Child sex abuse scandal black mark on Catholic Church: Pastor
Press TV has interviewed Eli Joseph James, congregational pastor and political commentator from Chicago, to discuss Pope’s praise for US bishops’ response to the clergy sex abuse crisis.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: How genuine were the US bishops in their efforts to help sexual abuse victims that the Pope praised them for it?
James: Your previous guess used the word hypocrisy quite frequently, and I have to do likewise. We have an expression in America called blowing smoke, which is when somebody basically lies to the public in order to avoid discussing the issues, and that is what Pope Francis is doing. The fact is, and your intro’s absolutely right, the Catholic Church has been doing nothing but obstructing justice and has been penalizing the families and the victims of sexual abuse by these priests, by dragging on the court cases, using their lawyers to fight on behalf of the sex abusers instead of along the families to get a final conclusion to these cases. No greater hypocrisy could possibly be happening in the Catholic Church than what is going on right now with this sex abuse case.
Press TV: How much damage have pedophile priests caused to the church and made people turn away from religion itself?
James: That is the real problem and actually amazes me that more Catholics do not leave the church over the scandal, because it is obviously a black mark on the entire hierarchy of the church from the Pope and down to the local parish. We have had so many parishes in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, New York, Boston; all of these parishes have had priests engaging in sex abuse and these parishes are protecting these priests. They are not doing anything to ensure that justice is served. They are not serving the victims. They are not serving the victims’ families. What they are doing is they are serving themselves and maintaining an utterly corrupt clergy, I repeat what I just said, it is an utterly corrupt clergy from the top down to the local parish.
I would simply call Pope Francis an anti-Christ, because he is not doing what Christ would do. Christ would clean house as any good reformer would do. What he is doing, he is actually making excuses for the perpetrators and he has no concern or compassion whatsoever for the victims, absolutely none!
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