An Illinois Catholic bishop said he thinks the Catholic
Church has handled its multiple sexual abuse scandals better than any
other institution in the world would have, and that a hostility against
Catholics is rising in the U.S.
In a recent interview, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the
Diocese of Springfield, Ill., warned that the media is at fault for the
anti-Christian sentiment in America, according to the Washington Times
Communities.
He said he thinks the Catholic Church has been responsible
and that people are still attacking it unfairly, according to
Wonkette.com.
“I would venture to say that of any institution in the
country – perhaps in the world – I don’t think anyone is dealing with
(sexual abuse scandals) as responsibly as the Catholic Church has,”
Paprocki said. “So public figures like that continue to point their
finger at the Catholic Church and say you have a problem with sexual
abuse and people are ignoring where most sexual abuse is taking place.
It’s occurring in families. It’s occurring in schools.”
He added that he thinks people are trying to label sexual abuse as “a Catholic problem.”
“There is a lot of sexual abuse that is taking place and
needs to be addressed,” he said. “This lets people too easily off the
hook to say that, oh, that’s a Catholic problem…. If people are really
serious about sexual abuse, I think they need to be looking at some
other places as well.”
The bishop compared the persecution he thinks Catholics face today to the issues they faced in ancient times.
“We (Christians) find ourselves now – just in this short
period of time - where the early Christians found themselves in the
Roman Empire. So the church in 2,000 years, we started out as being a
persecuted faith, with Constantine being an accepted established faith,
then for centuries, kind of moving in that direction that had this close
relationship between the secular world’s values and Judeo-Christian
values,” Paprocki said.
He said he thinks current society is moving far away from Christian culture.
“And now I think we are moving in a direction that – not
only is it more than secular – it’s a rejection. It’s an outright
rejection [of Judeo-Christian values]. It’s a pagan kind of a culture,”
he said.
To respond to his perceived shift in society’s view of Catholicism, he said Christians will have to adjust to the situation.
“We (Christians) have to mentally adjust. I know it is an
adjustment for me because – and I assume for many other people as well -
because I grew up in this country at a time when the values in our
secular world mirrored the values of the religious world,” Paprocki
said. “And I think what’s happening now is that relationship – that
symbiosis between our culture and the church - has been ruptured.