better late than never

 

U.S. Catholic bishops issued a formal apology Friday morning (6/14/24)  for the church’s role in inflicting a “history of trauma” on Native Americans, including at church-run Indian boarding schools where a Washington Post investigation published last month documented pervasive sexual abuse by priests.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/06/14/catholic-church-indian-boarding-schools/

The vote by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which establishes policies and norms for the church in the United States, represents the most direct expression of regret to date by church officials for past participation in a systematic effort by the U.S. government to forcibly assimilate Native Americans into White society. By a 181-2 vote, the bishops approved a document called “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise: A Pastoral Framework for Indigenous Ministry.” Three bishops abstained.

 

The document does not specifically mention sexual abuse, but says “we all must do our part to increase awareness and break the culture of silence that surrounds all types of afflictions and past mistreatment and neglect.”

 The Indian boarding schools are an embarrassing part of our history, and I wrote about the subject a couple of years ago.

 https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/12/indian-boarding-schools.html

Another issue that the Catholic church has finally been dealing with is the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests, which has cost the church $3 billion. In some cases, the original crime occurred decades ago – and one of the perpetrators was a man who was our parish priest when we moved to Wisconsin in 1981.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/18/639698062/the-clergy-abuse-crisis-has-cost-the-catholic-church-3-billion

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The LONGEST  period of time before the church finally admitted it was wrong involved a man named Galileo, who taught that the Earth revolved around the sun, which was contrary to what the church was teaching at the time.

 In 1616 the Catholic Church placed Nicholas Copernicus’s “De Revolutionibus,” the first modern scientific argument for a heliocentric (sun-centered) universe, on its index of banned books. Pope Paul V summoned Galileo to Rome and told him he could no longer support Copernicus publicly.

In 1632 Galileo published his “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” which supposedly presented arguments for both sides of the heliocentrism debate. His attempt at balance fooled no one, and it especially didn’t help that his advocate for geocentrism was named “Simplicius.”

Galileo was summoned before the Roman Inquisition in 1633. At first, he denied that he had advocated heliocentrism, but later he said he had only done so unintentionally. Galileo was convicted of “vehement suspicion of heresy” and under threat of torture forced to express sorrow and curse his errors.

Nearly 70 at the time of his trial, Galileo lived his last nine years under comfortable house arrest, writing a summary of his early motion experiments that became his final great scientific work. He died in Arcetri near Florence, Italy on January 8, 1642 at age 77 after suffering from heart palpitations and a fever.

In his conflict with the Church, Galileo was also largely vindicated. Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire used tales of his trial (often in simplified and exaggerated form) to portray Galileo as a martyr for objectivity. Recent scholarship suggests Galileo’s actual trial and punishment were as much a matter of courtly intrigue and philosophical minutiae as of inherent tension between religion and science.

In 1744 Galileo’s “Dialogue” was removed from the Church’s list of banned books, and in the 20th century Popes Pius XII and John Paul II made official statements of regret for how the Church had treated Galileo.

 https://www.history.com/topics/inventions/galileo-galilei

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus

 

The Catholic Church finally admitted that Galileo was right in November of 1992, 359 years after the original inquisition.

You would think that any of the scandals listed above would hurt church membership, and you would be correct – but not as much as you would think.

In 2023, there were 1.376 billion Catholics in the world, an increase of 14 million from the year before. In the United States, there are 336 million baptized Catholics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_by_country

Like any large organization, the Catholic church has its flaws, even though its overall impact is positive. However, it IS encouraging that its past sins are finally being addressed.

Better late than never.