PAEDOPHILE CONCERNS

I note that the Roman Catholic Church in Londonderry has come out (whoops) and apologised for the disgraceful manner in which it took parishioners money and, without consulting them in anyway, put it into a fund for paying the victims of Roman Catholic clerical sex abuse. Well, it is always good to acknowledge a wrong but had the BBC not run their excellent Spotlight programme, I wonder if the Church would have been so quick to express its apology?

Comments

[slackjaw]

If parishioners' money facilitated the abuse, then it is right that it should also go to compensating the victims of that abuse. But collections expressly for that purpose should have been held at masses.

Bishops and priests should have explained from the pulpit exactly why the money is needed, and what is being done to prevent future occurrences of sexual abuse by priests.

What happened here in the Derry diocese exemplifies the strange relationship between clergy and laity, at least from my own experience, in the Irish Catholic Church.

The clergy works on the assumption that it always knows best, and is broadly unaccountable in its use of funds provided by the laity. But obviously enough, it does not know best, or there would be no paedophilia scandal in the first place. That contradiction, also manifest in many other areas, is what impels many to leave and never come back.

[joc]

David,

I was always of the view that the then RUC had a bit of a sectarian bias (don't flame me for this) and decided to go for Fr. Brendan Smyth. We (the Irish, esp the South) owe them a huge depth of gratitude for this.

It is very evident that a lot of investigations in the South were suppressed for a very long time due to the reluctance (and sometimes determination) of the Gardai to deal with a serious issue.

[BVM]

Pray for the wee disgraced Roman Catholic Church in Londonderry and its victims of Roman Catholic clerical sex abuse.

[Declan]

...and the Catholic Church wonders why there are less bums (whoops!) on seats week after week...