Because they’re talking out their asses (sorry 'luci, you know I love you, but this is the Straight Dope). Research findings indicate that celibate priests are no more likely than the general male population to commit molestation:
So no, the Catholic church does not have an abnormally large percentage of molesters among its clergy, nor do the sexual constraints it imposes on its clergy somehow make them abnormally prone to molest.
Where the Church, IMHO, is uniquely reprehensible is in using so much of its massive institutional power and prestige as a lever to protect and shield the molesters among its ranks, even at the cost of denying justice to the victims and putting other children in peril.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Because there might be other people out there doing the same thing, we shouldn’t go after the ones we know about? Oh, wait, I see. We shouldn’t only go after them. Well, thanks for clearing that up. There are of course, tons of people in this thread clamoring that we ignore abuse everywhere, except at this one institution. Oh, wait. There aren’t any.
What you are trying to do is derail the topic so that nobody can discuss the disgusting behavior of various players in the Catholic church. It’s behavior that’s almost as disgusting as what the church itself did. But no matter how much you desire to derail any discussion about the church, hopefully, people with good sense aren’t going to play along.
I hope they’re building a special place in hell for these molesters, and I hope you get to spend a few moments of eternity joining them.
Riiight. I’m no fan of the BSA, but here’s their current policy on dealing with abuse issues. Please point me to the section on the page where it says to deal with abuse accusations by comparing such accusations to the Holocaust. Please point me to the part where it says to reassign accused volunteers to work with other troops.
The BSA has a long list of things which everyone has to do now to prevent molestation. For example, under their policy, a scoutmaster shouldn’t be alone with a child. Does the church have the same policy with priests? Do you even know?
When the Catholic church stops making themselves by business, I’ll stop paying attention to what goes on over there. But as long as they are institutionally incapable of dealing with molestation, we should criticize them, no matter how much sickening people like you try and derail the conversation.:rolleyes:
I almost forgot this gem. “Spot on”? It’s like we’re discussing what the Vatican served for afternoon tea. Since you are such the expert on where we should look for molesters, why weren’t you aware of what happened in '98?:rolleyes:
So a discussion that points out that smearing the RCC does not help protect children is out of bounds because you like bashing the Church? At least you’re honest about your twisted priorities.
But yes, I would suppose the Boy Scouts certainly passed molesters around. At least it needs to be looked into.
Just because the TV tells you something is true does not mean it true. Think for yourself.
Oh, please. You don’t give a rats-ass about abuse, or you wouldn’t be trying to cover for the church the way you are in this thread.
I notice you have provided no suggestions for how to root out this hidden child abuse. You’ve not told of us anything you’ve done to root out this hidden child abuse. Your sole contribution to this thread has been to lecture the rest of us about how we can’t possibly be serious about abuse because we express disgust over the church’s behavior. If you actually cared about abuse, there is no way you would take this approach.
And of course, you can ignore the criticism of your truly disgusting behavior by claiming that others aren’t thinking for themselves. As I said, you are sinful and morally disgusting. You are nothing more than a defender of child molesters.
ETA: I’ll let you dig yourself out, if you can. List for me all the positive, pro-active steps you have taken to root out this hidden child molestation. And criticizing others for criticizing child molesters is not a pro-active step, as that does nothing to root out this hidden child molestation you claim to be so concerned for. Did you attempt to get laws changed? Did you investigate other molestation rings? Did you attempt to get institutional policies changes.
Additionally, please provide the scientific studies or other information showing that criticism of the Catholic church actually is detrimental to the reduction of abuse. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble digging that up.
Going after one den of child molesters is a lot better than going after zero child molesters. And that’s about what your position amounts to, that until we have enough information to alpha strike every child molester in the world we should just leave them be.
Going after the Catholic Church first does nothing to stop anyone going after other child molesters later. Hell, it might be enough of a deterrent that we won’t have to go after a few of them.
Also, wouldn’t going after the Catholic Church in full force actually encourage other victims of child abuse to come forward? If it’s made clear that reporting the abuse will cause it to stop and justice to eventually be served, I can’t really see this as anything but positive for other victims.
I think what’s most sad here is the utterly dishonest attempt to conflate rightful outrage over child molestation with some sort of generalized Catholic bashing. I’m not Jack Chick. I have only a vague understanding of Catholic theology, and I don’t really care what Catholics believe. People are more-or-less entitled to worship or believe whatever they want to. My guess is the vast majority of people in the US have the same viewpoint.
But when a child is abused, that crosses over from being the Catholic Church’s business to everyone else’s business. And if Catholics want to avoid tarnishing the entire Catholic belief system with the image of child molesters, they should not be running around comparing their critics to Nazis or telling their critics to stop criticizing them until all the other abuse in the world is uncovered and examined. It’s like anti-PR for the Catholic Church. What they should be doing is announcing definite, systematic guidelines to prevent molestation, the way any number of other organizations have already done (the BSA, schools and universities, medical licensing boards, bar associations, etc., etc.). And they should plan on doing thorough, public reviews of those guidelines every year until the problem seems to be fixed, the way every other institution already does or should start doing.
Hell, in my last job, I got roped into interviewing potential college interns, and I was given clear instructions to interview them in a location where we were visible to other people in the office. But clearly, I should have told our HR department that by forcing me to interview in a public location, they could have been missing sexual harassment that might be occurring in some hidden, super-secret location on the planet.
The fact that someone, somewhere is still abusing children is not good reason to lay off the Catholic Church. Especially since identifying the problem isn’t remotely the same thing as solving it, which they clearly haven’t done, and certainly won’t if people stop paying attention.
Yes. There is a scandal now because some people in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church did a very wrong thing. Not just because some people (liberals, the media, whoever) hate the Catholic Church and like to bash it. I’d love to see them admit that.
But you have to start somewhere, if you’re going to prosecute child molesters. Prosecuting all child molesters simultaneously is just not realistic. Why not start with the Catholic Church, if there are child molesters there?
Agree, in droves. I personally don’t give a damn if His Popeness is hurting like a mutha, I don’t give a damn about how much the bishops are feeling bad. Why don’t they just DO something to fix the problem, punish the bad ones, and TAKE ACTION?
Until and unless they do, they have nothing worth listening to. There was a time when the chruch taught that we should do the right thing, even it it costs us. It had something to do with respect, honor, justice.
I guess all that fine talk doesn’t apply to them. Hypocrites.
Remember Sinead O’Connor ripped up that photo of JPII? That was in 1992. Why did she do it? Inprotest over this same shite. This was well known here even then. Reports have come out, priests, the state and a lot of citizens have been found to be wanting. He comes out with that shite in the same week that we found out that the leader of the Catholic Church was in a meeting in '76 as a record taker with 2 kids who where there with nobody else other than priests around them were they were made take an oath that they wouldn’t talk about the abuse to anyone.
Fuck them, fuck them all. Bunch of child raping, beating and enslaving cunts. A lot of others enabled the raping, beating and enslaving at the very least.
The Church is in a cesspit at the moment of it’s own creation. Centuries of power and influence put them into positions of favour in states like Ireland. They basically had free reign to do whatever the wanted. Some used it to rape children and others protected them and put them into situations were they got a fresh batch every few years when they had gone too far in their current area.
Those words you quoted aren’t enough. They aren’t even the beginning.
The Jesus I was taught about raged against money changers in his father’s house. If he was walking the planet now he’d be tearing the fucking Vatican down not asking for statements of sorrow.
Norbert Denef was sexually abused by a priest. When he reported his abuse to the Church, he was offered 25000 Euro by the Church in compensation, but only on condition that he never speak about the abuse again.
Wonder if she ever got an apology for the years of shit she took for it.
No, that’s a settlement. In virtually all types of law, settlements are confidential. Even if the settling party hasn’t done anything wrong, they still don’t want people figuring out how much money they might be offered if they decide to make the same claim.
IANAL, but isn’t it just the amount of money they received (and other terms of the settlement) that is confidential in a settlement? Or is the person really forbidden to say anything about the incident that led to the settlement?
There was a rather harrowing story from a little over a year ago about how the church’s policy of moving these priests around eventually led to sending the offenders off to remote places where their actions would hopefully stay off the radar.
I have no doubt in my mind that there are pedophiles in every walk of clergy, youth counseling, summer camps etc. Every boarding school, every day care, every wherever there are kids. If I were a pedophile, I would go where kids are and I would learn what appeals to kids etc. That’s what successful predators do.
So, yes, I think we can all agree that this is bigger than the Catholic church. However, we are discussing the Church and its infinite wisdom in this thread. It doesn’t matter if (for purposes of this discussion) that a Lutheran youth camp counselor diddled your cousin in 1974. It matters greatly in the bigger picture and should not be dismissed, but that is not the conversation at hand.
Frankly, I’d be happy if the Church never recovered from this. It has as much to do with spirituality and faith as IBM has to do with advancing intelligence. It’s a massive bureaucracy with the sole ambition of maintaining its status quo and entrenched position of power. I have met too many nuns and priests in my time to see them as at all “holy” (that said, I am sure that there are those who are truly devout–I know of one. But she is more the exception than the rule)–and yes, this criticism could be leveled at any and all clergy. There is something so sanctimonious about the whole Catholic “meme”, though, that lends itself to easy mockery, but being an easy target with a dog collar doesn’t mean the evil isn’t real.
All that aside, the anger and disgust is deep and real. People have been hurt and lives destroyed due to the evil policies of the Church. There needs to be a sea change, and that is not at all likely, given who is in charge-Benedict-what an irony for a name. I see he has just appointed an Opus Dei archbishop to the LA archbishopric (or is it See–I don’t know). And yes, the first thing that crossed my mind was, “and how many boys did Father Gomez diddle?”
This IS the face of the Church right now–I hope there are enough Catholics out there that want that face changed. It’s up to them to change their church. It’s up to us to change laws and prosecute these assholes. And finally, it is up to us to figure out why pedophilia is so common and work to end it.