Archbishop Chaput to flock: hit back

Nothing less than "the systematic dismantling and pillaging of the Catholic community nationwide" is how Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput describes the impact of current and proposed sex abuse legislation around the country.

In a Q & A article to be published Sunday in Our Sunday Visitor, a national Catholic newspaper, Chaput is also critical of some fellow bishops for not doing more to fight the proposed laws.

How about those "wise" bishops calling for a lifting of the statute of limitations, like Bishop Gumbleton, perhaps?

Chaput, not naming names, attributed the reluctance [to fight back] to "guilt, confusion, a desire to take what they perceive to be 'the high road.' Fear has played a part, too.

"Maybe all these things have been justified in their time. But what's happening now - the systematic dismantling and pillaging of the Catholic community nationwide - is not justice.

"And unless Catholics wake up right now and push back on behalf of their church, their parishes and the religious future of their children, the pillaging will continue."

More here at the Rocky Moutain News...

So much could be said, but nothing said would be new...as anyone who has raised children knows, when one fails to properly teach, correct and discipline one's children, that is, when one is negligently permissive, the odds are usually significantly increased that they will act in ways that are injurious to themselves or to others. Some may even end up in prison or dead. Some may even find themselves in hell. The consequences of an unbridled permissiveness can be deadly, in more ways than one. Parents and our bishops and priests used to remind us of this...Now and for the past few decades, however, it didn't seem to be politically correct or "pastoral" to stifle one's creativity, "freedom of choice", or malformed conscience. Many, I believe, understand that most of these crises of faith and morality could have been prevented had we had loving yet firm and resolute bishops and priests doing what they were supposed to do. Pray and pray some more for our Holy Father, our bishops, and our priests. Pray the God's graces are showered over them and they come to do His will in humble and contrite obedience.