Nabi Sayeth: Will the Vatican “Committee” be Just Another Heapin' Helpin' Dose of Bureaucracy?

Clergy sex abuse victim, Marie Collins, who resigned from
 the Pontifical Committee for the Protection of Minors -
Read her story!

Nabi Sayeth: It has been announced that Pope Francis has called bishops from around the world to meet in February 2019 at the Vatican to plan the Catholic Church’s response, as a body, to the sexual abuse crisis. Father Hans Zollner, a Jesuit priest who is involved with the planning process for the meeting was interviewed by Vatican News and he made the following comments:

What is the Committee's goal? 

Everything needs to be prepared. And in order to prepare everything well, there needs to be someone to shoulder the burden. The meeting in February is an important event; it’s very important for the Church. It is necessary that it be prepared well, and that it involve all of the Episcopal Conferences right away.

[Editor's comment: One fears that what is being prepared is the strategy to continue the stonewalling and cover up. Will the meeting bring about any substantive change? If the past is prologue to the future, it seems unlikely.]  

Information, reflections, the spirit of prayer and penance and proposals for new concrete action needs to be shared immediately. It is necessary that the awareness of a synodal journal be shared -- cum Petro et sub Petro (with Peter and under Peter). We must do everything that we can, as the Holy Father said in his letter to the People of God “to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated”. Organizing the meeting well will help to put together the analysis, the awareness, the shame, the repentance, prayer, and discernment regarding actions to be undertaken and decisions to be made in justice and in truth. 

Because of this, the consultations that we will have with victims, with groups of experts, with the laity, with educated men and women is also important. This work will be done together with the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, headed by Cardinal O’Malley, of which I am also a member.

(Vatican News 11/23/18)

Nabi Sayeth, Speaking of the hand-picked Pontifical Committee for the Protection of Minors, there is a real conflict at the outset.

Marie Collins, a native of Ireland, is a victim of clergy sexual abuse. She was appointed by Pope Francis to his committee, but her tenure was short lived:

In 2013, Pope Francis personally selected Collins to sit on the Pontifical Council for the Protection of Minors. There, she helped create new procedures for the Church to properly deal with and prevent further abuse. 

Pope Francis has approved all the recommendations made so far, but the Curia, the administrative arm of the Catholic Church, has resisted putting them into action.
On March 1, 2017, Marie Collins resigned in frustration at the Church's resistance to change. 

"I felt I couldn't remain and retain my integrity," she said. 

"Somebody said to me once, 'Don't work with the Vatican if you want to retain your faith.' And I think some of that is very true. The men that are difficult, they live in a bubble — they don't see the world the way an ordinary person in the street does."
(CBC radio interview 10/12/18)

Nabi Asketh: If the work of the Pontifical Committee cannot be trusted by one of its members, herself a victim of sexual abuse, can the Committee’s work be trusted in other matters, especially at the upcoming meeting?

But then there’s another important issue that will certainly have a significant impact on the Committee’s deliberations, namely, the credibility of the participants at February’s meeting:

“Cardinal Daniel DiNardo is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, making him one of the most powerful Catholic officials in the country. He has also been one of the most vocal critics of the church's handling of its sex abuse scandal.

But this summer, Rev. Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, a priest whom DiNardo had promoted, was arrested for allegedly molesting two children.

CBS News looked over court records, turning up graphic allegations against a second active priest in Houston. In a sworn affidavit, a victim accused Rev. Terence Brinkman of "wearing his priest collar as he sodomized me" as a 12-year-old in the 1970s. Attorneys for DiNardo's archdiocese argued that the statute of limitations had passed and the case was thrown out of court. 

Today, Brinkman is a priest at St. John the Evangelist.”

(Nikki Battiste CBS News 11/20/18)

Nabi Sayeth: Cardinal DeNardo was questioned about the two predator priests who are still in active ministry in his archdiocese and he responded that the allegations against both clergymen were not credible. Really?

Nabi’s concern about the upcoming Vatican meeting is this: How many cardinal DiNardo’s are there out there and how many of them will be participating in the February meeting?

Will issues such as lack of transparency, lack of accountability, lack of credibility, and a lack of HONESTY result in any action taken by the bishops being perceived by concerned Catholic laity as “null and avoid” BEFORE the meeting even begins???