HOWEVER, Cardinal Tagle says he is against legal action on offending priests.
Cardinal Chito Tagle who, in an interview in December 2012, was quoted as saying that exposing the
victim and abuser through the media and seeking legal action against the abuser only “add to the pain.”
What is lacking in that statement?
Only the fact that, for many victims, seeking redress through the
media is their last resort in the face of institutional stonewalling
by the Church—from its impregnable silence about the corruption in its
ranks, to payments of hush money wrapped in lawyer-constructed quit
claims, to protecting and reassigning erring priests and bishops away
from the reach of civil and criminal authorities.
Elsewhere in the world, exposing wrongdoing is the preferred way of
redressing the wrong; in the Church, it is looking away and walking
on—but first making sure that victims remained in the shadows.
Here is what the next pope, whoever he will be, will have to contend
with: an arrogant and exclusionary Church that seems to have forgotten
the simplicity of the Beatitudes, the humanism and generosity at the
heart of the Gospels, the radical compassion of Jesus’ teachings.
The next pope may want to pay particular attention to “the only
Catholic nation in Asia,” where bishops have no qualms in labelling
candidates they disagree with as virtual endorsers of murder (“Team
Patay”), but who, when asked to account for wayward priests under
their watch who’ve wantonly broken the vow of celibacy (“Team Tatay”),
play victim by decrying the questions as a “smut campaign.”
http://opinion.inquirer.net/48695/fresh-start-2#ixzz2NPOuuYXJ
