Thursday, November 22, 2012

An unholy mess: Addressing sexual abuse in the Catholic Church

From ABC-

Next week, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference will hold its normal November meeting beside the tomb of St Mary of the Cross, Australia's first saint. It is noteworthy that the bishops will discuss the holy and unholy mess created by the clerical sexual abuse scandal and the forthcoming Royal Commission into the institutional responses to child sexual abuse, as well as the continuing fallout from the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry.

The Church has already lost the public relations war. The evidence of the Victoria Police has made very sure of that by the evidence of their statistics. These show that between January 1956 and June 2012 in their Victorian jurisdiction, of the 519 "distinct victims," 71.29% occurred within the Catholic Church system as compared to the Anglican (7.13%), Salvation Army (6.94%) and Jewish (3.47%) figures - although, of course, these figures do not pertain just to ministers of religion.


More here-

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/11/21/3637725.htm

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