Sweeping report on Catholic Church sex abuse in PA

[Yonny Costopoulis]

Hell lasts a long time.

I think they must have asked for forgiveness and so will be in heaven.

 

[Yarddog]

Pedophile predators are like any other predator they are going to go where there is the easiest available prey. If the RCC would allow priests to be men who wish to marry and have children of their own they wouldn't be so vulnerable to the pedophile predator.

Sadly, that wouldn't help. There is no correlation between celibacy and pedophilia.

One of my extended family member thought she wanted to be a nun. She was one of the oldest girls in a family of 14 children. While she was away at the convent she missed helping take care of her younger siblings. Before she took her vows she realize that she really wanted to have children of her own and left the convent. She was always faithful to the Church and raised her kids to be good Catholics.
My point is that if good women don't become nuns because they want to have a family, surely there are many good Catholic men who don't enter the priesthood for the same reason. The Church could be more discerning in who they choose to service.

Your kin made the right decision for her and was probably guided by the Holy Spirit. Women should only become Nuns if they have been called to do so by God. That is the reason the Church stresses that men and women who wish to enter become and priest or nun should examine themselves deeply before taking their vows.

There are many ways that men and women can serve God in the Church and still find the fulfillment of having a family.

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...spond-to-sexual-abuse-grand-jury-report-31379

“While this is an uncomfortable and unsettling topic, we must speak openly and frankly about it,” said Bambera.

This is why I started the thread, though uncomfortable and unsettling, cause for anger and sadness, it is important to speak openly about it regardless of the branch of Christendom.

 

[Hank77]

Sadly, that wouldn't help. There is no correlation between celibacy and pedophilia.

I agree there is no correlation, that's a fact.

My point is that if good women don't become nuns because they want to have a family, surely there are many good Catholic men who don't enter the priesthood for the same reason. The Church could be more discerning in who they choose to service.

Rewording my point.....if there were more good men available to enter the priesthood the Church would have a larger pool to choose from and pedophiles wouldn't be so confident of being accepted. And there wouldn't be so many of them to cover for each other.
We know that there have been good men who have left the priesthood in order to marry. Some have even left the RCC to become priest/pastor in other denominations.

Your kin made the right decision for her and was probably guided by the Holy Spirit. Women should only become Nuns if they have been called to do so by God. That is the reason the Church stresses that men and women who wish to enter become and priest or nun should examine themselves deeply before taking their vows.

There are many ways that men and women can serve God in the Church and still find the fulfillment of having a family.

The family unit of mom, dad, and children is a very special type of family relationship.

 

[Yarddog]

I agree there is no correlation, that's a fact.

My point is that if good women don't become nuns because they want to have a family, surely there are many good Catholic men who don't enter the priesthood for the same reason. The Church could be more discerning in who they choose to service.

Many married men serve their Church greatly as Deacons. We have two and each are extremely blessed and are wonderful at delivering the Gospel to the lambs.

Rewording my point.....if there were more good men available to enter the priesthood the Church would have a larger pool to choose from and pedophiles wouldn't be so confident of being accepted. And there wouldn't be so many of them to cover for each other.

Maybe, maybe not. The Church needs to do a better job at psychiatric examinations prior to allowing anyone to serve as priests, deacons, nuns, teachers, etc... to ensure that no child of God is damaged.

We know that there have been good men who have left the priesthood in order to marry. Some have even left the RCC to become priest/pastor in other denominations.

Yes, I know a few.

The family unit of mom, dad, and children is a very special type of family relationship.

Agreed.

 

[chevyontheriver]

Just to be clear I'm not referring to the confessional but top the cannon law.

It's 'canon' and not 'cannon'. An easy mistake to make, And as a legal system it is remarkably short, contained in one moderate sized highly available book. But still often misunderstood.

What you refer to is the document 'Crimen sollicitationis' and the part you think forbids reporting of sex abuse actually forbids use of any information from a confession outside of the trial of the priest in order to protect the person who has confessed. This applies only in the particular situation of solicitation for sex by a priest inside of the confessional.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I think they must have asked for forgiveness and so will be in heaven.

If they did, then fine. God is merciful even to those who we might think should rot in hell.

 

[mama2one]

The covering up has got to stop, for the sake of faithful Catholics, for the sake of their families, and most importantly for the sake of the children.

what I don't understand is the covering up

grew up Catholic but did not learn of all this until married/adult

we are raising our child Christian, not RC
know that I could not raise my child (in good conscience) in the RC faith

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

what I don't understand is the covering up

grew up Catholic but did not learn of all this until married/adult

we are raising our child Christian, not RC
know that I could not raise my child (in good conscience) in the RC faith

This is why I say things need to change, why I am saddened for the faithful Catholics, I understand it's not just a problem for Catholics, and it's not something any Christian should ignore, it is horrible news for all of Christianity and only fuels hatred for all Christians. How do people even recover from such things? I cannot imagine the scope of the damage that it does to families, how these grievous sins harden hearts and cause many to stumble and worse. I have relatives who are Catholics with kids, and I feel for them and wonder how they deal with the knowledge of these reports.

 

[chevyontheriver]

what I don't understand is the covering up

grew up Catholic but did not learn of all this until married/adult

we are raising our child Christian, not RC
know that I could not raise my child (in good conscience) in the RC faith

Covering up occurs all over, in churches and in secular society. It happens in your church too most likely. The two problems with Catholic cover-ups are 1.) Catholic dioceses actually keep the incriminating records and 2.) lawyers can make lots of money suing the Catholic Church. If your church is smart enough not to keep records of abuse and is poor enough that lawyers will not be able to get rich suing it, you will probably never learn of a cover-up or of the initial scandal that prompted the cover-up.

Insurance claim information indicates that this is not a Catholic problem but a societal problem. Cash payouts for abuse by insurance companies are steep for Protestant churches. And public schools are legally immune from being sued, so there is no financial incentive for lawyers to bother there. Lawyers follow the money.

Problem is we are a society awash in the results of the sexual revolution. And that has consequences for our children. A lot of it is hushed up because it is so sordid. But it happens. I will be happy for you if it never happens to you. But don't be all shocked if it does. It is a big deal in the Catholic Church because we are supposed to have a working accountability system with our bishops that has now been shown to be broken in many cases. What about all the places outside the Catholic Church which do not even have accountability systems? They do not appear to have problems because you cannot even track them.

 

[chevyontheriver]

This is why I say things need to change, why I am saddened for the faithful Catholics, I understand it's not just a problem for Catholics, and it's not something any Christian should ignore, it is horrible news for all of Christianity and only fuels hatred for all Christians. How do people even recover from such things? I cannot imagine the scope of the damage that it does to families, how these grievous sins harden hearts and cause many to stumble and worse. I have relatives who are Catholics with kids, and I feel for them and wonder how they deal with the knowledge of these reports.

We're struggling. And angry. Unless we are so far managing to be blissfully unaware. This will be huge. The McCarrick thing was a nuclear bomb. This is another one. And then there was the nuclear bomb that hit in the diocese of Lincoln NE. Think about how upended the USA would be if just one nuclear bomb went off in any substantial city. It really feels like what we could guess that would be like. We want to nuke our bishops and lynch our priests in revenge, even though in more rational moments we can see that most of them are probably not involved in this at all.

 

[Grumpmeister Supreme!]

It's 'canon' and not 'cannon'. An easy mistake to make, And as a legal system it is remarkably short, contained in one moderate sized highly available book. But still often misunderstood.

What you refer to is the document 'Crimen sollicitationis' and the part you think forbids reporting of sex abuse actually forbids use of any information from a confession outside of the trial of the priest in order to protect the person who has confessed. This applies only in the particular situation of solicitation for sex by a priest inside of the confessional.

The Church official didn't mention the confessional or the document you refer to. Had he done so I would have remembered it. Long story short, what he did say was that Church officials, be they priests or whatever position they hold in the RC Church, are not answerable to secular authorities whatever the reason. They acknowledge no law but Canon Law.

 

[chevyontheriver]

The Church official didn't mention the confessional or the document you refer to. Had he done so I would have remembered it. Long story short, what he did say was that Church officials, be they priests or whatever position they hold in the RC Church, are not answerable to secular authorities whatever the reason. They acknowledge no law but Canon Law.

You can have your opinion if you really want to. But you have misrepresented 'Crimen sollicitationis', because undoubtedly it's how you heard it from people who want to put the worst possible spin on it. But it'a about the one situation of how to gather evidence on a priest who solicits for sex in the confessional. The person who confesses is protected. That's about it. Every American Catholic is subject to canon law and American civil law.

 

[Grumpmeister Supreme!]

You can have your opinion if you really want to. But you have misrepresented 'Crimen sollicitationis', because undoubtedly it's how you heard it from people who want to put the worst possible spin on it.

It's not my "opinion". I'm merely repeating what the Catholic official said. Nothing more, nothing less. I thought I made myself very clear on that point. To insist otherwise is nothing more than you being disingenuous.

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

Covering up occurs all over, in churches and in secular society. It happens in your church too most likely. The two problems with Catholic cover-ups are 1.) Catholic dioceses actually keep the incriminating records and 2.) lawyers can make lots of money suing the Catholic Church. If your church is smart enough not to keep records of abuse and is poor enough that lawyers will not be able to get rich suing it, you will probably never learn of a cover-up or of the initial scandal that prompted the cover-up.

Insurance claim information indicates that this is not a Catholic problem but a societal problem. Cash payouts for abuse by insurance companies are steep for Protestant churches. And public schools are legally immune from being sued, so there is no financial incentive for lawyers to bother there. Lawyers follow the money.

Problem is we are a society awash in the results of the sexual revolution. And that has consequences for our children. A lot of it is hushed up because it is so sordid. But it happens. I will be happy for you if it never happens to you. But don't be all shocked if it does. It is a big deal in the Catholic Church because we are supposed to have a working accountability system with our bishops that has now been shown to be broken in many cases. What about all the places outside the Catholic Church which do not even have accountability systems? They do not appear to have problems because you cannot even track them.

But see, it is different in an independent church that is outside the RCC system. They have no separate system of law like the canon law and separate authorities. If something like this is uncovered, it is reported to the authorities immediately (or should be). Conversely, the RCC just covered it up, and moved the priests around to new crops of kids for decades, leading to thousands of victims.

This makes me really angry.

 

[chevyontheriver]

But see, it is different in an independent church that is outside the RCC system. They have no separate system of law like the canon law and separate authorities. If something like this is uncovered, it is reported to the authorities immediately (or should be). Conversely, the RCC just covered it up, and moved the priests around to new crops of kids for decades, leading to thousands of victims.

This makes me really angry.

It makes me really angry too. But please don't pretend that everything is wonderful outside the bounds of the Catholic Church. For one thing, the record keeping of past abuse may simply not be there to document it and document a cover-up.

 

[chevyontheriver]

It's not my "opinion". I'm merely repeating what the Catholic official said. Nothing more, nothing less. I thought I made myself very clear on that point. To insist otherwise is nothing more than you being disingenuous.

Do you know the name of this Catholic official?

 

[RestoreTheJoy]

It makes me really angry too. But please don't pretend that everything is wonderful outside the bounds of the Catholic Church. For one thing, the record keeping of past abuse may simply not be there to document it and document a cover-up.

I didn't say it was all wonderful outside. Simply that the bureaucratic layers are missing that shield this information from getting to the public in the same way. Not to mention all the sick and twisted use of God by these abusers, who are reported to frequently tell their victims that God wants them to do this, that it's ok, and to keep quiet because others "wouldn't understand".

Yeah, no kidding.

Not buying that no one kept records though. Many have surfaced in the various lawsuits, indicating such troubles and that priests were being moved around for vague reasons, correlating to the accusations at the time. I researched this quite a bit a decade ago or so.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I didn't say it was all wonderful outside.

Oh good. Because it seemed possible that was what you may have been thinking.

Simply that the bureaucratic layers are missing that shield this information from getting to the public in the same way.

In my little town the Presbyterians were quite good at pretending that one of their ministers just vanished. And the Lutherans, well the police were nice to them and the suicide didn't seem to warrant too much investigation. I suppose there may have been some bureaucracy involved, but it doesn't take much to stonewall a proper investigation. One does not need a bureaucracy to hide things. They may even be more easy to hide without the bureaucracy.

Not to mention all the sick and twisted use of God by these abusers, who are reported to frequently tell their victims that God wants them to do this, that it's ok, and to keep quiet because others "wouldn't understand".

Yup. We have those sickos. All sorts of snakes exist out there and we have most every kind. Goes back to Judas. It's sick, but it's not new. Depravity.

Not buying that no one kept records though. Many have surfaced in the various lawsuits, indicating such troubles and that priests were being moved around for vague reasons, correlating to the accusations at the time. I researched this quite a bit a decade ago or so.

My point was that Catholic dioceses DO happen to keep lots of records. And this is part of what has hung them as those records have been made public. The local non-denominational church, would they even keep a record of something as terrible? That was my point. If there are no records, who is to know? Did it ever happen? With Catholics we know it happened because the records show it. How would you know what happened 25 or 50 years ago in your congregation? How would you even find out?

 

[Grumpmeister Supreme!]

Do you know the name of this Catholic official?

No. I don't remember since it was quite some time ago.