The Church’s moral credibility will never be a thing of the past, because it is God who legitimizes the Church’s teachings on morality—recognition from other people might be nice, but it is completely unnecessary and inconsequential to whether or not the Church has moral authority or credibility.Than be prepared for the Church’s moral credibility to be a thing of the past — and worse.
The Church’s moral credibility with Catholics is on solid ground and will, as you said, never be a thing of the past.The Church’s moral credibility will never be a thing of the past, because it is God who legitimizes the Church’s teachings on morality—recognition from other people might be nice, but it is completely unnecessary and inconsequential to whether or not the Church has moral authority or credibility.
Indeed, this current media frenzy and drive to attack the pope seems like an assault from “the gates of hell.” It will not prevail.
First of all, as a lawyer, I am a mandatory reporter of criminal acts or ethics lapses of another lawyer.Not so for other institutions and it takes years for most institutions to actually begin reporting.
You can’t be serious Corki?? I am Catholic. I have been Catholic my whole life. I went to a Catholic college. My kids go to Catholic elementary school. And I am having a crisis of “Catholic” identity over all this. I have not lost faith in my God. I have lost faith in my church!The Church’s moral credibility with Catholics is on solid ground and will, as you said, never be a thing of the past.
The people who are most likely to “lose faith” in the Church and her authority are (and I’m generalizing here) those people who have not put themselves fully under the Church’s authority already. That’s why we see so many non-Catholics, dissidents and the like jumping into this fray.
I know this sounds bad but I really don’t care if non-Catholics and the secular press see the Church as a moral authority. They haven’t really recognized the Church’s authority since 1525. They haven’t recognized her authority on matters of faith, doctrine or morality but now they feign moral outrage and say they can no longer trust the Church.
Give me a break!
I have never been more serious. I love my Church. I will never let Satan (the father of lies) convince me that the sins of a few merit my abandonment of the True Church.You can’t be serious Corki?? I am Catholic. I have been Catholic my whole life. I went to a Catholic college. My kids go to Catholic elementary school. And I am having a crisis of “Catholic” identity over all this. I have not lost faith in my God. I have lost faith in my church!
How can you say the church is/should be the authority of morality when it is the very leadership of said church that perpetrated these atrocities??
It makes me very sad that fellow Catholics like you would rather blame the media for “attacking” the church then to admit that we have a huge problem and that we need to clean house. I don’t think you would be so quick to stand on such high ground if one of those priests had been reassigned to your parish and the bishop decided that you didn’t need to know about his past!
Mea Cupla, I’ve seen other posts like this and it is grossly inaccurate. Homosexuals are being used as a scapegoats rather then dealing with the issue.First of all, we need to recognize this scandal for what it really is - it’s not pedophiles, it’s homosexuals - most of the abuse was against teenaged boys.
Homosexual clergy is what is causing all this - they need to be rooted out and every effort made to keep them out in the future. In Milwaukee, Archbishop Rembert Weakland was a practicing homosexual - he’s the one that let Lawrence Murphy get away with his molestations for years. Homosexuals in authority over other homosexuals - of course there will be depravity.
Pope Benedict has already said that homosexuals should not be admitted to seminaries - this needs to be enforced here in the US and everywhere.
Being politically correct and letting perverts into the clergy has cost the Church millions of dollars and shaken the faith and confidence of many of the faithful and weakened the moral authority of the Church with those outside.
You are correct about pedophiia not being a sexual orientation issue. However, the overwhelming majority of the cases of clergy sexual abuse were not pedophila at all but were ephebophilia. The latter has an orientation. Ephebophilia offenders act as a twisted extension of their sexual orientation. In pedophilia, part of the “attraction” is the fact that the child has not developed sexually. In ephebophilia, part of the “attraction” is the fact that the child has developed sexually. A heterosexual person suffering from ephebophilia will virtually always act out with a member of the opposite sex A homosexually oriented person suffering from ephebophila will virtually always act out with a member of the same sex. The person with ephebophila is unable to develop a mature sexual relationship (hetero or homosexual according to his orientation) so seeks to act out with a more vulnerable, less mature individual but still consistent with his orientation.Mea Cupla, I’ve seen other posts like this and it is grossly inaccurate. Homosexuals are being used as a scapegoats rather then dealing with the issue.
Here is a good article to read. psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/facts_molestation.html.
Pedophilia is a mental illness not a sexual orientation issue and it cannot be argued that they offenders are either homosexual or heterosexual. Many pedophiles function in the heterosexual world as well.
Unfortunately, the abuse and cover-up still continues into 2010 and is not relegated to the distant past. Consider the case of a charity set up to help the poorest of the poor children in Haiti. It was discovered that no only the funds that were donated by faithful Catholics were being misused but the director and founder was using the charitable organization as a cover to prey on the poorest of the poor children in Haiti. This came to light in Feb. 2010.It is easy in 2010 to say what people in the 60s, 70s and early 80s should have done (30-40 years ago). Yet our view of things is far different today, then it was then. Abuse of any kind is never acceptable, not any kind. Yet, in those days the opinion of mental health professionals were very highly considered, and when Priests were said to be healed, then they were said to be healed. Today, after many more years of experience and knowledge, we know much more…not so back then.
So, when abuse was kept quiet and unreported, that was simply the way things were done back then. It was kept quiet for dignity of the victims, and for their families and neighbots–that is just simply the truth and applying today’s social standards to the 60s and 70s simply does not do any good at all.
Yet, the school system has 100 times greater rate of child abuse than the church does. The catholic church in 2009 had a total of 6 confirmed child abuse occurances. 6. The church has taken steps to address this issue, and apparently the steps have been working. The church’s abuse cases are less than 2% of all child abuse cases total. Yet it’s the church that has to do all these incredible drastic changes and dismantle everything for the satisfaction of the outside world? I don’t think so. The last thing the church needs to do is listen to people outside the church on how to handle its business.School teachers fall under this as well. I MUST report any suspected child abuse or neglect immediately. It’s been that way for many teaches since 1974
While this is a very sad situation, I don’t see what it has to do with the situation of clergy sex abuse.Unfortunately, the abuse and cover-up still continues into 2010 and is not relegated to the distant past. Consider the case of a charity set up to help the poorest of the poor children in Haiti. It was discovered that no only the funds that were donated by faithful Catholics were being misused but the director and founder was using the charitable organization as a cover to prey on the poorest of the poor children in Haiti. This came to light in Feb. 2010.
The founder of a boys’ school in Haiti who was charged with sexually abusing 18 boys in the country between 1998 and 2008 had pleaded not guilty to the charges added last week.
nbcconnecticut.com/news/local-beat/Haiti-Boys-School-Founder-Charged-in-More-Sex-Abuse-Allegations-82950162.html
Project Pierre Toussaint must reopen … immediately. Sadly, the Fairfield University community has been sending a disrespectful message to the people of Haiti: “If your children report that they are being sexually abused by one of us, we will abandon you.”
By April 2008, the New England Society of Jesus and Fairfield University officials were distancing themselves from a situation that had all the earmarks of a “scandal.” Although Perlitz wasn’t fired by the Board of Directors until August 2008, Carrier was ordered to resign from the Board four months earlier. Sadly, it is evident that neither Carrier nor Jesuit and Fairfield University officials cared about the well being of the boys in Haiti who were abused and about to be displaced.
fairfieldmirror.com/2010/02/06/day-five-in-haiti/
So where are all these safeguards that Catholics were told would be in place by the USCCB?
It is calunmny to link Fr. Carrier with clergy sex abuse problems.There have been no charges of child sex abuse that I am aware of against Carrier.
As good as they are, I think it is unreasonable for the US Bishops to have control of a lay run school in another country, don’t you? As far as their actual scope, it looks like they removed the person (Perletz) from any ministry access in the US early on in the investigation process. Isn’t that what they are supposed to do?So where are all these safeguards that Catholics were told would be in place by the USCCB?
I do not have the knowledge to speak for other countries. The USA abuse situation has been under great control for quite a many years now. That is where I live…I do not have personal detailed knowledge of how things are in other nations. I do though suspect that things are not 1/100th as bad as the media likes to portray.Unfortunately, the abuse and cover-up still continues into 2010 and is not relegated to the distant past. Consider the case of a charity set up to help the poorest of the poor children in Haiti. It was discovered that no only the funds that were donated by faithful Catholics were being misused but the director and founder was using the charitable organization as a cover to prey on the poorest of the poor children in Haiti. This came to light in Feb. 2010.
The founder of a boys’ school in Haiti who was charged with sexually abusing 18 boys in the country between 1998 and 2008 had pleaded not guilty to the charges added last week.
nbcconnecticut.com/news/local-beat/Haiti-Boys-School-Founder-Charged-in-More-Sex-Abuse-Allegations-82950162.html
Project Pierre Toussaint must reopen … immediately. Sadly, the Fairfield University community has been sending a disrespectful message to the people of Haiti: “If your children report that they are being sexually abused by one of us, we will abandon you.”
By April 2008, the New England Society of Jesus and Fairfield University officials were distancing themselves from a situation that had all the earmarks of a “scandal.” Although Perlitz wasn’t fired by the Board of Directors until August 2008, Carrier was ordered to resign from the Board four months earlier. Sadly, it is evident that neither Carrier nor Jesuit and Fairfield University officials cared about the well being of the boys in Haiti who were abused and about to be displaced.
fairfieldmirror.com/2010/02/06/day-five-in-haiti/
So where are all these safeguards that Catholics were told would be in place by the USCCB?
I wouldn’t count out the fact that schools are much more likely to report it, and what may be reported in a school as suspected abuse or improper conduct wouldn’t even cause many to think twice. — tutoring a student alone in a classroom, for exampleYet, the school system has 100 times greater rate of child abuse than the church does. The catholic church in 2009 had a total of 6 confirmed child abuse occurances. 6. The church has taken steps to address this issue, and apparently the steps have been working. The church’s abuse cases are less than 2% of all child abuse cases total. Yet it’s the church that has to do all these incredible drastic changes and dismantle everything for the satisfaction of the outside world? I don’t think so. The last thing the church needs to do is listen to people outside the church on how to handle its business.
The changes the church has made to address these issues are working. Yet the media keeps dragging stuff up from the past and blaming it on the church today. If anything, what the church has done to curb child abuse works better than all of the outside world’s methods.
Part of the problem is that it was not seen as a psycho-sexual deviancy, but as a mere sinfulness. Sins are forgiven. Sinfulness can be cured.I think you neglect to understand that the on-going scandal is because the Church was protective of PR instead of children and young adults. The abuse happened.
It continued to occur and it was covered up by clerics more interested in appearances than protecting the victims. So, right now I think the Church should not respond at all to attacks, even false ones.
This whole scandal could have been contained long ago.
I have not read all posts in this thread by far and my apologies for this, but the above struck me as a good post. Misguided good intentions by heirarchy in covering up abuse and trying to protect victims and family could be a reason, but never an excuse. I would like to see it brought into Canon Law that where a crime is committed by priest or heirarchy, Church leadership, that it must be reported to the secular authority i.e the police. A crime has been committed and membership of a heirarchical or leadership position in The Church cannot be a reason that the criminal should not face secular law authorities as a consequence of their breaking of the law and committing a criminal act.I’m not attacking the church and I was in no way trying to imply that the greater crime is the cover up and not the abuse. I was simply pointing out that those who chose not to report it or took extra steps to insure that the abuse remained private should have to answer for they’ve done as well. Am I saying that they are just as bad as the pedophile priests, no… Yet many defenders of the church are giving reasons as to why such things were never reported, or why priests were moved around within the church and not simply thrown out and handed over to law enforcement and they expect people to accept those reasons as legitimate and understanding answers.
Is there ever a good reason why one should not report the sexual abuse of a child??? And is there a good reason why said abuser is still allowed to remain in his position and still allowed contact with children??? I think people are getting upset because they don’t like to hear well intentioned catholic clergy defend the nondefendable. When you try to explain away how a pedophile priest slipped through the cracks based on a technicality or how they “thought” simply moving that priest from one parish to another would fix the problem, is a very hurtful slap in the face.
Exactly right…there are valid and understandable reasons for why the abuse happened and why the Priests were moved. However, those reasons are not excuses, they are simply reasons that the Church must understand so that it does allow these horrible acts to be repeated…ever.I have not read all posts in this thread by far and my apologies for this, but the above struck me as a good post. Misguided good intentions by heirarchy in covering up abuse and trying to protect victims and family could be a reason, but never an excuse. I would like to see it brought into Canon Law that where a crime is committed by priest or heirarchy, Church leadership, that it must be reported to the secular authority i.e the police. A crime has been committed and membership of a heirarchical or leadership position in The Church cannot be a reason that the criminal should not face secular law authorities as a consequence of their breaking of the law and committing a criminal act.
I do fear that if The Church does not enforce reporting of any criminal and criminal act to secular authority that more coverups of criminal offences of some kind may be enacted and the reason given is misguided good intentions. This has the potential to only raise further scandal in The Church at some future point and display very real weaknesses unaddressed in The Church.
Church leadership of all kinds needs to know that they will not be protected by The Church for any reason at all where criminal acts are committed. Perhaps Church heirarchy in administering The Church needs to know too that The Church may possibly be liable for criminal offences by leadership.
The Church needs to exercise great caution over whom she puts into leadership positions of any kind - great caution indeed. They are consigned to leadership of souls of The People of Christ who trust and esteem them as Church leadership and are called to do so. The Church in our heirarchy is accountable and responsible - delegating this accountability and responsibility on Her authority to others without relenquishing that accountability and responsibility of Her own one iota to my mind.
TS