SHOULD THE POPE BE GIVEN ABSOLUTION? or DOES THE BUCK STOP AT THE TOP.

In a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict acknowledged the sense of betrayal in the Church felt by victims and their families  For the complete article, click here. 

As Benedict worked his way up in the church to become Pope, it is beyond my ken that he didn't know about the abuses, just as it was beyond me that Cardinal Bernard Law in the Boston area was faultless.  Apparently no one in the Catholic church minds the store.

The emotional damage done to so many boys and girls has no end.  It lives within them forever. Defrocking a priest or even sending him to jail does not wipe out the emotional cost to the victims.  It changed the picture that sex should be a commitment to love, relationship, vows of closeness to another.  Instead, it became something dirty, secretive, and shameful.  It has made parents accuse their children of lying to them if they sought parental help because the parents would sooner believe their children untruthful than lose faith in the clergy.  How sad that so many needed to believe in the lies from the priests as much as we, as a country, have failed to pull the curtains apart to show the real 'Wizard of Oz' in politics, police departments, teachers, in fact in every part of our lives.  One's profession does not determine morality, integrity or honesty.  We, too often, don't get a close enough glimpse of a person to decide for ourselves.  Some of us who have skills trained over the years to look for clues in behavior not simply believe words, sometimes can see through the con artist in whatever cloak is worn.  Unfortunately, not enough people are intuitive, or are capable of developing that discerning skill.  This is why juries make so many errors regarding guilt and innocence and so many found guilty on circumstantial evidence.  We hear "he/she didn't look sorry enough"; "his face looked guilty'; "his eyes were too close" and many other ridiculous assumptions like the talking heads make on TV political shows.

With reference to religion, there are too few who understand that Faith does not mean blindly believing everything said by people working for the church business.  In fact, what one may believe the existence of a God, or an interpretation of the Bible (not necessarily the word of God or Christ), is personal to that individual and should be determined by what that person can believe. To be a good person does not require belief in any singular religion.  There are good people in all religions and among Atheists and Agnostics. Behavior and professed belief, as evidenced by the sins of the churches, are not one and the same.