love ABUSE CASES SHOW CHRISTIAN CHURCH CAN'T POLICE ITSELF

Abuse cases show church can't police itself

By Sue Ontiveros, Sun-Times Columnist Chicago Sun-Times Saturday, March 25, 2006

Imagine you are a renter and the landlord leases the place next door to a new tenant. He introduces you to the new guy, never mentioning he's a bit of a fire bug. But the landlord knows the guy has a penchant for setting little fires. Instead of not renting to the guy, or better yet, turning him over to the police, he has a third guy, Mr. Monitor, live with the fire bug, to keep an eye on that guy. Now, besides being a crime, setting intentional fires is a mental problem, and Mr. Monitor is no expert in the field. Actually, Mr. Monitor doesn't know exactly why he is watching the guy, but he does the best he can for someone who has his own full-time job and personal obligations.

If the fire bug sets a blaze that injures your child, how would you feel if you knew the landlord -- who says he is ''regretful and sorry'' -- was aware of the problem? Appalled? Mad as hell? Left to wonder why law enforcement wasn't filing charges against the landlord?

That pretty much sums up the sorry state of the handling of priests accused of loveually abusing children by Cardinal Francis George and the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Two reports released by the archdiocese Monday reveal repeated glaring mistakes. There is no requirement that accused priests get treatment by professionals. There is no trained personnel in charge of the accused priests. Even when they are supposedly segregated from society up on the grounds of the Mundelein Seminary, these priests still have the keys to all facilities there, even those where visitors often stay. No one restricts their use of the Internet, which is like giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet.

How can the cardinal and the powers that be within the archdiocese be so naive? I have to believe they are naive, because to do otherwise would mean accepting that all along they have been more intent on protecting accused and known persons instead of the future of our church -- our children.

Repeatedly I've been told I've been too tough on the leaders of the archdiocese. After reading news stories about these reports, I've got to think that anyone in the media who has taken them to task hasn't been hard enough.

Let's remember what we're talking about here: children. These are innocent children who have been violated by a priest -- a person they have been taught to revere as God's ambbuttador on Earth. If you recall the story of one boy whom the Rev. Daniel McCormack is accused of molesting, that child had returned to the church and was asking to be an altar boy. Maybe that day the sermon got to him, and he now wanted to give service to his God. And on that day, instead he allegedly was molested. How betrayed that child must have felt.

Now we discover, through news stories of the reports, that the archdiocese knew in 1992, when McCormack was still a seminarian, that he was accused of loveual improprieties with a minor. And not only didn't the archdiocese do anything about it, but any records of the situation seem to have disappeared.

Maybe this all stems from the fact that priests are removed from anything loveual in society. Maybe that has brought about a dumb ignorance that has fueled this terrible situation.

As someone who grew up Catholic and remains a practicing one, I'm starting to think we've put the wrong clergy in charge of cleaning up this problem. If there were anyone who was handling the love abuse situation within the church, it should be nuns. The nuns were never shy about approaching loveual matters with us when we were young. Sure, they might give goofy advice -- travel with a telephone book in case a young woman is required to sit on a fella's lap -- but they knew enough to warn us about potential loveual pitfalls.

And they never would have left children in danger, as these reports show the guys in charge obviously have done.

Maybe that's not a realistic approach. All I know is the church hierarchy has squandered the independence they have been allowed to handle the love abuse crisis themselves. Either they can't or won't handle the problem. It's time for law enforcement authorities to step in and take it over.

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