Good priests are paying the price for the corrupt ones. The media feeds on these stories - whether there is solid evidence to support them or not - like sharks to blood in the water. These men are guilty until proven innocent.
Anyone now can make a claim against a local priest and his fate will be sealed before the case even makes it to court.
This does not excuse the horrible behavior of some, but does it excuse the treatment of so many others who have done nothing wrong?
People who thrive on these types of "scandal" stories make me sick - just as much as those who have done such terrible things. These reports and media frenzies hurt the faithful who must endure even more contempt and public scrutiny towards the faith they still cling to - because they know the endless source of GOOD that faith has done throughout the centuries, despite the errors and mistakes of its members.
Below is an article from The Catholic League about the organization known as SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests)... an organization that seems to spring to action every time a priest sneezes. I find a lot of what this article has to say very interesting.
It is not my intention to excuse the actions of the guilty -- or to justify any positions Church officials take on any hot topic of the day - but I think people should take note that this anti-clergy movement is hateful and destructive.. not only to good priests, but to countless individuals in the pews.
SNAP’S DEFENDERS SHOW TRUE COLORS
March 21, 2012Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on those who continue to defend the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP):
Last week we released a report on SNAP that showed beyond a reasonable doubt what an utter fraud the organization is (click here to read it). It was not an essay; it was not an op-ed; it was not conjecture; it was not our opinion. It was the voice of David Clohessy, the director of SNAP. When coupled with our report last summer on the proceedings of its national convention (it offered irrefutable proof of its hate-filled agenda) it cannot be maintained by any serious observer what SNAP is all about.
The credibility of those who continue to defend this wholly discredited organization is on the line. That would include the editorial board of the New York Times and the Newark Star-Ledger (the latter offered a particularly vicious statement), as well as pundits such as Andrew Sullivan. That the near-moribund National Organization for Women and the Feminist Majority should weigh in is not surprising: though SNAP has nothing to do with women’s rights, it has everything to do with attacking the Catholic Church, and that is music to the ear of radical feminists. But it is Frank Bruni, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, who needs to be answered more than anyone; he loves SNAP.
Bruni notes that “some Catholic leaders have contended” that what drives wide media coverage of the issue of priestly sexual abuse is “an anti-Catholic and anti-religious bias.” Wrong, he says, it’s because of the “magnitude of the violation of trust.” No, sir, it isn’t. If it were, then the Times would be covering the incredible explosion of child sexual abuse by rabbis (in Brooklyn alone, 85 arrests have taken place in the last two years, yet the Times has never reported on any of this). Moreover, the media treat with a yawn the alarming rate of child sexual abuse in the public schools. So what else, if not anti-Catholicism, would be driving the disproportionate coverage? I’m still waiting for the evidence that I am wrong.
