This post is negative and dark, but the trend is hopeful.
Let me step on my soapbox ever so briefly. The topic of this brief post is loyalty and church leaders. Some clear statements: when a child has been abused, that is monstrously wrong. When a church leader cared more about the institutional church than taking care of children, that is monstrously wrong. They thought they were being loyal to the Church. In fact, they were destroying it. Some Church leaders, I really like. Some, I don't. Some of them probably don't like me either. So what.
My brief point is that I never believed that the people of God were served by leaders who were simply "company men." While these company men thought their intentions were quite good, actually their results were awful. This is why so many people are mad at church leaders today. They were not loyal enough to go the extra mile to protect kids and keep bad people out of the priesthood. I don't think this is very complicated. You have to care if you're going to be loyal and serve your people.
Even one case of abuse is too many. It is widely unrecognized, but objectively true, that the numbers of minors abused by priests is down to a very small number. May that number drop to zero. To put things in a little context that is not an excuse for even one person who is abused, in the last few years, nationally there has been about 7 cases of abuse on an average in each year. Seven too many. Definitely.
Take what has happened in Pennsylvania, the focus of so much publicity about the Catholic Church in the past year. Lets compare the number of priests against those in other professions. Forty-two teachers in public schools in Pennsylvania alone lost their licenses for sexual misconduct. One case, too many. But somehow things are getting better when you look at data involving priests. It must continue. You would never know this given the way that abuse has been reported. I am really ticked when dioceses don't report the context and the improvements being made. Steps that have been taken have produced results. This is not good news, since nothing about abuse is good. However, it is promising news. Trends are getting positive. This is real.
It breaks my heart at what this has done to the Church, to so many good and trusting people.
TODAY's GRATITUDE: That we're moving closer to the day when the number of children abused will be zero.