Media ‘distorted sex abuse crisis’

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
14 March 2004

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Media ‘distorted sex abuse crisis’

WORST CRISIS: Fr John Jay Hughes

By Chris Lindsay

Sexual abuse by Catholic priests and religious in the US has been disproportionately reported by the media, says a visiting American priest.

However, the revelation of this abuse – which had largely ceased decades ago – has been the worst crisis American Catholics have ever experienced, says Fr John Jay Hughes, Church historian and theological consultant in the archdiocese of St Louis, Missouri.

He was addressing Australian clergy in the Polding Centre on A Church comes of age: US Catholicism at the start of the 21st Century.

The sexual abuse crisis in the US “broke upon us in the early months of 2002, with the shock and destructive damage of a major earthquake”.

“There had been preliminary tremors a decade earlier,” he said. “In response the American bishops put in place policies which, if followed everywhere, would have prevented much of the devastation we have experienced.

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