US bishop says Church's credibility on abuse is 'shredded'

The US Catholic bishops' public face over sexual abuse matters has said the hierarchy's credibility on fixing the problem is "shredded" and that the situation is comparable to the Reformation, when "the episcopacy, the regular clergy, even the papacy were discredited," according to a Religious?News Service report published on NCR.

Bishop?Daniel Conlon of?Illinois, last month told a conference of staffers who oversee child safety programs in American dioceses that he had always assumed that consistently implementing the bishops' policies on child protection, "coupled with some decent publicity, would turn public opinion around."

"I now know this was an illusion," Conlon, chairman of the bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said in an address on August 13 to the National Safe Environment and Victim Assistance Coordinators Leadership Conference in?Nebraska.

His talk was published in the August 30 edition of Origins, an affiliate of Catholic News Service.

Conlon said the conviction of a high-ranking church official in Philadelphia for covering up clergy abuse and the upcoming trial of a bishop in Missouri on charges of failing to report a priest on suspicions of child abuse have contributed to a widespread impression that the bishops "have failed to keep their commitments."

The bishop disputed that view, but said even close friends "turned almost hostile" over dinner recently when he said the hierarchy has adopted "an entirely different spirit of openness and accountability."

FULL STORY Catholic bishop says Church's credibility on sexual abuse is 'shredded' (NCR)?

RELATED COVERAGE

Conference participants look at relationship between power and abuse (CNS)

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cathnews/RSS/~3/mk-mbAmdZEw/article.aspx

sinead oconnor braylon edwards jimmer fredette mall of america mennonite smokey robinson smokey robinson