Regarding Pat Murphy's July 18 opinion column, "A shameful day ... for Catholics"—Murphy has returned to his habit of indirectly castigating Catholic clergy in general by resurrecting the sexual sins of an unspecified number. He also ignores the vast majority who daily sustain what a April 29, 2002, article in Time magazine described as "far and away America's biggest social-service agency and as such does a tremendous amount of good: tending to the sick, feeding the hungry, counseling the troubled and running a school system the envy of secular educators public and private."
Certainly just one abusive priest or evasive bishop is one too many, and their depravity must not be understated. But Murphy should have put this matter in its accurate context.
As for the extent of involvement of Catholic priests in sexual abuse, a report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice concluded that of the 110,000 Catholic priests examined during the 52-year period from 1950-2002 (the period the Los Angeles Diocese was examined) about 3 percent committed a crime of sexual abuse. These factors should not be overlooked in mitigating a very dark period within the Catholic Church.
However, Catholic bashing, either direct or indirect, is currently the "in thing" and Murphy is part of it. In this case by not mentioning the extent of sexual abuse in other faiths such as that noted in the Idaho Statesman on Jan. 22, 2007, and the Dallas Morning News on March 9, 2002, as well as in the book "Ministerial Ethics," which concludes that 30 to 35 percent of ministers in all Protestant denominations have inappropriate sexual relations.
Certainly most of these relations are probably not of a pedophile nature, but most likely still well outside the bounds of their ministerial standards.
William K. Sullivan
Hailey
