Catholic Church Sex Scandal

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Paul1998

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I just watched “The Keepers”, a documentary series on Netflix where a priest, Joseph Maskell abused young highschool girls, leaving them with strong PTSD and other mental issues. The priest is also suspected of killing a nun in 1969, or at least be involved in this horrific crime. The archdiocese protected that man and some say they hide the truth from the press and the police.

After i saw this shocking seven-episode documentary I’m shocked and sad, and i lost a major part of my faith in the church. Can someone help me? And do you think the priest celibacy is a problem?
 
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Joseph Maskell was an imperfect human, like many other priests we have since found out.
But they are not the Church. You should not allow them to change your view of the truth of Catholicism. They are just people in time. What they have done wrong, does not change anything about The Eucharist which is, for Catholics, something you cannot receive anywhere else and have it be what it is: Jesus, body, blood, soul and divinity.
 
Don’t you think priest celibacy is the problem?
 
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Sometimes it can because priests lack the sexual stimulation, and they try to find it in this kind of activities
 
My faith is based on the divine promises given by God, not on a scandal, that, let’s be honest, is nothing new. The Church has had scandal for 2000 years. There’s a Baptist church near where I live, that had an abuse scandal of its own, now, does that mean I think Baptists are like that one person? No, because it’s unfair to judge an entire organisation because of the actions of a few.
 
She was murderd because she found out about the abuses, not because he enjoyed killing because of lacking sexual stimulation.
 
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I was responding to your premise that it is celibacy that causes pedophilia and sexual abuse.

I saw the series. Maskell was sadistic, manipulative and evil. Pure and simple. He would have been those things most likely even if he were not a priest. So that blows your connection to celibacy being the cause.
 
Well that’s a good argument and a good reminder that our church isn’t the only one involved in scandals, like some other Christians like to think…
 
Their head boss, their God once said–
It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
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So, if they don’t take that seriously---- what kind of a representative example are they of the faith they pretend to proclaim? If they’re doing exactly the opposite of the sort of life they’re supposed to live and the example they’re supposed to provide?

Likewise, if there’s a group of bureaucrats who choose to cover up for those sorts of shenanigans— I don’t want to be in their shoes at their judgment, either. I have enough troubles of my own, but for someone like that to fail so spectacularly in the protection of the souls entrusted to their care— ouch.

A predator is often going to gravitate towards positions of respect and authority to help cloak his activities. Whether it’s a respected religious position, like a priest or a minister, or whether it’s a respected secular position, like a teacher or a councilmember or a troop leader, they’re going to hide themselves among a hundred other people who are perfectly nice and normal and honest and true…

There’s not a whole lot of merit in being able to avoid sins that don’t appeal to you. 🙂 So I might say, “Well, at least I’ve never done X----!” but at the same time, I struggle with avoiding Y and Z. God isn’t going to praise me for not succumbing to X, but he is going to hold me to account for Y and Z.

But at the end, we each get measured with our own measure.
 
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Honestly? Since I had learned 10 years before any of these scandals came out that mothers and grandmothers protected family members and even family friends who had sexually abused their children, it didn’t surprise me.

People hide shameful things that no one will talk about. I wish bishops were different, but they thought that protecting the faithful from knowing that even a priest could do something like this was more important than protecting children. They wanted to believe these were things that were isolated incidents. Denial is a strong emotion in people, I guess.

Knowing what we know now, we ought to be suspicious any time there is an organization without protocols in place that prevent this kind of crime that claims they never have this kind of crime. It is far more likely that they are looking the other way.
 
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If other churches have their abuse scandals, supposedly as many as Catholics, why do we rarely hear about them?
 
Hope1960 said:
If other churches have their abuse scandals, supposedly as many as Catholics, why do we rarely hear about them?
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Probably for the same reason that the Catholic Church rarely had scandals 20 years ago.

If you don’t have evidence telling you what happens to a sexual predator who was caught trying to offend, the chances are that sexual predators are operating without getting caught or without getting punished.
 
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Do you mean that these other churches are sweeping it under the rug?
 
Hope1960 said:
Do you mean that these other churches are sweeping it under the rug?
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No, I mean that they may not be looking for abuses going on under their noses and don’t have a situation where victims feel they can come forward. (Not that there aren’t cases being publicized, too.)

In retrospect, it appears that most victims of the abuse in the Catholic Church never came forward. They didn’t think they’d be believed or they believed lies from their abuser that they, the victim, would be blamed. Some tried to tell, and their experience was minimized or accounted as a misunderstanding.

Look at the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal. This is going on in youth sports, too, and not just elite gymnastics, be sure of that.
 
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