There’s a bit of legislature floating around that is having a hard time becoming law. It’s called the Child Victim Act, and here is a great article talking about how the New York Catholic Conference, a Christian lobby group,  is pushing to kill the act. The CVA is designed to extend the statute of limitation on child abuse by another five years, thus allowing abuse victims a longer “window” to come forward. Anyone who has ever been abused as a child will tell you how difficult a process this is, and the extra time is designed to accommodate for this difficulty.

Of course, Catholics are crying bloody murder, saying this extension will basically bankrupt the Church because of all the settlement payments they are having to dish out. Even if that was true, why the fuck should we care? Perhaps they should have thought about that before they started shuffling child molesters instead of bringing them to justice. No religion that practically institutionalizes child abuse should be exempt from the laws of the land. The fact the Church is even fighting this goes to show how they really feel about children.

The saddest thing is the collusion of the some of the faithful in vilifying the victims, and accusing them of trying to take the Church’s money. It’s a sad day when people identify more with the abusers than the abused. (thanks Kylyssa for the correction there) I’m not sure any of those people would feel the same if their own children were victims of abuse. Child abuse ruins people’s lives. That the Catholic church is fearful of losing money should concern no-one. If you’ve done the crime, you need to do the time. That’s all there is to it.