You've got to be freakin' kidding me!

In Boston, Church Leaders Offer Atonement for Abuse

Do they really seriously think they are getting atonement from anyone?? This is nothing more than Cardinal O'Malley's 2006 tour of the parishes destroyed by pedophiles ~ the ones they know about anyway or maybe just the ones they're sharing their knowledge of. They never have released a list.

I have to agree with the protesters ~ too little, too late. It's just a band aid over a bullet hole. If they wanted to help the victims, help the community and really accept responsibility to gain atonement, they would take down the walls of secrecy. They would name the predators; they would excommunicate them. They would support the prosecution of them. They would stand fully behind the victims and try to help them regain all they had lost at the hands of the church.

My sister and I have always had strangely good instincts about people. There were some questionable teachers where we went to high school (one was later arrested), but we knew to stay away from them. And last Christmas when I was seated next to an unaccompanied minor and the 50 something guy on her other just seemed a little to attentive to her. (He hadn't even looked up when I sat down.) I had him pegged before I noticed that he was hiding an erection under his paperback and by that time I had made it clear that I was going to be occupying every moment of the little girl's time on that flight. Now that my sister has a child, we discuss the people in the neighborhood and who just doesn't seem right, like the retired school teacher up the street who is always telling her she doesn't need to worry about him because he's great with kids. It's actually kind of a joke between us about the pedophile instinct. How do know? We grew up in the Boston Archdiocese.

But back to the great atonement of 2006 and the prayer for God's forgiveness. Let's see it for what it really is. A bankrupt Catholic Diocese with ever decreasing donations making a major publicity play for the heart strings of those not personally affected by the abuse.

Get real, the victims are telling them to take their atonement and go to Hell.