During his homily, the pope asked his flock to "love your priests," and create an environment of forgiveness and vigilance to ensure Catholic children are raised in a safe setting.
Yesterday he discussed the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Catholic Church in America. The pope earlier apologized for the scandal.
"These efforts to protect children must continue," Pope Benedict said. "Today I encourage each of you to foster healing and reconciliation."
The pope also discussed what he called "a disturbing breakdown in the foundations of society" while also praising globalization and the increasing interdependence of humanity.
"Who can deny that the present moment is a crossroads, not only for the Church in America, but also for society as a whole?" Pope Benedict asked. "It is a time of great progress."
The pope decried a "weakening of the moral sense," and a "forgetfulness of Christ and God."
— Carrie Sheffield, Web editor, The Washington Times
Comments (1)
Before forgiveness must come accountability, transparency and most importantly Justice.
When those three conditions are fulfilled, the possibility of forgiveness by those abused may be possible although not probably in many cases because the pain and violation has been so great. But it isn't required for the institutional church to be accountable in Justice as Jesus himself requires.
Like Catholics across the United States I welcome Pope Benedict XVI as he visits Washington, D.C. and New York City later in the week. Benedict had a beautiful day in Washington to celebrate his 81st birthday as well.
The pain that so many victims of sexual abuse continue to endure throughout their lives is the pain that our Catholic Church should be considering first and foremost before the "enormous pain that your communities have suffered when clerics have betrayed their priestly obligations and duties by such gravely immoral behavior," as the pope spoke of in his words to the American bishops on Wednesday when he met with them at the National Shrine.
The continuing sex scandal was not just "sometimes very badly handled," it was very often and repeatedly handled very badly.
I consider it misleading to say that, "Now that the scale and gravity of the problem is more clearly understood you have been able to adopt more focused remedial and disciplinary measures and to promote a safe environment that gives greater protection to young people."
While the scale and gravity of the sexual abuse problem has been understood for years, the bishops formally or informally were part of a conspiracy that colluded in covering up the transgressions of rogue sexually abusive priests, including those abusing minors, moving them around their own dioceses, moving them to other dioceses and, in some cases, shipping them abroad to avoid arrest.
SMPTURLISH
maturlishmdsnd@yahoo.com
Posted by MAUREEN PAUL TURLISH, VICTIMS' ADVOCATE | April 17, 2008 5:00 PM