BishopAccountability.org's Anne Barrett Doyle (l) and
'The World' host Marco Werman (r)
A recently released, poorly sourced report out of France alleging abuse by priests committed many decades ago has predictably created the usual media circus of unhinged accusations and hysterical claims by haters of the Church.
And among the media pile-on was the radio show The World, hosted by Marco Werman. It's produced by PRX, a public radio outfit, and airs on NPR.
Taxpayer-funded bigotry
Werman is a recidivist when it comes to hatred of the Catholic Church, so it was no surprise that he invited one of America's most notorious anti-Catholic bigots, Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, to join him on his show.
But before introducing Doyle, Werman claimed that "Catholic clergy in France sexually abused more than 200,000 children since 1950." In fact, the report did not even conclude that, only stating that this number was an "estimation," whatever that means. And, needless to say, there are numerous reasons to question the legitimacy of such an extraordinary figure. For starters:
● What the report called "victims" were actually just random accusers, as citizens all across France were encouraged to fill out an "anonymous online questionnaire," allowing just about any ding-a-ling to say just about anything without much scrutiny. (This was not unlike the time in 2018 when an anonymous "tip line" was established for anyone to accuse Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sex crimes during his confirmation hearings; and, in the words of a Washington insider, "Every whack-job in the world called in to that thing.")
● Despite an investigation lasting three years, the report's commission only interviewed a mere 174 accusers. So, 174 / 216,000, or 0.081% (0.00081) of the total.
● The commission also interviewed only 11 priests alleged to have committed abuse many decades ago. Only 11? That's the real scandal here.
● Well over half of the accused priests are long dead and no longer around to defend themselves. The vast majority of accusations were never even fully investigated.
Yet these glaring problems with the report did not keep Doyle from making up her own additional fun facts, such as her claims that "cover-up still flourishes in the Church" and that abusive priests are still allowed to stay in ministry!
No good deed goes unpunished
Sadly, this phony report was commissioned by the Church itself. The Catholic Church needs to stop shooting itself in the foot by giving enemies of the Church free opportunities to bludgeon the Church over alleged crimes from many decades ago by making wild estimations incapable of being proven or disproven. No other organization on the planet has done more to try to rectify for its past than the Catholic Church – despite the fact there has been zero evidence that the Church ever had a bigger abuse problem than anyone else.
Enemies of the Church, including many from within, have snookered Church leaders into thinking that somehow there is something good and noble in commissioning reports like this, which are usually poorly done and only red meat for the haters like Werman and Doyle. They accomplish nothing, unless your goal is to give fodder to an anti-Catholic media and weaken the Church that Christ founded.
—————————————-
Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests? Check out the book: The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)
Finally somebody has said it!