How has the Pennsylvania scandal affected you personally?

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Actions speak louder than words. I’ll gratefully receive the Eucharist, but I’ll pass on the kool aid.
 
Then you’re basically just saying, you won’t be satisfied no matter what the Church or anybody says or does. Which is your prerogative, but don’t be saying “where is the outpouring of sympathy” if you reject it when it’s offered.
 
It hasn’t affected me personally. I am praying for the victims and perpetrators and all priests and religious especially as they will often take the negative impact more heartily that all of us. Especially those in the US as it is closer to home. Here we pray for them in mass as we do for any other massive tragedy occurring in the world. I haven’t had to defend my faith anywhere though or been asked about it in relation to the abuses, but then that may be more because I am not often out.

I always pray for priest anyway because they are more likely to be attacked by the devil as they can do so much good for God that if the devil can stop one of them then he is saving himself a lot of work, I saw it written once that priests in particular have a sort of target sign on them for the devil. So in times like this I think it shows us why we must pray for them to stop the devil getting even one bullseye. I am not saying the priests and those covering up aren’t to blame, but any one of us have sinned in the past perhaps not in that particular way but in some way, so we cant throw stones. I think we should pray for all involved, make moves to insure our children and adults are safe and these sorts of things are not kept under wraps. I am no expert so the hows of that must be worked out through the experts. The victims need help and time to grieve and work through this so they can heal and for that they need God and the church. I think they need to know that God loves them very much and will help them through this it is important that while this happened in the church, it is not seen as all the church is, however challenging that may be. Only with God can this ever be put together again. I have seen various Catholic sites directing people to sites teaching adults how to learn about this so it seems to be in place.
 
Of possible interest.


Myth : Over 300 priests were found guilty of preying on youngsters in Pennsylvania.

Fact : No one was found guilty of anything. Yet that didn’t stop CBS from saying “300 ‘predator priests’ abused more than 1,000 children over a period of 70 years.” These are all accusations, most of which were never verified by either the grand jury or the dioceses.

Myth : The grand jury report was initiated to make the guilty pay.

Fact : False. It has nothing to do with punishing the guilty. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh “Salacious” Shapiro admitted on August 14 that “Almost every instance of child abuse (the grand jury) found was too old to be prosecuted.” He’s right. But he knew that from the get-go, so why did he pursue this dead end?

Why did he waste millions of taxpayer dollars in pursuit of alleged offenders when he knew he couldn’t do anything about it? Because he, and his predecessor, Kathleen Kane (who is now in prison for lying under oath and misusing her Attorney General’s office) wanted to shame the Catholic Church.

Kane and Shapiro have never sought to shame
 
yes, they were allegations, but allegations that were serious enough that the bishops of each of those 6 dioceses freely turned over to the report. just because they weren’t proven in a court of law doesn’t mean much to me, because this is what those dioceses were freely admitting
 
on_the_hill said:
But how do we know what is truth? We are required, as Catholics, to rely on the bishops for truth.
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Now, you know better. They’re just people, not divine beings.
on_the_hill said:
When we question, we’re admonished with “Trust us.”
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Politicians say the same thing. I don’t trust anyone and never will.
on_the_hill said:
We’re taught that the Holy Spirit guides the Magesterium, that the Holy Spirit won’t let them get it wrong.
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Isn’t that only in matters of the Faith? Once again, they’re just people.
 
This disturbs me that it came from a Catholic source. It fails to mention that the information gathered was provided by the Church itself.

Also, the reason why these incidents were never investigated was bc the Church did not disclose the incidents to authorities and instead kept them locked in a secret vault until they were forced by law to hand them over, well beyond the Satute of Limitations in most cases.

Whatever the reasoning behind the Grand Jury investigation, the evidence presented is credible due to the fact it was written by the Church’s own hand.
 
So you think every priest, every Bishop and every Cardinal knew? Because I sure don’t.
 
SacredHeartBassist said:
yes, they were allegations, but allegations that were serious enough that the bishops of each of those 6 dioceses freely turned over to the report. just because they weren’t proven in a court of law doesn’t mean much to me, because this is what those dioceses were freely admitting
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The Catholic dioceses were subpoenaed to turn over all their records, and they complied. The grand jury went through half a million pages of diocesan documents which I imagine included everything from allegations of child abuse to where the diocese purchases their staplers from. Even if an allegation was uncredible and/or unsubstantiated, the document of the allegation would still be there in the diocesan archives for the grand jury to retrieve.

I’m not trying to say that there is nothing to the report. But it seems plausible to me that at least some of the allegations could be untrue. And it’s difficult to distinguish between the legitimate accusations and the non-legitimate ones as this is a grand jury report, not an actual trial.
 
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Joe_5859 said:
But it seems plausible to me that at least some of the allegations could be untrue. And it’s difficult to distinguish between the legitimate accusations and the non-legitimate ones as this is a grand jury report, not an actual trial.
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Give the man a Golden Cigar! (Yes, they exist)
 
I’d like to know why every time a scandal hits the Church somebody gets bent out of shape over Meatless Friday? It’s a discipline folks, and it always has been. It’s NOT a doctrine.
 
Yes, it is possible that “some” of these allegations are untrue. We can also assume that there were more cases that were not reported at all, as is usual in many cases of sexual crimes. I believe the statistic for reporting these types of crimes are 1 out of 3? But I’m not sure.
 
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Right. 🙂 I think it’s probably because it’s the most readily thought of example of something the Church leaders tell us to do that seems more or less arbitrary. As in, “Why should I let these bishops bind me under pain of mortal sin to not eat meat on Friday while they are perpetrating and/or enabling acts of child abuse?”

I certainly understand that. But recall, even Jesus told people to do all that the Pharisees asked them to do, but just not to live as they lived. He recognized the authority of the Pharisees while also recognizing they did not practice what they preached.

I see these scandals in the same way. If my bishop were a party to this, it would certainly grieve me, but I wouldn’t turn around and say I can go ahead and start eating meat on Friday. I can separate the office (which I will always respect) from the man (who could be a terrible person that I don’t respect).
 
Certainly. Though I’d imagine the greater number of unreported crimes are additional victims of the priests who have already been named rather than priests who have not been named at all.

Not to discount the true horror of these terrible acts that were committed, but, to some extent, all of this has been gone over before. Very few of these allegations pertain to anything from the 21st century. And those recent cases were all handled quickly and transparently. In my mind, that is an important point that is being overlooked. We already knew that these terrible things had happened. And we have been working to do better these past 15 years. And we have done better these past 15 years.
 
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I don’t think that should be your point. Even still, many are true
 
i haven’t read all 395 replies but i imagine a percentage to some degree is making excuses for the Church and saying oh well that is humanity for you we all sin to some degree an that is just a gross insane way of looking at he problem at hand, and it just doesnt take place in one or two states in America alone, this problem is epidemic across the globe. An to just say well it is a few men, in the clergy, and not the churches problem is just a gross a statement as well. plenty of investigations have now turned up the truth which is that the church had a playbook to sweep things under the rug and to just move predators to other dioceses an let it be someone elses problem and then more excuses come up well most are dead, well that happened so long ago, well that is just the main stream media trying to destroy the church, well it is just this or that. excuse after excuse after excuse an no one wants to admit that the problems start from the top down and the problem is being in a monarchy, the monarchy does not have to answer to the people; and by the way this isn’t inciting any thing against anyone this is merely the facts and truths to a problem that is only being answered with cowardice and being left to respective countries authoraties to handle things on a legal matter, and if the Catholic Church is not more proactive and transparent at some point what will happen is the matter will be taken up with the international court of justice, and why is that Because even though the Roman Catholic Church is a religious institution it is techincally headquartered over saught and run by Rome at the Vatican which is considered a legal country / state. The archaicness and stiffness neckedness of the way things are being handled is equivalent as the way Islamic Terrorists destroyed the Muslim faith, with this mind set of things are done this way because it has been written and translated in such a manner and anyone who says other wise is a blasphemer People want to say well look at America as a government it isn’t innocent, an true enough, but our government is held accountable by the people and the people are protected by a great constitution and bill of rights somthing that the Catholic Church will never grasp or consider There is no voice for the people of the Catholic Church we are left with forcing our respective governments and legal system to protect us from criminals with in the Catholic Church and from the cowards who protect them and are too cowardly to do what is right and just when crimes are committed Again if the Roman Catholic Church continues down the path it has been on and merely keeps up a public relations campaign of apologizing and saying we will fix this Things will continue to get worse and at some point, a group of people will take the matter to the ICOJ An the penalities will not be pretty and when it reaches that point it will be too late to keep apologizing We are past needing apologizies we need transparency we need accountability and we need immediate change. enough excuses enough of being glossy eyed crazy of how blessed we are to have the church and living in denial enough trying to protect ones prestige and power
 
How has the Pennsylvania scandal affected you personally?
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It’s forced me to remember that the Church began with the crucified Christ hung between two thieves. Abandoned by almost all his friends, with his mother there to watch him die.

This is the Church. One foot in eternity and the other firmly entrenched in human mire.

These scandals are difficult to stomach, but if I lose my faith over them, I was probably not really a Christian to begin with. We can’t fall in love with the rosy glow, we fall in love with the whole of it down to the dregs. Like Christ did and continues to do.

The Church triumphant is not a Church of mansions and privilege and power. It is a Church of radical sacrifice.
I fear for the souls of those abused, but I fear even more for the souls of the complacent and abusively self-indulgent, who are not conformed to Christ. (maybe that’s all of us to some degree…)
 
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Yes, hopefully we have. But recent scandals have shown us that it is still a problem. What’s been going on in Chili is a good example. And I may be wrong, but wasn’t one of the clergy currently accused defrocked by Pope Benedict and then reinstated by Pope Francis? Didn’t Pope Francis need to apologize to the victim for his initial “dismissive” response to his complaint just a few moths ago?

What is the consequence right now for Priests who murder the souls of children and their enablers? Is it still early retirement with a pension and medical/car insurance paid for by us? I ask these questions not to be snarky. I am just wondering/thinking out loud.
 
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