Episcopal dissembling

* Your editorial "Planning a day of fasting and penance" (NCR, Dec. 29) points to the importance of the Vatican requiring bishops to tell the truth about the sexual abuse scandal in order for healing to occur. I also believe that would be a step in the right direction. But it will never happen. I submit neither the Vatican nor the bishops will ever participate in any action that forthrightly acknowledges the depth of their complicity and culpability. To that extent, the editorial is naive and too trusting. No bishop has been held accountable beyond promotion to higher office. The hierarchy will always and everywhere protect itself first, placing power above principle, its reputation above justice. When bishops acknowledge the plain, simple truth that they lied to survivors, covered up abuse and criminally endangered children, then I will listen. But from chanceries we get only bleached language about "mistakes" and "harm" usually rendered in the passive voice. Turn to any deposition at www.bishopaccountability.org to see episcopal dissembling at its slickest.

I believe Fr. Tom Doyle's continuing experience of legal hardball by bishops confirms their willful blindness: blocking the release of documents, bogus First Amendment claims of all sorts of fanciful immunity, vicious attacks against survivors and their lawyers, unconscionable delays, obstruction at every turn, and worn out charges of anti-Catholicism. More spin is not the answer and that is all we will get.

CAROLYN DISCO

Merrimack, N.H.

* Sadly a day of fasting and penance will not get the job done, Pope Benedict's personal preacher notwithstanding. It is past time for that. What is needed now is the same process that's been needed since the church's mishandling of the sexual abuse problem became front page news in Boston and led to Cardinal Bernard Law's stepping down as spiritual leader. The church simply does not have time for any more external ceremonies and prayer services. Such contrived happenings are meaningless media events orchestrated by diocesan public relations teams.

The "Witness to Sorrow" program recently held by the Philadelphia archdiocese was one such event. It may have shaken a few comatose priests awake to the reality of what has been going on in their rectories and elsewhere during the last 50 years, but otherwise it was virtually meaningless. Cardinal Justin Rigali did not use that service to make any truly pastoral remarks to victims of childhood sexual abuse by priests. The cardinal also passed up a similar opportunity at the prayer service that followed in the seminary's chapel, what is needed is the removal of the "enablers" among upper-level clergy and bishops who, it would seem, we will always have with us. what is needed is contrite acknowledgment of the part prelates like Cardinals John Krol and Anthony Bevilacqua played in the cover-up, the conspiracy of silence and the intimidation of victims. What is needed is a public acknowledgment of all the priests who were ever known to be sexual abusers in our local churches.

CATHERINE M. HENRY

Havertown, Pa.

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