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| -Lurid Crime Tales- | |
| The Roots of the Catholic Church Sex Scandal | |
| 2010-04-13 | |
In June 2002 the full body of Catholic bishops of the United States in their General Meeting in Dallas approved the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. The Charter created a National Review Board, which was assigned responsibility to commission a descriptive study, with the full cooperation of the dioceses/eparchies, of the nature and scope of the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy. The National Review Board engaged the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York to conduct research, summarize the collected data and issue a summary report to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops of its findings. This report by the John Jay College is authorized for publication by the undersigned. | |
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| #5 Recall that a vast majority of the pedophile acts in the study occurred between 1960 and 1990, with the bulk of them and the cover-up work in the 70's and 80's. That generation' time has flown, and many are already judged, and most all of the rest will stand for judgment within the next decade. The best thing I can say about these wrong headed bishops is that many of them are dead, and within 10 years almost all of them will be. This is not new to the Catholic Church. The floor of hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. -- Saint Athanasius, the first recognized Doctor of the Church, approx 353 AD |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-04-13 23:04 |
| #4 The Catholic Church has set the example, and it has worked. It was not painless, and a lot of old wounds were re-opened, and recompense paid. But, like the Reformation, the Catholic Church is better off for the refining fire that helped burn this sin out. Talk about the Church all you want: there were 6 documented cases last year in the US Church. How many thousands were there in Government Schools? Worry more about the beam in your eye than the mote elsewhere... Nether is good, but we now need to turn our attention to the most broken institution that is harming our children: Public Schools. Lets see, when will the Government (public) Schools self-investigate by inviting an unbiased third party to examine them in deatail, openly, and make recommendations as to how to find, stop and prevent abuse? Time for the major remaining PUBLIC sources of pedophile acts to step up for their cure. If the Unions and bureaucrats will let them. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2010-04-13 22:56 |
| #3 I posted before I read essay #2 to the end. This drove him from the priesthood. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-04-13 22:53 |
| #2 Good link, Glenmore. I really like these separate paragraphs from the second essay: Many priests (including myself) simply couldn't imagine that such evil could exist within our ranks. How could any priest, knowing the words of our Lord in Matthew 18:6, dare to conduct himself in such a manner? “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” Did they care so little for their immortal soul that even so blunt a warning from Christ Himself failed to give them pause? There were (and are) some good bishops who openly addressed the issue, provided clear guidance to their priests, and stood up for the truth; but the majority of the hierarchy seemed to go into defensive mode, circling the wagons to defend the institution of the Church (and, perhaps more to the point, their own positions of authority). This seemed to me to be utterly incomprehensible, for three reasons. First, the church belongs to Christ. He will do any defending that is necessary. (Tragically, many organization men in the Church probably believe more in the institution than they do in Christ. That's one of the saddest things I've ever had to say in my life . . . but I think it's the only possible explanation for their focus on protecting and defending the institution, rather than the victims of this scandal.) Second, the ammunition being used by critics to attack the Church had been provided by the bishops themselves, through their evasion of their responsibilities in failing to deal with the crisis swiftly and decisively in its earliest stages. Had they done so, it would never have developed to the point that it did. Thirdly, how can one possibly defend the indefensible? If the stories we were hearing were true – bishops deliberately concealing abuses, transferring offenders to new locations where they could put others at risk, and so on – there appeared to be no possible justification or defense for them. The perpetrators, and the institution of the Church, deserved the public pillorying they were receiving. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-04-13 21:41 |
| #1 If this is a topic of interest to you, go read the essays on http://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/ He (former priest Peter) has posted the first two of four, and they are very worthwhile. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2010-04-13 20:14 |