Fossilized . . .

“We must not be fossilized in the past,” he said after being asked about transfers of priests from diocese to diocese that enabled them to escape investigation and prosecution. “This was a policy practiced decades ago, mostly.”

                         --Words of Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s representative in Geneva 

I read in the New York Times that Bishop Tomasi reports that almost 850 priest had been defrocked from 2004-2013 and another 2,500+ disciplined for sexual abuse. Moreover, since 1950 the Church has paid over $2.5 billion in compensation to victims and more millions on therapy and other costs associated with litigation and investigations. And over $260 million over the past 10 years doing background checks on people serving in the Church.

Big deal. Are we supposed to forget about the other stuff? What he doesn't say is how many bishops have lost their jobs for facilitating the abuse of kids for decades by simply moving miscreants around and/or paying off victims for silence. The answer is less than five. There are hundreds of these guys still out there in their positions of authority and privilege because Rome simply chose not to go after them. It was an understandable decision, after all, since Rome, which sees all and knows all, covered the whole sordid mess up for years and years until it could not contain things anymore. It's still doing it. The Vatican has been pretty damn sparing about what it says on this subject, and now we're being told that we should dwell on things that happened in the past . . . . mostly.