Volume > Issue > Note List > Priestly Pedophilia: Will Good PR Fix It?

Priestly Pedophilia: Will Good PR Fix It?

Did you know that the pedophilia scandals among the clergy are basically a matter of image and public relations?

Writing in his regular column in Our Sunday Visitor (Feb. 24), Msgr. Owen F. Campion, who is Associate Publisher of the Visitor and Editor of the Visitor’s sister periodical The Priest, informs us that PR is really what it’s all about. The Monsignor tells how in American history the clergy and nuns gave the children of immigrants the means, via Catholic education, to achieve “success,” and that “the sad stories of child abuse by priests of the past 20 years have robbed us of a once-splendid image” (italics added).

Monsignors and priests, you see, have an image to protect. More about that later.

Are the pedophilia stories “sad”? Of course. But aren’t they more than sad? Campion also allows that they’re “most disturbing” and a “dreadful problem.” Yes. But aren’t they also more than that?

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

Briefly: January-February 2012

Now I Walk on Death Row: A Wall Street Finance Lawyer Stumbles into the Arms of a Loving God

"Oh, I'm Nobody."

God knows me as one to whom He continually gives being, and whom He holds and guides in His loving Providence.

A Thomistic Vision of Man's Final End

Dante relied heavily on the philosophy of Aquinas to construct his epic. The Divine Comedy has been referred to as the “Summa in verse.”