These two pieces from the Chicago Tribune certainly add mortar to the brick wall the Roman Catholic Church is building to protect itself. In all fairness, after 16 years of Catholic education, I have met no relatives or friends who recall even the slightest incident of priestly abuse. I know that my parents reared us with a peaceful humanism and a healthy anti-clerical base. Gentle as my Father was, he would have responded to any inappropriate behavior with action from which no wall could protect the evil-doer; and this would be the better option for the perpetrator. Had my Mother become involved, I hesitate to imagine the outcome.
Parish Fights Archbishop to Keep Parish AliveBy Manya A. Brachear
Chicago Tribune staff reporterMarch 26, 2006
ST. LOUIS — On a recent Sunday at St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, the file of faithful streaming up to receive Communion stretched from the nave to the back pew.
Hands clasped and heads bowed, the parishioners returned to their seats reverentially after Rev. Marek Bozek placed a wafer into each palm and uttered the phrase “the body of Christ.”
In the eyes of St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, those who accept the consecrated bread and wine from this priest are committing a mortal sin. In a bitter dispute over control of the parish’s finances, Burke excommunicated Bozek in December and later stripped St. Stanislaus of its standing as a Roman Catholic parish.
Neither Bozek nor his congregation is backing down. In fact, membership in the parish has more than doubled.
The standoff began a few years ago when St. Stanislaus refused to give the archdiocese control of its property and other assets, worth more than $9 million. Burke removed the two priests then serving there, without whom parishioners could not receive Communion, baptize their children, marry or bury their loved ones.
After 18 months, the church’s six officers hired Bozek, an act of disobedience that led to a charge of schism and excommunication for the officers and the renegade priest.
The entire article should be here.
Opinion from Chicago Tribune
Absence of Moral Authority
The clergy’s failures are beyond the shame they bring down on the Church.
Dennis Byrne, a Chicago-area writer and consultant
March 27, 2006
For many Roman Catholics, the latest round of disclosures about pedophile priests in the Chicago archdiocese is the end of their patience with an institution that is incapable of or unwilling to change.
For other Catholics, it is further confirmation of a sad reality that has frustrated their attempts to wake up a hierarchy that is too deaf, smug or self-serving.
For non-Catholics, the failure to move against men who still victimize children, years after allegations against the clergy became widely known, is as much of a mystery as an outrage.
For Catholics who have tried to deny these sins of their fathers, it’s time for them to examine their own consciences.
Here we are, years after church leaders promised reforms, and a new report surfaces accusing the archdiocese of, as the Chicago Tribune put it, “botching” the job of protecting children from clerical pedophiles. The independent and expert report, commissioned by the church (at least give it credit for that, as well as hanging its dirty linen out in public), enumerated shocking failure after failure:
Not watching suspected priests closely enough, not requiring them to report their activities daily, not imposing consequences on priests who fail to report, not adequately training monitors, not being alert to misconduct of seminarians before ordination, insufficiently following up on allegations of misconduct, and so on. Just one incredible example: One accused priest last year took three minors on a Labor Day weekend trip in the absence of another priest assigned to monitor him.
The entire column should be here.