We need justice

When reports of priests sexually assaulting children and young people dominated national headlines back in 2002, the Vatican responded. They said priests were raping and sodomizing their young parishoners because the United States is too liberal and our sexual morals too lax, expecially in big bad Boston. (I don't remember hearing them issue a retraction when the news began reporting the same claims in the Midwest and the South- I guess we are just as much a bunch of libertines as the Boston crowd.)

When the crisis popped up in Australia, bishops decried bereaved parents as "cranky" when they complained their children committed suicide after being sexually assaulted by priests. Canada chimed in: thousands of Indian children were raped in the Catholic orphanages, according to published reports. And it was getting a little harder to blame the culture of the United States.

Last year, reports were released in Ireland detailing the massive amounts of abuse, including sexual assaults, that occurred at Catholic orphanages, churches and school; tens of thousands of people have come forth, and for every single person who finds the courage to speak out, many others suffer in silence. An Irish problem? The country was, for centuries, impoverished and backwards. That must be it.

But now, Europe is erupting with report after report after report of children being sexually abused in Bavaria, in Austria, in Switzerland, in Germany. (Although, as a Vatican insider helpfully pointed out, many who were raped or sodomized or groped were not really children, they were teenagers. Only someone who is not a parent would think that makes it all better.) Even the pope has been implicated in passing a predator on to another parish. The man, who had forced an 11-year-old boy to give him oral sex, received a month of therapy first, though, so naturally it was a big surprise when he reoffended. This priest was on active duty until last week.

The pope, the Register reported in the March 11 issue, "has taken a strong stand against abuse by clerics in the Roman Catholic Church." That month of therapy was rough, I'd imagine. Or maybe they are referring to the fact that, every so often, the pope pops out and says, "sexual abuse is bad." That's tellin' 'em!

No, they must be referring to the fact that the pope has written a letter of apology to Irish Catholics.

A letter of apology. For rape, for sodomy, for brutally stealing the childhoods of tens of thousands of the most vulnerable Irish citizens.

When are the governments of the many countries where this church has caused so much damage going to find their collective intestinal fortitude and DO SOMETHING? If this was some little podunk church in Arkansas, the feds would have it shut down faster than their creepy leader could proclaim puberty is consent. Is this another case of too big to fail, or even too big to be held accountable? I hope not; so many brave survivors have come out in the hopes that theirs will be the last generation to suffer at the hands of abusive clergy.