T
ThomasToo
Guest
The only edit was the qualification in the square brackets; I realized that saying ‘if I missed stories of this nature I would, frankly, be delighted to read them,’ sounded like I wanted more kids to molested so I could hear about the culprits’ punishment so I added ‘I’m not hoping more children were molested…’I’m afraid I came too late to read the pre-edit version of your post. Perhaps the reasons you might not read too often about the punishments in these cases include:
Do you mind if you can elaborate? Couldn’t they be released/expelled the clerical state?
- Wrong or no penal jurisdiction. The canon courts don’t have power to punish in the sense of putting someone into jail. Laicisation is not a punishment. It’s a release from a restraint, i.e., the vow of celibacy. Defrocking, as commonly (mis)understood as expulsion from priesthood, is not possible under Catholic doctrine (I won’t address the point here further).
Interesting.
- Wrong or no subject matter jurisdiction. Removing a priest from active ministry was at the time the sovereign prerogative of the Bishop. This is the same with a great many things, as they have always been ever since the Twelve Apostles. The pope is merely primus inter pares, and the Vatican establishment with its portrayedly gigantic centralised totalitarian control mechanism is really the tip of the iceberg, the rest of the iceberg being situations where the Pope is really no more than one more Bishop in the synod. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome is limited to certain things which, in the larger picture of the general scheme of things Catholic, is really the minority of matters.
I suppose I meant more civil punishment. You cite one priest who was subject to civil jurisdiction; is that the norm that they only undergo canonical (I don’t know exactly what the right word here would be… insight would be helpful) punishment or both civil and canonical? Thanks for the insight.