I think the issue is that few other religions are as centralized and organized as the Catholic Church, with such a degree of hierarchy. The others aren’t in the position to carry out the same types of actions.
No doubt, for example, there are plenty of pedophile Rabbis. But in Judaism, while Rabbis have a position of authority, they are not backed by the same type of religious organization as the Catholic Church.
In the Jewish congregations I am familiar with, it is ultimately the congregation that has the ‘whip hand’ - they contract with Rabbis as staff, and hire them under contract; this makes it much less likely that a Rabbi could get away with such offences over a long period of time - if they piss off a congregation for being of ‘bad moral character’, which could amount to offences a lot less serious than pedophilia, it is less likely that another will hire them.
Also, of course, Rabbis are typically married - not that this would prevent them from being pedophiles (there are plenty of married pediphiles), but it complicates their chances of getting away with it long-term; it makes that more difficult.
That might may be so, but so what? Nixon was a better target because he kept tapes. Didn’t make him any less guilty.
You’re right, but again, (a) there’s a big difference between a persistent pattern of active concealment by a single organization on the one hand, and a similarly persistent pattern of simply not dealing with it by a whole bunch of different organizations on the other hand, even if it winds up having the same overall effect. And (b) I can’t speak for everyone, but I as a Christian expect a bit more out of organizations claiming to represent Christ to the world than I do of secular organizations. Doesn’t matter if they’re Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Mormon, or whatever.
Given that the RCC knows of a good number of the bishops in question, and seems to have done little if anything to make their evidence of these bishops’ malfeasance available to the civil authorities in their countries, ISTM that the standard action of the church has indeed been to remain satisfied with their lack of consequences.
I agree that pedophiles exist in other congregations. There is plenty of evidence of this, mostly in the form of accounts of leaders in other religions being prosecuted for sexually abusing children. The rate of pedophilia among Roman Catholics may indeed be higher because of their peculiar celibacy requirement. It would tend to attract people trying to repress their sexuality, which would include pedophiles. But the real reason the Catholic Church has caught so much hell is the way they defended and enabled their pedophile priests and the way they sort of fed the children to those priests by shifting them from diocese to diocese. That was some evil shit right there, and no one else has done anything like it on the same scale. That’s why the Catholic Church has caught so much hell, and deserves to.
And yes, the Catholic Church is also despised by many for its stance on birth control and other evils like the Maryknoll nunneries – and once again, deservedly so. Sucks to be you, defenders of the Catholic Church! Maybe you should rethink a few things …
I would like to say how much I appreciate your attitude. Particularly:
Because if that’s all we Christians of any stripe can say for ourselves, we might as well just pack it in.
I dunno about this. ISTM that media interest in the RCC pedophilia scandal has waxed and waned a few times since it really blew up back in ~2002, so I think there’s still plenty of room to say it’s a combination of (a) coincidence, and (b) the fact that Francis has given them other stuff to talk about, given that his papacy is still less than a year and a half old.
But it really is getting to be time that the press starts asking him, “OK, we realize you’ve had a lot of other stuff to deal with as you try to reform the Church. But what have you been doing about the pedophile priests, and especially, the higher-ups who covered their tracks for so long?” It’s time for the honeymoon to be over.
That might be so - I don’t really have the sort of knowledge to base an opinion on. AFAICT, neither of them has done that much, and Cardinal Law still gets to hang out in the Vatican.
This. As I’ve said before, re-imagine Watergate, only with nobody getting punished except the seven actual burglars, while all the higher-ups in the Nixon Administration who were in on the cover-up got off scot-free.
I don’t disagree with any of that. My point is that it is a failure rooted in the nature of the Church’s hierarchy.
Even assuming for the sake of argument the same number of pedophiles involved in other religions, one would rationally expect a cover-up on a massive scale to be more likely in a religion with a centralized hierarchy like the Catholic Church - simply because they have the means to commit it.
I’m no defender of the Church; I think their policies on most issues are wrong, and I’m not Catholic.
I’m curious about the RRC supposedly paying hush money to victims, or presumably their legal guardians. These aren’t crimes that are up to their discretion not to report, are they? I didn’t think one could conceal child sexual abuse any more than one could conceal child murder.
Even if clergymen are mandated reportere under the law, that doesn’t mean they’ll *follow *the law, particularly if they *themselves *are the culprits or accessories.
In most U.S. states, there is a defined list of who is mandated to report child abuse (including sexual abuse), and no, it’s not an all-encompassing list. See, e.g., the Kansas list: teachers, medical professionals, police, firefighters, court services, and so forth, but not priests or pastors or rabbis.
Paying settlement money to victims or their guardians may be a moral lapse, but it’s not usually a crime itself. Misprision of a felony (knowing about and failing to report) under U.S. law now generally applies only to those with special responsibilities and those who actively conceal the crime.
At least in most U.S. jurisdictions, the prosecution would need to prove that the parent’s sole or primary motive was helping the perpetrator avoid arrest.
If the primary motive was getting money for the child’s well-being, and the secrecy was merely an unwanted side effect, well, getting money to pay for your kid’s counseling is not a crime.
The National Catholic Reporter **(astorian **would probably consider it a liberal Catholic publication) reported today that the Vatican has stripped Jozef Wesolowski of his diplomatic immunity. Although the Vatican does not have an extradition agreement with the Dominican Republic (not sure about Poland, where Wesolowski is also suspected of abuse), the Vatican appears open to allowing his extradition.
The story was also reported in New York’s Daily News today (no link – I saw it in the print edition).
Straw man.
The claim is that the RCC is more culpable than other groups. I do not see anyone claiming that the RCC is guilt free. Several of us have pointed out that the perception that the RCC is more guilty than other groups is based on an error, fueled by the sheer size of the RCC.
That makes no sense. Two organizations engaged in separate strategies to achieve the same effect are equally culpable.
Here you are on stronger ground. On the other hand, how many prosecuting attorneys have actually sought to bring such bishops to trial and in how many of those cases has the church actively interfered? I am sure that the number is not zero, but I suspect that (with statutes of limitations, the deaths of older bishops, and a number of other factors, the number is much smaller than many would like to believe. And how many non-Catholic bishops, elders, deacons, etc. have been charged? We are back to clamoring over the RCC, not because its behavior is worse, but because its size makes it an easy target.
Huh? I’m not asking you to prove a negative. Your claims was that “the Catholic Church was UNIQUE among religious groups in taking extensive steps to protect child molesters in its ranks from prosecution by civil authorities . . . Other churches … protestants, etc. … handed their pedophile preists or preist-equivalents over to civil authorities for prosecution.” Those are positive claims. If protestant churches reported paedophile clerics to the authorities for investigation and prosecution, there will certainly be records of the fact. Hell, you yourself must have some reason for your belief that they did this. What is that reason?
I’m not denying that the Catholic church did the things you say, and I’m certainly not defending those things. Nor do I say that protestant churches did those things, if only because many of them are simply not set up to; they don’t have the same international organisations structures, or bishops who can send clerics from one congregation to another, never mind from one country to another. Tomndebb suggests in post #49 that both Protestant and Catholic churches tried to bury the issue in different ways, but in each case their aim was to protect the institution, not the kids, and I suspect he is correct. Your claim is that he is not correct, and that Protestant churches have a better record than the Catholic church in reporting child abuse and co-operating with authorities. I am asking you for evidence. I am not asking you to prove a negative.
I am not about to defend the Catholic church or the “Towards Healing” process that the operate in Australia, but I would point out that the characterisation “hush money” in that article is the journalists. The headline “Catholic church admits paying sex abuse hush money” is true if, and only if, you agree that the money paid can be characterised as “hush money”. The Catholic church doesn’t agree, so the verb “admit” there can be a bit misleading.
The payments were financial settlements with victims who pursued compensation through the “Towards Healing” process. Part of the settlement was a confidentiality agreement - you won’t talk about this in public - and that’s where the “hush money” characterisation comes from. But before you got to settlement, quite early on the process, you’re told that if you believe criminal acts were committed, you should go to the police, and that in such a case the church investigation and compensation will not proceed unless and until the civil authorities have completed their investigation, and any ensuing action.
So it’s “hush money” in the sense of protecting the reputation of the church, but not so much in the sense of trying to avoid reporting to the civil authorities.
It isn’t just the sheer size, but the efforts of higher-ups to cover up and even enable the continuing abuse as well.
That sort of activity is in part enabled by the sheer size of the RCC, but the fact that person/entity A is in a position to commit a particular wrongness, and person/entity B isn’t, doesn’t mean you can say entity A isn’t more guilty because entity B didn’t have the same opportunity to do wrong.
You don’t have “two organizations engaged in separate strategies to achieve the same effect.” You have one organization acting in a global manner in a way that perpetuated abuse, where it either knew or should have known that that was its effect, and you have a bunch of small organizations each dealing with abuse by getting rid of the offender from their organization.
Now if the RCC had pursued the policy of those smaller organizations, it would have been effective due to their size. But they didn’t. The smaller organizations pursued a better policy, but due to their small size and lack of coordination with similar organizations (partly due to the sheer number of them), it was ineffective, and it would have been much more difficult in those times for them to develop an effective approach.
Before I offer this analysis, let me reiterate: even IF it’s TRUE (and it’s quite plausible) that the Catholic Church doesn’t have any more sexual predators per capita than any other church or any other large institution, that’s a piss poor standard for judging.
“The Catholic Church: Not Notably More Depraved Than Anyone Else” is a pretty lousy slogan. My Church SHOULD be judged by higher standards than other institutions.
That said, here’s the single biggest difference between the Catholic Church and other institutions: the Catholic Church has a centralized group of rulers who make decisions for the Church over wide areas- sometimes over the entire Earth.
Southern fundamentalist and evangelical churches allow their clergy to get married. So do liberal Protestant churches. So do synagogues. So, no one can claim that celibacy is driving their clergy to lust after boys. Nonetheless, pedophile scandals regularly occur in such churches and synagogues.
When that happens, do the local church/temple leaders turn in the offending clergy to the police and come clean to their members? Generally, no. Most such churches/temples are run by a local board of elders who make the hiring and firing decisions. And THOSE people are no more fond of scandal than Catholic bishops are.
So, what do they do? Well, if the elders of a Baptist megachurch find out that their youth minister has been fondling boys, they’ll probably call him on the carpet, and tell him, “We want you to resign. Don’t tell anyone why- just say you’ve got an exciting opportunity elsewhere. We’ll write you a glowing letter of recommendation, so you can get a job somewhere else- somewhere far, far away.”
This is standard practice MANY places. And not just in religious settings! A pedophile teacher at an elite Northeastern prep school would probably be treated the same way.
The difference with the Catholic Church is, there’s typically a paper trail that leads back to a big shot- usually a bishop. A Baptist Church or a ritzy prep school can send the offender away quietly, and he becomes someone else’s problem. In the Catholic Church, an offending priest is still the Church’s problem, and too often bishops have decided to send offenders off to new parishes where the offender is free to strike again.
Maybe you missed reading comprehension day at school, but it’s obvious that I wasn’t talking about how many anonymous-message-board threads were opened on a subject as a measure of public opinion.
And yeah, we (we all, no"we SDMB") should be talking more about child abuse in schools.
Or are these links to conservative, pro-Catholic for you?
I agree.
Criminal should go to prison. Enablers should be punished.
However, the fact remains that 10 separate accusation of child molesting in ten independent non-Cahotlic congregations are not as “interesting” as 10 cases from Catholic parishes, even if by relative numbers the Catholic case were less prevalent.
Just in case it is not obvious, many high-level people in the Church dropped the ball big time, hurting the victims and the Church.
I mostly agree.
You seem to imagine that I care a lot about your opinion on other people’s interest in reading my posts.
Apparently you also missed reading comprehension day at school.
You said or implied it was a defense. I said “no it isn’t”. They you accuse me of using it as an excuse.
I can say WHAT I want, WHEN I want it, thankyouverymuch.
I fully criticise any attempt to circumvent the law. I also fully criticise those who won’t afford people they don’t like all their right given by previous, non ad hoc, law.
No I don’t and neither do you.
Yeah, being exposed as a Catholic-hater posing as a child-defender usually gets a wow.
Ok. 100% agreed.
I also hope you’ll do the same with other cases or get interested in other cases and not simply wait for the easy layup that is Cathoic-bashing.
I’m not convinced of the importance of celibacy until I see numbers but I agree that (innocently or not) the whole priest-shifting stuff is horrible and moslty indefensible.
I gather you consider the RCC stance on birth control as an evil. Got a cite for that? The “evil” part, that is.
It doesn’t suck, you know, not at all. What I’m sure definitely sucks is the faux-unbiased pose many people take when talking about the RCC.
Somehow, THAT never makes the news.
Big Headline "DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY!!!ELEVEN!!!
Page 34 bottom right corner on #3 font “[SIZE=“1”]diplomatic immunity lifted”/SIZE].
“Hush money” is a headline.
"Pirvate agreement"is boring.
It’s a lousy slogan, that’s why nobody uses it. The phrase is only used when countering “RCC more evil than all”.
That is a very good point. Even though each (arch)diocese is almost completely independent, better rules should been imposed.
However, dealinbg with child abuse on a large-scale institutional level is something we’ve only learnt how to do very recently.
Agreed.
Couldn’t have said it better.
This DOES NOT mean that I approve of anything that endangers kids, or those who help molesters.
I also repeat that even the worst criminals have legal rights too.
I’m with you to a point. Though I lack any statistics, I think it rather more likely that a religion that has the “hire a religious figure on contract” system is rather less likely to simply kick the can down the road, by giving the priest or rabbi a good reference and sending him on to the next congregation. Rather, they are more likely to fire the guy with a bad but nonspecific reference - “of bad moral character”. While it is in their interests to avoid a scandal, it isn’t as much in their interests to keep a certain level of rabbis and priests in service.
That, it seems, is part of what is fueling this Catholic priest problem - Catholicism has a “top down” structure, requires a certain number of priests to staff its existing churches, and faces something of a crisis in finding enough bodies - in part because of the demands placed on priests, such as celebacy. That creates an institutional incentive not to “lose” priests who commit “indescretions”.
Yes, you do. Actually, they are both following nearly identical strategies.
You are under a serious (if common) misapprehension regarding the structure and functions of the RCC.
You perceive it as a corporation or as a military organization with a specific line of command and a pyramid of responsibilities. In reality, each suffragan bishop, (the guy responsible for one diocese), pretty much answers to no one but the pope. All the other apparent “ranks” and commissions can do nothing more than set out desired policies and hope that the bishops comply. There was never a “global” action, just a bunch of bishops among whom too many were more worried about “giving scandal” than they were protecting children. They were following exactly the same policies as their non-Catholic neighbors, except that the rules of the church kept the priests within the church rather than quietly dismissing them. There were also a great many bishops who took the appropriate actions when a pedophile or ephebephile was identified, but they do not make exciting news stories.
What?
You are saying in the bolded section that it is better to turn loose a pedophile into the community without telling anyone about his predilection than it is to keep him in the organization where ha can, at least, be watched or tracked?
That is silly.
A number of bishops erred in keeping priests who had been accused of abuse active, but at least there is some sort of record where they went if we want to go back, retroactively, and track them down. You favor a policy of sending abusers into the world with absolutely no record of their behavior.
Odd.