Saturday, July 30, 2005

Clergy Molestation: When Evil Stops Being News

This week another Catholic official—this time in Maui—was arrested for sexually assaulting a young boy, the latest of hundreds of such arrests nationwide in the “Priestofeelya” scandal.

James “Ron” Gonsalves of Wailuku is charged with 32 counts of first-degree sexual assault and 30 counts of third-degree sexual assault.

That puts him up there with the “greats” of molesting priests—62 counts, he must have had a very busy “ministry.”

But here’s the distressing part of this story: It only made the news in Hawaii.

So many priests have molested so many children it has stopped being news. The Pope gets a pass. Once you hit 100 priestly pervs and over $1 billion in settlements, it gets boring.

Same thing happened to Caligula—at some point nothing impresses any more.

“Yeah, we’ve heard that before, the Catholics got problems, now where’s that sports section?”

Maybe that’s the best gauge of how pervasive the “Priestofeelya” scandal really is. It’s just not news any more. Not to the press, not to the Vatican.

Funny, the only people who still seem to care are the victims. C’mon, get over it.

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