Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the reaction of the Catholic left to the clergy sexual abuse scandal:
It’s over. Not only is the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church over, those who helped drive it—the Catholic left—have lost. Their pitiful reaction to the 20th anniversary of the Boston Globe series on priestly sexual abuse in Boston is all the evidence we need to make this charge.
The National Catholic Reporter ran three articles on the 20th anniversary of the Boston Globe series, and not one of them had the intellectual honesty to say that the homosexual scandal has been effectively checked.
On January 4, the Reporter ran a piece by Barbara Thorp which concluded that we need a national database of accused clergy. On January 11, it republished an article by Catholic News Service that allowed the discredited shell of a group, SNAP, to claim that no progress has been made. On January 12, it featured an essay by its former editor, Tom Roberts, wherein he said the scandal “is not over.”
As I point out in my book, The Truth About Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, the Reporter played a prominent role in fostering the scandal.
Its relentless attacks on the Church’s teachings on sexual ethics gave succor to already disordered men, effectively giving them the green light to act on their twisted id. I also point out that dissidents such as the Reporter have a vested ideological interest in pretending that the scandal is on-going. Now they have proved my point beyond dispute.
My news release of January 3 provides evidence that the scandal is long over. “The average number of substantiated accusations [against the clergy] made in the last ten years is 5.9.” In all three articles by the Reporter, there is not one statistic that can support their position. I have the data—they have none.
Case closed. The Catholic left has lost.
Contact Heidi Schlumpf, executive editor of the Reporter: hschlumpf@ncronline.org
