The Catholic Church reportedly suspended a Ugandan priest for blowing
the whistle on child sex abuse in that country. The priest was told to apologize and help cover up the crimes, because, he was advised, that’s what one is supposed to do.
He refused, and got suspended.
The priest is named Anthony Musaala. And the LA Times reports that he was suspended indefinitely by the archbishop of Kampala for blowing the whistle on child sex abuse, among other wrongdoing, in Uganda.
To appreciate why the Catholic Church is so upset with Musaala, you have to appreciate something about Africans and child sex abuse – they (at least their Catholic leaders) think it’s a white thing.
I wrote a while back about Ghanian Cardinal Peter Turkson, who was reportedly on the short list for Pople, who recently said that pedophilia isn’t a problem in the African church because being gay is a white thing (so many levels of ignorance in that one statement).
But throw in the African notion that homosexuality (which is how they incorrectly define pedophilia) is a white thing, and you have a perfect storm of denial.
The church actually asked Musaala to apologize for spilling the beans on the child sexual abuse:
Indeed, after Musaala’s letter became public, a Catholic government minister close to the archbishop advised him to apologize. “He said, ‘You spent a lot of time in England and you have been here for 17 years, but you’ve never quite understood the kind of environment in which we live here,’” Musaala said in a telephone interview. “‘And the kind of things you are trying to say just do not fit well in this kind of environment.’”Stopping the rape of children doesn’t fit well with the Catholic Church?
Yeah, we kind of already knew that.
It’s really quite abominable that the church isn’t facing more of a legal challenge internationally because of its poor treatment of the abuse cases.
Imagine any other institution continuing to aid and abet the rape of young children – children as young as five years of age – and not be the subject of a RICO indictment and international sanctions.
The very notion that the Catholic church has the nerve to even rear its head in moral debates, such as its recent nastygrams it sent President Obama about including gay couples in immigration reform, shows that not nearly enough has been done to force the church to repent.
There’s still far too much hubris in Rome, and Kampala.
If the Vatican doesn’t intervene and reinstate Anthony Musaala, we’ll know all we need to know about the new Pope.