VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis summoned the presidents of the world's bishops' conferences Wednesday to a summit on preventing clergy sex abuse and protecting children, responding to the greatest crisis of his papacy with the realization that Vatican inaction on the growing global scandal now threatens his legacy.
Meanwhile, the LDS Prophet is busily silencing and excommunicating a member for advocating the Church do more to prevent clergy sex abuse...
But not everybody is impressed with the idea of just more talk...
"There's absolutely no reason to think any good will come of such a meeting," given the church's decades of failure to reform, David Clohessy, former director of the victims' advocacy group SNAP, said.
"Criminal prosecutions, governmental investigations and journalistic exposes — stemming from brave victims and church whistleblowers — are the best way to protect kids, expose wrongdoers and end cover-ups," Clohessy said.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
Yes, reform is the solution. It's not about talk, it's about what child protection policies get put in place and how they're enforced.
Speaking of, the following occurred:
1. I wrote a suggested church child protection policy and asked the Trib to print it alongside an op-ed I wrote.
2. They agreed.
3. When the op-ed was published, the child protection policy wasn't included. Since the practical reform suggestion was my whole reason for writing the op-ed, I complained. They had also made a headline choice that significantly changed the meaning of my op-ed and negated what I had intended with the protection policy.
4. They told me the suggested policy took too much space to print to paper.
5. I told them I never would have given them the op-ed if I didn't think it would include the practical reform suggestion and asked them to put the child protection policy suggestion online -- no ink required.
6. They agreed and posted the reform policy to their website, linking it from my op-ed.
7. I went back to publish a follow-up op-ed a few months later, wanting to link to the policy I had suggested. I found that the practical child protection policy I had suggested had been removed.
8. I bumped the email thread where I had talked to the editors about the importance of the reform policy being printed and their concern about it taking too much space in the print version of the paper. I pointed out that at one time it had been available online, but that bow the link was missing and the policy was missing. I pointed out that no ink was necessary for an online posting and that it had once been online but had now been removed. I asked them why anyone would take the time to remove it once it had been put online.
9. The Trib did not reply to my email.
Why is it that we have to have people like Sam make a bloody stink to get movement on the most important issue? Why isn't the Trib acting like the Boston Globe? What are the Trib's real interests?