Article about priests and pedophilia

[SteveDallas]

The latest New York Review of Books showed up with this article in it. I thought I couldn't get more disgusted than I already was by the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church on the pedophilia issue.

Scandal, by Garry Wills

[Griff]

I don't take anything Garry Wills has to say on any subject seriously.

That said, any clergy who helped sweep this under the rug need to be prosecuted. If it was one of my kids, you'd have a dead priest (teacher, coach, local loon), period. I've known a few fine priests but damn few decent bureaucrats and that is the basis of the problem, not conservative fantasies about a post Vatican II homosexual priesthood or even Wills' little leftist fantasy about infantalized priests. Its bad enough that this has and is going on without people using it to to serve their agendas. The bureaucrats mindset is to go along to get along, protect insiders, and keep problems quiet, those attributes are antithetical to a priestly life. As always, just one drunks opinion.

[Nic Name]

[tw]

Pedophilia in the Catholic Church has been old news for years. Almost a decade ago, estimated that upwards of 8% of Priest were pedophiles. Even worse, little challenge to those numbers. How many actually are pedophiles? We don't know. But we do know the numbers are high and were routinely covered up.

What makes the current scandel new is that even the courts have demonstrated routine coverup by the Catholic Church 'powers that be'. That is old news to be proven even by the American legal system.

In Cellar Mark I, one poster openly acknowledged being gay. This was not a problem until we encountered the 'gay in the military' conflict. Hetrosexual males feared serving with gays. Why? What is the most aggressive, violent, and most feared sexual orientaton? Not lesbians, heterosexual females, or gays. The most feared are almost always heterosexual males. And yet they are the ones who most fear gays? How absurd.

Males are sexually aggressive. To turn such people into enics is even more absurd. And yet that is exactly what the most right wing Catholic Church leaders demand. It makes Priests ripe for concepts such as "The Thornbirds", homosexuality, masterbation, and pedophilia. Males must have sexual release. But a perverted church even considers sex only for the making babies. Even birth control is an original sin according to an archaic church. The church creates its own problems by denying reality.

Having ignored reality, the church then and instead covers up crimes by their employees - rather than address reasons for those crimes. More reasons for pedophilia to be so rampant. The church was a safe haven for any pedophile. So safe that at least one priest adovcated pedophilia in public speeches.

But it gets worse. The Economist published one of their famous Surveys on the church. Excerpts were posted in an earlier version of The Cellar. Under this Pope, only the most right wing leaders are promoted. One need only review the current leadership in US dioceses to see the 'we fear the real world' mentality. Anyone in the US with a progressive attitude would never be promoted to positions of authority by this Pope. Since he has been Pope so long, the Church has become very extremist and very myopic.

Even when all US Cardinals go to Rome, and even when same will demand the removal of a long known pedophile friendly Cardinal, then instead they get nothing useful from a Rome that fears this entire issue. Sex. It can't exist. It must only be for making babies. Or are church politics more important that reality?

Pedophilia is rampant throughout the Catholic Church - not just in America. What is the church doing about something they just 'discovered'? They ignore it as much as they can.

For a Priest to be normal, he must live a normal sex life as Priest once did a thousand years ago. To make a Priest celebrite is as rediculous as requiring meals of fish on Friday. But in a conservative church, reality always takes second place to reality. 8% are pedophiles? Quite possible because of the leadership and policies of the Catholic Church.

[Griff]

I'd like a citation for that 8%.

You seem to be combining two unrelated subjects, marriage in the priesthood and pedophelia. As a "normal" heterosexual male, I can assure you that celibacy, while certainly not my first choice in lifestyle, would not lead me to pedophelia. Marriage would probably work for some priests but others I've spoken with assure me that they couldn't in good faith take on family responsibilities along with their other duties, for fear of neglecting both.

Its all well and good for folks outside the Church who may or may not hate the institution to suggest improvements but they must know that their voice carries little weight and even suggestions made in good faith will only be addressed in the Churches time. Purging pedophiles and their protectors, without purging the innocent, should be job one, placating media leftists and rightists isn't on the docket.

[Undertoad]

I can assure you that celibacy, while certainly not my first choice in lifestyle, would not lead me to pedophelia.

Having answered the question of whether priests can safely choose celibacy, now consider whether celebates can safely choose the priesthood.

I don't have an answer for this question, I just enjoy being a wise-ass.

[Griff]

Originally posted by Undertoad


I just enjoy being a wise-ass.

Thats why I like to drop by the Cellar.

[Nic Name]

As reported in the Globe & Mail

As in the United States, Canadian survivors charge that the church in Canada simply shuffles abusers around — sometimes to another country — when their misdeeds come to light.

"Nothing will change until the church does something. So far, it's done diddly squat," said an angry John Caruso, who was abused by Rev. James Kneale in Fort Erie, Ont., in 1985. Mr. Caruso filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the priest, who was relocated after his 1999 conviction. In a bizarre twist, Father Kneale has sued Mr. Caruso's parents, claiming they were at fault for allowing their son to spend time with him.

In Orillia, parishioners at the Guardian Angels Church were asked to pray for Rev. Hugh MacDonald by the diocese, which called the allegations against him a "painful situation."

The Church must stop treating the allegations and revelations of abuse as the problem. The Church has to stop treating pedophilia as a moral failure of the clergy, and a breach of their vow of celebacy. The Church has to recognize sexual abuse of children as a crime. Crimes by individuals who are clergy should be prosecuted. If other individuals within the Church obstruct justice they should be prosecuted.

Unfortunately, there is no moral clarity in the leadership of the Church with regard to sexual abuse of children by clergy. The Church struggles with the moral issues and often ignores the criminal issues. The Church is more concerned about the implications of the scandal for the institution and the clergy generally, and sometimes even the guilty clergy, than it is for the victims of abuse. Sad but true.

[tw]

Originally posted by Griff
You seem to be combining two unrelated subjects, marriage in the priesthood and pedophelia. As a "normal" heterosexual male, I can assure you that celibacy, while certainly not my first choice in lifestyle, would not lead me to pedophelia.

Those who are not getting any will do irrational things. It is the classic example of using the head on your shoulders to think - or one between the legs. There is no logical thinking from the head between legs - which means sex may come from many forms - without any consideration to the consequences.

If a priest cannot have a sexual partner, he may just as easily find one among those least likely to 'out' him - children. Pedophilia, like all other sexual acts, is less likely when males are not horny. A horny male will do things he otherwise would not do. If every Priest is horny, then how on earth is he to not be driven by the wrong head?

Celibacy is as perverted as the "don't eat meat on Friday" nonsense - except with more disasterous consequences. Pedophilia is only officially exposed first and recently in the US. It is worldwide among Catholic priests - we can safely bet. The church's long standing actions were to transfer pedophiles where they could not be located by victims. Sometimes that even meant a transfer to Rome.

That 8% number was reported maybe a decade ago. Long since forgotten the source. I may have even quoted one of those articles back in an earlier version Mark X of The Cellar. Maybe 60 Minutes was the source? But 8% was suggested in at least two different, major news sources. It is an educated guess by those familiar with the problem that long ago. But the number does reflect how serious the problem has been known and officially ignored.

[Nic Name]

One can see the vestiges of the Canon Law in the Catholic Church's reluctance to submit to the criminal laws of men.

In the history of the Church, clerics have been longer above the criminal law than subject to it.

Clerical immunities, of course, differed largely at different times and in different countries, the extent of them having been gradually curtailed from a period a little earlier than the close of the middle ages. They consisted mainly in exemption from public burdens, both as regarded person and pocket, and in immunity from lay jurisdiction. This last enormous privilege, which became one of the main and most efficient instruments of the subjection of Europe to clerical tyranny, extended to matters both civil and criminal; though, as Bingham shows, it did not (always and everywhere) prevail in cases of heinous crime (Origines Eccles. bk. v.).

This diversity of jurisdiction, and subjection of the clergy only to the sentences of judges bribed by their esprit de corps to judge leniently, led to the adoption of a scale of punishments for the offences of clerks avowedly much lighter than that which was inflicted for the same crimes on laymen; and this in turn led to the survival in England, long after the Reformation, of the curious legal fiction of benefit of clergy (see below), used to mitigate the extreme harshness of the criminal law.

CLERGY, BENEFIT OF, an obsolete but once very important feature in. English criminal law. Benefit of clergy began with the claim on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities in the 12th century that every clericus should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the temporal courts and be subject to the spiritual courts alone.

The issue of the conflict was that the common law courts abandoned the extreme punishment of death assigned to some offences when the person convicted was a clcricus, and tile church was obliged to accept the compromise and let a secondary punishment be inflicted.

The term “clerk” or clericus always included a large number of persons in what were called minor orders, and in 1350 the privilege was extended to secular as well as to religious clerks; and, finally, the test of being a clerk was the ability to read the opening words of verse I of Psalm II., hence generally known as the “neck-verse.” Even. this requirement was abolished in. 1705. In 1487 it was enacted that every layman, when convicted of a clergyable felony, should be branded on the thumb, and disabled from claiming the benefit a second time. The privilege was extended to peers, even if they could not read, in. 1547, and to women, partially in 1622 and fully in 1692.

The partial exemption claimed by the Church did not apply to the more atrocious crimes, and hence offences came to be divided into clergyable and unclergyable. According to the common practice in England of working out modern improvements through antiquated forms, this exemption was made the means of modifying the severity of the criminal law. It became the practice to claim and be allowed the benefit of clergy; and when it was the intention by statute to make a crime really punishable with death, it was awarded “without benefit of clergy.” The benefit of clergy was abolished by a statute of 1827, but as this statute ‘did not repeal that of 1547, under which peers were given the privilege, a further statute was passed in 1841 putting peers on the same footing as commons and clergy.

For a full account of benefit of clergy see Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. i. 424-440; also Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, vol. 1.; E. Friedberg, Corpus juris canonici (Leipzig, 1879—1881).

Source: the 1911 Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica

[Griff]

Tw, I'd say we just have two competing views of humanity (as if we didn't know that already). The Church's main problem, in my view, is simply failing to realize how fundementally damaged pedophiles are, its difficult for people in the redemption business to realize some things can't be fixed. Now they need to clean house, with its own set of problems. I understand that you don't buy into mystycism, prayer, self control, or individual responsibility but most priests do and can easily focus on studies and meditation to the extent that "horniness" disipates to the point of being irrevelent. Try to consider how different someones life could be if they choose to forego the constant assault of cable tv and on-line porn, instead focusing on intellectual and spiritual pursuits. Man is capable of so much more than you realize.

[Nic Name]

Originally posted by Griff

... most priests do and can easily focus on studies and meditation to the extent that "horniness" disipates to the point of being irrevelent. Try to consider how different someones life could be if they choose to forego the constant assault of cable tv and on-line porn, instead focusing on intellectual and spiritual pursuits.

Griff, you're absolutely right.

Pedophile clergy should spend the rest of their lives as contemplatives ... meditating on what they've done ... on their knees ... in one of those state cloisters specifically designed for criminals.

[Griff]

He heh. The celibacy option won't be available... what goes around comes around.

[Undertoad]

Try to consider how different someones life could be if they choose to forego the constant assault of cable tv and on-line porn, instead focusing on intellectual and spiritual pursuits.

Different? I should think one's life would be far less interesting, that one would be a far less enriched person. And certainly not a wiser or more enlightened person.

Systematically ignore sexuality and entertainment? WHY? These are two extremely basic drives of mankind. It's only our own ancient biases that suggest these things might be distracting or harmful. And there must be thousands of examples of what happens in controlled populations where basic human drives are withheld. It's never good...

The rush is on to try to figure out whether pedophilia is more prevalent amongst priests, or merely just as prevalent as it is amongst the general population. So the question is: in at least this element of life, did following their duties make priests equally wise as the general population... or less wise?

[Griff]

Pedaphiles tend to cluster in the "helping" professions, clergy, teachers, social workers, any job which provides opportunities so if comparisons are to be made they should be like comparisons.

Enlightenment from cable tv... we are so different my brother. Your point is well taken, however, that wisdom comes from experience. There is a fine line between basic drives, which we all have and nurture and base drives which would be ignoring greater human potential in favor of titty bars. Lets also admitt that most American films use nudity not to develop a story line by rather to sell tickets to teenage boys.