U.S. CATHOLIC BISHOP'S MEETING: Seattle next week...

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Staying with Catholicism; American bishops are scheduled to meet in Seattle June 15-17.

One headline (Huffingtonpost.com) about the meeting stated “Catholic bishops to take a second look at abuse reforms” but added that no changes have been proposed so why even the second look if you already know nothing will be done.

The reason for a second look at the rules is that the rules are not being followed. Even worst, these rules carry no penalties for breaking them so they are, at the least, ineffective.

In Philadelphia, a grand jury reported that the Catholic Church there had 37 priests in active ministry that have been accused of improper sexual acts with minors. How effective do you think the rules were in Philadelphia?

In Kansas City, Bishop Robert Finn apologized for not removing a priest from ministry after he was arrested on child pornography charges…where were the rules?

In Gallup, New Mexico, Bishop James S. Wall in his two (2) years at the diocese has never met with the lay review board as directed by the rules…spit on the rules? Review boards in Kansas City and Philadelphia knew nothing about the abuses until they read about them in the paper.

The U.S. Church has spent over $2 BILLION on sex abuse settlements…wow! There have been over 1,500 victims since 1950…wow! And they don’t think they should approach this matter seriously?

The bishops have commissioned two (2) sweeping studies to explain the causes of the scandal…I could have told them for much less than they spent on those studies.

The 200 bishops meeting in Seattle will be under the direction of Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York who is a Pope Benedict clone which means he will try to minimize the worst crisis in modern Church history and get past it as soon as possible.

While in Seattle, the bishops are expected to denounce physician-assisted suicide which is law in Oregon and working just as expected with no problems at all. Here again, the Catholic bishops would rather deny a dying person’s right to a merciful end to their suffering but allowed priests to subject innocent children to horrendous suffering for decades…does that make sense?

The bishops will also discuss how to get more Anglican priests to come over to their side since the Anglicans no longer view homosexuality as a sin or problem and have allowed gays to join the clergy.

Yup, it appears that the American bishops are not going to rock the boat any time soon and that is disconcerting since in history, many very needed Church reforms came from within the Church, usually from lowly priests and bishops who are now saints…guess there are no future saints in this bunch.

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