What is the purpose of counseling for a priest involved in abuse cases, and how successful is it?
It helps us to establish that this man is an abuser, that he has to be removed, either because he’s going to jail or because we hopefully through this new process will immediately be able to remove him from clerical state. Maybe we can help him to live with himself, and help him to maybe find a job where he will not be into these kinds of temptations. In the old days, 15 years ago, it was the hope they could cure him. That’s where so many of these terrible things happened, because these very credible institutions would say this man is OK; we fixed him up. Well, we found out that works perhaps 90% of the time. But we didn’t know that it didn’t work all the time. Now we do. You can’t take a chance. Q: Some Catholics see an anti-Catholic campaign in these scandals, with your church held to a higher standard. A. I noted a couple of weeks ago that if this was a Boy Scout leader it would be on page 20, if it was a minister of another religion, it would be on page 6, and if it is a Catholic p
