Catholic Church Gives Pedo Preists A Second Helping ... er, Chance ... in South America

The BBQ Pit
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How do you “weigh” the ethereal? We can at least analyze to some degree the value of preventing governments from casually directing law-enforcement muscle against real or perceived enemies or scapegoats (i.e. the population doesn’t have to live in fear of being capriciously arrested by a secret police force - a luxury not typically enjoyed in less-free societies), but evaluating a “spiritual” good?

Anyway, can you explain to us the relative spiritual good of Catholic confession versus, say, sacrificing a goat on an altar to Zeus? This is not a specious comparison - such sacrifices were taken quite seriously for centuries - and if it is safe to assume that you consider Zeus to be a false god and such worship to be sacrilegious or even evil, can you demonstrate the relative spiritual good levels in play?

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Yes, I agree.

No, I don’t agree. I think you’ve avoided an outright statement to that effect, but I can’t find the slightest hint that you’re weighing anything at all on the other side of the scale.

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This wasn’t sufficient for you?

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I would hazard a guess that for at least some of us. … or maybe just me, i don’t presume to speak for anyone else. …there’s a profound disconnect between an organization, whose purpose is to spread God’s word and act as a moral force in a world twisted by pain and suffering, one that literally has the power to tell its adherents that they will go to hell for breaking its laws, and an organization that had no applicable law to punish someone who enables child rape. Those who believe in the Catholic faith can apparently accept both that a man who uses his position and power to hurt children is beyond punishment and that a child who is raped is automatically excommunicated if she obtains an abortion. There is no disconnect for you, i get that. But it seems strange to me. That’s why i have endeavoured to respectfully make an effort to understand.

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Actually, any organization has that power (at least in places where free speech exists). I could form the Sacred and Holy Order of Bryan and declare that any violations of its bylaws condemns the offender to eternal suffering.
The SHOB, though, like the RCC, only has what spiritual power its adherents (if any) give to it. They may have other power, in the sense of accumulated wealth or property, but that is surely in the realm of the Earthly and not the spiritual.

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No. What’s missing is the recognition that Catholics, in contrast to many Protestant views, believe that Christ instituted the Church itself – he told Peter, “You are the rock upon which I will build my church,” and what he meant was to build a church, complete with a bureaucracy. In other words, the Church’s authority to organize and make internal rules derives directly from Christ’s mandate to Peter – think of it as kind of like the Necessary and Proper clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution did not explicitly give Congress permission to create a federal bank. But the implied power to create a federal bank exists under the Necessary and Proper Clause, as a way for Congress to exercise the explicit power of spending.

So the distinction between the “largely secular administration” and the “saving souls” main work of the Church is not as divided as your paragraph suggests. The ordinary magisterium of the Church includes, to a non-trivial extent, largely secular administration tasks.

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And in an effort to help you understand, I have drawn parallels to our own secular law. You don;t say, for example, that it seems strange to you that an government like the United States’, that should stand for justice and protecting its citizens, nonetheless has a law that says, “Even if we know for sure you’re guilty, we can’t prosecute you and you get away with it, just because someone madee a mistake and didn’t get a warrant.”

Why doesn’t that seem strange? Or does it?

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Not to you.

But to you, I can draw the parallel that allows similar secrecy between a person and his lawyer. We as a society don’t require a lawyer to reveal his client’s confession of molestation. Think of that as a a good comparison to the spiritual benefits in play.

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That doesn’t seem strange to me; the Bill of Rights protects citizens. Sometimes it protects criminals too. While i appreciate your efforts to help me understand, i already see the net benefits the BoR conveys. i don’t see the net benefits of Canon law. From the outside, i see the bishop who is excommunicated for ordaining a woman, and the bishop that isn’t for covering up sexual abuse.

Eta i imagine from the inside, the structure – and the benefits therein – are more apparent.

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There are ways to break doctor/patient privilege. There are ways to break lawyer/client privilege. Are you arguing that there should never be a time when one must be forced to break priest/confessioner privilege?

But is that really all this is about? The sanctity of confessions? Is that the only way priests have been discovered, is that they confess to it? Because I’m going to assume not. So what are the other reasons the Church is simply unable to adequately deal with the child molester issue within their ranks?

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I gather this is an attempt to turn your failing somehow into my failing. You’re invoking a “spiritual good” as if it was something that had to considered, but cannot be explained. This is a valueless line for you to pursue.

Okay, and how is this relationship affected if the lawyer is the client’s employer? Does that added element have any effect on the parallel? If John works for a law firm and asks one of the senior partners for legal advice, and John tells the partner that he had committed a crime against a child of one of the firm’s clients, does that partner have any legal or moral obligation to act? If we assume he does not and simply tries to keep things quiet by assigning to John to other clients, and John repeats his crime against the children of those clients, at what point (if any) do we begin to look askance at the partner and the firm?

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What bishop was that? I don’t remember a bishop excommunicated for ordaining women. Can. 1024 provides that only a baptized male can validly receive Holy Orders. I’d be curious to know more details.

But as I suggested – you can’t excommunicate for an offense that wasn’t covered by the law at the time you did it. The bishop that covered up abuse wasn’t violating secular law when he did it. Do you think that the church should be able to hit him with an ex post facto conviction?

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What ways are you think of to break lawyer/client privilege?

I’m not sure what else you were thinking of. I’d say the current reforms adequately deal with the issue.

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I may have overstated the case of Fr Greg Reynolds. He advocated ordination of women, and according to the Canon law that i found, ordaining a priest who does not meet papal approval is an automatic excommunication. There was another, But i cannot find it now. My apologies. I did find georgia walker, who was excommunicated, and the woman who ordained her, Bridget Meehan .
I don’t think that the Holy See should have made some sort of retroactive ruling that reached back to make a legal action illegal. I’m a bit surprised that covering up sexual abuse was not illegal under Canon law. US law is irrelevant. Abortion is legal in the US; yet it is subject to automatic excommunication.

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Roy Bourgeois, according to wiki, though i was thinking of yet another. But his was an automatic excommunication.

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I do, in fact, understand that Catholic believe their church was established by Christ himself, and I’ve not challenged that idea at all. I’m less clear on the extent to which the organizational details of the Church were laid out directly by God, and which were arrived at by men trying to meet their understanding of God’s directive. I don’t think, for example, that you’ve adequately demonstrated that Jesus requires the bishops of the Church to be largely independent of the Pope’s control. I pretty strongly suspect that arrangement arose out of internal church politics, and not scripture. And when I say that, I don’t mean it in the sense that, “Catholic’s believe X, but here’s what really happened,” I mean that in the sense that I don’t think that the Catholic faith actually requires that arrangement of powers between the Pope and the bishops.

That’s sort of my point, though. The Constitution allows for the creation of a federal bank, but it doesn’t include the details about how members of the board are selected, or the division of powers between the president and the CEO. Similarly, while I accept the sincerity of your belief that Jesus told Peter he was the rock upon which he would build his church, and am not seeking to challenge it, I question your assertion that this requires a system of largely independent bishoprics only nominally under the control of Rome.

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There is the problem right there :wink:

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Well, of particular note is Clark v. United States where Justice Cardozo opined: “There is a privilege protecting communications between attorney and client. The privilege takes flight if the relation is abused. A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.”

Would that it worked the same for other privileges.

Really? Really now? Because I’d have to say that the very existence of this thread where the OP links to an article that gives five examples of the problem not being solved kinda negates your point. We’re not talking about priests who hid the truth through confession. They outright confessed to molestation, their churches had paid out the victims, and the law still wasn’t involved! The priests just moved to another parish.
How is that dealing with the issue?

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Nuns accused of abuse at Boston School for Deaf
9 former students file joint lawsuit
May 12, 2004|By Ralph Ranalli, The Boston Globe.

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BOSTON — Nine former students at the now-defunct Boston School for the Deaf filed a lawsuit Tuesday claiming they were the victims of emotional, physical and sexual abuse decades ago by the staff of the school, including at least 14 nuns.

Along with the nuns from the Sisters of St. Joseph, the plaintiffs are suing two priests, an athletic instructor and a former top official in the Archdiocese of Boston, according to their lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian.

Garabedian’s clients, three women and six men, were between the ages of 7 and 16 when they allegedly were abused between 1944 and 1977. The plaintiffs, who are now between 41 and 67 years old, are all hearing- or speech-impaired. They say they were subjected to physical abuse and corporal punishment, as well as alleged fondling and more serious sexual contact.

“As children at the Boston School for the Deaf, as alleged in the complaint, they were sexually molested and physically abused and otherwise mentally tormented,” Garabedian said at a news conference. “The people responsible for these acts were the Sisters of St. Joseph.”

The Brighton-based religious order issued a statement Tuesday in response to the allegations, pledging to “begin an immediate investigation that will be fair and sensitive to all involved.”

“We want to remind all that the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston approaches reports of possible abuse with compassion, pastoral care and attention to the protection of each person involved,” the statement said. “From 1899 to 1994 our sisters staffed the Boston School for the Deaf, reaching out to the hearing impaired. We were able to positively influence thousands of lives.”

Sister Mary Carl Boland, a former principal of the school who is accused in the suit of physically abusing children, declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press on Tuesday at a Framingham retirement home for nuns. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she said as she passed the phone to another woman. The other woman said, “We are not responding to reporters here.”

William Shaevel, a Boston lawyer representing the Sisters of St. Joseph order, did not return telephone calls Tuesday. A lawyer for one of the accused priests, however, adamantly denied that his client did anything wrong and voiced skepticism about the complaints in general.

“In his 20 years at the school, he saw absolutely no hint of physical or sexual abuse of any kind,” George McMahon, a Quincy lawyer, said of his client, Rev. Charles J. Murphy, who is accused of walking into a 14-year-old female student’s dorm room while she was undressing.

“He never witnessed anything, and it seems very strange to me that such allegations of widespread abuse would not have been heard before,” McMahon said.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston, Rev. Christopher Coyne, said that while the church kept extensive files on hundreds of allegedly abusive priests, the archdiocese has no record of any previous complaints against anyone affiliated with the Boston School for the Deaf or the Sisters of St. Joseph. He also said he could not recall any prior complaints “of a sexual nature” against a nun in the archdiocese. Though it was affiliated with the school, the archdiocese is not named as a defendant in the case.

This been going for years with nuns sexual abusing hoh and deaf kids and there is nothing about it on the news .

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“…and not scripture,” doesn’t mean what you think it does to a Catholic. There is a concept called Holy Tradition, which I believe you don’t understand.

An arrangement that arose out of internal church politics is still one that has similar force of authority to scripture.

Again with the bishoprics.

The details of how the board is selected are made by Congress. Does Congress have that power? Yes. Because it’s Necessary and Proper to carry out their explicit power. My point exactly. (well… My point analogously)