The Loss of Innocence

I don't remember what content filled my coloring-books as a child, but I'm pretty sure it was bunnies and stuff. Whatever the case, it didn't seem to be matter too formative or instructional to begin with: and it certainly wasn't about seedy scandal. The depth to which the child sexual abuse scandal has injured the Body of Christ can be seen in the fact that, in legally coping with the issues it has caused, hands have been tied on all sides by matters of accountability, and the resulting obsession with "safe environments" now threatens to steal any matter of blissful innocence and ignorance from our children forever. Since it is legally unfeasible to say nothing at all, when priests have illegitimately stolen children's innocence in the past, the Church must now corrupt that innocence in the name of "education": to wit, this new initiative from the Archdiocese of New York.

What a sad day. And Cardinal Dulles' warnings from the Dallas Conference come back to mind with haunting prophetic implications: for now, priests are not only robbed of the presumption of innocence in legal process and the media, but in the means with which we educate our children...