First, it was "Senior Cardinals" I was declaring synonymous with the Vatican, not some priest. Second, I could care less what other folks think. Maybe some are out on a crusade to destroy Catholicism or something, but not me. I think religion has a function, and while I have zero interest in its function, I respect its existence. That said, molesting a child is inexcusable and anyone with knowledge that attempted to cover it up should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and shunned for it.
What is the bizarre attitude towards sex and marriage you speak of? You don't know the church's arguments or are stuck with a pre-Augustine understanding of what the Church teaches about sex and marriage. Check out JPII's Theology of the Body talks. If you are Catholic and are claiming that there is a God, and a natural law that our bodies attune to, then JP II's teachings on the theology of the human body are something you need to tune into. If anything, the over-sexualized culture we live in has probably contributed more than anything to the scandals. Read "Goodbye Good men" just for the anecdotes (not the author's commentary, which is reactionary and not at all charitable) for tons of stories about the generation of priests trained following Vatican II, and how the standards really became quite relaxed for both doctrine and morality. The last two popes have attempted to clean up the problem. I have pretty direct knowledge myself of priests who were in the seminary during this time, and who disapproved of the behavior being failed by their superiors and shipped out of the seminary for objecting to the way they were training priests. The Current pope has made great strides in starting to change the way these seminaries teach and accept applicants for the priesthood. If anything, the less liberal standards are making for better priests and there is less of a chance of those with pedophile tendencies getting in. But really your argument about celibacy holds little weight when taken in respect with the population at large. As I cited earlier from the Weigel article: "According to other recent studies, 2 percent of sex abuse offenders were Catholic priests—a phenomenon that spiked between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s but seems to have virtually disappeared (six credible cases of clerical sexual abuse in 2009 were reported in the U.S. bishops’ annual audit, in a Church of some 65,000,000 members)." It is not celibacy that causes pedophiles to be pedophiles in public schools, the population at large, or other religions that do not require those in charge to be celibate. And yes I am anti-condom and anti-masturbation, and also anti-p*rn. I think those views are well known on the bbs.
I wasn't trying to accuse you of anything malicious, just pointing out a common fallacy I see. This is where it is helpful to know the law, and to understand the civil system for torts. You are suggesting that they be prosecuted for aiding and abetting child molestation? To prove that you would have to prove that a particular Bishop had the intent to have the children molested. Else you are working with negligence, or possibly attempt to obstruct justice. Even then it becomes hard to tell how much is an attempt to obstruct justice and how much is respecting the seal of confession and allowing the church an amount of autonomy (I will not pretend that these are not complicated religious liberty questions). Needless to say, the burden of proof would be quite high and if a particularly zealous prosecutor wanted to go down that path they would have done so (they have prosecuted the actual priests who did the molesting). The route that has offered more healing than others is the tort, and the Church has done the right thing and settled as many of these cases as possible to get victims the compensation they deserve. Now, obviously it's not going to make up for the imprudent decisions that were made completely, but it's really the best our adversarial system of justice is going to get them. The Church has made a slue of changes to help avoid these problems from occurring again. In the current instance, again from the weight of documentation I've posted, the Times' accusations are just incorrect. There really isn't much more to say.
They are in a bind. There is an extrme shortage of men in the US, Europe and some other parts of the world who want to be celibates, knowing it is just a momentary phase with no theological reason at this point other than blind obedeience to perhaps the last of the celibate supporting popes. This leads to pressure to keep those already ordained and ignore their warts if possible. In general folks in Europe and the US prefer not to be only attended to by priests from the Phillipines, Asia, Africa and other parts of the world with relatively poor economic prospects.
A simple and wrong answer once again. Some are defrocked, some show repentance and a general desire to change, others lie about wanting to change. One of the problems the church had was finding a way to deal with each case individually, and many of the Bishops who made the bad decisions did so with the hope the bad priests could change. This was a bad idea, which the church has acknowledged. Here's an article outlining some of the things the Pope has done to clean up the scandals: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303960604575158310656792820.html And another: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...165792228341212.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion
More evidence of a cover up and a BBC story coming out tonight. ******* Pope 'led cover-up of child abuse by priests' The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight. In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church's interests ahead of child safety. The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated. The Panorama special, Sex Crimes And The Vatican, investigates the details of this little-known document for the first time. The programme also accuses the Catholic Church of knowingly harbouring paedophile clergymen. It reveals that priests accused of child abuse are generally not struck off or arrested but simply moved to another parish, often to reoffend. It gives examples of hush funds being used to silence the victims. Before being elected as Pope Benedict XVI in April last year, the pontiff was Cardinal Thomas Ratzinger who had, for 24 years, been the head of the powerful Congregation of the Doctrine of The Faith, the department of the Roman Catholic Church charged with promoting Catholic teachings on morals and matters of faith. An arch-Conservative, he was regarded as the 'enforcer' of Pope John Paul II in cracking down on liberal challenges to traditional Catholic teachings. Five years ago he sent out an updated version of the notorious 1962 Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis - Latin for The Crime of Solicitation - which laid down the Vatican's strict instructions on covering up sexual scandal. It was regarded as so secret that it came with instructions that bishops had to keep it locked in a safe at all times. Cardinal Ratzinger reinforced the strict cover-up policy by introducing a new principle: that the Vatican must have what it calls Exclusive Competence. In other words, he commanded that all child abuse allegations should be dealt with direct by Rome. Patrick Wall, a former Vatican-approved enforcer of the Crimen Sollicitationis in America, tells the programme: "I found out I wasn't working for a holy institution, but an institution that was wholly concentrated on protecting itself." And Father Tom Doyle, a Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticising the church's handling of child abuse claims, says: "What you have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen. "When abusive priests are discovered, the response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one place to another. So there's total disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole new crop of victims in the next place. This is happening all over the world." The investigation could not come at a worse time for Pope Benedict, who is desperately trying to mend the Church's relations with the Muslim world after a speech in which he quoted a 14th Century Byzantine emperor who said that Islam was spread by holy war and had brought only evil to the world. The Panorama programme is presented by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a priest when he was 14. He said: "What gets me is that it's the same story every time and every place. Bishops appoint priests who they know have abused children in the past to new parishes and new communities and more abuse happens." Last night Eileen Shearer, director of the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults said: "The Catholic Church in England and Wales (has) established a single set of national policies and procedures for child protection work. We are making excellent progress in protecting children and preventing abuse." Panorama: Sex Crimes And The Vatican is on BBC1 tonight at 10.15pm. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23369148-pope-led-cover-up-of-child-abuse-by-priests.do
Well it looks like the scandal will not go away. It is difficult to trust those long involved in the cover up to come clean or consider them to have the moral authority to run the Church. Here is report of how 130 priest who abused kids were not reported to police by Italian bishops. http://www.snapnetwork.org/snap_sta...s_investigated_over_abuse_victims_respond.htm Andrew Sullivan reports on how a very prominent member of the Church used large sums of money to keep from being investiagated. This was widely known by both the previous pope, who PopeBenedict is trying to put on a fast track to sainthood and Pope Benedict himself. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.c.../the-vaticans-watergate-follow-the-money.html
Two billboards in Marsa advertising the Pope's visit to Malta got the unlikely addition of two stencilled images of what looks like a panda. It is not clear why the "artist" in question juxtaposed the bears with the Pope. The organising committee was alerted yesterday morning and it plans to erase the images. link
What exactly is the argument against condoms between married couples? That to me is the most bizarre one.
Are they trying to dig a hole for themselves: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/13/vatican-homosexuality-paedophilia-claim-condemned ******* Vatican attacked over cardinal's claim of homosexuality and paedophilia link Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Pope Benedict's number two, said homosexuality - not celibacy - is linked to paedophilia Gay rights groups have condemned the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for claiming that the Catholic church's sexual abuse crisis was linked to homosexuality and paedophilia and not celibacy among priests. Bertone, who is considered Pope Benedict's number two, sparked the controversy on a visit to Chile when he suggested gay sexuality was to blame for the church's child abuse scandals. Homosexual associations in Italy reacted with anger and indignation. The biggest group, Arcigay, called the cardinal's words "shocking and irresponsible". The president of the gay media service, Gaynet, said if senior church officials "feel constrained to dump the blame on homosexuals, it says a lot about the current state of desperation in the Vatican". Gay rights advocates in Chile also waded in. "Neither Bertone nor the Vatican has the moral authority to give lessons on sexuality," Rolando Jiménez, president of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation in Chile, told AP. No reputable study exists to support the cardinal's claims, said Jiménez added. "This is a perverse strategy by the Vatican to shirk its own ethical and legal responsibility by making a spurious and disgusting connection." The cardinal, who is known for his blunt and sometimes tactless manner, made the remarks at a televised press conference in Chile's capital Santiago. He said: "Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. This pathology is one that touches all categories of people, and priests to a lesser degree in percentage terms. The behaviour of the priests in this case, the negative behaviour, is very serious, is scandalous." In apparent embarrassment, the Holy See's official daily, L'Osservatore Romano, did not mention Bertone's remarks in its report on the press conference. Five years ago the Vatican implicitly linked homosexuality and paedophilia when, following the child abuse scandals in the US, it banned men from studying for the priesthood if they "showed deeply rooted homosexual tendencies". But the connection was questioned last year in the preliminary version of a report commissioned by the American Catholic bishops, which is due to be published in December. They said the data they had studied so far did not support a link between a homosexual identity and a higher probability of sexual abuse. Cardinal Bertone's remarks in Chile may have been prompted in part by renewed calls in Latin America and elsewhere for the church to drop its celibacy rule. Costa Rica's president Oscar Arias last week urged the Vatican to "correct that error". The church is also under pressure in Argentina, Mexico and other Latin American countries which have ignored its injunctions against granting civic rights to same-sex couples. Santiago was not an ideal venue for the cardinal's remarks given that one of the Chilean church's highest-profile paedophile cases involves a priest having sex with young girls. Despite multiple complaints the church hierarchy kept Father José Andres Aguirre, known to parishoners as Father Tato, serving at several Catholic girls' schools in the capital.
Although no longer a follower of any religion, I defend religion in most of the religion bashing threads because I believe the individual good that results from a heartfelt practice of a religious belief outweighs the collective historical "bad" stuff. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools growing up. I still have a respect for the accomplishments of the church and disdain for the historical excesses and mistakes. It is troubling and sad that the "church" (in the collective sense) has chosen to shield, hide, deny, and cover up the criminal deeds of their priests. As the caretakers and stewards of this church we expect so much more of these guys. Very sad. Gratefully, I never witnessed nor heard of any improprieties in our local laity during my youth.
You know why? Because they don't happen that often, do you know how many individual Catholic parishes there are in America alone? There were 18,992 parishes serving 69.1 million American Catholics in 2005. The percentage of parishes who were victims of inappropriate conduct is incredibly small. I am in no means condoning their actions, but this is not the norm in the Catholic church, and most people probably know this, but to those of you who don't...you should
Maybe it's just me, but growing up we had lots of issues in the parishes and schoos that I grew up with with misconduct by priests. A lot of it was just rumored, some of it was admitted (we were pretty close friends with a few of the clergymen and women, and my parents were on the parish council, etc). And the most notorious case of it was documented (my former high school principal - busted for soliciting a male UC cop in an adult bookstore, it was on the news and obviously a big deal at a time). And guess what, google revealed to me that he's now off in in Canada, teaching at an all boys day school - I'm not sure if that's really a good idea (though in his defense, the cop he solicited was not underage.) Honestly, my ratio was more like 1/2 parishes. Or 2/2, depending on what you believe.
A priest I had a lot of contact with in college was busted a number of years later for molesting a young teen he was giving pastoral counseling to. It was in the papers.
