Another church scandal - Confirmation of the obvious

JUST as business scandals no longer provoke the kind of emotional response we might have once expected abuse scandals in the Catholic church, and the church’s response to them, no longer shock us.

Rather than shock we now greet them with an appalled half silence, both wondering how such horrors could have occurred and how they could have been kept so very secret for so very long. This week, like more or less any other week, another scandal of abuse and cover up has come to light, this time in America.

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Vatican did not discipline a priest accused of sexually abusing up to 200 deaf boys from the 1950s to the 1970s as Church laws do not require automatic punishment. Internal Church documents show that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was informed of the case.