When I was in elementary school, my parents forced me to go to the local Catholic school for religion classes. Once a week, I argued all the way from my public school to St. Francis, ranting all the reasons why I shouldn't be subject to an hour of some nun telling me about burning bushes and random contradictory rules.
I never really bought the whole Catholic thing and although I went through the motions (the classes, communion, confirmation), I never believed a word of what I was told. I often questioned my teachers and was usually given some circular answer that didn't really answer anything.
In short, I was not the model student. And I never went to church. Ever. This posed a problem because we had to get the weekly newsletter signed by the priest every Sunday to bring to class the following week. I solved the problem by usually going into the church when I knew the services were over and had the priest sign it. With the crowd of children around him, he never knew I wasn't in attendance.
A few years after the torture was over (I had completed the required classes), a big scandal arose. The principal of the Catholic school, a woman (but not a nun), was accused of molesting a then-grown student. The boy she molested went on TV, as a grown man, and told his story to the world. The principal disappeared, never to be heard from by my classmates or me ever again. The boy? I'm not sure what happened to him either. The issue died down, the school tried to save face and eventually everyone forgot about it.
Now, the issue of religious figures taking advantage of their proximity to children arises again; although I am sure that it never really went away, it had for me.
Pope John Paul II has finally issued a strong statement against child molestation by priests: the church will institute a "zero tolerance" policy for priests who molest children. The issue, though, appears not to be finalized. Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that a definite decision will be made at the bishops' general meeting on June. I, however, fail to see where the conflict in such a seemingly simple decision lies.
"There is a growing consensus that it is too great a risk to assign a priest who has abused a child to another ministry," said Gregory.
This statement, perhaps, illustrates a significant part of the problem within the Roman Catholic Church. There is a severe lack of accountability and willingness to address problems. Assigning a priest who has molested a child to another ministry is like sending a drug dealer to a different neighborhood. The problem will no longer be yours, but it will be far from solved.
Currently, bishops within each diocese set their own policy on the handling of molestation. In this way, the church can hide behind their doctrines and do not have to answer to the "outside" world. It is about time that this stopped; molesting children is a crime and anyone who does it should be sent to jail, not to a new playground.
Even more ridiculous, though, are the proposed regulations by church leaders to the Roman congregations to be decided upon in June. One of the proposals would set up a special process to remove priests who have "become notorious and [are] guilty of the serial, predatory, sexual abuse of minors," according to an April 24 article on CNN.com. I would like to know how a molester becomes notorious. Does it mean that he has molested more than one child? Is a repeat offender? If this is the case, why hasn't be been removed already?
Another proposal states that if the offending priest is not considered notorious, the local bishop will determine his fate by determining whether the molester "is a threat to children and should be dismissed," according to the same article. Maybe notorious in this case means how visible the priest is to the public eye. If the pope molested a child, he will be removed, if father O'Brien does the same, he will be relocated. How, then, are these proposals any different from the current system?
The leaders also recommend that the church be more attentive in teaching moral Catholic doctrines to reduce the sexual abuse of children, which they described as "deplorable behavior." Instead of acknowledging the fact that sexual abuse is a real problem within the religious organization, they try to make it seem as though if they pray enough, it will go away.
The leaders who will be attending the June conference even went so far as to urge the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to ask that members of the church join in a national day of prayer in reparation for the abuse inflicted on children. Because I am sure that children who have been traumatized by authoritative figures whom they were supposed to trust and have faith in will feel so much better after a day of prayer; I doubt many of them can even find it in their selves to maintain their faith in religion.
What the church needs to do is try and dispel their reputation by practicing what they preach (pardon the clich?(c)). The distrust many feel towards the church will only be obliterated with time and the rebuilding of morals within the church itself. To do this, though, religious leaders need to acknowledge the problem at hand and be willing to deal with it, despite the bad press and embarrassment it may bring. The new "zero tolerance" policy is only the first of many steps, but at least it is a start.
