I can no longer support a system in the Catholic Church that hides abuse of children to preserve its own reputation.
What is going on? To place articles that discuss this travesty on page 14 of the Aug. 17 publication demonstrates that the Church and some of its leaders are still trying to contain their failures for their own sake and not the sake of the victims.
I no longer have any faith that the bishops’ conference or, for that matter, the hierarchy of the Vatican are placing the victims first. The men who committed these abuses should not be allowed to find a hiding place to atone for their sins. They are criminals, and they should be prosecuted and sent to a prison system that will punish them in a more just way.
Any priest, bishop, cardinal or pope who was a predator, or allowed the predators to continue in ministry knowing that they would harm more children, should go to prison and make a public atonement to the victims.
I thought that when Pope Francis was elected pope that these perpetrators would be called out and punished. Based on what we are finding out about the Catholic hierarchy regarding the Pennsylvania scandal, the resignation of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the questions raised about Cardinal Donald Wuerl, remembering Cardinal Bernard Law and the scandal in Boston, I see the Catholic Church as a political system that protects its own before the people who put their faith in justice and God.
Patricia Marino lives in Charlotte.