{"id":174,"date":"2008-12-11T10:29:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T10:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/nrb-head-sex-abuse-scandal-its.html"},"modified":"2008-12-11T10:29:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T10:29:25","slug":"nrb-head-sex-abuse-scandal-its","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2008\/12\/nrb-head-sex-abuse-scandal-its.html","title":{"rendered":"NRB head: Sex abuse scandal? It’s history. Really."},"content":{"rendered":"

In an Op-Ed in today’s Boston Globe, the current head of the National Review Board, the blue-ribbon, lay-led group that is supposed to keep the bishops following their own policies on child protection, says Catholics have nothing to worry about–all is fine, and the scandal is history.
\nThe hook for Michael Merz’s piece, “No Doubt about Church’s Resolve,”<\/a> is the movie “Doubt,”<\/a> which premiers this week. (I’ve seen it, and will have more thoughts another time.) The film takes place in 1963 but effectively addresses questions of clerical sexual abuse of minors that only emerged in recent years. Church leaders are clearly concerned that the movie might prompt more critcism.
\nVoice of the Faithful<\/a>, the lay reform group that grew up out of the scandal, is also making leaders available to talk about the movie and its implications.
\nBut Merz’s article, by dint of his position, is the most pro-active effort by the institutional leadership to “get ahead” of any criticism the movie may renew. Merz rightly points out the enormous efforts the church has made–thanks of course to the victims, their lawyers, the media, lay activists and others who forced the bishops to take steps they would not otherwise have taken–and the openness of the church relative to analagous organizations.
\nYet it is puzzling that Merz does not cite any of the failures of recent years and months by some bishops, including top leaders of the conference, and in perhaps his most controversial statement, he rejects the suggestion that any bishops should resign:<\/p>\n

Still, many Catholics and others expect more. Their anger, disappointment, and frustration are not surprising given the gravity of the crimes, and the admittedly sorry record of some bishops who moved priests from parish to parish even, tragically, in the face of evidence of abuse. Many Catholics wonder why more bishops haven’t resigned as a sign of contrition and, indeed, penance. Priests, they say, have been removed. I, on the other hand, believe it is better for bishops to take responsibility for fixing the problem. This may not satisfy everyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This issue will continue to roil the folks in the pews, at least those who haven’t left or care enough to stay and fight. But what strikes me is that Pope Benedict and the Vatican and top US church leaders have made it clear that they do not believe the bishops did anything wrong–except to follow bad advice from experts who led them down the garden path.
\nGiven that lack of a sense of culpability, as well as ongoing violations of the bishops policies by bishops themselves, I’m not sure Merz’s take is going to prove convincing. Certainly the lay board is playing a far different role than it did in past years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an Op-Ed in today’s Boston Globe, the current head of the National Review Board, the blue-ribbon, lay-led group that is supposed to keep the bishops following their own policies on child protection, says Catholics have nothing to worry about–all is fine, and the scandal is history. The hook for Michael Merz’s piece, “No Doubt…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,6,3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nNRB head: Sex abuse scandal? It's history. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}