It’s business as usual in the Catholic Church. Some seven weeks have passed since Bishop Raymond Lahey was arrested in Ottawa on child pornography charges. The bishop had recently presided over a $15-million dollar legal settlement for victims who had been abused by priests in the Antigonish Diocese dating back to 1950. That settlement elicited allegations of sexual abuse by priests that had to that point remained unspoken. But now all the hushed whispers were coming to the fore. The numbers of young boys callously deprived of their youth and their innocence by sick and manipulating clergy throughout many of the small communities that make up the diocese escaped from soft murmur into open, public conversation. And it was almost too much for many churchgoers to bear. Then a bishop, the very bishop who had brokered the settlement for abuse victims, was charged with possessing and transporting child pornography. It was enough to make Archbishop Anthony Mancini, the man now in charge...
Reflections from the pastoral ministry of an Evangelical Catholic Priest.