Unfortunately, the Vatican has acted as if it is above the law in providing a safe haven for bishops like Cardinal Law. This article raises major issues for the pope and the current way the Vatican operates. No matter what happens in the legal sphere, the court of public opinion , including Catholics worlwide, are holding the pope, the Vatican, and their bishops accountable.
The institutional church must abandon the sense of entitlement that gives special honors and priviledges to the hierarchy. This is what has led it to its current demise: protecting itself as the expense of the thousands of victims who were sexually abused. Catholics must step up now and take action to reform the church in grassroots communities, where decision-making is in the hands of the people and priests, not just the hierarchy, and where women priests, married priests as well as celibate priests serve in a renewed priestly ministry. It is time!
Bridget Mary Meehan
Bring Pope to Justice
http://www.newsweek.com/id/236934
"Detain or subpoena the pope for questioning in the child-rape scandal? You must be joking! All right then, try the only alternative formulation: declare the pope to be above and beyond all local and international laws, and immune when it comes to his personal and institutional responsibility for sheltering criminals. The joke there would be on us."
..."This point must have hung in the air a bit, and perhaps lodged in Cardinal Law's own mind, because in December of that year he left Boston just hours before state troopers arrived with a subpoena seeking his grand-jury testimony. Where did he go? To Rome, where he later voted in the election of Pope Benedict XVI and now presides over the beautiful church of Santa Maria Maggiore, as well as several Vatican subcommittees.".....
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