Inside
NCR
This weeks cover story and its
insights into the caregiving at St. Anthony Village in Portland, Ore., is not
simply another NCR parish story. Like our Feb. 22 story on free health
clinics being stretched to the limit, it signals NCRs increasing
commitment to health care coverage. Health care is a complex field.
The lack of access to health care in the richest country on earth
is a national disgrace. New developments in biomedicine, cloning and stem cell
research are growing moral challenges. The financial pressures on hospitals and
providers, Catholic and otherwise, affect all Americans, while the increased
understanding of the interplay between spirituality and good health is
promising to some people.
NCR has its eye on all these issues and, in the months
ahead, will gradually steady its focus to bring the full force of the
discussion and dilemmas, national and local, to the readers on a regular basis.
Stay tuned.
And those stories about extraordinary parishes? Well keep
doing them, too.
The priest sex abuse story is
exhausting to cover and comment about. It is a terrible abuse of power, a
horrible betrayal of our children, and it causes deep embarrassment and shame
for the Catholic community before other churches and the wider culture.
More than 15 years ago NCR broke the story of priest sex
abuse and the pattern of cover-up and further abuse of victims by leaders who
abandoned their pastoral instincts and acted to protect the reputations of
priests and the institution.
It is somewhat maddening that all of the broken trust, expensive
settlements, betrayed victims and shattered priests of the past decade and a
half lead to the same questions and frustrations that were expressed at the
start.
Many of us hope that this time, this new explosion of disclosures
will lead to more than just another round of forced apologies.
In the meantime, our coverage this week is a special report
package that includes stories from Boston by Chuck Colbert, who interviewed Fr.
Jerry Osterman, pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Everett, Mass.
Osterman seems to be the kind of pastor -- not only open and forthright with
his parishioners, but deeply respectful of their intelligence and experience --
who inspires hope that something good can come from this awful crisis.
Jesuit Fr. Raymond Schroth, who spent hours reading through
thousands of pages of documents released by the courts, gives us his analysis
of the case of John Geoghan, the defrocked priest convicted of child abuse.
I call your attention, too, to a brief on Page 8 (briefs are not
posted on-line) that tells of theologian Lisa Sowle Cahills call for an
economic boycott to force the church to consider the kind of significant reform
needed to deal with the clergy sex abuse scandal. Her plea was carried in an
op-ed piece in the March 6 issue of The New York Times.
Fr. Richard McBrien on Page 20 (no posted on-line) argues that any
solution to the crisis will require a kind of strong leadership that appears in
short supply. Finally, dont miss the letters section for a healthy dose
of wisdom and insight. The anguish and the questions contained in the letters
on the sex abuse crisis are a powerful testament to how deeply Catholics both
love their church and are disturbed by the ongoing scandal.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, March 15,
2002
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