Criticisms of Church Responses
While the Church in the United States claims to have addressed the issue, some disagree. As Mark Honigsbaum from The Guardian put it in 2006, "...despite the National Review Board's own estimates that there have been some 5,000 abusive priests in the US, to date 150 have been successfully prosecuted." Some critics of the Church such as Patrick Wall attribute this to a lack of cooperation from the church. In California, for example, the archdiocese has sought to block the disclosure of confidential counseling records on two priests arguing that such action would violate their First Amendment right on religious protection.
In 2010, BBC reported that the latest research by experts indicate that Catholic priests may be no more likely than others to abuse. However, a major cause of the scandal was the cover-ups and other alleged shortcomings in the way the church has dealt with the abuses. Particularly, the actions of Catholic bishops in responding to allegations of clerical abuse came under harsh criticism.
In September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that the Roman Catholic Church had not been vigilant enough or quick enough in responding to the problem of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy A representative of SNAP, a group representing abuse victims criticized the pope's remarks as "disingenuous" because, in her opinion, the Church had in fact been "prompt and vigilant" in concealing the scandal. After Benedict's resignation in 2013, Benedict was criticised by SNAP for allegedly protecting the Church's reputation "over the safety of children", while representatives from the Center for Constitutional Rights, (at the time engaged in an International Criminal Court case against the Pope in which they were acting for SNAP), alleged that the Pope had been directly involved in covering up some of the crimes. On the other hand, Alexander Stille in The New Yorker described Benedict as being more "vigorous" than Pope John Paul II in responding to the scandal.
Read more about this topic: Roman Catholic Sex Abuse Cases/Archive 4
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“The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.”
—William James (1842–1910)
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