Looking sex abuse in the eye

Last updated on: October 11, 2013 at 12:16 am by Billy Kangas

Looking sex abuse in the eye 2013-10-11T00:16:00-04:00 Billy Kangas

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@JamesMartinSJ recently dropped a moment of truth over on facebook as he linked to this most recent sex abuse story stating:

It gives me no pleasure to post stories like this, but they are important to read and understand.

Often I’m told that people are “tired” of reading about, or talking about, the sex abuse crisis. Last summer at a talk someone asked me what I thought was the biggest challenge facing the church, and I said the sexual abuse crisis. My questioner then took me to task for several minutes: Isn’t that in the past? Doesn’t the media focus too much on abuse in the church and not with other groups? Well, some of it is in the past, and the church has taken important steps in this area (particularly with the Office of Child and Youth Protection and safe environment programs in dioceses across the country), and sometimes the media does overlook abuse that occurs other settings–public schools, for example. But stories like this one show why this problem is not yet fully consigned to the past in the church, and why constant vigilance is required to protect children and young adults. I also want to point out the high level of the person who blew the whistle–chancellor for canonical affairs.

It’s a good word, and one we need to hear. As a Catholic it can be easy to get defensive with these stories, to try to point out that Catholics aren’t the only ones who are having these issues, or to even believe that if I just hope the abuses will go away hard enough that they will, but Jim reminds us that the Church is only starting to deal with this. There are hundreds who have been so deeply wounded by “Men of God” that they can no longer see God as anyone other then an abuser, and countless more will never walk into a church again because they saw how the church walked out on these kids, and I don’t blame them. I am grateful for guys like Jim who keep these stories in front of our eyes and heats.

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