Priests are supposed to be better than the rest of us, right? They’re supposed to have a special pipeline to god – that’s why they’re priests. It’s not just a job like any other; it’s not something you learn, like plumbing or pharmacy; it’s a magical goddy thing you’re inducted into. Priests are Set Apart; they are Intermediaries between us and the goddy fella.
Bishops are that but more so, and archbishops are that and more so again.
So why would an archbishop not know it’s wrong for adults to rape children? Knowing that is just average, surely; since archbishops are supposed to be way way way above average in the knowing right from wrong department (because of the special link to god), they would surely know it before they had even sent away for their name tapes for priest-school.
But the archbishop of St Louis says he doesn’t know if he knew. He’s just all at sea on the matter.
Carlson, the head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was deposed for a case regarding sex abuse allegations that took place when he was auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis from 1979 until 1994. He investigated those allegations during his time in Minnesota.
During the deposition, which was released Monday, attorney Jeff Anderson asked Carlson if he “knew it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a kid.”
“I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not,” Carlson said. “I understand today it’s a crime.”
So back then he may have thought it was ok? He’d have been happy to have told everyone he knew that he (just for example) was raping children every chance he got?
You know what? I don’t believe that. Not for a second. People knew it was a crime when I was a child, two hundred years ago. The archbishop told a whopper. That too is frowned on. The archbishop is not a moral exemplar.
Carlson said he doesn’t recall when he first discerned that it is a crime, but documents released Monday from the law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates in St. Paul tell a different story.
A 1984 document, reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed Carlson’s correspondence with the former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis about one particular victim. Carlson wrote that the victim’s parents were thinking about notifying the police.
See? That’s what I’m saying. Of course he knew it was a crime. Wrong, and a crime.
The Catholic church seems to be bad for the moral fiber.
It’s a tactic I myself have employed: functionally lying without actually lying (aka prevarication).
(In this case, an appeal to lack of absolute certainty)
I wonder whether the arch-bishop will have the grace to resign now that his shameful lying, or prevarication, is so much on show. What a mediocre litlle worm. Bugger off!
Tim Harris @2
You’re forgetting that supporting and protecting child-raping clergy is the official policy of the Catholic Church. His ex-Holiness, Benny Ratzi, so declared it when he was Head of the Inquisition* (he was Joey Ratzi at the time) and that policy has never been rescinded. So His Archbishopness (or Archbishopicity, I can never keep that straight) is just following the dictates of his bosses.
*Officially Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the newer, shinier name for the Inquisition.
He didn’t say he didn’t know it was wrong. he said he may not have known it was a crime.
Archbishops aren’t very bothered about crimes. What concerns them is sins, and quite possibly as a sin adults raping children is no worse than adults- male or female- voluntarily having sex with adults they aren’t married to.
That’s the central issue in my view. They’ve adopted a view that all sexual activity is pretty bad, but we’ll make an exception for the right kind of people who go through the right kind of marriage and engage in only restricted forms of sexual activity. Anything and everything outside that limited exception is absolutely forbidden.
Which means they’ve left themselves with no moral compass to distinguish rape, for example, as more immoral than voluntary sexual activity. When it comes to priests raping kids, they’d move them on to another parish in exactly the same way they’d do if the priest had a consensual loving relationship with an adult woman in that parish. They’re both sins in the view of the church and the priesthood. But they have no way of acknowledging that some sexual sins are worse than others. Let alone with the general view outside the church that raping kids is about as low as you can go.
srsly, WTF?
These people can somehow unilaterally decide that some adult sticking his penis in some orifice of another consenting adult is the worst thing possible if they don’t specifically bless that very specific instance, but somehow some adult sticking his penis in an orifice of a very-much-non-consenting juvenile is totes kewl. Because it’s not their place to judge or some shit (unless the judgee is not a cit hes (probably white) male).
What does it take to get people to realize that child rape is (infinitely) more wrong then consensual sexual activities (homosexual, heterosexual, whatever, as long as everyone involved wants to be involved…(this shouldn’t really be a difficult concept to grasp…))
In cases like this, the Satanic Brotherhood (ie the clerical caste of the Catholic Church) closes ranks and protects itself. Move the molester to some other school or parish and deny any knowledge of his activities is the name of the game.
.
Legally, the Brotherhood is as solid as a sponge. There is no entity recognised as the ‘Catholic Church’ that can be sued or prosecuted, so the Brotherhood’s assets are firewalled and unassailable. Otherwise, the said Satanic Brotherhood would be up to its collective neck in lawsuits brought on by its victims in every jurisdiction in the world.
Not even remotely credible. But surely no-one expects truth from an executive of RCC Inc? Pathological Lying must be one of the core courses in catholic seminary; a sine qua non for graduation.
This does prove one thing however. If these canaille really believed for a moment any of the nonsense they preach about their doG they would never dare to do and say the things they do and say.
It is well past time that the RC Church was declared a criminal organisation, its assets forfeited, and its activities proscribed by law.
What we call lying the RCC calls ‘mental reservation’ – when done by a priest or bishop. Different rules for them than the rest of us!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20110503.gif
It’s almost like all those people with a direct line to God are just talking to…nothing. And they’re just… people.
Nonono he’s not lying, he’s just saying he’s not sure now what he knew then. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. He knows now, but he may or may not have been drinking a couple of bottles of altar wine for breakfast every day during that period, so he might not have known what day it was let alone anything more complicated. He’s not saying he did, but he’s considering the possibility that he did, and that he is now suffering from Alzheimer’s, so he doesn’t know what he did or what he really knew.
@9
Agreed, and like any criminal organisation, the Church practises ‘Omertà’.