My letter to the Pope

Prefecture of the Papal Household
00120 Vatican City State

Your Holiness:

First, I apologize for sending this c/o the Prefecture of the Papal Household. This was the only mailing address I could find on the Vatican website (http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm).

Second: the point of this note is to express my displeasure with your inept handling of the developing pedophilia scandal, and to suggest an alternate approach that may better serve the Church.

I note that the Vatican’s persistent denials, specious defenses, and scape-goating of the news media have not worked particularly well to defuse the developing scandal. Given the documentary evidence that the Church has dramatically failed to protect its children, what do you hope to gain by continuing to pursue a defense of denial and “letter of the law” scholastic sophistry? Recent published defenses have suggested that the Church’s position is, “We’re not the only buggerers, so it’s okay.”
Is this really the position you want to adopt?

You would be far better served to simply come clean, fully and publicly.

Yes, we – the Holy Catholic Church – made mistakes in the past.
We protected the institution, the Church, at the expense of our flock.
We are deeply and truly sorry. We confess our sins and repent.
We will strive mightily to prevent a recurrence of this shameful episode.
We will from this day forward take all allegations of child sexual abuse seriously, cooperate fully with secular authorities, and ensure that accused clergy are segregated from pastoral duties.
We beseech your forgiveness, which we do not deserve.

Consult with a professional Public Relations firm – I think the professionals will agree that the approach suggested above is far more likely to defuse the current crisis than the adversarial, belligerent stance you have adopted to date.

This is simply taking your own medicine – the path to salvation you in fact promote to your parishioners:

Confession
Contrition
Penance.

The longer you persist in denial, institutional and public, the greater the damage done to the Church. Denial and belligerent scholasticism – citing the letter of the law – only open the Church to further attack.
Bend. Confess error. Profess contrition. Do penance.

You – personally and institutionally – are NOT the victim.

Sincerely,

Okay, now that I got that outta my system, maybe I'll turn to other topics.