Pennsylvania Priest Caught in Sex Scandal

[Tomdstone]

What? The crime is more horrific based on the perpetrator (I.e. a Catholic priest)?

Yes it is. The RCC teaches that the Roman Catholic priest is another Christ. A layman is just a layman. So if you have another Christ committing a crime it is infinitely more horrific than when a layman commits the same crime.

 

[saintjohnxxiii]

I personally support allowing Priests to marry. The celibate clergy is a discipline-not a doctrine and can be changed by the pope anytime he wants to.

We should be careful, however, to not look on this as a panacea for the abuse problems/ Abuse is more prevalent among denominations with married clergy than it is among Catholic clergy.

Correct me if I am wrong but Priests were never permitted to marry, but that married men could become Priests. If a married man became a Priest and then were to be a widow then by law he would have to stay a widow if I am not mistaken.

 

[SeanF1989]

This was pedophilia unless the person involved was not a child. Enough of this redefinition of childhood. If puberty defines childhood for sexual purposes, then those making these distinctions would label marriage to a post-pubescent 9 yr old girl what?

What I find disgusting is that in some countries this situation with the priest and young teenage boy would be LEGAL!

In France, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland (and some others) the age of consent for homosexual is 15!

Here in the UK it is only 16.

If childhood ends at 18 then maybe the age of consent should be 18 too?

 

[seekerz]

Would you please stop this ridiculousness? All the discussion of complicity is based on reported news and contingent on the veracity of that news. That is always the case.

The only reason the victim’s complicity is a “hot topic” is because you won’t even agree that a teenager answering a Craigslist ad is complicit in the sexual liaison resulting from answering that ad. I haven’t read a post from anyone else that has such difficulty with recognizing that. You are the reason for the “hot topic.”

You can decline to defend whatever it is you are bent on defending. The news reports give the priest’s version - scratch that: versions. First it was about counseling, then it was about Cragslist, reportedly. I haven’t read an account of the boy’s story so if I were to attribute anything to him I might be guilty of slander/calumny.

 

[seekerz]

What I find disgusting is that in some countries this situation with the priest and young teenage boy would be LEGAL!

In France, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland (and some others) the age of consent for homosexual is 15!

Here in the UK it is only 16.

If childhood ends at 18 then maybe the age of consent should be 18 too?

It is up to the society. In some places a 15 yr old might be keeping house with his similarly aged wife, but not before achieving the maturity and skills required for manhood in his part of the world…

 

[seekerz]

Yes it is. The RCC teaches that the Roman Catholic priest is another Christ. A layman is just a layman. So if you have another Christ committing a crime it is infinitely more horrific than when a layman commits the same crime.

Muchas, muchas gracias.:tiphat:

 

[seekerz]

My thanks to those going on and on about the John Jay study. I decided to look it up again - specifically what the critics say. Here’s an excerpt from one critique:

Matter of opportunity

The report — titled “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010” — found no evidence that celibacy or homosexuality contributed to abuse.

While more boys than girls were abused, the researchers said that happened because priests had greater access to boys. The disproportionate number of male victims was actually about opportunity, not preference or pathology.

The researchers said they found that priests who had same-sex sexual experiences either before or during seminary were more likely to have sex after ordination, but with adults, not minors. They also noted that as more self-described homosexuals began entering seminaries in the 1970s, the incidence of abuse began to decline.

Sexual identity was a key factor for the John Jay researchers to say that homosexuality was not a direct factor in abuse, even though the vast majority of victims were males. The only significant risk factor related to sexual identity and behavior was a “confused” sexual identity, which was found most commonly among abusers who were ordained before the 1960s.

“The question is this: If you define them as homosexual by their deviant, abusive behavior, then you say that it doesn’t matter what they thought of themselves or what they did later on in life. It doesn’t make sense,” Smith said. “The men who committed the majority of the abuse cannot be called homosexual unless you stretch the definition really thin.”

So I’m confused - mercy me, yet again today - as to when exactly the study became a basis for the child abusers = homosexuals theory.

PS: And here is another more scholarly-sounding article which is highly critical of the Church. I include it because it does refer to actual statistical research methods:

It is troublesome to me that [Lead investigator Karen] Terry and her colleagues failed to qualify the limitations of the report or sufficiently use qualifying language. Much, not all, of the John Jay source material was data self-reported by bishops, priests and church-operated treatment centers. Self-reports in research are regularly viewed with skepticism because there is no way to validate the accuracy of what is being surveyed. Since we know from grand jury reports and lawsuits that dioceses and provincial officers have been derelict in sharing all that they know about the history of abuse in their domains, Terry should have expressed the potential limitations of self-reported data – in any research and particularly in this study.

What the John Jay researchers know about perpetrating priests is also conditional because officials can only supply the records of priests who have been accused. Too often, the research team uses assertive language about the number of abusive priests or the number of victims rather than qualifying these as accused or reported perpetrators and only victims who have come forward. While acknowledging that abuse is both underreported and reported years after the fact, Terry does not convey tentativeness about her findings. There are reasonable, literature-based extrapolations that can be made to conclude that the actual number of victims over 60 years is closer to at least 35,000 than 11,000 and that there are priests who perpetrated but were never accused. In addition, priests already accused may well have had more victims who have never come forward. Terry should have included statements about the significant likelihood that the number of reported victims and of reported perpetrators are both understated.

The same absence of qualification applies to the report’s discussion about recidivism. If many perpetrators are never reported, it is likely that many more are reported only once although they have offended again. When Terry talks about priests who have only one victim, she again should have qualified that with some discussion of probable understatement.

 

[SaintAugustine]

Correct me if I am wrong but Priests were never permitted to marry, but that married men could become Priests. If a married man became a Priest and then were to be a widow then by law he would have to stay a widow if I am not mistaken.

That is correct.

 

[SaintAugustine]

You can decline to defend whatever it is you are bent on defending. The news reports give the priest’s version - scratch that: versions. First it was about counseling, then it was about Cragslist, reportedly. I haven’t read an account of the boy’s story so if I were to attribute anything to him I might be guilty of slander/calumny.

Again, forgetting this case entirely, you refused previously to even agree that someone, anyone, answering an ad for companionship on Craigslist is asking for sex. It was asked in the general sense more than once to your illogical howls of protest. There is no calumny/slander when speaking in generalities.

 

[Tomdstone]

Correct me if I am wrong but Priests were never permitted to marry, but that married men could become Priests. If a married man became a Priest and then were to be a widow then by law he would have to stay a widow if I am not mistaken.

Correct in the RCC, but I beleive that a few exceptions have been made in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Romania and in Russia.

 

[SaintAugustine]

Correct in the RCC, but I beleive that a few exceptions have been made in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Romania and in Russia.

Maybe by exception, but I believe the general rules are the same.

 

[NeedsMercy]

No. You certainly are missing something. The Church did NOT cover it up.
From the article linked in the OP:

I’d like to apologize to everyone on this thread. What I said was not correct. It was not Paulish that I was thinking about. It was another pedophile priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia–Robert L. Brennan–that was arrested and about whom I was thinking.

nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Priest-Arrest-225331662.html

Now here’s where we’re talking about cover up. The Archdiocese has a history of covering up, which went all the way up to Cardinal Bevilacqua, who destroyed a list of priests whom he knew had abused children.

I don’t think I’m missing anything now.

 

[GraceSofia]

Do you consider a teenager to be a child? Teenagers are fighting in our wars. Teenagers are Marines and Soldiers and Sailors. How old was this teenager anyway.

He was 15. I looked it up and the age of sexual consent is 16 there, so it is conceivable that had the event occured a month or a week later, there would have been no crime (by the world’s standards).

The three parishes that he was pastor of between 2000-2004 were rural parishes. He would have to drive from one church to the next to say mass every Sunday. One of those parishes was the one my family attended when we were in the area. That is how we got to know him. The congregation really liked him, but I remember him looking very worn out by the time he left.

There were rumors about him taking to drink and that was why he left, but that is something you can’t believe unless you’ve seen it happening. I just remembered people feeling sorry that he had to leave and how worn out he was. I know that it isn’t easy being the only priest for three parishes in a rural area. I’m praying to God that he didn’t do anything to the children I knew at that parish back then. It was such a close, tight-knit parish. One of my favorite parishes I ever attended. Two of those parishes have since closed during the time of Bishop Martino. I know St. Francis is still open, though.

It must have been difficult and lonely.
I hope he didn’t do anything to the kids there either. If-- and I repeat if-- he did, then hopefully his MO was to find willing older teens, not prey on parish children.

Would you please stop this ridiculousness? All the discussion of complicity is based on reported news and contingent on the veracity of that news. That is always the case.

The only reason the victim’s complicity is a “hot topic” is because you won’t even agree that a teenager answering a Craigslist ad is complicit in the sexual liaison resulting from answering that ad. I haven’t read a post from anyone else that has such difficulty with recognizing that. You are the reason for the “hot topic.”

Agreed.

 

[GraceSofia]

As a mother of sons, I think the distinction between a pedophile and a homosexual is very important. As a Catholic, I feel the same way. The anti-Catholics, the liberal media and the homosexual agenda NEED for the sex abuse scandal to be about pedophiles not about homosexuals, and to that end, they have distorted the truth, and tarnished the Church.
**
Here are the statistics, in Part 4.2 of the study: “four out of five (80%) alleged victims were male,” and “the majority of alleged victims were post-pubescent (87.4%), with only a small percentage of priests receiving allegations of abusing young children.”**

Take away the homosexual post-pubescent cases, and there is not much of scandal with which to demonize the Catholic Church.

crisismagazine.com/2012/clergy-sexual-abuse-the-unaddressed-question-of-same-sex-attraction

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will. Even one case of abusing a child, breaking a trust, is one too many. The damage done to the child is reprehensible and incalculable. The damage done to everybody else’s faith is incalculable.

NeedsMercy:

I’d like to apologize to everyone on this thread. What I said was not correct. It was not Paulish that I was thinking about. It was another pedophile priest in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia–Robert L. Brennan–that was arrested and about whom I was thinking.

Okay, I wondered what you were on about.