Tzedek-Tzedek

  [Part One] I have just returned from a business trip to the USA. While there,  I picked up on two angles on campaigns in the USA for justice against child abuse enablers. One is Catholic (big time campaign) and the other is Jewish (small time campaign). The word “enabler”, by the way, is used to describe people who provide a conducive environment for pedophiles to operate. It’s a secondary act, rather than the direct act of abuse against the child. Some types of "enabling" are illegal in the USA and in Israel , such as failure to report child abuse, when this reporting is required/mandated by law; or where the enablers interfere with the course of justice. ------ An American Catholic friend of mine told me that the number one issue in the Catholic Church today is the church’s mishandling of child abuse cases. You have surely hear about the Catholic campaign, which is targeting both Catholic clergy who have abusing children, and the secondary enablers, being the ch...

On the one hand, the Catholic Church has been accused (and found guilty in formal reports in the USA and Ireland ) of systematically turning a blind eye, covering up, and enabling child abuse. On the other, the Church is now accusing the media of stirring up international hysteria, and being disproportionate in the outcry. Similar arguments have gone back-and-forth in the Jewish community in recent months and years – including on this blog. The sexual abuse of children, even more so than physical, emotional, or neglect forms of abuse, generates a strong outcry.   The sense of despair and betrayal is amplified when discovering that a family member, teacher, camp leader, coach, day care worker, doctor or religious leader perpetuated the abuse.   It is estimated that 85% of victims of child sexual abuse knew they attackers (see: http://futureofchildren.org / futureofchildren/publications / docs/19_02_08.pdf ) When men-of-the-cloth are involved as either a perpetrator, or ...

Cases of clerical sex-abuse and the Catholic Church’s mismanagement – amounting to systemic enablement – have surfaced and spread out from Boston, where they were first revealed in 2002, then throughout the USA - and are now spreading across Europe, including major scandals in Ireland and Germany. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict) himself was responsible for managing sexual abuse cases when he was archbishop of Munich in 1980 and when he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Apparently, in Munich, a priest Cardinal Ratzinger had sent to therapy for pedophilia, was returned to pastoral work with children. The priest was later convicted on charges of molesting boys. Last week, it was revealed that an office under Cardinal Ratzinger’s command had stopped the prosecution in 1996 of Wisconsin priest Lawrence Murphy, who admitted molesting 200 boys at a school for the deaf where he worked for 20 years. As the first victims and insiders within th...

Since the Boston Globe first revealed some of the abuses of minors by Catholic Priests in the Boston Diocese in 2002, the wave of allegations has spread. In the months following the series of Boston Globe articles, other complaints surfaced and diocese throughout the USA came under scrutiny. Court cases against the Church itself have so far run into billions of dollars in settlements and penalties. Major scandals have also subsequently erupted in Ireland, Australia, Canada, and most recently in the European mainland, including in the Pope’s own previous dioceses in Germany. This week, the German church suspended a priest who had been allowed to work with children for decades after a court convicted him of molesting boys. In 1980, Archbishop Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) had allowed the priest to move to Munich after allegations of abuse. Although the full extent of the abuses and the management of those abuses by the Catholic Church is still not known, and by the nature of...