In regional news, the Catholic church is getting sued. Two hundred bishops have been named in a lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin family. I suspect you won’t even need to read the article to guess what it’s about.
That’s right: a conspiracy by the church hierarchy to protect a pedophile priest.
This priest committed suicide after the police homed in on him in a murder investigation, which makes it a little more sordid. Apparently, the priest, Ryan Erickson, argued with a local man about the accusations of child abuse, and shot him and an innocent bystander to shut him up. Erickson wasn’t just a messed up pedophile, he was a gun nut who wore a pistol under his robes at Mass, and had a reputation as a histrionic religious fanatic, even more so than you’d expect of a priest. One of the bizarre revelations at that last link is that the guy was also in charge of sex education for his parish, and was particularly interested in suppressing and condemning masturbation. I guess, actually, it’s not masturbation if you get a little boy to help you out.
I’ll be very surprised if this lawsuit goes anywhere, though. Religion is always regarded as a solid defense.
Unfortunately, the idea that the Church has its own canon law, separate from secular law, is taking a long time to die.
Even more unfortunately, the Church hierarchy has been aware for a long time that religion is a matter of perception and spin than anything else. Why deal with a pesky problem when it can be swept under the rug so easily?
How anyone can still call the church a moral institution – yet claim all “libruls” protect and support pedophiles – is beyond me. How these sickos can sleep at night knowing they helped child rapistsand molestors to go unpunished is beyond me.
the fine satin pillows help…
Actually, the ecclesiastical defense (that the internal workings of the church are not “justiciable” or capable of being adjudicated by the courts) relates to matters of doctrine and related things. This is because the defense is based upon the first amendment’s freedom of religion clause, etc. I don’t think it would be applicable here.
3rd link: “The cops also pursued the possibility that crazed potheads might have been ransacking the mortuary for embalming fluid to spike their marijuana.”
…ummm…this tells me a lot about the people in the area. Seriously tho, cops shouldn’t be this ignorant.
Ah, but it has been used to defend the position that priests accused of child abuse within the church not be reported to civil authorities.
I’m amazed at your legal and current events ignorance. The Roman Catholic church has been bankrupted in some regions by hundreds of millions of dollars in damages assigned to the victims of priests.
The law is not what you imagine. There are protections of the confidentiality of information given to physicians, lawyers, psychologists, priests, etc. These protections are not unlimited. They and their employers must still comply with a variety of laws. With prior cases the Roman Catholic church was highly negligent and found to have contributed to the harm, and penalized strongly. Their negligence did not reach the level of intent needed for criminal actions, but met the level of civil responsibility.
For this particular case, what will matter is the detailed facts of the issue. Those will eventually come out. It will be much like the case for a professor and their college employer. If a professor is found to have been an abuser the college might or might not be responsible as well. It depends upon what the college knew, should have known, did or did not do, etc. The answers to this kind of detail won’t be known until the case is much further along.
Don’t assume that the church gets of free. If this is like previous cases, the church will be paying huge costs, but will be shown to have been negligent rather than criminally culpable.
Noting how many cases there have been, is there any website tracking the cases and the results? I’d be quite curious.
If there isn’t one, there should be one.
Is it just the US-centrism of US media, or is this sort of thing mainly a US problem? I’ve always wondered why we don’t hear about pedophile priests in Roman Catholic countries like Spain or France, for example. Does it happen less often there for cultural reasons, is the Church able to cover there it up more easily, or do these cases occur there and just not reported over here?
Is it just the US-centrism of US media, or is this sort of thing mainly a US problem? I’ve always wondered why we don’t hear about pedophile priests in Roman Catholic countries like Spain or France, for example. Does it happen less often there for cultural reasons, is the Church able to cover there it up more easily, or do these cases occur there and just not reported over here?
I’m under the distinct impression it happens in other catholic countries. There are fewer incidents, perhaps, and the church generally does a better job at keeping it quiet. (While briefly visiting Austria, I heard a lot about it. The opinion of the Austrians I talked with was that this happens in all Catholic countries. (Anecdotal evidence, of course.)
The sexual conduct of Catholic Priests in Africa may be of particular interest.
Amerocentric media also plays a part, I should think.
Are there meaningful connections between the appeal of having a supernatural world-view and pedophilia? One of the things that really concerns me about religion – especially xtianity – is its ability to convince its followers of their cultural, intellectual, and moral superiority (i.e. can do no evil, or are forgiven when they do) wholey based on subjective opinion (thier own) but dressed up as objective reality. In other words, lies. This enables them to pretty much justify any kind of behavior, as history shows.
Noting how many cases there have been, is there any website tracking the cases and the results? I’d be quite curious.
If there isn’t one, there should be one.
The following might be something like what you’re looking for.
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/
That’s a pretty large number.
When the Catholic molestation story first broke, I really didn’t understand what the fuss was about. I had been hearing it for at least a decade from Colin Quinn and Dennis Leary.
But it’s quite alright when . Yup. No outcry from you Christian-bashers about that. Nope.
Blasted HTML. Let’s try that again:
But it’s quite alright when the ACLU protects pedophiles.
This is most definately NOT just a US problem. I researched it a few years ago and found reports in South and Central America and in the Asia/Pacific region. I would guess it is really covered up in places like Italy.
Longer than that – the following joke is AT LEAST 25 years old:
Father O’Malley wanted to go golfing but he was supposed to be listening to confessions. He sees the janitor Fred and convinces him to listen to confessions instead, going into great detail on how many “Our Fathers” or “Hail Mary’s” to give for each of the common sins.
Father O’Malley grabs his clubs and says, “And Fred, if you get stumped, just ask Billy the alter boy to help you out.”
Everything is going fine until Fred hears a woman’s voice in the confessional. “Father, I gave my boyfriend a blow-job”.
Well this was definately not on the list Father O’Malley had given him, so he leans out of the confessional and says, “Hey Billy, what does Father O’Malley give for a blow-job?”
“Sometimes a Snicker Bar, sometimes just a pat on the head.”
Thanks for proving my point, Jason.
…is this sort of thing mainly a US problem?
FWIW, there seems to be plenty of it next door in Canada (plenty of media noise, anyway, along with assorted criminal charges and lawsuits). Some of it was local-parish stuff, some came out of Church-run reform schools and orphanages. A particularly sordid issue (which I don’t think the US has an equivalent of) is the “residential school” system, in which Native kids were taken from the reserve and plunked into boarding schools (run by both Catholic and Protestant churches on behalf of the Canadian govt) to be properly “civilized” — including in many cases, sodomized and other forms of abuse (and even those not actually assaulted suffered from the cultural dislocation). The survivors (now mostly middle-aged or older) are seeking compensation, and both the churches and various levels of govt could be on the hook for quite a few megabucks. There are thousands of claimants.
I read jason’s link and I don’t understand what his point in posting it is. The ACLU was defending what they labeled first amendment rights, not what puke-inducing NAMBLA advocates. The ACLU isn’t helping NAMBLA to rape children, unlike the church which aides these priests. The ACLU wasn’t involved in defending the actual murderers.
As there is no evidence (from this link at least) that disgusting NAMBLA members have actually done anything wrong – also unlike the kiddie rapist priests – is Jason advocating thought policing? Yes, Nambla is vile and disgusting. So is the KKK, Ann Coulter and Christianity. Should all of these also be denied first amendment rights as well?
His false comparison fails. You’d be hard pressed to find many people who support NAMBLA’s ideas. That said, if they aren’t actually breaking any laws, then the first amendment protects them and their repulsive ideas.
And, p.s:
the ACLU also defends the religious. http://www.stcynic.com/blog/archives/2005/01/aclu_defending.php
So if his point was that the ACLU is some evil anti-religious organization, he failed there too.
Actually, we do have the equivalent of it; US government and religious residential schools did the same thing to Native American students.
One of my favorite ironies of history, and one which speaks extremely highly to the patriotism of the Navajo, is how they stepped up to the plate in the WWII Code Talker program, using the very same language they had been punished for in the residential schools in service of the very government who had punished them for it.
Had I been taken away from my family, punished for speaking my native language, and watched the systematic slaughter of my people’s farm animals by the US government, I myself would not have been nearly so forgiving as to sign up to fight for that very same government the way the Navajo (and other less-well-known code-talker tribes) did. Fortunately for us all alive today, they were not only willing to forgive, but patriotic as well.
But I didn’t. To wit:
I didn’t claim the Catholic Church is a moral institution, though it’s certainly more moral than the ACLU.
I didn’t and don’t claim that all “libruls” protect and support pedophiles. I claimed (with proof, unlike you) that the ACLU is protecting pedophiles, yet there is no outcry from the likes of you.
Same here.
See, the difference between you and me is that I condemn any and all protection of pedophiles, be it by the Catholic Church or the ACLU. You only condemn it when it’s the Catholic Church and ignore it when it’s your beloved ACLU. You just proved that you are hypocrites of the worst order.
I doubt that this is strictly an American phenomenon, or for that matter a modern one. I remember learning in my Chaucer class that sexual attacks upon women, at least, by priests were rampant. This is a question of power, and of secrecy and immunity from consequences.
“I didn’t claim the Catholic Church is a moral institution, though it’s certainly more moral than the ACLU.”
*Lol* Apologies, I thought you were attempting a serious debate. I didn’t realize you were a commedian.
“You only condemn it when it’s the Catholic Church and ignore it when it’s your beloved ACLU.”
Strawman. Did I say anything about supporting the ACLU? Or did I visit your link and attempt to make sense of you failed comparison? And, btw, you have presented nothing that shows you don’t support the catholic church. However, your first post implies a strong (and completely unjustifiable) defensiveness about the posts denouncing the Church.
” You just proved that you are hypocrites of the worst order.”
Though it’s clear you’re a troll, I have to add here that all that’s been shown is that you use strawman arguments, and put words in people’s mouths and then attack them for it.
My (limited) perspective on the priest/pedophile connection is that it’s a symptom of their enforced celibacy. They have the same sexual drives as anyone else, and no acceptable way to act on those drives. I have to wonder if that’s part of the Catholic Church’s motivation in covering them up: they don’t want anyone to realize how many problems enforced celibacy causes.
Catholics who express sexual deviancy from “acceptable” norms are very often advised to enter the priesthood as a means to atone and to help combat their desires. I vividly recall hearing my parish priest broach this subject during CCD.
My personal opinion is that the enforced celibacy exacerbates the situation. Going without sex for a couple decades and being effectively isolated from any sort of community tends to make people a bit squirrelly.
Qalmlea: “I have to wonder if that’s part of the Catholic Church’s motivation in covering them up: they don’t want anyone to realize how many problems enforced celibacy causes.”
My suspicion was exactly the opposite. I suspected that people who knew they had criminal sexual urges might be attracted to the priesthood precisely because enforced celibacy would be (they thought) a good way of suppressing those urges.
Anyone who looks to the RCC given there history, not just with pedophile priests, as a moral authority on anything simply has their head in the sand. These are men, very fallable men who simply follow a party line and apparently will do whatever it takes to protect it in all avenues, even when they are wrong.
And Jason:
No the difference between you and most of the commentators here is you can’t see the why these two events are not the same. In your ideology driven ‘brain’ you equate the ACLU as evil when they defend many church groups also. They are not advocating what NAMBLA does but they are upholding the constitution. Are you opposed to the constitution?
I suspected that people who knew they had criminal sexual urges might be attracted to the priesthood precisely because enforced celibacy would be (they thought) a good way of suppressing those urges.
Not even criminal, necessarily. My amateur-psych take on it is that a repressed gay man might enter the (theoretically asexual) priesthood as a way of avoiding the issue. However, trying to suppress one’s sexuality merely makes it pop out somewhere else, in pathological form.
BTW: did anyone else get from that CP article that it repeats the old gay=pedophile canard?
“I suspected that people who knew they had criminal sexual urges might be attracted to the priesthood precisely because enforced celibacy would be (they thought) a good way of suppressing those urges.”
Or, perhaps those with criminal sexual urges toward children would chose a vocation like the priesthood because of the easy access to children.
Hey it’s Jason! Welcome back Jason we were running low on straw men.
1) Every American citizen is guaranteed the same constitutional protections. Including the first amendment, which is the basis for why the ACLU is representing NAMBLA here.
2) The ACLU is not defending an imaginary right to have sex with boys. The case centers around the right of NAMBLA to state that they are opposed to age of consent laws. Also for the right of the group to maintain the privacy of their membership list.
If the group members have knowledge of or if the list is based on criminal activity then they are obligated to turn it over to the police and report the crime. But if it is just a membership list they are under no obligation to turn it over to private citizens.
3) The men who kidnapped and killed Jeffrey Curley are already in prison. One is serving a sentence of life without parole and the other is going to be in for a minimum of 23 years. It’s rather hard to defend someone when the trial and sentencing is already complete.
4) The Ellison and O’Connell families are asking for a list of priests accused of molesting children. If this list does exist then anyone with knowledge of this list is obligated to turn it over to the police. I doubt that private citizens have a right to that list but if it does exist it certainly does belong in the hands of the police as does any other information on criminal activity.
5) NAMBLA is a joke. NAMBLA does also have a legal right to exist. They are rightly called out as the douche bags they are by almost everyone that has heard of the group. But no matter the state of their douche bagginess it doesn’t limit their legal rights nor does it shield them from prosecution from criminal activities. Of course IMHO I could also substitute U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops for NAMBLA in the entirety of 5).
Just in case there is anyone here who didn’t follow the link, the ACLU is not protecting pedophiles’ right to engage in pedophilia, it is protecting a pedophile organization’s right to have a website advocating pedophilia.
It’s fairly easy to see why some people would like to blur this distinction.
I think I may be suffering from petophilia. I love my dog, my old tom cat, and as for the new kitten, hubba-hubba!
Jason, your argument is clearly with the ACLU becuase you hate them. You hate them for their stance regarding the wall of separation – which is Jefferson’s label by the way. Christians would love the ACLU to be proven as an immoral, corrupt, dasturdly institution because it is the biggest obstacle you your ilk foisting their beliefs onto everyone in America, and making it law. Very transparent.
Jason, the Constitution is fairly amoral with respect to who has the right to speak their minds. The ACLU is completely amoral with respect to whose rights to free speech it defends. It can’t be otherwise and still claim to actually defend the Constitution. However, at the same time, it has an absolutely immoral stance when it comes to cases of, “I am sorry, but I don’t think we can win that case, you are on your own!” The problem with people like you is that you think “moral” means a) don’t defend free speech for everyone, just the people you agree with and b) if you think you can’t win a case, its OK to not fight it at all, especially if the defendent is in trouble for apposing religious bigotry that you agree with. Now, I admit, the later is just my “guess”, but I find myself hard pressed imagining you defending the right of, say, an atheist’s kid to “not” be forced to pray at a school function or condemn the slander and false accusations against their parent, which led to a trial in the first place. I will bet damn near anything you would be one of the lack wits on the potential jury list babbling about how you “can’t trust them atheists, and I will never accept their word as true!”
Go back to your cave, I am sure the tribal shaman with his stained glass cave paintings and wooden totem carvings is really missing you a whole heck of a lot more than we have.
So…Satanists vs. Catholic priests…what’s the child molester ratio there?
This is slightly off topic. I just found the link. I apologize if this violates any TOS. Please visit:
http://www.firstfreedomfirst.org/first?from=0
Last week in Southwestern Ontario, a Roman Catholic priest pleaded guilty to 47 sexual assaults on children (girls) during a 36-year period. Victims remain angry because church leaders transferred him across southwestern Ontario without ever disciplining him or forcing him to seek treatment. The bishop announced Sunday he will petition the Vatican to have him defrocked.
On a side note, there was letter to the editor in my local paper from a guy who is upset that Bill Clinton is coming to a Roman Catholic Counselling Centre fundraiser. He says that Clinton is a sinner because his affair with Lewinsky and he vetoed legislation that banned partial-birth abortion.
No, this is definitely not an American-only phenomena. There were some scandals of a similar nature in Australia over nunneries and churches with such activities occurring. One could probably compile quite a worldwide list of horror stories over Catholic Church sex scandals of our times, yet somehow I guess people would be more willing to shoot the messenger.
It’s Jason, woo woo! Hey, you forgot to say “painting with a broad brush”. It’s your signature line. Don’t let your fans down.
Jason, why do you hate the American value of the right to free speech? Do you understand that if a right doesn’t belong to everyone, it’s not a right?
Do you think you could find enough Satan worshippers to compile any meaningful statistics?
But, Don’t you See? It’s not Godd, or the Catholic Church who molests children or hides these molestations. It’s just everyone in charge of the Catholic Church. Godd and his friend Jebus have nothing to do with the corrupt hierarchy that encourages blind obeisance to crumbling institution. See? The Church is fine. The molesters just aren’t True Priests.
I was going to add a link for http://bishopaccountability.org/, but see that someone already did.
In answer to Jason: The ACLU has never had any authority over me. The Catholic Church has. At least for me, the bad actions of the Church are a little more personal.
One person placed in a position of authority over me and an entire parish was one Charles Schoppe. In the early sixties, he abused some girls. I didn’t know about the abuse until much later, but I did know he was a fucking asshole who shouldn’t be anywhere near children.
As a child, I found it very difficult to have any allegiance to an organization that would choose a cold, cruel man like Charles Schoppe to be a pastor. After learning about his pattern of abuse, the coverups in Boston and elsewhere, the apathy of Pope JP II about the crisis, and the complicity of Pope Ratzinger in at least one cover-up, I don’t have much good to say about the hierarchy of that morally corrupt organization.
To paraphrase the attorney general of Massachusetts, Archbishop Bernard Law committed horrible acts that were not illegal because it never occured to anyone that a law covering these particular heinous acts would be necessary.
I thought thats what RICO was for, but I’m not a lawyer.
Try that again …
http://bishopaccountability.org/
On a similar note:
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060810_evo_rank.html
The only place in the world with more Evolution deniers than the US is Islamic Turkey… And oddly enough.. There seems to be a strange correlation with Biblical/Koranic literalism and political manuverings by the lunatics that believe in them…
Who could have guessed!?!
They transfered that murderer to Hurley? My brother was living there during that time. I wonder if his transfer didn’t make the news, or if since I was in MO at the time I just didn’t hear about it.
And Loki – yes, criminals from northern Wisconsin are mostly inept. There isn’t a whole lot of crime there to begin with, so the police aren’t challenged very often. I am actually from northern Wisconsin, and I can assure you that the majority of people (while not necessarily well-educated) are good people.
Actually they’re not even doing that: they’re advocating the organization’s right to have a website advocating changes in the legal system.
I don’t see how it is reasonable to assume that the plaintiffs’ *claims* are 100% accurate or parrot their attempted demonization of the defendants, especially before the case has even begun. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until you see the evidence.
I don’t see in the article any claim (let alone any evidence) that the NAMBLA website ever said “Ignore the law, rape some kids today.”
If it did, and if the plaintiffs can prove that it did, then maybe the plaintiffs should win – although I would still expect the ACLU to step in for the defense, because their ideology is that there’s no idea whose expression is more dangerous than the suppression of ideas. Some people disagree with that philosophy, but it’s hard to say that they aren’t honest and principled about it.
Oh, and you might want to read up on the difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia. The irony is that you can make a pretty good case that the age of consent really *is* unreasonably high; but anyone who advocates lowering it to something more in line with the actual development and sexual behavior of adolescents is immediately demonized as not only wanting to lower it to something like 10, but wanting that with the personal motive of having sex with 10-year-olds.
I don’t know NAMBLA’s actual position on what the age of consent should be, or their arguments for it, or why their members are motivated to advocate such a position; and the articles on this subject didn’t provide any facts related to those questions, either. They were too busy painting NAMBLA as slavering predators. Shoddy sensationalistic journalism, at best.
Hardly anyone is even willing to take a serious look at the issue before they jump in with guns blazing (rhetorical ones at least).
P.S. Since when did atheists own either NAMBLA or the ACLU, anyway? I must have missed that article in the Global Atheist Conspiracy Newsletter.
That was in volume 12, article 14, page 666.
I need to understand some language here- please define “troll.” Thank you.
Troll:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
-GH
I think what you mean is that they are not advocating what NAMBLA stands for.
The ACLU is doing for NAMBLA what I have on some occasions done for Jason, when people have attacked him for responses he had not yet made, in other threads: standing up for a party whom they disagree with and personally regard as despicable, when said party is genuinely being treated unjustly. No data exists on whether NAMBLA has subsequently behaved brazenly in a way which made the ACLU sincerely regret even bothering.
And, for that matter, on the difference between pedophilia and child molestation. The former refers to a psychological state of being primarily sexually attracted to children, the latter to a behavior (engaging in sexual behavior with children) and a legal definition based on it. One statistic I have seem but cannot now locate indicates that around 10% of child molesters are actually pedophiles in the psychological sense; the others were found to be either motivated by sadism rather than “attraction” in the normal sense of the word, which is distinct from “pedophilia” as it is technically defined, or are not normally attracted to children but not above using them for sexual relief when other sources are not available, which, while there are many, many things that can and must be said aggainst it, certainly no more makes them pedophiles than masturbation makes one a hand fetishist. Information on the percentage of pedophiles who ever act on their attraction is difficult to come by (for obvious reasons), but there is an enormous reporting bias towards those pedophiles who do act on them (and are subsequently charged).
Labeling all child molesters “pedophiles” is a bad idea for two reasons: first, it’s inaccurate; this being a science blog, I don’t expect the undesirability of this to be contested. Second, it increases the probality of people who are attracted to children but who have never acted on it being outed as “pedophiles” and subsequently lynched, to say nothing of persecution, harassment, and even murder of people mistakenly believed to be pedophiles; see this forum thread (which reprints the original article, for the full text of which the original website seems to be attempting to gouge readers) about the vigilante murder of Paul Cooper, and this article about the persecution and harrassment of a pediatrician in Britain, about which later reports were admittedly heavily exaggerated. Behaviors which throw gasoline on moral panics should be avoided.
You can indeed, and I will outline one here. While this is an issue that people understandably feel strongly about, the fact of the matter is that decisions and judgements made on an emotional basis are, based on their typical results, A Bad Thing, and this is true even (read: “especially”) of matters that provoke a strong reaction. It is true that many young adolescents may not be capable of making wise decisions about engaging in sexual behaviors, the same is true of many adults who are not penalized (heh heh..), and as one of my friends often observes, “If by the age of 13 or 14 a [person] doesn’t have the knowledge and critical thinking skills to make a wise decision about sex, [his or her] parents should be charged with negligence.” Sexual behavior among children (including preteens) of relatively close ages should only be subject to the same restrictions as adult sexual behavior, and in a sane society would be similarly accepted, but monitored by parents for indications of abuse (in the common-sense, not the arbitrary legal/moralistic, sense of the word, meaning behavior that causes tangible harm to one or more parties, or tends to), with proper sex education and contraceptive use strongly encouraged (perhaps even mandated for sexually active, pubescent minors, though this might present some constitutionality concerns).
As far as adults and minors go, there is no credible case that sexual interaction between teenagers and adults is always or inherently abusive, and I would argue that such relationships should be treated in a similar fashion to the relationships between children described above (accepted but monitored closely for abuse). Sexual interaction between preteens and adults (and, to a lesser degree, between preteens and teens) is a different case; while it is probably true that not every instance has caused tangible harm to either party, the tendency of such interactions to do so is quite well-supported, and given the potential damage, the difficulties in sorting out consensuality (again, in the common-sense sense of the word), and the prevalence of less-developed reasoning ability among preteens, I would argue that interactions between adults and preteen children should not be legalized or accepted socially. However, one global change that should be made is the renouncement and cessation of the current Demented Fuckwit policy of treating nonviolent and mutually desired or accepted contact between adults and minors as being no different from contact that would still be considered rape or sexual assault if both partners were of age.
Ok, there’s my position. Jason, based on your conduct earlier in this thread, this is your cue to accuse me of “defending pedophiles.” Give those straw men hell! (And give me an excuse to take action against you for libel. …please?)
If only they were always rhetorical; see the Paul Cooper article for details.
Does it happen less often there for cultural reasons, is the Church able to cover there it up more easily, or do these cases occur there and just not reported over here?
That last one. There was a big scandal in Brazil just a few months before the one that broke in the US, and the media made a lot of noise then and in other cases. The Church does engage in all sort of dirty tactics, from moving the abuser to another city to threatening and slandering the victims.
What I find more interesting than yet another in a LONG line of pedophile priest stories, is how this flamboyant charismatic priest came in and divided the congregation into a group of traditionalists and a group of “holy rollers”. What I find interesting is how this grup of holy rollers hounded the church’s school principal out of his position and seemed to turn from a sane group of religious practitioners into a bunch of rabid groupies feeding off of the personality of Father Ryan. It makes me think that it takes VERY little to sway a group from normal behavior to abberant and even dangerous behavior.
Oh, and that this is what is happening in every mega-church and many tiny parishs across the country. God save me from your followers.
not a regular reader, but I’ll like to comment.
Priests who abuse child need to face a trial. We have one priest in my area who molested kiddies several years ago. It was another priest who reported him and the sicko ended up in jail. Score one for the good guys.
My view is that in the past the bishops didn’t know what to do about the situation. They may have considered it a weakness of characters, forgave the idiot, and sent him away to get a new start in life. I would worry if the sicko did it again, but how many times should you forgive a person ?
But that’s the past. Would they do it now – they shouldn’t, and the bishops in Oz have put in laws saying they can’t.
As for how bad it is, http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/sheets/rs1.html says that
The most recent national figures from AIHW indicate that in Australia during 2002-2003 there were 198,355 reports of suspected cases of child abuse and neglect made to state authorities.
my view is that of the 198,355 cases, not all of them were done by catholic priests. In fact, I expect priest committed a very small number of the 198,355. Unsure if they commit a greater ratio than the general public, but I think that the yearly number of abuses committed by priests/nuns/brothers are too small for realistic averages to be worked out.
One priest molesting kids is one too many, but its not just priest who molest kids.
Final note, from the same site ‘In all jurisdictions (except the ACT) girls were approximately three times more likely than boys to be the subject of a substantiation of sexual abuse.’
So maybe its altar girls they get as well. Or just that some people molest kids – and of these people, some are priests, and some are not.
Being religious isn’t a magic bullet to make you one of the good guys
Uh…you DO realize that “abuse and neglect” !necessarily= *sexual* abuse, right?
Especially with “neglect” attached. Somehow I can’t imagine anyone being charged for neglecting children’s sexual needs… ;/
Brian Dewhirst
«I’ve always wondered why we don’t hear about pedophile priests in Roman Catholic countries like Spain or France, for example.»
I can tell you it is not an american problem. It’s completely widespread. But in countries like Portugal (my own) and Spain, where even though the catholic church supported dictatorship ended a few decades ago, the church has a lot of political power so these cases are sushed. And the catholic media is very powerful and influent so you don’t hear about it very often on the press.
There was only a case in Portugal that was talked about a lot because of the dimensions and because the pedophile priest in case, one Padre Frederico, the right hand of Madeira bishop, was convicted for murder (and somehow escaped to Brazil).
there are cases in France, Italy, Austria, Ireland, Poland, etc…
And loads of examples from England, pedophile catholic priests. I mean. Some quite recent:
http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=105&ArticleID=1670215
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1838319,00.html
And of course, you have Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, recently pardoned by B16.
I wrote about this Wisconsin case last November.
On the subject of Catholic priest child molestation in general, there are a number of cases that are probably bogus recovered memory cases (e.g., some of the cases listed here). We shouldn’t endorse such cases just because Catholic priests are the accused.
There was only a case in Portugal that was talked about a lot because of the dimensions and because the pedophile priest in case, one Padre Frederico, the right hand of Madeira bishop, was convicted for murder (and somehow escaped to Brazil).
Well, you guys have been sending your criminals over here for 500+ years now, so I can’t say I’m surprised. :)