In the same way that being a pedophile isn’t enough to get you arrested by the civil authorities. And in the same way that until they actually DO something, either downloading child porn or actually molesting a child, there are very few ways to be able to know that the person is a pedophile.
Now, I’m not defending the Church’s actions in shuffling pedophile priests around without so much as a warning to their new parish, only critiquing Sarahfeena’s post.
I find this difficult to believe. I’m sure they SAY they don’t intend to do it again, but still. If they didn’t want to molest again, they coulda stood up and said something along the lines of “Maybe putting me in charge of the Alter boys would be a bad idea, seeing as I have history of molestering them and all”. They coulda said this in private to their superiors and kept their reputations intact (thought they certainly wouldn’t deserve it).
I think that most of these guys chose the preisthood because it provided a target rich enviroment and allowed them to hunt from a position of power within an organization that would help shield them from the law. But that’s just me.
Anybody got any stats of molestor priests being excommunicated? For being molestors, that is?
I am pretty sure that the number is zero.
As noted, excommunication is intended to make a person who wants to be a member of the church to realize that his or her actions have put him or her outside the church, encouraging them to change their behavior. Given that pedophila is a pathology, there is no real point to imposing excommunication on a pedophile. How are they supposed to re-enter the church? When would they be re-admitted, given that most psych authorities say that it is incurable?
And while I suspect that the vast majority of pedophiles clearly have the desire to molest children, that would appear to be different than wanting to molest kids. Read up on the reports of the “super priest,” sometime. A number of pedophile priests have been among the most dynamic and popular priests in their areas as they try to find ways to compensate for the wrongs they know they are inflicting. (This in no way mitigates their actions, but it remains true that the Geoghans–guys who deliberately sought out ways to get access to kid after kid after kid–are not the typical pedophile.) The very first pedophile priest about whom I learned was sentenced to jail time and his parishoners launched a serious publicity attack on the judge and the system because they could not believe that he, who was doing so many wonderful activities around the parish, could actually be guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted.
It’s a good point. There is something a bit odd about saying that marriage is an act and that “being married”, a state of being, is worthy of excommunication, but that in pedophilia’s case only the acts should be punished and not the state of being.
Right, but I wasn’t talking about the psychiatric/psychological arena…I was talking about the religious arena. Religions are notoriously slow to recognize these things…and I’m not sure it really matters anyway, because no, I don’t think the actual desire to commit an act is enough to get a person excommunicated. As you point out in your later post, it’s pretty hard to tell what a person is thinking…the church can really only respond to what a person does. A marriage vow is different because it is a public vow, a statement of intention, so to speak. The intention is to continue to be married and live as a married person. As an analogy, a priest who has an affair with an adult is not under the same threat of excommunication, because this is seen as a discrete act of sin, not a public statement of intention to live outside of the Church.
We obviously see this from different points of view. What you call “compensating for wrongs”, I call “creating cover”. Obvious pedophiles don’t get as many victims as the ones that convince their victims (and more importantly, their victim’s parents) that they are upstanding citizens.
Are we sure it is a mental condition? Some result of childhood trauma or chemical imbalance in the brain? Could’t it be the result of a “pedophile gene”? If we could get around the entire issue of consent (maybe pint sized sex dolls or something).
Hmmph. Point well taken.
That dog, it’s barking. 
Thanks! Glad I made myself clearer that time. Some of my posts in this thread are a muddled mess!
Was James Porter excommunicated or did he leave on his own? The article refers to him as a “former priest”, which I think is a misstatement as far as Roman Catholic doctrine is concerned - the Church can’t rescind the ordination, only order the priest not to act as a priest anymore.
Regards,
Shodan
From your linked reports:
Technically, under actual RCC doctrine, James Porter is still a priest – ordination leaves “an indelible imprint on the spirit,” which cannot be removed – but he’s been laicized, suspended from functioning as a priest except in cases of extreme emergency, to permit him to marry and raise a family. He could, for example, come upon a dying Catholic in a major auto accident, and administer the last rites to him/her both validly and licitly. But he could not volunteer to substitute for the parish priest some Sunday – not without some very special and hard-to-get authorizations.