been closed. Not sure how many people actually signed the thing, but that’s not the thing that matters.
What matters is that it’s been tried once, and if you know anything about liberals and Catholycs, they don’t let one or two setbacks stand in their way.
So make no mistake. Folks who want the Church brought down a few pegs in order to satisfy their petulant demands that the Church change Her teaching on many issues – such as abortion, contraception, women priests, divorce & remarriage, to name a few – will not hesitate to use the evil of child sex-abuse to advance their cause. Yes, the sexual abuse of children is indeed evil and heinous – I’m not arguing with anyone there. But to stand upon the backs of the victims to demand changes to Church teachings unrelated to the sins and crimes of some of its members is equally reprehensible.
So keep your eye on Australia – and don’t be surprised to see similar attempts resurrected here in the US.
If they begin to investigate the Church, they must also investigate school systems, sports teams, scouting, etc. A few years ago in New York, there were calls to change the statute of limitations on abuse committed by Catholic priests. Upon learning that the schools would also become liable because laws can’t be changed to target one group only, the population of the state was against the change. It’s one thing to divest the Church of money, but God forbid tax dollars go out in payments to those who were abused children
Larry, Thanks for the eye-opener.
Here’s one to share too… do you know that approximately 10,000, yes 10,000 prosititutes will be in New Orleans soon for the Superbowl and Mardi Gras, many of whom are underage victims of human trafficking? I was blown away by the statistic. Our awesome Arch Bishop Aymond is actively involving Church and the community to help identify victims and take action. Prayer cards asking the intercession of St. Josephine Bakhita, who was sold into slavery as a child, are in every Catholic Church in the diocese. At least four hotels are placing soaps in hotel rooms with wrappers that say ” stop human trafficking” and other measures. Where are the petitions for this one?!
Well, I suppose there is good news in the sense that I didn’t read anything about legislating to coerce priests into breaking the seal of confession in order to catch criminals, or is that still in the works?
What if the media spent more time talking about the far larger (even per-capita) level of sex abuse by schoolteachers, other school employees, entertainers and entertainment industry people, therapists and gurus and teachers of Eastern religions? At least that appears true in the US. Maybe Australia is different. Of course, in addition, married Protestant leaders are just as likely to commit sex abuse as priests are. But that wouldn’t feed into the anti-celibacy narrative, so we don’t hear as much about it.
The sodomite-agenda in amchurch USA brazenly came out over 4 decades ago & was diligently ingrained & nurtured by the proponent of the ‘seamless garment’, & his social-justice communism ! The USCCB, still today, has many of his followers in positions of corrupt authority. Cardinal Dolans margin of victory in the last USCCB election was only by 11 votes over his effeminate opponent ! The annual CCHD collection is a prime example of their corrupt leadership. Millions collected from every Diocese in the USA are then granted to Pro-Abortion, Pro-Sodomite Marriage, Anti-Catholic & outright left wing-communist groups. They actually gave ACORN over 7 million & insured the election of the Abortionist-in-Chief in 2008. They also ordained hundreds of pederast over the decades that disgraced the Catholic Church & themselves & who will continue to do so until Rome denounces them as shepherds !!!!! This too is old news & Rome stands mute !
Every Catholic Bishop that has been validly consecrated as Bishop is in Apostolic succession, and Father to his diocese. The Church is a hierarchy, but it is not in a business mode where the CEO of a company (or board of directors) can fire the President of said company. The successor to Peter is the Vicar of Christ and has a special charism to teach, but he is not each bishop’s employer with the power to fire them. Our duty as lay Catholics is to pray, pray, pray for our bishops. And to trust that the Lord Jesus has triumphed and will bring good out of all the evil in the world.
Hi Larry.
Here’s the update – commissioners have been named, Currently, it’s expected to run for around three years.
There’s actually been significant coverage of the abuse of children in state-run institutions in the papers as well. This has been building for an awfully long time, and while the Catholic Church became a lightning rod (and will undoubtedly be the focus of the media coverage), there was significant pressure, enough to be felt by an atheist PM, to widen the scope of the Commission to all of society’s institutions.
You can find the website here: http://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx
As for the Catholycs, well, they may bloviate all they will. All the sin of the world rushed God and lost. God backs His Church to the hilt, and so I’m left to just ask the question – “What hope have you got mate?”