Married priests

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

I have one other comment on this thing.

It seems that no matter the topic some people always resort to bringing up the clergy sex scandal. Why is this?

 

[otm]

Probably for several reasons:

1. it is an explosive issue in and of itself in terms of betrayal of the victim by the perpetrator;
2. sex sells; as Madison Avenue; there is a bit of vouyer in the issue;
3. there is no question that early on (pre mid 80’s) almost all of it was extremely hush-hush; the bishops did all in their power to avoid what they perceived as a major scandal;
4. the treatment of victims was very often to treat them as pariahs, and otent to treat them as the cause of the sexual activity;
5. given that the advise from psychologists and psychiatrists in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s often was wildly incorrect, the bishops often failed, after a priest received treatment, to do something when he abused again;
6. the almost absolute veil of secrecy was used when moving a priest after violations to a new parish, thus betraying not only the future victims but the parishes themselves;
7. the failure of the bishops as a whole, and many in particular, to address the issue of homosexuality in the priesthood (from which sourced the same-sex attraction to adolescents).

I am sure others could go on, but when it gets into a discussion of leadership of bishops on just about any topic, this will probably surface, especially if the speaker feels that the bishop(s) failed to lead on the other topic. It is part and parcel now of that general topic. In other words, all the bishops will be painted with the same brush, whether they are right or wrong about the sexual issue. The failure was not just a few, and not just a few incidents.

 

[loyola_rambler]

ByzCath:

This is an error that has been pushed by the media and those who wish to destroy the Church.

I am not making any excuses for the clergy sex scandal but it was no worse than what happens in the rest of the world today. What was bad was that apparant cover up that took place in some of the cases.

That being said, the clergy sex scandal was not pedophilia.

Here is the definition.

pedophilia: psychosexual disorder in which an adult’s arousal and sexual gratification occur primarily through sexual contact with prepubescent children.

As you can see, pedophilia deals with sexual contact with prepubescent children. I have not heard of many of the cases being with children such as this. So it was not pedophilia and no, that does not make it right, but it does make the issue different. It has more to do with homosexual behavior than pedophilia.

Frankly, I’m so tired of people nitpicking on which cases were pedophilia and which weren’t. The bottom line is that Catholic priests broke the trust of their congregations, abused young men, women & children (and yes there were hundreds of prepubescent children who were abused), made a mockery of their vows, engaged in the most vile and sinful of all behaviors and their bishops were tolerant of every bit of it and allowed it to continue. The sheer hypocrisy to claim that we must maintain a celibate clergy is glaring when we realize how many sexual preditors wore or are wearing a Roman collar. The utterly duplicitous statements of these same bishops denouncing homosexuality and non-marital sex while many of them and many of the priests serving under them are engaged in these behaviors make a mockery of our entire faith.

I don’t care how the Church wants to spin this mess. The facts are:

1. The Church created the problem
2. The Church perpetuated the problem
3. The Church hid the problem and enabled the preditors to hide behind some secret old boys’ network
4. The Church had the unabashed audacity to claim the victims or their families were somehow at fault
5. The Church continues this behavior and is obfuscating the truth
6. At least one openly gay bishop has been moved into a leadership position in an American diocese that is reeling from its own sex scandals and it’s totally hidden from the faithful
7. The Church has erred…and yes, I will go so far as to say that members of the episcopate and magisterium have gravely sinned…in the handling of this mess
8. Children were harmed and no one has the integrity to stand up and admit the duplicity

As a result, the magisterium and American bishops have created a situation where the entire priestly vocation is highly impugned and the young men discerning their vocation are dealing with an ugly cloud of the Church’s own making.

Before blaming everyone else for the problems and the fallout, the Church has to stand up and take responsibility for its own actions and its own role in the current crises.

 

[loyola_rambler]

ByzCath:

I have one other comment on this thing.

It seems that no matter the topic some people always resort to bringing up the clergy sex scandal. Why is this?

Because it’s a glaring example that the Church has violated the public trust, engaged in duplicitous and outright illegal behaviors, obfuscated the truth, and tried to hide behind fictitious privileges in the name of God. Had the current leadership learned from men like Bernadin who actually did handled such scandals properly, then we wouldn’t be in this situation. But until the Church admits its own sins, there won’t me any moving forward. Men like Law were a disgrace to the Church, to God and to humanity as a whole. As long as he’s in the picture, there’s no healing. Without healing, it’s going to keep coming up time and again as a serious example of the flaws of the men who run our Church and who are supposed to be our shepherds.

 

[otm]

loyola rambler:

1. The Church created the problem
2. The Church perpetuated the problem
3. The Church hid the problem and enabled the preditors to hide behind some secret old boys’ network
4. The Church had the unabashed audacity to claim the victims or their families were somehow at fault
5. The Church continues this behavior and is obfuscating the truth
6. At least one openly gay bishop has been moved into a leadership position in an American diocese that is reeling from its own sex scandals and it’s totally hidden from the faithful
7. The Church has erred…and yes, I will go so far as to say that members of the episcopate and magisterium have gravely sinned…in the handling of this mess
8. Children were harmed and no one has the integrity to stand up and admit the duplicity

As a result, the magisterium and American bishops have created a situation where the entire priestly vocation is highly impugned and the young men discerning their vocation are dealing with an ugly cloud of the Church’s own making.

Before blaming everyone else for the problems and the fallout, the Church has to stand up and take responsibility for its own actions and its own role in the current crises.

I don’t find anywhere that the Magisterium has done any of the above; and I would be cautious in saying that the Church has done this. Individual bishops have done it. Many, if not most of the abuse cases we have today are 30 to 50 years old. So I would be careful of connecting bishops today with what may have been done, or not done, by a predecessor 2, 3, 4 or more bishops ago. But that is all a matter for a different thread.

I would be cautious, also, of making any case for married priests; the statistics and studies I have seen put most of sexual abuse in families, primarily, and to a very large majority, by males against children; theirs, their wife’s by a prior marriage, or relatives. Promoting a married clergy does nothing to guarantee an elimination of child sexual abuse.

 

[HagiaSophia]

loyola rambler:

Frankly, the author of the article is one of the biggest problems with the Church today. The cardinal needs to just go away

Cardinal John O’Connor of NY has been dead for a number of years. RIP

 

[HagiaSophia]

loyola rambler:

and there was an excellent example in the AD of Chicago about how it should have been handled and the policies/procedures that should have been implemented. Had he followed the Bernadin procedures, I absolutely believe the scandal wouldn’t have exploded and the confidence in the clergy wouldn’t have disappeared.

According to Greeley, Chicago had problems for a long, long time and just today I have read Sipes statements about the entire Bernardin legacy with regard to this matter. Not pleasant reading at all. Beware of hierarchy who promote their own PR - not always trustworthy reading.

 

[loyola_rambler]

HagiaSophia:

According to Greeley, Chicago had problems for a long, long time and just today I have read Sipes statements about the entire Bernardin legacy with regard to this matter. Not pleasant reading at all. Beware of hierarchy who promote their own PR - not always trustworthy reading.

Sorry to disagree with you on most every point you made in the last posts, but it’s a reality that Rome was very much aware of these issues since the 70s, they didn’t act upon them appropriately, the cardinals and bishops of the US constituted a dirty old men’s club that freely traded bad priests, often without sharing full knowledge of the priests’ histories if they thought their colleagues were going to reject the transfers, and the Vatican knew all about it.

As for Greeley, he’s hardly an insider. I know him and think he’s a wonderful man. But he hasn’t been an insider since the days of Cardinal Cody. I was there when Bernadin worked through the sex scandals and I was there to see first hand how the Church regained its credibility inspite of the growing scandals elsewhere in the country. Cardinal George was very lucky to come into a local church that had already started cleaning house. The only mistakes that George made regarded an auxilary bishop who was openly gay and who George put in charge of a major seminary. After the scandals started there, he nominated that man to fill an open episcopate in another diocese that was reeling from a huge scandal all its own.

As long as the bad bishops and cardinals stay in power, the Church won’t heal. I don’t care who agrees or disagrees. Reality sucks.