What A Mess For The Catholic Church

Now you’ve got a Bishop saying he was abused 60 years ago:

Gumbleton, 75, told The Washington Post in an interview published in Wednesday’s editions that he was “inappropriately touched” by a priest in 1945 when he was a ninth grader at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit.
…He was appearing in support of a bill pending in the Ohio House that would open a one-year window for sex abuse victims to sue the church for incidents that occurred years ago. The state senate has already passed the bill.
…He told the Post that opening the window to additional law suits in Ohio and elsewhere “could cost the church some money, but it also could bring a great deal of healing to a lot of victims.”

Certainly the Church brought a lot of this onto themselves by covering up, ignoring reports and shifting scumbags to different parishes, and for this they have rightly paid and continue to pay, both financially and morally as they should. But for a legislature to effectively write a blank check to anyone who has an axe to grind is just wrong. They will be no standard of proof in these cases; it’s a mugging, plain and simple, sanctioned by the state. If someone was abused by an Ohio State Legislator 60 years ago would the Legislature give them another year to file a suit, so long after any reasonable semblence of a statute of limitations had expired? Hell, so long after many of the supposed perps had expired? I don’t think so. All those who so zealously scream, and many times rightly so, about the separation of church and state, will they now speak out when the church is singled out unfairly?
Don’t hold your breath.

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