Has "Nice" New Pope Made Media Stop Caring About Pedophile Priests?

Great Debates
1

For very good and very obvious reasons, the media devoted a lot of air time and a lot of ink to the scandal of pedophile Catholic priests during the years that Benedict XVI was Pope.

But quick- when’s the last time you saw a lengthy newspaper piece about child molesting priests or enabling bishops? When’s the last time you saw a prominent editorial denouncing coverups and payoffs?

Speaking as a faithful. conservative Catholic who has always been as outraged about the scandals as any secular leftist… it looks to me as if the media have completely lost interest in a scandal of massive proportions that has NOT really gone away.

So, why HAVE the media lost interest? Well, two possibilities come to mind.

  1. The public has a short attention span, and the media bosses figure this story has been done to death. Time to move on to something else, like a pop singer driving drunk, or a football player shooting his mouth off after a game, or a traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

  2. The media never gave a damn about the victims of pedophile priests- they were just a convenient club with which to beat (ostensibly conservative) Pope Benedict XVI over the head. Now that Benedict has been replaced by (ostensibly liberal) Francis I, why, there’s no more problem.

Your explanation?

2

Has the “nice” new Pope stopped covering up child abuse? Has he apologized for the actions of the past? Have there been any new scandals since he became Pope?

3

Pope Francis hasn’t DONE anything (yet) to fix the problems. Nor has he (yet) offered any public apologies for the Church’s crimes. All he’s done is LOOK nice, friendly and deceptively liberal.

4

The most recent sex abuse scandal story I remember hearing about was from a few weeks ago. An Archbishop who is currently in the Vatican has been accused of sexual abuse while he was stationed in the Domincan Republic- and the Vatican will not extradite him.

The Vatican claims they’re doing their own investigation and will try him but they will not extradite him- neither to the Dominican Republic nor to Poland (he’s originally from Poland and seems there are some allegations of past abuse there as well?).

Recent, but also the first sex abuse story I can remember hearing about since Francis first put on his dress whites.

5

Eh, seems the obvious answer is that there hasn’t been any particularly scandalous revelations of childabuse in the last, what, eight months since Francis was made Pope.

The example in the OP is pretty meh. Its not clear the images in question involved any actual minors, and the police decided not to press charges. The story is basically: “priest has porn collection”, which is pretty weak sauce as far as scandal goes.

Meh, that’s silly. The abuse scandal court cases were a pretty big deal, involving hundreds of victims and millions of dollars. Gore Vidal could’ve been Pope and the media would’ve still been all over it.

6

I’m with a modification of option two … the lamestream media never cared … it’s just about selling goods to Protestants … and it’s fun to pick on Catlickers.

Unfortunately, your new Pope is the only individual who can speak for God. To critize him is heresy. If this is a lack of faith on your part, please reconsider … humans are weak, and fall to temptation. Also please consider the looooong history of these kinds of abuses. Let God sort this out in His own fashion, trust in Him to punish the evil-doers.

Papal Infallability … your new Pope is correct at all times and in all matters.

7

I’m not sure who believes this, but it is not a Catholic belief.

Yeah, again, I don’t know who believes this, but it is not a Catholic belief.

I can post the, like, five hundred thousanth link ever posted on this messageboard to the explanation of the term Papal infallibility, but I’m not sure you’re interested in fighting your own ignorance here. Oh, I’ll post the link in case anyone else cares (for the five hundred thousanth time).

8

That only makes sense if you buy the right wing propaganda line that “the media” is liberal. It’s not.

9

Well, today in my hometown newspaper there’s a report about the Holy See ordering the new bishop of a nearby diocese to defrock a priest over a scandal that started with sex abuse allegations. And shortly after Francis took over the Papal Nunzio for this region got recalled over such allegations as well. So it’s not “forgotten” everywhere, just that there has been no grand new initiative and in much of the world the “social gospel” thing is too attractive because of the political angle and thus gets the publicity (and let’s face it, short of ordering every Perv Padre and every enabling Bishop to turn himself in to secular police and plead guilty, what WOULD be a good new initiative?)

10

The unstated, incorrect assumption is that the media ever “cared” about pedophile priests, or any of the abuses that clergymen perform in general.

11

Last week.

There’s no question that Francis has brought the church a lot of good publicity in the West at a time it really needed it. I think that publicity is excessive and (so far) way out of proportion with the amount of substantive change he’s brought about, but that’s me. The sexual abuse scandals will come back in the news if there are new developments, and there are new developments once in a while - but the basic news is broadly known at this point.

The scandal blew up when John Paul II was pope.

The scandal received tons and tons of media coverage. If that’s not “caring,” it’s good enough.

12

Six days ago.

13

I’m probably one of the most cynical posters here when it comes to Francis’ motivations and I think the OP is seeing connections that aren’t there. Certainly locally in MN, we heard all about Nienstadt and his priest coverups. I wouldn’t consider the arrival of Francis to have dampened anything when it comes to sex abuse reporting.

14

One additional factor is that Francis appears to be a very media-savvy Pope. He’s doing a lot of highly symbolic actions (driving a Ford Focus, not occupying the Papal Palace or whatever, that sort of thing), actions that are easy to cover and make for good copy.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he’s cynically doing it in an effort to distract people from the abuse scandal, but it does seem to be having that effect.

15

It seems to have always been his personal style, so I’ll go ahead and assume it’s sincere. But the College of Cardinals knew how the press and the public would respond to him and they didn’t elect him by accident. That’s not to say it’s the only reason he became Pope, but it had to be a major point in his favor.

16

Have you considered the possibility that the rate of pederastic abuse has dropped to a very small amount, so there is just less to report?

Pope Benedict laicized those who were problems. He streamlined the review process. He changed the seminary admissions criteria. He implemented mandatory training sessions for all clerical and lay members of the Catholic Church who come into contact with children, laying out the new standards.

The annual mandated audit on abuse cases within the Catholic Church (by an independent contracted auditing firm), if the statistics are accurate, reflects hat the Catholics are dealing with the residue of cases from the fucked-up 1960s and 1970s, and most of the priests under investigation are already removed from ministry, retired, or dead. Even with those cases, in 2012 law enforcement found only six credible cases among 34 allegations of abuse of minors that were made in 2012. Credibility of 15 of the allegations was still under investigation. Law enforcement found 12 allegations to be unfounded or unable to be proven, and one a boundary violation. That’s out of about 40,000 current diocesan and religious order priests in the U.S.

In my daily paper, I see a couple of stories each week on teachers, ministers, police officers, and correctional officers involved in sexual abuse of children - I don’t see many new instances involving Catholic priests, other than some old cases of laicized priests who came in during the 1960s that show up now and then.

The rate of abuse in non-Catholic Christian denominations and other religions continues to be very high in comparison, and the rate of institutional cover-ups is likewise high, as seen in recent cases involving the Baptist, Buddhist, Jehovah’s Witness, and Orthodox Jewish communities.

The revolting level of sexual abuse among teachers in non-religious institutions, and the cover-ups by colleagues and teacher’s unions (particularly in New York - Campbell Brown: Keeping Sex Predators Out of Schoolrooms - WSJ) is the subject of most media interest these days, and that’s probably appropriate. Most people have kids at risk in public schools, fewer people are church-going Catholics. A 2007 AP study found about 3 instances of sexual abuse of children happen in American schools every day. (The Washington Post, on the other hand, published an editorial saying that maybe sex between teachers and minors shouldn’t be a crime: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sex-between-students-and-teachers-should-not-be-a-crime/2013/08/30/dbf7dcca-1107-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage)

There is less media interest in the rate of pedophilia in the entertainment industry, where sexual “indiscretions” are winked at, and convicted pedophiles like Roman Polanski are applauded and celebrated.

17

A further update on Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the Vatican’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic–where he engaged in substantial sex abuse of young boys.

People in the Dominican Republic are angry he hasn’t been sent back for punishment.

18

And people in Boston are still waiting for Bernard Law to be extradited, too. Or even demoted from Cardinal - hell, he got to *vote *for Bergoglio, just like he got to vote for Ratzinger.

19

I don’t think you can “demote” somebody from Cardinal, can you? Otherwise, you would have, historically, have had popes getting in and then just purging their enemies in the Cardinalate.

20

On NPR recently there was a Catholic Bishop talking about the injustice and problems the children from Central America that are being caught and giving up at the border. Many are or are likely to be deported before looking at the very good reasons why some should be considered for asylum. The Bishop Made the point that this is a humanitarian issue and not a border one.

I though it was kinda unfair that the issue of the paedophile priests was mentioned by the NPR reporter as a way to point out that many would dismiss the Catholic Church humanitarian position because of what did happen with the past with the church defending and hiding the rapists.

Well, at first I was like :rolleyes: as I did think that, “well, that is a point, not on point, but it was a little bit good to keep reminding the church that they are still being watched by the media on that issue”, but then after the bishop apologized and I was expecting the segment to go back to the issue at hand the NPR reporter made the bishop end the segment with yet another long explanation/apology about the abused by priests children.

:mad:

Just about one of the few times I spoke aloud for coworkers to hear and agree that, ‘once it was good, attempting to keep the listeners away from what was going on with the current humanitarian crisis at the border was really shitty’ IMO.