One page analysis of news article provided - Essay Example

Article Analysis The article ‘Sex Abuse Scandals Threaten to Taint Papacy’ discusses how recent occurrences in the Catholic Church regarding sexual molestation are threatening to taint the church’s reputation on in Europe and the United States. The article compares an earlier incident in Wisconsin where 200 boys were molested by priests to the current issue in Europe where 67 people have come forward claiming the same thing has occurred to them. In both incidents the children were highly vulnerable ‘deaf’ children, and in both incidents there appears to be some effort on the part of the church to conceal the incidents.

While the Catholic Church claims that such incidents are reflective of society at large and not merely the Catholic Church, opponents argue that when Pope Benedict XVI was still functioning as a Cardinal he made frequent actions to impede the prosecution of the accused clergy members, including preventing the prosecution in the Wisconsin incidents, as well as transferring an accused sex offender in Munich to another church in 1980. While I was familiar with these scandals through the news media, the article brought my attention to the severity of the problem.

The article states that, “One victim, Alessandro Vantini, told the AP last year that priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel ‘as if I were dead.’” In addition, the high number of children the article indicates (200 and 67) is astonishing. The article does a solid job of presenting both sides of the controversy as the church indicates that a formal complaint was never issued and that they didn’t have a means to contact the molested children to interview them about the incidents.

However, in totality it seems that there is some misconduct that has occurred and that it might be best if an outside entity was able to step in and investigate. I also seems imperative that the Papacy take immediate measures to prevent similar occurrences in the future. ReferencesMarch 26, 2010. ‘Sex Abuse Scandals Threaten to Taint Papacy’