To me the problem isn't the percentage of Catholic priests involved vs. any other group -it's how the Catholic church responds to sex abuse. If they'd actively take steps to prevent sex abuse and cooperate with bringing those responsible to justice, they wouldn't be in this mess. Instead they try to cover it up and protect the perpetrators, and put known offenders back in contact with the public.
Exactly.
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Only by examining carefully the many elements that gave rise to the present crisis can a clear-sighted diagnosis of its causes be undertaken and effective remedies be found. Certainly, among the contributing factors we can include: inadequate procedures for determining the suitability of candidates for the priesthood and the religious life; ... and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person.
To me and I'm not trying to be argumentative (even though I always am), if they had natural urges (bad choice of words I know) there would be a lot more hooker priest scandals, or priest woman scandals. In the day and age of sexual liberation through things like the internet and publications I never buy that they think there are no other choices.
Whether they believe that fleeing to the cloth will help them control their urges (Pedophilia) or they believe that going to the cloth will give them better access to their desires, or even worse that god and the church will forgive them and absolve them of their actions, I think that priesthood holds a powerfull attraction for predatory pedophiles.
I don't think allow priests to marry will ever curb that, sex drive is about more then just relief, if that was true we wouldn't need woman. We're driven to what attracts us the most.
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Originally Posted by habernac
Great points, Captain. But I would be curious to know if there's a big problem with this in churches that allow their priests to marry.
I dunno, I tend to side with Habby on this. I think the fact that women are essentially considered forbidden so it may not be that they're so irresistably attracted to young children, and boys in particular, but rather that its more acceptable to do that and circumvent the rules they swore to adhere to.
Basically, in lieu of breaking their vow of chastity they just rationalize that boys dont count ergo they're not breaking the rules.
There would probably be a significantly lower amount of this happening.
The thing I find strange is the high concentration of pedophiles in the priesthood and the disturbingly larger concentration of homosexual pedophiles. There has to be a reason or arent those statistics strangely high in what would ordinarily be a very small section of people?
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I dunno, I tend to side with Habby on this. I think the fact that women are essentially considered forbidden so it may not be that they're so irresistably attracted to young children, and boys in particular, but rather that its more acceptable to do that and circumvent the rules they swore to adhere to.
Basically, in lieu of breaking their vow of chastity they just rationalize that boys dont count ergo they're not breaking the rules.
There would probably be a significantly lower amount of this happening.
The thing I find strange is the high concentration of pedophiles in the priesthood and the disturbingly larger concentration of homosexual pedophiles. There has to be a reason or arent those statistics strangely high in what would ordinarily be a very small section of people?
I don't know Locke, I'm gonna stick by my guns on this. For the most part sexual orientation and urges are not something I chose. (Except in Prison, but I believe that prison rape is more about establishing power rather then suddenly going gay)
I think that you have a higher number of gay pedophiles in the priest hood because they consider it to be a target rich environment. Basically the parents used to completely trust the local priest. They would willingly deliver their sons to the priests in form of alter boy duties or other church activities. Plus it would be pretty easy for a priest to ask the question "who are your parents going to believe, you, or a man of god?"
I also believe that thats why you see the same kind of incidents between teachers and students. A position of trust can be incredibly powerfull, and worse yet a position of power and taking advantage of it could be pretty intoxicating.
I would love to know if these guys had the same urges before they took their vows.
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I don't know Locke, I'm gonna stick by my guns on this. For the most part sexual orientation and urges are not something I chose. (Except in Prison, but I believe that prison rape is more about establishing power rather then suddenly going gay)
I think that you have a higher number of gay pedophiles in the priest hood because they consider it to be a target rich environment. Basically the parents used to completely trust the local priest. They would willingly deliver their sons to the priests in form of alter boy duties or other church activities. Plus it would be pretty easy for a priest to ask the question "who are your parents going to believe, you, or a man of god?"
I also believe that thats why you see the same kind of incidents between teachers and students. A position of trust can be incredibly powerfull, and worse yet a position of power and taking advantage of it could be pretty intoxicating.
I would love to know if these guys had the same urges before they took their vows.
Okay, but dont you think you're assigning an ass-load of deceit to all priests?
Your contention is that they became priests in order to get at all that easy underaged tail? Alright, I suppose that would explain my question of the statistically anomolous amount of them, but I cant believe that this could possibly be anyone's major motivation to do anything.
I mean, doing all the priest stuff and lying about being the God-loving person and everything just for that?
It would explain why Priest-School is called the 'Seminary' though....
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Okay, but dont you think you're assigning an ass-load of deceit to all priests?
Your contention is that they became priests in order to get at all that easy underaged tail? Alright, I suppose that would explain my question of the statistically anomolous amount of them, but I cant believe that this could possibly be anyone's major motivation to do anything.
I mean, doing all the priest stuff and lying about being the God-loving person and everything just for that?
It would explain why Priest-School is called the 'Seminary' though....
I agree with Captain. Boy Scouts had a big problem with pedophiles - men who were married, or could get married. Boy Scouts provided them access.
Okay, but dont you think you're assigning an ass-load of deceit to all priests?
Your contention is that they became priests in order to get at all that easy underaged tail? Alright, I suppose that would explain my question of the statistically anomolous amount of them, but I cant believe that this could possibly be anyone's major motivation to do anything.
I mean, doing all the priest stuff and lying about being the God-loving person and everything just for that?
It would explain why Priest-School is called the 'Seminary' though....
Not to all priests, and my contention is that it is an attractive field of work for these predators for many reasons.
Maybe they believe that joining the Priesthood will help them conquor their urges. Or maybe they believe that whole total forgiveness thing. Or maybe they see the young boys going in and out of church everyday.
We've seen hypocrites in every position of trust out there, but only a few offers the power, the community trust and the relative privacy that the cloth offers.
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Re: the title of this thread -- I think maybe these guys are above the law. How many of them go to jail? How come we let them get away with it? This has been going on for decades. Centuries, probably.
Doesn't sound like many of us in here are Catholics, so by default (I would think), we don't think these guys are special. They aren't holy, they don't represent god, they can't tell us what to do. They are regular guys who just happen to believe they are special.
When a story surfaces on here of a regular guy getting caught raping numerous children, the thread turns into a contest to see who can come up with the most vicious torture that ends in a gruesome death.
In here, we've had a call for an inquiry.
We let them get away with it, by and large. So maybe they are above the law.
Re: the title of this thread -- I think maybe these guys are above the law.
The title was a bit off... should have been "The Pope should not be above the law."
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Originally Posted by peter12
What change? The future is completely unpredictable. The problem with activists is that the majority of them are absolute utopians with no real grip on the complexity of humanity.
Haha, I actually had "positive change" in there before I submitted it, but decided to take it out because it is subjective. Regardless, if you want to improve the world, you need a mechanism for change and activism provides a way to spread ideas which can then be either accepted or rejected by others.
I don't necessarily believe this is happening because the priests can't get married. I think you'll find issues like this all over.
It is disgusting that they'll get away with it. But you're treading on 'holy' ground if you want to say that no man, or no church should be exempt from the rule of law.
I happen to believe it, but it seems to go against what the Catholics and many other churches believe.
People tell me to love the sinner and hate the sin, and that forgiveness is next to divinity, but honestly when it comes to kids, I'm just not a big enough person to forgive someone for molesting an innocent, and I can never find it in my heart to forgive someone who molests children.
I thanked your post cause I think you hit the nail on the head for what can and should be done.
But I just wanted to comment on this part. I think this is important, whether one is religious or not. Forgiveness is important to all parties and helps everyone heal and should be pursued in most situations.
But like you have suggested, this is a bit different, and I see it this way... What prevents people from forgiving the church (fairly in my view) is the churches own actions. When one seeks forgiveness they are supposed to admit wrong doing, and try and fix the problem.
The problem with the church abuse scandals is not the fact that they are (were) abusing kids (which is horrendous enough). It is the fact that there has been a systematic cover-up and denial of responsibility.
It has been argued that all groups (even those with good intentions) have bad apples you can point to. And I guess this is true. But what other group continually helps and hides their bad apples to this degree? Over something so serious?
How can you forgive someone or some organization that consistently tries to hide and get away with their crimes and or sins? That won't admit fault?
And to add insult to injury, hypocritically suggests you do what they cannot.
The crimes are bad enough. But the whole organization is so rotten from within I don't know how anyone can defend or follow it. I really don't. They aren't trying to make things better and they aren't trying to fix their mistakes. They take no responsibility and it's gotten to the point that yes, in my eyes, EVERYONE IS ACCOUNTABLE. Cause no one is taking a stand, no one is fixing it.
If you want to extrapolate this to many peoples views on organized religion and what it's really good for or used for, then I hope you do. But I don't want to litter the debate with more subjective topics and conclusions and I'll just leave it at this.
Hopefully organized religions, not just the Catholic Church, can move from their spotty pasts, and become the true beacons they claim to be. And in that, I think you made an excellent post.
Being able to forgive someone doesn't mean that person shouldn't face the full extent of the law and be completely responsible for their actions to the point of being executed.
Being able to forgive someone doesn't mean that person shouldn't face the full extent of the law and be completely responsible for their actions to the point of being executed.
Oh I don't disagree with that. (Cept maybe the execution thing, but that's just a belief obviously)
I was just attempting to highlight where the real disconnect in the issue was. If the church just owned up and kicked out or put away these guys then 1. there would have been less problems and 2. it would have made more sense to forgive the church as a whole.
But the fact that everyone ignored it, covered it up, and tried get away with it is the real problem. And that is what, in my eyes makes everyone in the organization accountable. Every single priest, whether involved or not, and to an extent, even their followers. By not demanding more, by not asking more of their organization, and by just going along with whatever, they are complicent(sp) too.
But the church won't own up because they believe that they're ordained by God and as a result are above the law.
What I meant with the execution thing is that if law in a certain country permits that a child molester be executed, the child molester should be punished to the full extent of the law regardless of our feelings of contempt or forgiveness.
In other words, the church and state should always be separated.
I think this issue with the Catholics and child molesters could be solved internally if they really wanted too. I don't know how the Catholic Church is dealing with it, but from what I've read they seem to brush the issue away to the point of completely ignoring it. Why? Probably because they think that their priests being ordained by God cannot be persecuted by the law of man. Which makes me wonder about the law of the church. Obviously one would think that they view molestation as a sin. Perhaps even a cardinal sin.
The way I've always looked at the 'priest'...'preacher'....or even the 'pope'....is that the POSITION was ordained by God, not the man. The man can fall, make mistakes, screw up and all that and he needs to be responsible for his actions. But the position really is holy ground. Which speaks more for how the person holding the position should treat it than it does for anything else. Obviously if we go to a certain church we'll have a level of respect for the pastor. But I think we should be holding MORE respect for the position and the responsibility that the pastor has than we should for the person.
I don't know how you hold respect for a position (or any concept or anything inanimate really. I guess, maybe the Stanley Cup... ).
Respect is something that is earned, not given blindly.
Course I understand that that idea is presented in many dogmas.
EDIT: And the reason it is is so control can be achieved. God, whether real or not, is a concept used to give men power and prevent peopl from arguing against them, even when they do something wrong.
If a Canadian company had a policy preventing women from being managers, it would be very quickly shut down.
Ditto for any company where it turned out some daycare workers were known to be pedophiles, but were simply moved to other daycares without notifying the authorities.
Or a company that said "no gays allowed... cause there's something wrong with them..."
The Catholic Church gets to do all these things. That's leaving aside the millions of people who are dead in Africa because the Church considers Aids to be slightly less important than advocating AGAINST the use of condoms.
The Catholic Church is an archaic joke of an organization, and should be run out of modern society as quickly as possible.
Which thankfully appears to be happening anyway.
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Or a company that said "no gays allowed... cause there's something wrong with them..."
This is what really makes me boggle.
You've got a church that won't accept someone being homosexual, something the individual has little or no choice over, but will accept and shelter pedophiles, also something the individual also has little or no choice over.
The homosexual acting out on their sexual preference does no harm to anyone but is labeled bad and should be rejected, but the pedophile acting out on their sexual preference DOES do harm to others and while also labeled bad actions speak louder than words, the pedophile isn't subject to the same things.
Would a homosexual priest be allowed to keep their priesthood? Unlikely, they'd probably be, what defrocked? But pedophile priests get to keep their status and just get shuffled around.
It's all about values, and their actions show them to value appearances above all else.
Incidentally I don't actually think booting a pedophile priest out of the church would be a good thing, at least not compared to the other possible options. Keep them in the church where they could have the social support necessary so they can keep above their desires, and put them in positions where they don't have the opportunity to reoffend.. the church has great power and resources, a pedophile priest could still serve sweeping floors in the Vatican or in the archives or doing research or something, somewhere where there's no kids involved but still contribute to society and be in all other respects normal people. It's not like people choose to be pedophiles.
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Some American Catholic church poobah is claiming the priests in question, aren't pedophiles as most of the victims are post pubescent, so they are homosexuals.
Whatever, they are predators.
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