In as convoluted a piece of reasoning as we’ve seen in a long time, The Tidings, official newspaper of the Los Angeles archdiocese, declares in its Jan. 13 issue that “the belief that bishops moved child abusers from parish to parish, allowing them to abuse over and over, may well be one of the greatest myths created by the press coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the church.” A Jan. 13 article points out, “Bishops did not generally move abusing clergy around because they were very often not aware of the abuse taking place.”
Now that’s quite a sentence. Let’s try to pick it apart: Bishops did not transfer priests they did not suspect of molesting children. To which the only logical response is … huh?
The more relevant question, of course, is how many priests known or suspected by their bishops of having abused children were whisked away from one parish (lest their activities result in scandal) only to show up running the CYO or training altar servers in another? The answer, and this is no myth, is a whole lot.
It gets worse.
It’s too bad, though, that this editorial ends up minimizing the problems in LA, the very problems that made this editorial so risible in the first place. As the writer argues with the editorial, the evidence is presented: Philadelphia, NY, Boston…and oh by the way:
And, of course, there’s Los Angeles, where Cardinal Roger Mahony has acknowledged some of his own shortcomings related to the assignment of abusive priests.
Softball, people. Softball.
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