11,000 Clergy Abuse Claims Filed

[Sin of Man]

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From: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040216/ap_on_re_us/church_abuse_survey_1



No other organization can abuse 11,000 children, and not be closed down.






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[feral]

I saw something about this on this afternoons "Headline News". It's pretty hard to even grasp that many young people being abused by so many priests honestly and I don't know what should be done. I don't feel that Catholicism encourages abuse in any way or that mainstream Catholics approve of these actions. However I do fault the individuals who committed the crimes and the bishops and officials that allowed these known child molesters to be moved to different churches. I don't think the Catholic church should be "shut down" but drastic steps do need to be taken in order to ensure this does not happen again. One huge problem was the permissive attitude of the diocese which transferred accused priests to different posts instead of removing them altogether. The church needs to implement some sort of system that ensures guilty priests are dealt with properly, not passed along to avoid scandal.

 

[praying]

In all fairness this was a survey and the numbers could be inflated, but even if you cut them in half it is still WOW.

I heard on CNN this evening that 143 priests had been accused of exually abusing 3,000 some odd children, now that is atrocious.

 

[SFMichael]

Now -- let's all remember that an accusation is not a conviction and that it has certainly become vogue to accuse the Catholic Church of abuses of this nature. Let's wait and see how many ACTUAL abuses occured before we start condemning whole swaths of our fellowship.

Michael

 

[Sin of Man]

Now -- let's all remember that an accusation is not a conviction and that it has certainly become vogue to accuse the Catholic Church of abuses of this nature. Let's wait and see how many ACTUAL abuses occured before we start condemning whole swaths of our fellowship.

Michael

Michael, this study was commissioned by bishops in the church.

Also from the report:

"Victim advocates say the survey ultimately will underestimate the number of cases because the report is based on self-reporting by bishops."

 

[Polycarp1]

Not to play the Post Police, but...

There appears to be a problem with copying or lengthy quotes from AP copyright stories (see the sticky thread) -- Sin of Man and mhatten, you may want to edit the OP and the quote of it so that Erwin doesn't get legal trouble from the AP copyright-enforcement folks.

There's a thread about this in OBOB, the Catholic forum down in the Congregation area, too.

Apparently about 7,000 of the 11,000 claims were found to be substantiated, 1,000 were unsubstantiated, and about 3,000 involved priests who have died in the interim and so cannot be proven out one way or the other.

 

[Sin of Man]

Thanks Polycarp, I don't usually post in the news forum. Have removed the paste, but left the link.

 

[DaveSZ]

I wish we could have regime change in the Catholic Church leadership for allowing this to happen.

I mean the disgust at those who should be helping children, yet willfully covered this abuse up is almost too much to bear for me and most of my family members.

 

[Dale]

*
To try to find a Biblican perspective on this...
When Eli was High Priest at the Tabernacle, we are told that he personally was an upright man, but that his two sons, also Aaronic priests, wre not. The sons, Hophni and Phinehas, committed acts of sexual immorality, besides being greedy.

*
In I Samuel 2: 30-34 a prophet delivers God's judgment to Eli:
"Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: 'I promised that your house and your father's house would minister before me forever.' But now the Lord declares:'Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father's hosue, so that there will not be an old man in your family line and you will see distress in my dwelling. Although good will be done to Israel, in your family line there will never be an old man. Every one of your that I do not cut off from my altar will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and to grieve your heart, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life."

*
The passage goes on to say that descendants of Eli will be rejected as priests and that they will go hungry and beg for food.
*
One can easily see a similarity between Eli's situation and that of the Pope and the Bishops of the RC Church. God makes it clear that whole hierarchies of priests can be toppled from their position for bad behavior. This includes sexual immorality but is not limited to it.
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The Bible also makes it clear that the highest priest is always responsible for restraining lesser priests from immoral acts.
*

 

[the_malevolent_milk_man]

I wonder... of all those cases reported... how many went unreported? One would think that for all the claims that are unsubstantiated there would be an unreported case to take it's place, +/- a certain percent.

Still, even the numbers polycarp gave are pretty disturbing. That's like my entire hometown being molested 5 times over.