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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (121972)	4/13/2010 12:05:27 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Wayne even the rats know when it is time to leave a sinking ship In sermon, E. Longmeadow priest calls on Pope Benedict to step down Says only truth can heal church in abuse scandal By Emma Stickgold, Globe Correspondent \| April 12, 2010 An East Longmeadow priest called yesterday from his pulpit for Pope Benedict XVI to step down, demanding greater protection of children and greater accountability from the Catholic Church hierarchy. The church’s top leader has not been truthful, said the Rev. James Scahill of St. Michael’s Parish, violating an important tenet of the faith. His strongly worded sermon echoed sentiments he shared with parishioners several weeks ago, but this time, he spent more time and spoke with greater conviction on the controversial subject. “Any who deny the truth deny Christ, and we, as people, must reclaim our church,’’ Scahill said in a phone interview last night. “Those in authority must be willing to admit to the truth, admit their horrific crime of coverup, and beg for forgiveness, and until that happens, there will be no healing.’’ Benedict has been heavily criticized recently for the way he has dealt with some abuse cases, and Scahill said that because of all the information that has been brought to light, the pope should resign. Scahill, who became pastor of the church in 2002, has long been outspoken on the need for accountability among church leaders. Parishioners generally were supportive of Scahill’s sermon, said Parish Council president Thomas LaMondia. “I thought he did a great job of conveying how he feels and how the church feels about the whole issue,’’ he said yesterday. “I thought he did a really nice job of explaining that it’s really about the protection of children. . . . The church really needs to look at what they need to do to hold people accountable.’’ Controversy within the church over priests’ and bishops’ roles in the abuse scandal has been going on for more than eight years since the scandal broke in Boston but recently it has escalated, with new allegations about the actions of the current pope when he was an archbishop. “If we cannot get a pope that’s going to give us the truth, then our church is dead,’’ Scahill said. Mark Dupont, a spokesman for the Diocese of Springfield, was quick to distance the diocesan leadership from the comments made by Scahill. “It in no way represents the position of the bishop,’’ Dupont said. “We find his statements to be unfortunate.’’ Scahill, he said, has not properly recognized measures to ensure safety undertaken by the American Catholic leadership, which has “led the world in their efforts,’’ as well as steps the Diocese of Springfield took over the years to deal with the issue of sexual abuse.

To: Freedom Fighter who wrote (121972)	4/13/2010 9:27:28 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Piercing a papal shroud By Kevin Cullen, Globe Columnist \| April 13, 2010 It’s doubtful the mandarins at the Vatican are shaking in their boots, now that a simple parish priest in Western Massachusetts has stood in the pulpit and called for Pope Benedict’s resignation. But I wouldn’t bet against Father Jim Scahill. When it comes to going after peers who do the wrong thing, he’s two for two. He has taken on and taken out a priest and a bishop, so it could be that a pope is the next logical step. Logic is not an attribute that Scahill’s critics — many of them fellow priests — often ascribe to him. But his theological approach during 36 years as a priest, and especially as a conscience for a church whose leaders had none when it came to the abuse of young people, has been perfectly logical. Eight years ago, after he became pastor of St. Michael’s in East Longmeadow, Scahill started withholding the 6 percent cut the Diocese of Springfield received from the weekly collection basket until the diocese stopped supporting a pedophile named Richard Lavigne who happened to be a priest. Scahill ministered to some of Lavigne’s victims and his argument was perfectly logical: He didn’t want any of his parish’s money subsidizing a priest who should have been dismissed. When Bishop Thomas Dupre continued to protect Lavigne, Scahill went after Dupre, logically concluding that Dupre was an enabler. Turns out Dupre was also an abuser, and again it was Father Scahill who helped reveal this. Lavigne lost his pension and his collar, and Dupre resigned. If you listen to what Scahill has to say about the dilemma facing Pope Benedict XVI and the rest of the hierarchy, it’s perfectly logical. Scahill says the pope and the bishops are in trouble because they never properly accounted for their behavior as enablers of abuse. And he’s right. Why is anybody surprised the pope would be accused of covering up for or going easy on priests who raped kids when he was a bishop? Protecting the church’s reputation at the expense of young people’s souls was official policy right up until the whole thing blew up, in this town, eight years ago. These cases will continue to surface, not because Jim Scahill is a loose cannon, or because of some left-wing secular conspiracy to ruin the church, as has been suggested by certain clerics in Rome who compared the savaging of the pope’s reputation to the suffering of Christ on the cross or Jews during the Holocaust. These cases will continue to surface because the Vatican never confronted the reality that its managers, its bishops, enabled thousands and thousands of kids to be raped and abused by predatory priests. The enablers were never disciplined, never held accountable, never made to pay close to the price they should have for the pain they inflicted on so many innocent lives, and so the outrageous cases such as the ones in Wisconsin and California and Germany and Ireland and Italy will continue to surface, because you can’t bury the truth forever. It has become fashionable to fire all the teachers at bad schools. The church never considered firing all the enablers, because if they did, there wouldn’t be a church. Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law was the only American bishop who lost his job because of his complicity. And his “punishment’’ was a nice sinecure in Rome, where he is treated like the prince of the church he remains, and where he continues to pick new bishops. How’s that for making him pay? You have to wonder if Jim Scahill, a good priest, will suffer far more than Bernie Law, a bad bishop, for having the temerity to point out all this hypocrisy. If Scahill’s worried, he’s not showing it. Then again, he grew up in Hungry Hill, a neighborhood in Springfield where people stood their ground. And he’d be glad to talk this over with his bosses. “I heard from ‘Good Morning America.’ I heard from CNN,’’ Father Scahill was telling me. “I haven’t heard from the Vatican. Or my bishop.’’ Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.