Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Washington

From the

Official News Magazine of the Diocese of Spokane

(From the Jan. 13, 2005 edition of the Inland Register)

The Inland Register welcomes lettesr to the editor. Please limit letters to less than 500 words. Letters must be signed, and include a mailing address and phone number for contact; names can be withheld upon request. Please remember to be charitable.

Mail letters to:
Inland Register, P.O. Box 48, Spokane, WA 99210-0048
Street address:
1023 W. Riverside Ave., Spokane, WA 99201
Fax: (509) 358-7302
E-mail: inlandregister@dioceseofspokane.org

Editor:

All of us who are Roman Catholics and who love our Church are horrified by the actions of the bishops, priests, deacons and Religious who have betrayed our trust and sexually abused children and youth, or who have shielded abusers. As a survivor of clergy sexual abuse, I have been personally affected.

I know how difficult it is to read, day after day, about accused priests, angry and frustrated victims, lawsuits, dioceses declaring bankruptcy, and parishes closing. It is heartbreaking and not a little embarrassing to see the Church presented in such a light.

The media is reporting this because it is news. The secular media will spin a story as they see fit, and, unfortunately, sometimes these reports serve to fuel the anti-Catholicism that is rampant in our culture. Even so, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the secular media for telling us what our own Church did not: that clergy and Religious sexually abused children, and that some bishops moved child molesters to avoid scandal, did not alert parents of the presence of these molesters in their parishes, did not alert law enforcement authorities, and paid little attention to victims’ appeals for justice. These sad facts, as painful as they are to hear, are, nonetheless, the truth. Whatever “spin” the media puts on the stories of molesting priests and the bishops who shielded them does not change this truth.

I urge all Catholics to become as informed as possible. Go to the Clergy Abuse Tracker at http://www.ncrnews.org/abuse to get daily updates about the crisis. Read not only the secular media, but also publications such as America, National Catholic Reporter, and U.S. Catholic, which regularly report on the crisis from the perspective of faith and love for the Church.

And whatever the facts, or how they are presented, remember the victims. Please do not blame us for the bankruptcies, the parish closings, and the embarrassment of seeing our Church criticized. Some of us would settle for an acknowledge-ment by the bishops or Religious superiors of our abusers that they made terrible and damaging mistakes when they transferred or shielded priests who molested children. Some of us would just be satisfied with the removal of our abusers from the clerical state (I am in this category).

Some have sued for huge amounts of money. Whatever path we victim/survivors have chosen to take, the crisis never was and never will be, our fault.

The Church is all of us together: victim/survivors, children and young people, lay men and women, members of Religious orders, deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops and cardinals. Our Church cares for the poor, the needy and the marginalized. This is the truth. Representatives of the Church have used their positions of power to sexually abuse the most innocent and vulnerable. This, too, is the truth. Our difficult task is to become instruments of reconciliation, while acknowledging the whole truth and working toward healing.

Paula Gonzalez Rohrbacher, Douglas, Alaska