Cardinal: ‘Sorrow, disgust, rage’ are ‘righteous’ reactions to abuse

August 23, 2018
Catholic News Service
 
CHICAGO – “Sorrow, disgust, outrage – these are righteous feelings” for all to have in reaction to the latest abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, Cardinal Blase J. Cupich said in an Aug. 17 statement.
 
These are “the stirrings of the conscience of a people scandalized by the terrible reality that too many of the men who promised to protect their children, and strengthen their faith, have been responsible for wounding both,” he said.
 
His comments came in reaction to the Pennsylvania attorney general’s Aug. 14 release of a grand jury report detailing seven decades of child sex abuse claims in six Pennsylvania dioceses. Some weeks before that were the allegations against Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick that he abused a minor more than 47 years ago and was sexually inappropriate with seminarians.
 
“Anger, shock, grief, shame,” said Cardinal Cupich, who was chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on the Protection of Children and Young People 2008 to 2011 when he was bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota. “What other words can we summon to describe the experience of learning about the devastating revelations of sexual abuse – and the failures of bishops to safeguard the children entrusted to their care.”
 
He described the grand jury report as a “catalog of horrors” that came on “the heels of news accounts of deeply disturbing sexual abuse and harassment allegations” against McCarrick. He said victims’ suffering was compounded by bishops’ “woeful” responses.