Sr. Nuala Kenny, SC (Halifax) appeared in a 30 minute Salt and Light Witness video about the clergy abuse crisis with host Fr. Thomas Rosica.

After an initial sharing of how she became a Sister of Charity, pediatric physician and how that set the stage for her pioneering role,  Fr. Rosica ask  how the Church can begin to heal from the  clergy abuse crisis. She concludes by sharing her conviction that if as a doctor she treated your headache and failed to discover that it is caused by a brain tumor she have failed you and contributed to your death. It is that spirit which led to the extraordinarily frank analysis of a moral cancer in Newfoundland in the late 1980’s here close to 1/3 of clergy were under investigation. “I have never done anything as difficult as going to each parish that was affected and hear what was done.”

She is a co-author of the Winter Report which was charged with understanding  the systemic issues. She is also a contributor to the  then groundbreaking “From Pain to Hope” (pdf) offering guidelines for addressing clergy sexual abuse . They prepared “Breach of Trust/Breach of Faith“, a Study guide.

McGill university is sponsoring a major conference  October 14-15, 2011 and Sister serves as Co-Chair “Trauma and Transformation” . See the list of presenters.

Her involvement began with Volume 1:  Report of the Archdiocesan Commission of Enquiry into the Sexual Abuse of Children by Members of the Clergy (Winter Report)  (Newfoundland, 1990).

• Table of Contents and Mandate
• Preface
• Ch.1 – Introduction
• Ch.2 – Events in the Archdiocese
• Ch.3 – The Causes of Child Abuse
• Ch.4 – The Church in the Archdiocese
• Ch. 5 – Why it Happened
• Ch. 6 – Impacts and Needs
• Ch.7 – Conclusions and Recommendations
• Bibliography
• Appendixes

Things to think about…

• It takes courage to look situations in the eye. Do we?
• It takes deep faith to believe that the Spirit can “renew the face of the earth”. Do we have that faith?
• Do we believe that this is a systemic issue we must all face?