John Allen offers his latest Word from Rome in which he speaks with Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras. Last year, Rodriguez said that the Scandal was overblown and a production of the anti-Catholic media that was really out to get the Church for her support of the Palestinians. Allen sits down with the cardinal to clarify the remarks, and the cardinal says that he didn’t mean to minimize the suffering of victims of abuse, but wanted to ask whether the abuse of a few by less than 2 percent of priests was the story.
One of the things that holds back most Third World nations is endemic corruption. In almost all of these countries, nothing can get accomplished because the rule of law is ignored and significant resources are eaten up or diverted by unscrupulous individuals, making it difficult for almost anyone but the unethical to build wealth for themselves or others.
C’mon, Todd, don’t be obtuse. Whatever corruption exists in the US is nowhere near the level it is Third World countries and nowhere near as institutionalized. Have you ever traveled in the Third World? If so, haven’t you ever seen a cop take a bribe to look the other way on anything from jaywalking to robbery? If not, what about the corruption we saw in Africa over the past two decades where millions of people are starving despite tens of millions of ponds of food aid from the West because corrupt officials steal it and sell it on the black market.
I know that for some people it’s always easy to find a moral equivalence and say that America is just as evil as every place else, but it isn’t so easy. Yes, there is sin and corruption everywhere but when it comes to institutional corruption we’re not even in the same ballpark.
“C. Rodriguez was making and putting words in his mouth”? What does that mean?
Look, I know we went around and around on this before, but let’s stipulate that the press pays inordinate attention to the Church in crisis and that there is no epidemic of priests abusing children.
But what the Cardinal said in his original remarks is that the thing is entirely a media creation which it is not. The real Scandal is not just that abuse took place, but that the bishops engaged in a coverup that endangered more children. Who can deny that? Who can deny that it is horrible for the successors of the Apostles to do such a thing? Isn’t the evident hypocrisy newsworthy? Shouldn’t we expect to hold the Church to a higher standard than any other institution?
Besides, if the Scandal is a creation of the anti-Catholic media, how do you explain the faithful Catholic media that have been covering Scandal-related issues for years?
Hi, Dom.
Chris’ quoted words are easier to parse if you put a comma after “making”; or you could read them as free verse:
—-quote—-
Some comments here
are missing the main point C. Rodriguez was making
and putting words in his mouth
and interpreting his unseen thoughts.
—-end quote—-
Ah, I understand it then.
Todd, I’m not going to argue the point with you. Any first-year economics student can tell the difference between a US company going bankrupt and society-wide corruption and the relative effects.
Sometimes I think you just post stuff to disagree with me whatever I say.