Holy Father, do not look away!
For the priests with the altar boys play!
If you plunge your aspergil
To feed base, primal urge, you’ll
Risk the wrath of the Ancient of Days!
“Touch these little ones not,” sayeth He!
"It were much thing the better for thee
"To be hung from a millstone
"By thy naughty boyfillstones
“And be drowned in the depths of the sea!”
You know, I don’t think anyone in the Church’s power structure disagrees that sexual abuse by members of the clergy is a bad thing. The controversy has been over the Church’s refusal to subject those priests to secular authorities for punishment rather than dealing with it internally, a policy which literally has a thousand years or more of history on their part.
Hence, “Do not look away!”
They’re not even really “looking away” though. They’re just not looking at it the same way you are - they’re aware there’s a problem, they just don’t think it’s one that civil punishment can fix.
They want to use Church methods to deal with them? Fine. They can dust up a few racks and iron maidens.
Otherwise this whole “benefit of clergy” thing is going too far.
Transferring a priest to a different parish is not dealing with it internally. It is sweeping it under the rug.
I am not a Catholic, but it’s my understanding that the church doesn’t believe throwing someone in prison is the way to earn them forgiveness.
A cross should do very nicely, along with a stroll up a hill with whips to provide encouragement. After all, there is a precedent for this.
I’m sorry, but this one has already been hit out of the park:
The Holy See continues to see nothing. 
How is busy is the Rome-Capua road these days anyway. A new road side attraction perhaps.
And how’s that working out for them? :dubious:
Who gives a fuck what they think? They are not a law unto themselves.
The very least, the very least. they should do is open up all the books of evidence and hand the lot, unbidden, over to the legal authorities.
Dealing with it internally is not dealing with it all. Until such point as they turn all evidence, on every case, over to the law then they remain morally bankrupt.
What would Jesus do? well he was supposedly a man of peace but even he’d give Franky a sharp kick in the nuts and ask him what the fuck he was doing.
Aren’t they? The Pope is de facto the monarch of a sovereign state. He is the “legal authorities” so far as the Vatican goes. Even in the US, the 1st Amendment recognizes the sanctity of the confessional, so it would in fact be unlawful for the church to “turn in” an abusive priest on the basis of something he admitted to privately.
I seem to recall Jesus had some choice words about letting he without sin cast the first stone, and loving thy enemy, and going forth and sinning no more and such.
Jesus ALSO said that anyone who harms a child should be cast to the sea with a millstone around his neck, IIRC. By your logic, the church would be against any sort of prison, wouldn’t it? As someone who WAS raised Catholic, that’s not true. The church doesn’t teach that you’re not supposed to obey the law, or that you shouldn’t be punished when you break it. (Yes, even priests). By that logic, the church would be against ANY kind of laws.
They didn’t transfer them on the basis of things learned in confession – it was based on accusations from victims. Instead of going to the police, the priests were moved to other parishes. Forgiveness is one thing – but that doesn’t mean you allow someone to harm another person. No one’s saying you can’t forgive them. But you shouldn’t just sweep it under the rug and allow a person to go on and HURT OTHER PEOPLE. It’s about protecting the innocent. And the church wasn’t moving these priests because they believed in forgiveness – they were doing it to avoid any type of a scandal or negative attention.
Now, HAS Pope Francis said anything about how the church has dealt with child abuse by priests, and what should be done in the future? (I’m interested to know, I’m liking this guy a lot)
Of course it is just my opinion* and I could be wrong, but I think the R C C’s stand on sexuality is a big part of the problem.
And within the walls of his own “state” he can set his own laws. Crimes within that state should be liable to Vatican laws (and the world should judge them on the openness of their judicial system and their willingness to tackle wrongdoing). Outside of his massively opulent palace it means nothing, You live by the law of the land you are in. Church doctrine is not, and should never be a substitute for the rule of law.
In the UK thankfully there is no such legal protection for the confessional and quite rightly we would look dimly on anyone holding back information on child rape in favour of “dealing with it internally”
Would you consider it appropriate for any other organisation to deal with heinous crimes in anything other than open court?
Anyone who seeks to defend the church’s stance in manner shown above is engaging in sickening apologist bullshit.
And yet…and yet…and yet…the church seems happy to pass judgement on all and sundry, even those who have committed no crime, all the time remaining silent on those in it’s ranks who have raped children.
It would be the natural conclusion, but the amount of molesters among Catholic priests & among clergy of other faiths, including married clergy, has been shown to be about the same - 4%. And other professions which involve close contact with children hardly fare any better. A public school teacher who is a molester can have a ongoing supply of fresh meat that some priests could only dream of. Of course, the fact that the church is a huge bureaucratized institution with a sense of Diving mission has let to the coverups & shuffling. But even that can partly be attributed to what many psychiatrists were saying in the 1960s-70s- get the abusers away from the victims, put them in treatment where they can be fixed, & then rehabilitate them. So throw in the ideas that psychiatric treatments & confession/repentance would actually take hold & fix “good men who had done bad things” and you have a perfect storm for an ever-building scandal.
BrainGlutton’s version has better rhyme, better meter, larger vocabulary, and is much less vulgar.