Sins of omission

From Philadelphia-

The case against local Episcopal Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr., who returned to his duties Monday, has lifted the veil on decades of silence and inaction toward sexual abuse of minors that reaches to the highest rungs of the church hierarchy.

The bishop had been inhibited for almost three years from functioning as leader of the five-county Diocese of Pennsylvania because of charges that he failed to act when his younger brother John, then a youth leader in Charles' parish, was accused of sexually preying on a teenage girl.

The ecclesiastical appeals court agreed with a 2008 church ruling that Bennison was guilty of "conduct unbecoming a member of the clergy," but in reversing a ruling that he be defrocked, the court pointed out that because Bennison was not the abuser the statute of limitations on his misconduct had run out.

In explaining its ruling, the court pieced together a damning picture of an ineffectual church hierarchy that often seemed to prefer silence and collusion to the truth. But the court also pointed out - in my opinion with justice - that to be silent or even possibly willfully ignorant of abuse, as his opponents argue Bennison was, still doesn't make him a perpetrator.

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http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20100822_Sins_of_omission.html#ixzz0xLEozJeL