I’m outraged that what apparently has been a long term, wide spread, chronic condition was allowed to continue. I’m outraged that yes, no action was taken. Get rid of the church? No. I do expect them to actually stand by all the fine words they preach every Sunday, about love, justice, kindness, honesty, and then practice what they preach. If that means purging the “bad apples” then they should do it. If they don’t they are complicit.
Matt 23:27-29 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
Matt 23:25-26 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
You realize that this has been the law all along, right? Are you really in this thread just to tautologize that “criminal acts should be prosecuted”?
Is what so hard to grasp?
Thread asks: What is it about the Catholic Priesthood that attracts so many pedophiles?
Some people try to answer: It’s not that the church attracts paedophiles. It’s that the church has been exercising a common institutional instinct to protect itself. (or other helpful attempts to address the question)
SteveG1 answers: Throw them all in jail! Don’t bother me with all your ragginfraggin discussionating! What’s so hard to grasp here!
It doesn’t necessarily attract them, but it sure protects them once they are “in the system”, by using internal rules about secrecy to sidestep the law.
What would you do if you found you had a cancer? You’d have it removed. That is what “these guys” should have done. Instead, they let it metastasize. So instead of protecting the institution, they are poisoning it, through their own inaction. That is stupid.
We all know that athiests are never pedolphiles. It is just a catholic problem so get rid of the catholic church and that will take care of the problem.
What about the internet? Kids are hunted online all day long. Should we get rid of that too?
If I was a pedophile the last job I would go into is the priesthood. At least in the US. The new rules are in place and make it virtually impossible. If someone di go in with that idea he would soon find there are much easier ways to get to children.
No. It happened. A lot, apparently. You seem more upset that it is being stopped than that it happened, more upset that it ever came tto the surface. So what is your answer?
Is it something like the following?
Oh it’s too complex. It’s too big to fail. It will hurt the institution. It’s not about rape, or torture, or any of that, it’s an institutional thing. You want to dismantle the church. Don’t deal with the problem, just keep on keeping on. Better to just wring our hands and drop the subject.
Is that a fair summation?
If The Institution is broke, you fix it. You remove the rules that require perpetual silence. You call the cops on the perp. You get your eviidence and your testimonies, and if it all points to guilt, you take action. You don’t reassign the perp and pretend nothing happened. It’s in the hands of the pope, the cardinals and the bishops to fix the institution and prevent future instances. It should be in the hands of the police and the courts to deal with past instances - because the law was broken - crimes were committed.
No apology, unless it is backed up by action. No more silence.
It’s not an April Fools joke, I’m serious. Further, my first 'appearnce" in this thread was to agree with Martu that there was a simple solution - arrests and convictions - at least as a first step. Later I added, the church should revoke requirement for perpetual silence and should stop reassigning perps instead of punishing them. I said there is an institutional problem and provided the cites. I said the institutional part of the problem was the enforced silence (with quotes and cites and stuff).
As to the OP’s question, no I don’t necessarily think the church attracts an huge percentage of perpetrators. My beef was that they don’t do anything about them (anything useful or worthwhile) once they are in.
So what is YOUR answer? How would you, Ascenray, deal with the problem if you had the authority? Go for it. Play “pope for a day”.
As for the “you” in my statements, that is the rhetorical you, the generic “you”.
Ya know what? The Church is not made up of only high ranking bishops and cardinals and priests. There are all those parishioners too. Maybe, they should stop contributing until the almighty “institution” gets its house in order. That would probably get some attention fast. Money talks.
So you’re serious in baselessly imputing to me a grab bag of opinions.
If I can remind you, this thread started with the premise that “The Catholic church disproportionately attracts sexual deviants.” My response was that I believed that it was not sex that was the issue but that the church as an institution was forming and implementing policy in a manner that was causing a problem. And then you started in with your “Institutional problems? That’s an excuse” line. I really don’t see any way out of this other than to offer you the opportunity to stop responding to my posts with non sequitur hysteria.
And my response was to list the specific “guidances and directions” that support your “institutional” statement, wasn’t it? However, I also added that it would be a straightforward matter to start correcting that, didn’t I? It seems the main focus of the “letters of instruction” - the institution - have for too long been to maintain silence.
Here, again, were my “ways to address the issue”
[ul]
[li]revoke the demand/requirement for “perpetual silence” - institutional - and supported by an increasing number of bishops[/li][li]file criminal charges and issue arrest warrants against the perpetrator(s) - individuals - and supported by an increasing number of bishops[/li][li]remove those who are proven guilty from “the system” - institutional[/li][/ul]
I was educated in a Catholic grade school, a Catholic high school and the first time going to college, in a Catholic college. The people I was taught by were honest, upstanding, ethical people. I imagine, they are probably just as disgusted by this mess, as anyone else would be.
I think that young men raised in a community that teaches their predilections are an abomination before the Lord, be they homosexual or attracted to children, are drawn to the church as a place where they can stay safely away from greater society and attempt to pray away their inclinations.
The shortage of priests mean there is no monastic refuge for those afraid of their own corruptions. Once in the priesthood they are surrounded by priests who do not always keep all of their vows strictly, (Human beings after all), and it breaks them down, and they give in to their inclinations.
I don’t know that I believe they are drawn there for access to victims. I think they are attempting to escape who they are, and when they finally break they are surrounded by potential victims.
Where most of the victims are teenage boys (as has been the case in the USA, though not in Ireland, among other places), it’s neither unfair nor silly to ask: is the problem truly “pedophilia” or is it gay men who can’t/won’t keep their pants zipped around teenage males.
Gay adult males are not significantly more likely to molest male adolescents than straight adult males are. Ephebephilia, or sexual attraction to adolescents, cuts across sexual-orientation categories.
This is a super important fact that is often overlooked in national media. Even though some people are trying to do gays a favor by distancing them from pedophiles (which is of course a total distinction), they serve no purpose when they inaccurately say “Molesting a 16 year old boy has nothing to do with gay or straight…”.
No, if they molest a 16 year old boy they’re probably gay. If they molest a 6 year old boy then their orientation could go either way but the pedophilia overrides the normal sex drive. Either way of course it’s reprehensible, but there is a major difference in whether the strayed priest is gay or straight in terms of whether you’d want him around post-pubescant boys.
Do you have a cite for that? Because the studies I’ve seen indicate that this is NOT necessarily true. Teenage boys are apparently at least as likely to be molested by a straight adult male (especially a family member) as by a gay adult male.