American Cardinal Accused of Sexually Abusing Minor Is Removed From Ministry

[FollowChrist34]

Yes, surely it would act as a deterrent, right, to other potential offenders if you remove people who should not be in these positions. Ideally the Church is discouraging this sort of thing, not abetting it. It’s awkward if you are trying to claim any sort of moral superiority over the pagan culture…and the pagan culture actually has its act just as together or more in terms of identifying/punishing sex offenders. I think there is a lot (unsavory) behind closed doors in the Church unfortunately along these lines - just too many anecdotes from reliable inside sources for too many years. Not to mention the public scandals and legal settlements. Not a well kept secret. People are just too embarrassed/uncomfortable to deal with it. It’s understandable I guess. Nobody likes bad press.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

It’s awkward if you are trying to claim any sort of moral superiority over the pagan culture…and the pagan culture actually has its act just as together or more in terms of identifying/punishing sex offenders.

Sex offenders, and sinners in general, come from all cultures and groups.
Rational Catholics today don’t claim “moral superiority” over most other religions in the sense of saying Catholics are necessarily more “moral”, assuming that the other religion is reasonably founded in ethics as most of them are today - in other words they aren’t doing human sacrifice or orgies.
It’s possible Catholics might have made such claims in the past but I think in the post Vatican II ecumenical environment, not so much today.

We do claim that we have the truth of Jesus Christ which is better/ more correct than pagan religion. That is not the same as saying every Catholic is morally superior to every pagan.

In the end, we are mainly concerned about sex offenders because vulnerable children and adults are being harmed and the sex offender is committing sin, bringing corruption into the Church, harming the Church, and generally acting badly.
Not because we want to portray ourselves as “morally superior” to others. To hold ourselves out like that would be committing a sin of pride in my book.
It would also be denying the reality that all people sin, some people sin badly, and you will always have some sinners in high places.

 

[Joe_5859]

Could it be that journalists didn’t care because it was not pedophilia?

I really think the most reasonable explanation is that most reputable journalists are not inclined to publish something they cannot back up with evidence. Running a story like this that they cannot substantiate would open them up to a lot of legal troubles. I doubt they were doing it out of some sense of giving nudges and winks to someone they felt was on their side with regards to homosexuality.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

One other thing to keep in mind is that a settlement under US law is not an admission of guilt in most cases. People interpret it that way because they figure if you are not guilty, why settle? But for businesses, large organizations, celebrities etc it can be less costly and less risky to just settle a case and be done with it, rather than go through a long, expensive, public court proceeding even if they win in the end. Courts love it when people settle as it reduces their work load, so they encourage settlements. Lawyers will also often advise or try to arrange a settlement because it’s a lot cheaper or better in some way for their client.

Settlements are also often confidential. A news outlet may or may not be able to publish details of them.

So the fact that there were two settled suits might suggest to me that a person was maybe taking some risks in who he associated with. It doesn’t tell me much about what actually transpired between the two people involved.