Kim has some excellent analysis of where it fails to hit the mark over at LP. Two major problems:
- the setting of the apology (a mass for seminarians and clergy/religious orders only) reflects an inward focus on dealing with abuse as a problem for the Church internally with the victims and their families left outside the process (symbolically yesterday as well as actually in practise).
- the pope ascribed clerical abuse to a very odd cause (shifts in moral teaching of theology in seminaries, WTF?) that reeks more than a little of simply being yet another stick that the conservative theologians will use to bash the already dwindling arm of progressive theologians.
Kim also notes the galling hypocrisy of News Limited (I know, shocked, aren’t you?) in their coverage of the victims and families who are speaking out (links are those supplied by Kim).
It’s probably significant that all those who have been claiming that the demands of victims for justice are politically motivated, or whatever, pass over in silence the case of Emma Foster, preferring to concentrate their rhetorical venom on [Anthony] Jones - whom no doubt they see as a weak target. They’re also ignoring the appalling remarks of Bishop Anthony Fisher. There’s a big contrast between the special pleading and victim blaming of the conservative media here and the “outrage” over an unclothed photograph of a 13 year old in the Bill Henson photos controversy. Seemingly, an artistic image of a naked 13 year old is a much more urgent matter for moral angst than the vastly inadequate response of a powerful and conservative institution to the repeated rape of a 12 year old girl.
Related Reading: the Hoyden About Town archive of WYD posts [link] and Bill Henson posts [link].
