Catholic Church Remains Defensive over Sex Abuse Scandal

Rather than reaching out to the survivors of sexual abuse, Catholic Church officials have spent the last two weeks defending the Pope and attacking the media for what it calls unwarranted attacks on the Church and the Pope himself.  The only two exceptions to this are the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin and German  Archbishop Robert Zollitsch.  Zollitsch criticized the Church’s handling of the abuse scandal by characterizing the Church’s position as a "wrongly intended desire to protect the church’s reputation."  Apart from these two bishops, other cardinals and bishops have condemned the news reports as attacks on the Pope.  This past week, the NY Times came under criticism from Cardinal William Levada for inaccurate reporting of the sex abuse crisis.  Levada, former Archbishop of San Francisco and Portland, is now the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the pope’s former position in the Vatican.