Keeping the faith in church leadership among scandals

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_Abyssinia said:
Reading some of the things related to the scandal with Cardinal McCarrick has really disturbed me. I dislike even writing this, but it’s left me wondering who else in church leadership could be saying one thing in public and in private living very differently to say the least, not living out their vow of celibacy. Accountability needs to be pursued for anyone that committed abuse, or covered up abuse within the Church.

How do i keep the faith and trust in church leadership in the face of such dark scandal? I can’t imagine that every priest, Bishop etc. has committed or covered up abuse, and that there are in fact good and decent churchmen out there, but the McCarrick scandal among others, has put a sense of doubt in my heart about those within church leadership and I want to overcome that.
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Jesus never promised impeccability among the leadership of His Church. In fact consequences for bad behavior can be even more disastrous for them. Note: Fr Joseph Mary wolf gave this following sermon at an EWTN mass.
Fr Jose NDE
 
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joeybaggz said:
Think the church needs to handle this itself. Not going to go down that road.
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Could not disagree more. This problem festers when the laity goes, “oh, well, I’m sure the good bishops will sort it out appropriately” and move on. Some of the accounts of the sexual abuse are horrifying, and McCarrick was the public face of the response to the crisis. It’s deranged.

The last thing we need is a complacent laity reassuring itself that “father knows best.” The laity needs to register its fury and disgust and make it clear that we’re no longer going to simply assume things are being handled internally.
 
We are not supposed to have faith in the clergy but in God, in Jesus Christ.

The abuse scandal… that is what those who don’t follow Christ do. The saints show us what happens when we do follow Christ.
 
Right. The real question isn’t “are there sinners in the Church,” but rather, “Are the sinners living out the Church’s teaching.” And the former is YES, while the latter is NO.

There is NO Church teaching saying sexual abuse, rape, pedophilia, etc. is moral. These are mortal sins.

Sure, people are hypocrites, but if someone wants to de-legitimize the Church, they will have to show its teachings are wrong, or that it is not of divine foundation. Simply pointing out sinful men, even REALLY bad guys, has no bearing on whether or not Catholicism is true. As Catholics, our trust is not ultimately in men: Receiving Holy Orders, even becoming Pope does not make one sinless!!

Imagine a 1st century Jew pointing at Judas: “Oh look! It’s that real bad guy, the betrayer who sold his own Rabbi to be crucified! Wow, that Christian movement must not be true or good at all, considering some of its followers are so bad!”

Judas does not disprove Jesus. Judas does not justify leaving Peter.
 
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It’s all well and good to say “remember, there are plenty of great clerics, too.” That’s true, but we can’t use it as an excuse to be complacent or disconnected. We can’t just mindlessly trust whatever someone with a collar tells us.
 
Researching these scandals has shattered my trust in pretty much all officials.

Did you know that while the Church was dealing with these kind of scandals in the 70s, the psychiatric community was too?

There was this child psychiatrist, well known and hugely established, who openly admitted to raping a 13 year old boy and he was released with no punishment because the court decided the boy had seduced him. He went on to rape and molest hundreds, if not thousands, of other children.

It was later discovered that well respected men in power in the psychiatric community were actively working to protect paedophiles who would get themselves caught.

They would say things like the child seduced the adult, or that the child enjoyed it therefore it can’t be wrong… or etc.

There were also cases of school teachers who were caught touching students and were NEVER reprimanded. At worse, they would be transferred to other schools where the abuse continued.

In the 70s there was this idea in the psychiatric community that paedophiles could be rehabilitated. I really think the Church fell into the scandal it did because it A: Trusted the psychiatric community, and B: There WERE men high up in the Church who were paedophiles who protected other paedophiles.

Do I believe the Church as a whole is responsible for the actions of these men? No. Just as I don’t believe all schools and every psychiatrist is responsible for the actions of those teachers and psychiatrists. These men did evil, ugly, horrible things. They did these things that went AGAINST Church teaching, they actively worked in secret because they KNEW it was wrong. They protected, guarded and helped each other. It was an entire network of sick men working together for one common goal.

But that doesn’t make the Church responsible.

They are responsible for their own actions and evil.

Would I ever trust my child with a teacher or psychiatrist? No. Would I ever trust my child alone with a priest? No. But I continue to recognize that psychiatry has it’s use and does good. I continue to recognize that teachers have their use and do good and I continue to recognize that the Church is true, it’s teachings remain true and it does much good.
 
I think this is the stuff we need to be careful about. We can’t hero-worship priests to the extent that people are afraid to ever question them. That’s the kind of attitude that the minority of priests who are predators depend on.

One of the most heartbreaking things to read in the sex abuse stories is how many kids told their parents a priest was assaulting them only to be reprimanded with “shut your mouth, a priest would never do that! Don’t slander a priest!”
 
Just like most priests are good, the same is true with teachers, psychiatrists, and other people who work with children. I think the important thing to do is teach children what appropriate boundaries are. If an adult (or even another child) is trying to get them to be alone with them, give inappropriate gifts, give special favors, keep secrets from the parents, or break down their touch comfort levels, the child needs to learn to recognize that this is predator grooming and report it. Parents need to have real conversations with age appropriate children about these things. The research suggests that predators don’t pick kids who will tell on them. They pick children who they think they can manipulate into not telling. I know it is NEVER a child’s fault if they have been victimized, but we can try to equip them not to be.
 
Oh, no, I know you’re not excusing sexual abuse. I just think we have to remember that we can’t just assume that any given priest is a great guy. Most are, some are really, really not.
 
_Abyssinia said:
How do i keep the faith and trust in church leadership in the face of such dark scandal? I can’t imagine that every priest, Bishop etc. has committed or covered up abuse, and that there are in fact good and decent churchmen out there, but the McCarrick scandal among others, has put a sense of doubt in my heart about those within church leadership and I want to overcome that.
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Statistically speaking, most priests do not commit these kinds of abuses and at least as many married men do. There are not just “some” good and decent priests. Even a secular sociologist could tell you that the evidence is that the vast majority of priests are good and decent. We don’t have the protection rules in place that we do now because the Church is full of pedophiles. We have them so that the Church will not be a place where a pedophile can hide offenses. That will not stop some of them from trying, though.

Look around you, and your eyes will land on some people covering up facts about themselves or their families that they do not want anyone to know. Some of those things are just embarrassing, some are scandalous, but some are criminal.

In other words, when we learned as we did probably twenty years ago (or is it thirty, now?) that there were mothers and grandmothers and aunts covering up sexual abuses within their own families, we had to know that there were probably bishops and priests doing the same. Why? I think it is because it was a time when even good people did not understand that this is an offense with an extremely high recidivism rate and a far higher prevalence than was dreamed of in a society that refused to talk about it. They thought someone could say “I’m sorry, it happened once, it won’t happen again,” and the victim and offender could “forgive and forget,” and that would be that. It was a time when there was more ignorance and a LOT more wishful thinking.

Even now, people know how others rush to judge that the offense of one member of their family or their diocese will be taken as a reflection of the whole group, if it is known. We are only starting to come to the point where exposure of misconduct is taken as evidence of vigilance and integrity rather than as evidence of moral decay.

I think we ought to want to see an occasional public revelation of wrong-doing by those who ought to be above reproach. It tells us that someone out there really is being vigilant and really is holding people to account. We ought to realize that there will always be failures and offenses. If we never hear about them, we can be reasonably sure not that they never happen but rather that they are never talked about when they do.
 
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Exactly; we.must be balanced. Gentle as doves, and wise as serpents, no?
 
The scandals are a horrible thing but I do believe that most priests are good. Also things were handled wrong in the past with being covered up instead of the offenders being punished, and that is regrettable. I think the ONE bad thing about the church being universal is that a few bad apples make the whole Church look bad. Meanwhile I’m sure that just as many Protestant officials are abusers but no one connects the dots because they are not united into one church like we are as Catholics. It’s terrible that evil like this exists in the world at all and most especially when they are supposed to be representing a church. I haven’t completely lost faith in church leadership, because I know this is a minority of people commuting these evil acts.
 
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Show me a church that has no sinners, and I’ll join that one.


http://www.virtueonline.org/scandal-cardinals-disgrace-episcopal-bishops

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article184564528.html



http://stopbaptistpredators.org/scandals.html
http://www.spiritualabuse.org/history/upcabuse.html

Recent Pentecostal Scandals

Recent Pentecostal Scandals
www.wayoflife.org


www.theglobeandmail.com

Scandal reaches highest echelon of Greek Orthodox church

The Globe and Mail offers the most authoritative news in Canada, featuring national and international news
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com

www.theguardian.com

Sex and fraud woe for Greek church

Embattled Orthodox archbishop calls emergency meeting and asks for forgiveness over lurid claims.
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

www.telegraph.co.uk

Russian Orthodox Church embroiled in corruption scandal

A Russian Orthodox provincial priest was revealed to have amassed a collection of luxury cars and to keep hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash in his safe.
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk

www.baltimoresun.com

Sexual abuse allegations against rabbi divide Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community

Many in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community thought the case against Rabbi Steven Krawatsky was closed. A 7-year-old boy at a summer camp in Adamstown had accused the popular teacher of sex…
www.baltimoresun.com www.baltimoresun.com




 
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When I was in RCIA in 2002/03 the sex abuse scandal was breaking in my own diocese. It seemed like each day the morning paper had a new scandal printed on the front page. Shortly after I was confirmed, my diocese became the first in the US to declare bankruptcy. Yet, still I converted. Why? I knew if I went through with confirmation I’d have to own the abuse in the Church, even though I had nothing to do with it.

In my own mind I realized that it’s a small percentage of our priests/religious who were engaging in this behavior, and the Lord told us that the gates of hell would rise against us. If you were trying to destroy the Church, what better way to do it than from the inside? That was a big faith builder for me. What other institution has survived assaults from the outside as well from it’s own members?

I’ve been Catholic 15 years now and I realize that the Church is always in reform and I have been called to be a part of that reform. Catholics today need to be vigilant. We need to look out for and protect our children and vulnerable adults. It’s been embarrassing and it’s been kind of hard, but I’m still grateful I can call myself Catholic.
 
Turn the media off. You’ll be glad you did.
Focus on personal holiness and let the Church take care of the big problems.
The Church is indefectible and has withstood innumerable far worse attacks over her 2,000 year history.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
Could not disagree more. This problem festers when the laity goes, “oh, well, I’m sure the good bishops will sort it out appropriately” and move on. Some of the accounts of the sexual abuse are horrifying, and McCarrick was the public face of the response to the crisis. It’s deranged.

The last thing we need is a complacent laity reassuring itself that “father knows best.” The laity needs to register its fury and disgust and make it clear that we’re no longer going to simply assume things are being handled internally.
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I originally didn’t want to reply to this post as I am a believer in the scope and number of these claims are somewhat questionable insofar as the media running with every allegation and rumor as absolute truth. The number and age of these scandals demands that from a standpoint of fairness and objectivity, the fact that most of this occurred 30 or more years ago has to be taken into account when placing blame. And what the churches have done in the interim to combat it.

That being said, I think my statement that the resolution should be kept “in house” is misleading. Ever write a post almost to yourself what you are thinking? When I wrote it what I was thinking is that the church has to find the truth, publicize it, allow any and all civilian actions to be allowed, with McCarrick and those like him, defrocked, denounced, any and all privileges revoked, and banned from any and all future church activities outside of what is allowed for a cleric returned to the lay state. The church cannot in any way, “weasel” its way on this one. And any others like it.

I belong to a parish where they have taken such stringent measures top stop the problem, that if I want to pour a cup of coffee for another parishioner at coffee and donuts after mass, I must obtain clearances from the Virtus program, the Pennsylvania state police commission on protection of youth, and an FBI background check. Unless I do, I can participate in no liturgical or secular parish activities. They take no prisoners around here and that bled through in my post. In no way do I advocate sweeping this thing internally under the rug. Sorry if you get that impression (and I see how you could)
 
Trust in God all the more. We are sojourners in this world, and God looks after us, including the fatherless–those abandoned by their spiritual fathers, who have neglected their duties and pursued evil and worldly things. God upholds us and reigns forever.
Psalm 146

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord, O my soul!
2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God while I have being.

3 Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no help.
4 When his breath departs he returns to his earth;
on that very day his plans perish.

5 Happy is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord his God,
6 who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith for ever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;
8 the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the sojourners,
he upholds the widow and the fatherless;
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

10 The Lord will reign for ever,
thy God, O Zion, to all generations.
Praise the Lord!
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