Lord Acton famously stsed that "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." We see this in so many ways.
Recently we had a whistle blower stand up and do tbe riht thing to help crack the wall of corruption. Siobhan O'Connor secured copies of confidential documents and gave them to the FBI i order to expose the well known culture of corruption in the Catholic Church. She needs to be both praised and protected for her actions.
Praised be cause she provided the evidence that the FBI needs to go after the Buffalo Diocese for its actions in covering up the sexual abuse of children and others by priests. Bishop Malone needs to do the right thing and open all the files that the Church has on the priests accused of sexual abuse. He needs to give names, numbers, documents - everything that the church has on this scandal to the FBI so that justice ca be served.
Siobhan also needs to be protected - not because the Church has some sort of spiritual hit squad that will take her out. She needs to be protected so that other whistle blowers will come forward and give the public the information it needs to protect itself from other institutional criminals. Particularly corporate criminals. Yes, the Church has shown itself to have few to no morals or guidance. Corporations have even less. Remember Karen Silkwood? Do some digging on her. Brave woman. Gone.
The Church also needs open and public oversight. This criminal behavior of moving pedophile priests around was wrong. They needed to be put not in other churches, but behind bars. The Church has shown that it can not be trusted with power and needs oversight beyond what it is willing to provide for itself. What happened was the equivalent of having a fox watch the henhouse. Epic fail.
The Church has the potential to do good. I have been given a book on Liberation Theology and I look at what the ministers in Latin America are doing to help in the fight against exploitation. For that they are being killed. We need that type of leadership.
What we don't need is a criminal cover up.
And we now know why the Church fears women being in positions of power.
Siobhan is an example of what happens when a person with a conscience acts.
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