{"id":3823,"date":"2011-01-19T12:49:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T12:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/01\/why-the-irish-abuse-letter-concerns-me.html"},"modified":"2011-01-19T12:49:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T12:49:00","slug":"why-the-irish-abuse-letter-concerns-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/01\/why-the-irish-abuse-letter-concerns-me.html","title":{"rendered":"Why the Irish abuse letter concerns me"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>It\u2019s not that I haven\u2019t seen it before.\u00a0 A document from anywhere over the last two thousand years is released, and the press heralds it as \u2018Smoking Gun Proves Cover Up of Abusive Priests!\u2019\u00a0 Like many things so released, there can be defenses made, as they are being made <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20110119\/ap_on_re_eu\/eu_ireland_catholic_abuse\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a>, and over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncregister.com\/blog\/vatican-warned-bishops-not-to-report-child-abuse\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">here<\/a> is a good example from Jimmy Akin.<\/p>\n<p>My problem is, yeah, from a very legalistic viewpoint, from a very \u2018assume innocence until beyond a reasonable doubt\u2019 perspective,\u00a0this just might\u00a0be more much ado about nothing.\u00a0 But defense of this, and so many other examples of \u2018stunning evidence\u2019\u00a0over the last few years, involves a certain \u2018hey, it may look bad, but if you look at it from the Church following every jot and tittle of canon law, then it\u2019s not that bad.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the way the Church does things the way it does them.\u2019\u00a0 The problem is, this is all happening while thousands of lives are being irreparably damaged, while entire faiths are being destroyed, and lives altered forever.\u00a0 While it\u2019s going on.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>This doesn\u2019t prove that the Church is evil, this doesn\u2019t prove that the Church was even wrong.\u00a0 What it does prove, and what it aids, is that classic Protestant scree against the Church that Catholicism is where the heart and soul of the Gospel of Christ gets entangled in the eternal arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or the demand that the holy and sacred copy machine not be placed along the south wall.\u00a0 Sure, lives may be at stake, but we must do diligence at all cost, and if that means some lives slip through the cracks while we run the numbers, so be it.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not saying that was the attitude of those involved.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying there is guilt or innocence.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I just know that when things look stinky, they stink.\u00a0 A picture of a pile of manure has about the same impact as actually standing next to a real pile of manure if you think about it.\u00a0 Impressions are impressions.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<p>All of this is to say that there may well be a need for the Church to rethink its current strategies for bureaucratic administering of the Faith.\u00a0 As charming as it is to imagine the Church as just a bunch of lovable Ents who get around to things when they get around to them, it\u2019s not so charming when we remember the all important dignity of the individual that the Church is constantly reminding every other government and nation in the world about on a constant basis.\u00a0 Even one child so harmed should be enough to shake the systems and structures of the bureaucratic institution to its core.\u00a0\u00a0At best, this shows a marked lack of anything but doing diligence at all costs, even if the rusty wheels turning slowly means\u00a0a few\u00a0lives ruined in the process.\u00a0 That\u2019s the best you can say about many of the defenses over the years. <\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s hope it doesn\u2019t get any worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s not that I haven\u2019t seen it before.\u00a0 A document from anywhere over the last two thousand years is released, and the press heralds it as \u2018Smoking Gun Proves Cover Up of Abusive Priests!\u2019\u00a0 Like many things so released, there can be defenses made, as they are being made here, and over here is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why the Irish abuse letter concerns me<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It&#039;s not that I haven&#039;t seen it before.&nbsp; A document from anywhere over the last two thousand years is released, and the press heralds it as &#039;Smoking\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2011\/01\/why-the-irish-abuse-letter-concerns-me.html\" \/>\n<meta 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