Lynn’s Sentencing Illustrates Contrasts between Church & Penn State Scandals (continued)

But when evidence of such horrific wrongdoing at Penn State seeped out, and was confirmed by an independent investigation, those responsible were held accountable by appropriate criminal and civil actions brought in the name of victims. The conviction of former football coach Jerry Sandusky, firings of the highest university staff by trustees, harsh NCAA sanctions and the inevitability of civil lawsuits show clearly how Penn State has been held accountable for its crimes and gross malfeasance.

In the Catholic Church, however, the hierarchy has covered up systemic abuse of children in diocese after diocese, religious order after religious order. Church officials claim exemption from the way secular society treats these crimes based on their self-perpetuated views that clergy are separate, above and exempt from the same norms that apply to everyone else. So, when the Church commits crimes:

• no full independent investigation by qualified investigators outside the hierarchy's control takes place;

• statutes of limitations run out, too often precluding criminal or civil reviews of evidence, while the hierarchy fights tenaciously against statute of limitation reform in state after state; and

• no local trustees, a la Penn State, are available to judge the merits of the revelations on the grounds of ethical behavior, common decency and Gospel values.

Bishops in Catholic dioceses are accountable to no one, under Canon Law, except the pope. In the United States, the Vatican has not held a single bishop accountable for failing to do what decency, ethics and Gospel values alone, not to mention civil law, would expect from leaders of a secular institution, let alone a religious one. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the closest approximation of an oversight body such as the NCAA, has never even approached the types of sanctions the NCAA has levied against Penn State.

If survivor advocates, the media and the courts (in those limited cases where courts have jurisdiction) had not been working for years to shine light on clergy sexual abuse, the public would have continued to hear only the hierarchy's spin whenever allegations of abuse surfaced.

In those cases of Church wrongdoing that have gone to trial, the evidence of what happened at the time of abuse and thereafter shows the same pattern as at Penn State. Fortunately, unlike the Catholic hierarchy, most secular institutions cannot keep the evidence hidden, and none can escape accountability when the evidence is revealed, evaluated and judged.

The time has come, and long since passed, for the same truth, justice and accountability seen at Penn to be seen in the Church. Penn State has experienced severe justice and accountability served. Nothing comparable has occurred within the Catholic Church.