I was thinking more along the lines that, being a State court, they could not the Roman Catholic Church to depose their leader. Even if there was enough evidence to put the guy in jail, he wouldn’t necessarily have to cease being the Pope. In fact, I think the only way a Pope can be deposed (by someone other than himself) is if he is killed.
The front cover of this week’s Private Eye magazine has a photograph of the Pope addressing the crowds in St Peter’s square. Headed “Easter Message For Pope” there are two speech bubbles. One says “In the old days boys wanted to enter the priesthood…”, the other one “…rather than the other way around”.
He was never indicted or anything, but after he resigned as Archbishop of Boston, he was given a cushy job in the Vatican, probably both to get him out of town, and to avoid even the possibility that he would be indicted. At the time, everyone involved (including the MA district attorney) was hoping this was an isolated thing and would blow over.
Bernie Law freely admitted that he did know that certain priests were pedophiles, but “at the time” they thought pedophilia was curable so they kept sending them back to parishes after treatment (which apparently mostly consisted of prayer). They didn’t inform anyone at the new parish that the priest was a “reformed” pedophile, so the parishoners wouldn’t be prejudiced against them.
Which is of course bullshit of the highest order. I can maybe, maybe understand that (but not agree with) if the accepted thinking at the time - among the medical community, not just the church - was that pedophilia was curable, that you give a priest another chance. But then you damn sure make it known to his new superiors that he had this problem, and to watch him closely, and don’t give him opportunities to commit more crimes. And you certainly don’t give him another chance after he’s committed more crimes, much less the 6 or more transfers that some priests were getting. How stupid do you have to be to really claim “Gee, the past 5 times he was declared cured it wasn’t really true - but this time I’m sure he’s OK.” ? Law is far from stupid, which makes him a liar and an accessory IMHO.
Apparently now, some bishops are stepping up in ireland and Switzerland, and in other places. They are FINALLY telling people to report these things to the police. Is it a case of CYA? It might be. Is it a case of the decent ones finally deciding enough is enough? It might be. IS it “too little too late”? YES.
In all honesty, even if the Church perfectly handled every other thing they were involved in, child abuse is really enough of a big topic that i’d still say it was fair to claim that all things considered they werent’ handling things well. This isn’t a matter of a priest claiming too much for paperclips; this is lengthy, systematic, and apparently wilful closing of eyes to some horrific behaviour, insufficient responses, with a focus on the problem being the revelation, not the events. It’s like claiming an athlete handles his sport well, oh, except for those drugs he’s been taking. But hey, he’s punctual, and his kit is always so nice and clean.
Agree. Not only were they handlng it in a poor and incompetent way, they were deliberately hiding it and covering it up (my cites earlier). The “instructions” had quite a bit to say about “the good of the church” and nothing about the good of the victims. And compounding the problem, they insisted on swearing eternal secrecy - to the point where the victim was also sworn to secrecy, under penalty of excommunication (and of course whatever hell fire follows that). Pretty nice, ain’t it. Swear some kid to total silence, under threat of hell.
It was all about sweeping shit under the rug, plain and simple. They didn’t “handle” shit. Instead, they protected and enabled it.
The word “depose” has more than one meaning, and I suspect talk of “deposing” the pope applies more to the third meaning for depose than to the first meaning.
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. . . .
"Not every one who says to me, Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, `I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.’ "
I’ve mentioned this before but will bring it up again: Deliver us from Evil**, a documentary film, covers this mess, especially in regard to a CA priest whose actions were repeatedly protected and covered up by Mahoney, Ratzinger, et. al.; they just kept moving him from one parish to another. Then they carted him off to Ireland.
And that’s just one example.
I conducted a thought experiment relative to this. I asked myself, “If the Church were a group of psychotic sexual predators bent only on being able to sexually abuse their flocks without suffering any consequences, how would they handle this situation?”
I did it thinking the likely answer was that there would be no difference, cynical person that I am. But I quickly realized that was wrong. There were many voices calling for investigations, exposure and turning records over to civil authorities from within the Church. If the Church was Predators R Us, there would be no such voices, just a determined effort at cover up, denial, avoiding consequences, then if things got very bad and it looked like the civil authorities were going to bust them anyway, making a public show of cooperating while hiding the evidence as best they can. There would be lots of praying and calling for reconciliation while the machinery of corruption and coverup continued to work its way. They might toss a few low-ranking predators under the wheels of the bus if they had to, but they would make every effort to conceal how thoroughgoing the actual predation was, for their own sakes.
And when I thought about that, I realized that was a pretty good description of the behavior of the top leadership of the Catholic Church over the last few decades. Scary.