Depending on the bishop, I’d be worried about “are you sure?” and “we want to avoid scandal” and “let’s let the internal process run and verify before we go to the civil authorities”.
Depending on the priest, that could delay/prevent reporting to the civil authorities.
I don’t care. If a priest (or a parent, or a parishioner) reports something to the diocesan (or other hierarchy) authorities, who then reports it (in a timely manner) to the civil authorities, I’m fine with that. If that priest (or parent or parishioner or anyone at all) goes directly to the civil authorities, I’m fine with that too. As long as an allegation is reported to the civil authorities, quickly, the channels by which it gets there don’t worry me too much.
I worry about that too. A policy is all well and good, but implementing it is up to the local bishop (who’s pretty much an absolute authority in his diocese).
Bad bishops are as much the cause of the scandals of the Church as are the priests who did the actual molesting.
That was my worry, and my point, too. That as long as it’s reported first to the bishop, it has a good chance of being swept under the rug, as countless cases have shown.
It can happen. It has happened, obviously. I’m not sure that the Church is different in that respect than the secular world, but it’s not good either way.
At the end of the day, it comes down to human nature. Which is what it is, no different inside the Church hierarchy than outside.
And as a tangent, I’m a 62 year-old lapsed Catholic.
My main parish priest from grade/high-school years was revealed as a molester years later (no personal problems with him or knowledge of anyone in my small hometown who was a victim (but it’s not a conversation I’d be comfortable having with most people from there)).
One of the priests at my university was diddling kids in the associated prep school (and I know there were others in the monastery with the same problem).
The (new ordained) associated pastor at my first parish after I moved for my first job was sent to IIRC correctly New Mexico for “treatment” after being caught with a young boy (could have been a teen, details were scant).
Then the last parish priest before I stopped attending Mass was convicted of child pornography after attempting suicide. Bishop Finn was convicted of failure to report suspected child abuse in the case.
So, anecdote is not data, but I certainly seemed to end up with a lot of bad priests (and I note that there were more good ones, but not by much).
That’s horrifying.
My experience, thankfully, is pretty much the exact opposite. I went to Catholic elementary school, Catholic (Jesuit) high school, and one year of Catholic (Jesuit) college. And I’m still a Catholic, and active in local church community stuff.
I never knew anyone, child, teen or young adult, with whom a priest had, or was alleged to have had, any kind of inappropriate contact.
I did know one priest (auxiliary bishop, in fact) who got caught having a long-term relationship with an adult woman. Somewhat different situation, I guess, than what’s under discussion here. And not something that’s of any interest to the civil authorities.
Every priest who had abused children, and every one who has covered up for them has had an army of people who know them personally who were absolutely certain that they would never do either of these things.
That you know them personally means absolutely nothing in this regard.
Perhaps. But it’s not my working assumption that the priests I know are child molesters. I’ll go with my belief that they’re not. Up to and including having them in my home with my children.
Have you followed the news over the last 20 years and over the whole world? The reason you don’t know anyone is because tens of thousands of cases were hidden away under secret settlements. And tens of thousands more victims were silenced by their own families who owed blind loyalty to the church.
Thinking that this isn’t widespread and an institutional breakdown is beyond delusional.
A lot like Jimmy Swaggert, who publicly threatened hell hire to anyone who was acting the way he was acting privately.
And we would like to think of sex abuse scandal as a thing of the past, but is very much a thing of the present:
"Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability,” the grand jury wrote. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.”
And still lying about it.
But several bishops, including Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh, rejected the idea the church had concealed abuse.
“There was no cover-up going on,” Bishop Zubik said in a news conference on Tuesday. “I think that it’s important to be able to state that. We have over the course of the last 30 years, for sure, been transparent about everything that has in fact been transpiring.”
But Biden can’t communion, because…
So yeah, fuck these people.
Of course.
Perhaps. Or maybe I don’t know anyone who was the victim of sexual abuse by a priest because nobody I know was the victim of sexual abuse by a priest.
I’m not delusional, and the institutional failure of my Church to deal with this is a horrible thing.
That story is paywalled, so I can’t read it. Is it about events happening right now?
President Biden has not been barred from the altar rail. Some minority of American bishops have, however, proposed that the USCCB discuss at a future date such a bar.
It won’t happen. For one thing, Archbishop Wilton Gregory of DC is opposed to it, and he’s the bishop who would be responsible for implementing such a policy.
For another, to pass such a policy (which would not be binding on Archbiship Gregory, as I understand it – it’s “guidance,” not a rule that binds bishops, which the USCCB doesn’t have the authority to do) would require a two-thirds majority of the USCCB. Which isn’t going to happen.
For yet another, the Pope himself is opposed to it.
It isn’t going to happen, any more than it did when a minority of the USCCB proposed the same guidance with regard to John Kerry. It didn’t happen. It went nowhere.
I was able to see just enough of the article to see that it was from 2018 before the paywall blocker popped up. So it’s not ancient history but it’s not brand new. And I can’t tell how old the report is, but I doubt it was that old in 2018 or it wouldn’t have been news.
The chance that you’ve spent your whole life among Catholics and never known anyone abused by a priest is 0. No one’s ever told you.
That’s just factually nonsense.
OK. How’s that sand taste?
It’s nonsense. Please. We’re into the realm of statistics and probabilities here, and what you say is not factual. That’s all.
For me to say that is in no way minimizing what has actually happened.
The article is talking about a major investigation into church abuse that happened in Pennsylvania between 2016 and 2018. Despite uncovering thousands of incidents of abuse at the hands of hundreds of priests, only two people were actually charged, as theirs were the only cases that were still within the statute of limitations, having committed their offenses some time in the early '90s.