Lessons from Life 20 March 2010 - Pope prepares letter on Irish abuse amid growing anger

"Pope prepares letter on Irish abuse amid growing anger - Sat, Mar 20, 2010 AFP

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI was preparing Saturday to issue a pastoral letter on the child abuse scandal in the Church in Ireland, amid growing anger about similar affairs in other countries.

And one Irish group representing victims of the abuse made it clear Friday that they would accept nothing less than a full apology and confirmation that abuse had been covered up at the highest levels of the Church.

The pope announced the release of the letter on Wednesday, St Patrick's Day, during his weekly general audience in St Peter's Square. St Patrick is the patron saint of strongly Catholic Ireland."

This type of scandal seems to occur with alarming frequency with the Catholic Church! The most shocking revelation is that some of the victims were swore to secrecy by the Church and some senior church leaders were supposedly involved in making the deal!

Lessons for me are:

1. misplaced sympathy and kindness has no place in certain situations. The sanctity of the Church CANNOT tolerate abusers. Period. There is no if or but about it. When the acts were committed, treatment need to commence and victims helped and the perpetrators kept in check and the rest of the innocents informed;

2. an organization like a Church CANNOT have fear that the believers will NOT want to come to worship if such ungodly acts were committed by men of god. If it is an individual that strayed, you cannot let others formed the opinions that the whole flock are also strayed! The best way to ensure that is to expose the wrong doing, admit guilt, deal with the offenders, restore confidence in the integrity of the process and the system that the crime committed were, indeed, by a rare minority! This is really Crisis Management 101. The longer you delay, the more lies you have to tell to cover the earlier 'false' impression built up!;

3. personally to be celibate is not naturally. Only those with the deepest of conviction and devotion will keep to that vow if he really want to be a man of god. This vow cannot be taken lightly. It has its consequence. If you commit, there is no room for violation. If you violate the vow, you must be punished without mercy. It is how it is as you walked into it 'eyes wide opened'!!

I do not measured up to the standard of the great divine, so I will do what I can to be a 'good' man as much as I can. My definition of a 'good' man is: do not violate any one's right intentionally! Do not harbour harms towards others!!