The grand jury findings proved to be shocking and abhorant, showing dozens of priests over a multi-decades span sexually molesting and abusing young children.
To further compound the scandalous findings, the Church leadership and their representatives appear to be trying more of the same recipe that has proven disastrous to the victims, and to the Church body: deny, deny, deny.
No, there is no denial that molestation and abuse has gone on, that would be ridiculous in light of the now incontrovertible proof.
The denial aspect comes into play when Church leaders, particularly Cardinal Justin Rigali, put out vehement defenses for Cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua, his immediate predecessors.
In the grand jury findings, the two Cardinals are specifically singled out for a failure of leadership. They are accused of handling the problems as they surfaced over the years largely by sweeping them under the rug.
As the allegations would come to light and be found credible, priests were shuffled from parish-to-parish in a sort of shell game that did nothing to solve the problems, only serving to expose even more individuals to the predator priests practices.
It is long past the time for the Church to stop playing the same old game of denial, and instead it is overdue that the Church and it’s leaders take on the full measure of their responsibility for these grave sins against it’s own membership.
