Connecticut bishops fight sex abuse bill
Yes, like everyone, I too read PZ. And, maybe, this copy is just for the sake of using the title I came up with. But, there you go.
A bill in Connecticut's legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.
Under current Connecticut law, sexual abuse victims have 30 years past their 18th birthday to file a lawsuit. The proposed change to the law would rescind that statute of limitations.
The proposed change to the law would put "all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk," says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut's three Roman Catholic bishops.
If there's no other demonstration that the church hierarchy has no interest whatsoever in dealing with these crimes tdhat you are willing to listen to, this should be all that is needed. This profoundly powerful extranational organization must change or be abolished. In its current state, it is corrupt to such a degree that it is more concerned about protecting the proclaimed few officials who have defiled themselves, their station, and their church than ensuring that your women, your children, and others who may be unable to defend themselves are not raped and abused.
Stop and think about it. I know it's horrifying. It should be. These men (and rarely women) overpower, threaten, coerce children and assault them.
A family in Tallahassee recently discovered a man who allegedly assaulted their toddler and beat him so badly he was hospitalized. Someone raped a two year old little girl, they thought this guy did it, and they beat him up. That's how we usually respond to this. It's wrong. It's horrifically wrong to return assault with assault, but that is our usual reaction. But when these men with such profound power and access to children commit the very same crime, they are protected and moved to another place where they are given access to new children.
In fact, a number of such offenders were specifically moved to preside over parishes in Alaskan native villages. This organization set these vultures upon a population of children already suffering a pervasive second-class status and even more vulnerable than most.
Roosa and his associate Patrick Wall (a former Benedictine monk who once worked as a sex-abuse fixer for the Catholic Church) said they knew of 345 cases of molestation in Alaska by 28 perpetrators who came from at least four different countries.
This concentration of abuses is orders of magnitude greater than Catholic sex-abuse cases in other parts of the United States. Today, Roosa said, there are 17,000 Catholics in the diocese of Fairbanks, though there was a much smaller number during the peak of the abuse. Roosa compared this lawsuit to the famous Los Angeles suits of 2001, which claimed 550 victims of abuse in a Catholic population of 3.4 million.
These abusers in Alaska, Wall said, were specifically sent to Alaska "to get them off the grid, where they could do the least amount of damage" to the church's public image.
But it doesn't stop there.
Catholic officials of both sexes played a key role in instigating ethnic conflict and preparing and perpetrating the genocide in Rwanda.
Fortunately, the ICCTR saw some of these individuals tried for their crimes.
On 7 May 1994 soldiers and militias arrived at Shyogwe Diocese aboard a red pick-up vehicle to transport civilian Tutsi refugees to the killing sites. "On that day Bishop Samuel Musabyimana was present and, addressing the soldiers and militias, publicly stated that he did not oppose the killing of Tutsis, but that he did not want killings at the Diocese and that the Tutsis should be taken to Kabgayi to be killed." (Indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda against former Anglican Bishop Samuel Musabyimana).
On 22 April 1994, Séraphine Mukamana had hidden herself in a garage when militias attacked a convent in Sovu in southern Rwanda. "We sought refugee in the garage and closed and barricaded the doors. Outside a bloodbath is going on. Suddenly an orphan begins to weep as it gets to hot in the garage. At once, the killers approach the garage." As the refugees refuse to come out, the militia leader Emmanuel Rekeraho decides to burn them alive in the garage. "'The nuns are coming to help us. They are bringing gasoline,' I heard [Rekeraho] say. Looking through a hole that the militiamen meanwhile had made in the wall, I indeed saw Sister Gertrude and Sister Kisito. The latter was carrying a petrol can. Shortly upon that, the garage is set on fire." Testimony against two Catholic nuns, Sisters Gertrude and Maria Kisito in a Brussels court, May 2001.
In 1957, the Hutu catechist Gregoire Kayibanda, under the ideological patronage of J.P. Harroy, the Belgian Governor of Rwanda and Mgr. Perraudin, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Rwanda, publishes the 'Hutu Manifesto' demanding the political authority be granted to the Hutu majority. According to the present Rwandan government, in that year "the Catholic Church encourages Gregoire Kayibanda and his associates to form political parties ... to champion 'Bahutu interests'".
In 1959 "PARMEHUTU (Le Parti du Mouvement de l'emancipation Hutu) is established under the guidance of the Catholic church by the proponents of delayed independence. PARMEHUTU was also openly sectarian and anti-Batutsi," again according to the Rwandan government. The same year, the first massacres of thousands of Tutsi is organised by radicalised Hutus, "under Belgian supervision".
Note that this isn't just a Catholic problem.
Archbishop Augustin Nshamihigo and the coadjutor Bishop of Kigali, Jonathan Ruhumuliza, were seen describing the government responsible for orchestrating the genocide as "peace-loving" at a Nairobi press conference in early June 1994. The accusations against clergy of the Free Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and Seventh-Day Adventist Churches are equally shocking. According to survivors, Bishop Aaron Ruhumuliza, head of the Free Methodist Church in Gikondo, Kigali, helped the militia carry out a massacre in his own church on 9 April 1994. Michel Twagirayesu, the President of the Presbyterian Church of Rwanda and a former vice-president of the World Council of Churches, is alleged to have worked closely with the killers in the Presbyterian stronghold of Kirinda, Kibuye, betraying parishioners and fellow-clergy alike, according to a report by African Rights.
What would have happened if we, as an international community, had not been prepared to initiate an international court? How many decades later would these men and women, shifted to some other parish, still stand red with the blood of those they murdered with no pnishment whatsoever? There's a poignant answer to this question. Many of these genocidaires were and remain hidden from the court, and there hasn't been a peep from the Pope.
The Catholic Church bore grave responsibility for contributing to the culture that fermented the genocide, but the culpability did not end there. Hundreds of Catholic priests and nuns and some bishops personally took part in the genocide – indeed led the genocide in many areas. Fleeing Tutsis, including women and children, crowded into churches, believing they would have sanctuary there, and were encouraged in that belief by priests, who then turned on them and, along with the Hutu militia, slaughtered them in the sanctuaries and pews.
I visited one of those churches just outside Kigali in 2004 when I was in Rwanda doing a TV programme for RTÉ on the anniversary of the genocide, and in the church the remains and belongings of the hundreds of slaughtered people were still in place. The tiny shoes of infants, women’s shawls, handbags, toys, skulls and bones were all there. It was difficult to walk through the church without walking on the remains of the slaughtered.
And what did the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church do in the wake of this mass murder? It gave aid and assistance to the genocidal priests in escaping retribution in Rwanda and elsewhere. They were hidden in monasteries in Italy, France and Belgium, away from the reach of the International Criminal Court that was established to try and convict those who committed such barbarity.
There was no church inquiry into its own culpability for what happened. I suspect there were few if any canonical trials. There was no Pastoral Letter expressing shame for the involvement of the functionaries of the Catholic Church in that terrible crime. No apology. No papal visitation to identify with the victims. No papal audiences for the survivors. Nothing.
The April 12, 2010 issue of Newsweek contained an interesting article by Lisa Miller about how changing the role of women in the Catholic church may--even if it didn't change the behavior in the church--could at least change the perception of the church's potential to handle these situations better. I think much of it was pretty misguided, but it was certainly interesting to see Miller's perspective.
In another article for Newsweek about breakaway married priests in Africa who have been swiftly excommunicated for marrying, Miller comments:
One wonders at the priorities of a man who failed to defrock a priest in Wisconsin who molested hundreds of children but acted so decisively in the case of one who married a consenting adult.
Whether the problem is the men or the problem is the church's ham-fisted failure to respond to the sins of her officials, the solution can only be found in the hearts--and wallets--of the faithful. We can abolish limitations statutes, we can even declare the Catholic church a criminal organization subject to RICO prosecution... but none of it will happen, nor have any weight or impact until those who follow the church's teachings demand right behavior and swift justice from those who minister to them. It's not the Pope's job anymore, but the responsibility of Catholics everywhere to vote with their feet and their seats and their wallets and force change through... But, as long as that crusty old man claims to have a say in their eternal salvation, I really don't see much hope of that. The flock will thin as apostacy takes those with more conscience than fear and the rest will remain: insular, devout, and blind.
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