So you know little about either the problem or (as you proudly admit) the letter but feel that is no hurdle to commenting anyway. Thanks for your contribution. The quality of your input is what makes these boards the intelligent, considered place they are.
Your statement is an interesting amalgamation of tautology and meaninglessness.
Not all the things I have described are crimes.
You are aware, aren’t you, that an institutional problem can be an underlying cause of a crime? Crimes don’t always spring out of the ether. Failing to address an underlying problem can be a lost opportunity in preventing future crimes.
What the institution did might not have actually constituted a crime at all times and in all places.
Access to altar boys? Protestant churches don’t have altar boys.
So for a pedophile looking for access to kids, becoming, say, a Baptist minister isn’t going to automatically get him that access. Becoming a Catholic priest will.
If this reply was to me, the reason there is a 'situation" now, is that some individuals did abuse children. That is a crime. They apparently were serial offenders. Their superiors shuffled them from one place to another without getting rid of them, or calling the police. They kept silent. So, they are covering up, aiding and abetting. That is a crime. I don’t care about “institutional” problems. That is an excuse, and a weak one. Anyone at any time can pick up the phone, call the police, and report it. I have a real problem, a serious problem with the idea that this never seems to happen.
Actually, several sentences later you add other things that created the “situation.” Those things are institutional problems. So it doesn’t begin and end with this initial crime.
Some of them apparently were. Are you stating that you know for a fact that all of them were serial offenders?
Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. Are you asserting definitive knowledge about the criminal law in all the jurisdictions that this occurred over a period of several decades? How do you know that?
What a bizarre assertion. Of course it’s not an excuse. It is in fact the topic of the thread. The reason that these offenses were covered up was because it was an institutional policy to do so. The institutional problem is the cause of the “situation.” If you don’t care about the institutional problem, then you also don’t care about preventing it from happening again in the future. Sitting around and being belligerent about it is apparently all you think that needs to be done.
And why do you think it doesn’t happen? It’s because there is an institution that has been implementing a policy that prevents it from happening. Get it? Unless you address this institutional problem, you’ll never the the answer to your question.
Furthermore, as I stated before, there also seems to be an ongoing problem with priests having illicit relationships with adult women and then abandoning their children, which suggests that there is an institutional problem that is deeper than can be solved merely by putting sex offenders in prison. Go ahead and stick your head in the sand with “just throw the paedophiles in jail” but if that’s all you do, you’re failing to address an ongoing institutional problem that will continue to have negative effects on individuals and society as a whole.
The more people say this the more I’m convinced that people know nothing about priests. In my experience the contact a priest has with an alter server is: speaking to them before mass, serving mass with them, and maybe training them in a group.
In my experience priests actually spend most of their time around adult women. Their secretaries and assistants, their housekeepers (if they have one), and the people wanting to talk seem to be overwhelmingly women.
I think people need to go to their state websites and look at how many pedophiles are in their own neighborhoods. It’s in the sex offender database. This is a huge problem and the priests are a small minority. Most priests are celibate. The problem with pedophiles is huge in the US and most of us live next to one, work with one and never even know it.
True! They are around women and usually have a live in housekeeper. Why would they bother going to years of seminary when they can just go to the nearest play ground or find a women with kids ? Seems like they would blow their cover long before they became a priest. Priests are called for a reason. It is not and easy job they do with long hours totally devoted to performing sacraments in hospitals and nursing homes. They also would be told about the new rules and how hard it would be to accomplish it with PTC in place in all US churches.
Agree. It’s a simple problem, with a simple solution. Step ONE would be to revoke all rules, laws, letters, and “instructions” that demand perpetual silence (total secrecy) on the part of the victim (chruch enforced secrecy under threat of excommunication). Step TWO is turn the offender over to the law. Not church law which has failed miserably and which simply shuffles abusers around so they can do it again, but to civil and criminal secular law. Get rid of the secrecy, the cover ups, and the veiled or not so veiled threats against the victims,
A simple problem, with simple and direct solutions. Drop all the cover ups and secrecy, and start filing criminal charges.
No I’m not, but some casual Googling should clear that up for you. Start with Ireland, then try Austria, then check out Ummm Wisconsin and Boston.
Toss them in jail… Why not? Isn’t that what we do with them? Toss out the various “requirements” for secrecy, and the latitude for simply relocating them to do it all over again. Why not? Get rid of the secrecy, the requirement of swearing the victims to “perpetual silence”, and start thinking about the victims rather than some undefined “good of the church”.
Fix the institutional problems AND punish the guilty.
Why not? Is it so hard to do the right thing?
In the Pit, I linked some of the “church instructions” about keeping things so secret. There’s the institutional problem.
Molesters seek out jobs that will give them access to their targets. It’s not just the priesthood (though that gives additional cover for not having adult relationships), but other positions like scout leaders, little league coaches, etc. Anyjob or position which will give them access to and power over their sexual targets is going to be attractive to them.
I’m sure that protestant clergy perpetrate just as often, but they don’t have a powerful and massive hierarchical system protecting them.
I think they need to do what the Catholic church is doing. Flush them out, pay restitution and implement a strict program. I don’t think becoming a Protestant minister is anywhere near as difficult as it is to become a priest.
Are you aware that this is no way meaningfully supports your assertion that they were all repeat offenders?
Toss whom in jail? The actual sex offenders? Well, they’re already being tossed in jail as they’re discovered. Isn’t the topic under discussion broader than that? Toss the entire Catholic hierarchy in jail? On what grounds? Do you see how you’re failing to meaningfully respond to the issues?
Who’s doing the tossing and ridding here and who’s going to make them do it?
Oh, wait, now there are institutional problems? That’s funny. I thought that was just an excuse of some kind.
Whom are you asking to do the right thing? The sex offenders? The public? The police? Low-level church employees? High-ranking church personnel? Lawmakers? Care to define exactly what the right thing is for each of them in addressing this issue?
Hmm … Maybe you’re someone who holds some position of authority in the Catholic hierarchy who has the authority to just go around tossing and ridding. Maybe you’re the Pope himself? Well then, instead of carping on a message board, maybe you can get cracking and just do the right thing. Unfortunately the rest of us don’t have such direct influence and might have to engage in a discussion that’s more detailed than “What’s the problem! Just toss and rid, toss and rid! There’s your institution!”
And … now … what? If you’re trying to say that we should just get rid of the Catholic church, then just come out and say it and propose how that might be accomplished.
Otherwise, I have no idea what you’re doing in this thread except spewing outrage.
Does it matter if they were all repeaters or if only some were? Is there some minimum allowable limit? Is there a quota?
Toss the offenders in jail. The problem obviously, is that it was not happening to enough of them, they were simply being reassigned.
The police and the courts of course. The law is already in place - enforce it. No one is above the law. Must be a novel concept in some quarters. The victim presses charges. Police investigate and collect evidence. A trial is held. If guilty, a conviction follows.
Stop sheltering offenders?
It’s a hell of a lot better than the NOTHING that was done before, isn’t it? In fact, as I linked, bishops are starting to say the same thing, as in “tell the cops”. Is that so hard to grasp?