More on the Penn priest scandal

... or not start over. A world without religion (or at least Catholicism) would be a world with a little less self-righteousness, greed, and prejudice in it.

Ah, such wishful thinking.

I agree Cass, absolutely, many institutions are guilty of that kind of thing. I just think the Catholic Church has been the worst of them. But I also think (and I know this could be its own thread) many religions inherently preach and promote prejudice and bigotry. Me no likey.

As people here might understand, this is causing me a lot of pain and cognitive dissonance, as it has for years. These latest revelations, well, the only way forward I can see is a huge purge and a lot of jail time, and a serious look at allowing priests to marry. Heck, they should have allowed already married men to become priests YEARS ago. I do think there's a difference between an already married man becoming a priest, and a priest dating and courting and finding a wife. But really, this is unabashed, true evil.

Yes it was perpetrated by a small percentage of clergy in looking at the overall numbers. And the truths of the teachings of the Church, and the good it does, still matter to the faithful and those it helps. So no, of course I don't want to obliterate the entire Catholic universal church. After all, Mark, what tenets of the Catholic faith say this is ok or promotes this? Quite the opposite, as you well know. But this purge must be swift and angry and uncompromising and broad and about a million times more dramatic than Jesus' cleansing of the temple, while at the same time taking other concrete steps (like what Cass talked about) to prevent it ever happening again.

Can't say more right now, gotta run.

It's true that many other institutions/orgs cover up bad stuff or otherwise protect members when they do bad stuff.

But few (none?) of these others have existed for as long as the Catholic Church. Few have the resources of the Catholic Church. And few have a leadership who pretends to exercise moral authority over the world, granted exclusively to it by God.

The new Pope has gotten a lot of love for a lot of the things he's said and done, with regard to things going on in the world, but imo all of that praise is misplaced since the Catholic Church has been covering up what amounts to systemic problems of child abuse by its priesthood for decades, if not centuries.

Faith and dogma need to be separated from this issue, in my view. The Faithful aren't responsible for the transgressions of the priesthood and indeed, have themselves been used repeatedly by the priesthood. I'm sure most priests are more or less fine people, but right now they're connected to a grotesque (imo) bureaucracy that is culpable at every level, whose crimes have only been touched on, when it comes to this kind of abuse.

Again, this report is about ONE STATE in JUST THE USA in a limited period of time and only covers reported transgressions. Many historians of crime argue that the dark figure for a given crime is as much as five times the reported figure. Maybe that's too high of an estimate, but the reported numbers are far lower than the actual numbers, that much is certain I think.

I'm talking big numbers here and I think it's time that people start to realize just how big. "It's only a small number of priests" doesn't cut it anymore, imo. The numbers are saying that's bs. Remember, the US isn't even a Catholic nation. Imagine what these numbers might be in those nations that are, where the political and civil authorities are all Catholic, themselves, and beholden to the Church.

When I said it’s only a small percentage, I did not mean it’s a small number or that the consequences to the victims are small. I only meant that the greater percentage of priests are good men trying to do God’s work and are serving their people well. That’s one reason I do not think the answer here is to destroy the entire Church and start over.

Just to clarify.


IMO, ONE episode of abuse by a priest is a large number.

Allowing priests to marry might be a smart move, but I dunno how much that would really strike at the core issue here (the abusiveness). After all, people who are married and people who abuse children aren't mutually exclusive categories. What I would like to see first and foremost is the Church stop protecting people they know are guilty of this stuff. Such clergymen shouldn't be moved around from parish to parish, where new victims are always available. And people who have been involved in making those decisions to sweep things under the rug need to be dealt with, as well. Do that first, then re-thinking celibacy might be an option. 

(Or maybe they can all just become become Buddhist monks. They seem to have a better track record w/ celibacy, for whatever reasons.) 

If it were up to me, I would most certainly hold the church accountable for the cover-ups and I would do it to the fullest extent possible. Here's why:

My middle daughter was sexually molested by an old man who was beloved by our entire community. When she finally plucked up the courage to tell me, we reported it to the police and he was arrested. Nobody believed it. Our house was tagged, egged, dog-poohed every day for months. We had vicious anonymous calls until we changed our number and my daughters could not play outside, even in our backyard. The old man pleaded not-guilty, of course, so my daughter was set to testify against him in court. (No camera in those days.) Halfway through the trial, faced with the overwhelming evidence against him, the old bastard changed his plea to guilty and my daughter did not have to testify. There was absolute silence from the community. No apologies. Nothing. My point here is this: Firstly, priests are held in such high esteem that I think no one wants to believe that they could do wrong. Secondly, pedophiles are such goddamn good actors they'd fool God into believing they're innocent. So I can understand if one or two complaints against priests were denied. But so many complaints? For so long? Inexcusable!

Pedophile are drawn to jobs (not vocations, in this instance) where they can have uncontrolled access to children. This has been known for many decades. I don't believe the Catholic church was not fully aware of it. Firstly, why are they not doing a better job of screening candidates for the priesthood? (Okay, I know this isn't easy, but still.) Secondly, what happens now? Do they take these sick bastards and ship them off to places like Africa, where the population is still relatively naive? When will the church see this as an egregious crime and not merely a sin?