Jeanie Hannaman

By Ed Langlois Catholic News Service - Portland Archbishop Alexander K. Sample issued a letter Aug. 20 to western Oregon Catholics in which he expresses shock, anger and discouragement over revelations of clergy sex abuse in other parts of the country... "I have been shaken to the core of my soul over them," Archbishop Sample wrote in the five-page letter, which includes a call for renewed care of victims, reinvigorated prayer life among priests and an outside lay-run investigative body. Archbishop Sample also said that bishops should be held to the same standards as priests.

By Catholic News Agency -Bishop Philip Egan of the Diocese of Portsmouth, in southern England, has written to the pope asking him to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops in the wake of recent scandals… Bishop Egan says that his suggestion was prompted by the recent scandals of clerical sexual abuse in the United States… “Clerical sex abuse seems to be a world-wide phenomenon in the Church,” Egan wrote to the pope. “As a Catholic and a Bishop, these revelations fill me with deep sorrow and shame.”

Rev. Jerry J. Pokorsky, The Catholic Thing - In the time of Noah, the people were so wicked that God destroyed them in a great deluge.  The wickedness must have been much more serious than disobeying mom and dad.  God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone.  The wickedness of Sodom must have been much more serious than failing in generous hospitality.  In time, God promulgated the Ten Commandments to make sure these crimes never happened again.  But it was necessary for Him to send His Son. And we messed up that one as well.