The problem isn’t the pedophiles evading capture, though of course that is an issue. The problem people have with the Catholic Church is the systemic coverup by the upper echelons. When pedophiles are discovered, they are transferred and their crimes swept under the rug, not turned in to the proper authorities.
Show evidence of other religions or professions doing the same, and we’ll gladly dump on them as well. Plenty of people have already gone after Penn State for the exact same thing.
It’s a joke about how Christians were supposedly fed to the lions by the ancient Romans.
Reminds me about the time some years ago when a bunch of self proclaimed “Prayer Warriors” came to San Francisco to protest Halloween; some of the counter-protestors were carrying signs that read “Bring Back The Lions”.
Exactly. It’s pretty much the ultimate case of “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup”. It’s the systematic, Church-wide coverups that turn this from something that can be handwaved away as a “few bad apples” situation into a Church-wide indictment.
Der Trihs, thanks for coming into this thread. I’m interested; I know your views on this topic, and I wonder: what would you propose the Church should do? What demands would be in your verdict? Even if the answer would be " disband", disband in what way?
To all of you who said that the Church must adapt and become something resembling, welll,another faith…Do catholics have a moral duty to stop supporting their Church? In what way? Should they, en masse, change churches and publicly disown the Pope? (much like Sinnead o Connor did in 92, and she lost her career over it)
Police, teachers, the Boy Scouts, protestant clergy, mormon clergy, Hollywood… Tell you what, tell me what your religion and profession are and I’ll find a link for you.
I’m not about to defend the Catholic Church on the grounds that “someone else does it too.” I’m all for levying justice wherever appropriate, driving abusers in the streets, hearing the lamentations of their women, etc. But the scandals will strike you and yours more closely than you probably think.
Krokodil, di you even* read* the posts answering yours? None of your links mention any large scale cover-ups in the police, boy scouts etc. Yes, they had their share of sexual abuse cases; but no, they didn’t have the enormous institutional cover ups.
And the Trump Chapel would be a sight to behold 
Yes, the typical layperson does have a moral duty to fix the church. The pope is supposed to be the Sky Daddy’s ambassador to earth. The “Holy Church” while not being perfect is supposed to spread the word and do Sky Daddy’s work on earth. Apparently SD’s work is raping children first and spreading the gospel is a distant 63.
I cannot believe how so many catholic sheeple are willing to turn a blind eye to the rampant corruption and vile evil that operates at the highest level of the church. I know many people, family members included, who constantly make excuses for the church but stay active in it and support it financially. If enough people resisted, left or withdrew financial support you bet the church would change. Anyone who still gives money to the church is an active participant in the covering up and protecting child rapists. They are just as guilty as the vermin that is the head of the church and probably the majority of the power structure of the church.
The church did recently re-define purgatory. The church did change the sermon from latin to the common language of the people. The priest now faces the congregation. The church will change if it has enough resistance. Unfortunately apparently the majority of catholics world wide are fine with child rape.
Maastricht, poke around on Google looking for “(institution of your choice) child abuse” and you will inevitably get headers with the phrase “worse than Catholic Church.” Since other religions and institutions don’t share the RCC’s precise structure (There is no Baptist Pope or Supreme Presbyterian), they’re not vulnerable to the exact systemic liabilities the RCC is. That doesn’t mean your child is safer there, or that abusers’ colleagues aren’t covering for them.
The Mormon link hit all your requirements. So did the Boy Scouts link, although that’s still kind of in progress (I thought the attorney’s website more germane than any of the articles entitled “Boy Scouts: Worse than the Catholic Church”). The teacher link went dead; sorry. A second one for Hollywood is A Minor Consideration, an advocacy group for child actors getting molested by producers on one side and financially mismanaged by parents on the other. The entertainment industry doesn’t have a Vatican per se, but it does shield its moneymakers from adverse legal consequences. I can’t imagine that this is in dispute.
The police link seemed particularly on-point:
Police abuse of teenagers routinely occurs with the cooperation of other officers, and frequently the higher-ups decline to investigate.
Anyway, yes, I read the links. Which ones did you have a problem with?
Think of the RC church’s institutionalized child buggering as a big step forward – at least the out-right murdering children is not supported.
“Take your son, your only son – yes, Isaac, whom you love so much – and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you.” (Genesis 22:1-18)
“Consecrate to me every first-born that opens the womb among Israelites, both man and beast, for it belongs to me.”( Exodus 13:2)
Essentially, yes. As Christians, they have a duty to distinguish between the true teachings of Christ, and the human-created institutions that have evolved historically along a claim of being the true successors to Him - a claim which is also human-derived. The Jesuits themselves draw a distinction between the True Church and the Historic Church, as part of explaining the corrupt history of the organization.
Yes, devout Catholics accept a duty to the True Church, and that necessarily involves refusal to submit unquestioningly to the Historic Church. If that institution is too separate from the True Church, then yes, they have a duty to leave it and either find or establish one closer to it.
The OP addresses amends, rather than justice, or something else. How about considering the various acts to be “amended” for as sins, repenting, repairing the damage as best as possible, apologizing, and doing it no more, than some charitable work, etc.?
That said, the RCC seems bent on returning to the middle ages with respect to how it treats women. JC treated women really well and with great respect.
Well, they’d never do it willingly, so it would require someone with the power to enforce it on them from outside. But if I could, I’d investigate the hierarchy and jail everyone proven guilty of either molesting children (or other serious crimes I’ve heard of them doing, like nun rape) or helping in the cover up. Then I’d declare it a criminal organization, forcibly break it up, and confiscate and sell off their assets. I’d treat them much the way I’d treat a corporation found guilty of the same crimes.
Now, that won’t stop Catholics from eventually remaking a Church for their religion; the great majority of them should be untouched after all. But it would break the power (and likely the unity) of the old Church and break the old criminal Church culture. They’d hopefully be less inclined to pull the same things as their predecessors, and probably be less able to as well.
Stop sending them money. It’s all the only argument from their “sheep” that they really understand.
Conduct a thorough investigation of their own, to identify not only as many sexually abusive priests as possible, but also as many bishops, archbishops, cardinals and whatnot who moved the sexually abusive priests from parish to parish, and covered up their crimes. (I gather from the crickets in my GQ thread that nothing of the sort has been done.)
After conducting this investigation, they should defrock and dismiss every last member of their hierarchy that, by the standard of preponderance of the evidence, appears to have committed sexual abuses of minors, or covered up for those who did.
Then they should make public the results of their investigations of the dismissed priests, with names of persons besides the dismissed members of the hierarchy changed to protect the innocent. And then they should fully cooperate with any civil authorities conducting criminal investigations.
And they should be ready to sell as much of their worldly property as necessary to pay off civil judgments to the victims of priestly child abuse.
Believers’ options are limited, but I’m all for Der Trihs’ suggestion that they cease putting money in the collection plate until the RCC reforms itself.
The RC church should thoroughly investigate and then act accordingly, but it won’t.
Hell, these are the folks who assigned Bishop Raymond Lahey to make good on behalf of the church for the child buggering it had permitted in eastern Canada, but less than a week after the settlement in September 2009, the son of a bitch was caught bringing child torture porn into the country. Despite his pleading guilty in May of 2011, he was not de-frocked until a year later.
Anyone heard of the Vatican contributing to payment of court ordered damages against RC priests, parishes, deaneries or dioceses? [crickets]
The parishioners get hammered twice. First they learn of what their priests were doing to little kids. Second, the assets of the parishes that they funded out of their own pockets are depleted to pay court orderd damage awards. Meanwhile, the Vatican’s purse remains tightly shut. Which brings us to the next issue – the Vatican bank scandals. The outfit is rotten at the top, so reformation can only come from the bottom.
Then create two priesthoods: one to turn the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood, and the other to do everything else that priests do.
The transsubstantiative priesthood would be a highly valued but limited office, kinda like the way the RCC regards motherhood. The members of the other priesthood would be the ones who could become bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and Popes.
That was easy. Next?
Agreed. But it is still worth outlining what the RCC should do, so we have a yardstick for measuring just how completely it’s failed to do so.
The Eastern Rite isn’t really relevant here, since we’re discussing the Roman Catholic Church. But the married former Episcopalian priests that converted to Catholicism yet retained their status as priests seems sufficient to undermine (a) the notion that priests must be celibate, and (b) the notion that there’s anything uniquely special about Roman Catholic ordination.
On that latter point, let’s work through the logic:
Either Episcopal ordination (a) is recognized as a valid priestly ordination on par with Roman Catholic ordination, or (b) it isn’t.
If (1b), then Episcopal priests who convert to Roman Catholicism aren’t priests, because they never were priests with respect to Roman Catholicism. From a Roman Catholic POV, they were always laymen; they just went from being lay persons outside the RCC to being lay persons within it.
Now that they’re married lay Catholics, they can’t be ordained, because married lay Catholics can’t be ordained. But they’re ordained, so (1b) is false, and (1a) must be true.
FWIW, I would think it’s obvious that the celibacy requirement results in a RCC priesthood that’s more gay and more pedophilic than the population at large.
Suppose you’re a devout young Roman Catholic man, sufficiently devout that a vocation to the priesthood is hardly out of the question.
If your primary sexually attraction is toward adult women, the celibacy requirement is a pretty stiff barrier, because you’re giving up something real to join the priesthood.
If your primary sexually attraction is toward adult men, then you think: this attraction is wrong, and I cannot yield to it. But I have little if any interest in sex with women. If I’m going to live a celibate life anyway (you’re not going to, in all likelihood, but you’re not thinking that at this juncture: you hope to do so with God’s help), there’s no reason not to join the priesthood on that account.
The interior conversation would be similar if your primary sexual attraction was towards children of either sex.
So the RCC priesthood is flawed by design, self-selecting for pedophiles. (And self-selecting for gays too, but I don’t regard that as a flaw. The RCC would regard it as one if they acknowledged they were doing such a self-selection, but I’m sure they’re in official denial about that.)