Possible untapped way to defend the church against the abuse scandals?

[TheLittleLady]

TheLittleLady, it is by no means established that ‘most of the scandal cases are ephebophilia’, that is, committed against children who are post pubescent. To take one example, the Australian Royal Commission (probably the most exhaustive and fair examination of institutional abuse), put the average age of victims it heard from involving Catholic institutions at 10.4 years old.

I should have clarified. I am familiar with the John Jay report and my statement was based on those findings. I will clarify here.

An article that hits the high points of the John Jay report

What caused the crisis? Key findings of the John Jay College study on clergy sexual abuse

Key findings of the John Jay College Study on clergy sexual abuse

www.americamagazine.org

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I for one don’t care if the priests were mostly abusing 10-year-olds or 17-year-olds or adult seminarians/ nuns/ laypeople who felt intimidated by the priest. What they all did was wrong and we need to own it. Splitting hairs over terminology is not going to help in any way. It would be the equivalent of Bill Clinton claiming he “didn’t inhale” or “didn’t have sex with that woman” within the legal meaning of the term “have sex”. The Church would look completely crass, out of touch, legalistic, and lacking in crediblity.

I agree with the comment above that these acts have NO defense. NONE. Catholic priests did it, and the buck stops with the Catholic Church.

 

[Bon_Croix]

This issue revolves around what bishops did to the priests who were not convicted in a court but on who’s behalf the church paid money to a victim who made an allegation. False allegations have probably been made in some of these cases.

As I’ve posted before, settlement agreements are often made to accusers even when persuasive evidence does not exist. A settlement does not imply guilt. So, if the priest was moved to a new parish after a settlement and the new community wasn’t warned in order to protect against ruining the priest’s reputation, how can you put blame on the bishop? Only if the bishop had evidence beyond a reasonable doubt would he have sufficient cause to ruin the priest’s reputation in the new community.

 

[DarkLight]

I’ve wondered if there are folks out there who are attracted to children, but decide to avoid them and avoid sin and never act on their temptations (in the way that a dating couple may choose not to have sex).

Of course, it would be very hard to gather data on this, because a person with pedophilic tendencies would probably keep their mouth shut about it.

There is evidence that there are such folk out there. It’s gained some discussion in the legal field, because of how obligations to report work in mental health treatment. And because pretty much all studies are done on convicted offenders, there’s little evidence of whether anything could help beforehand.

None of that is to excuse what anyone does. But it seems like something that would be worth studying. It would be hard to do while avoiding liability issues though.

 

[LateCatholic]

Well, let’s see – you said 85% is not correct, but then you said 17%were against females. So that means 83% were against males, right? Not too far off from 85%. Obviously, the 17% is dwarfed proportionally by the 83%.

83% were male to male.
I believe 60% were TEENAGE MALE victims, not 85%.
But I’m not sure.
I know that the male to male victims of ANY AGE was 83%.
There were toddlers that were victims.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

Loud-living-dogma:

Well, let’s see – you said 85% is not correct, but then you said 17%were against females. So that means 83% were against males, right? Not too far off from 85%. Obviously, the 17% is dwarfed proportionally by the 83%.

83% were male to male.
I believe 60% were TEENAGE MALE victims, not 85%.
But I’m not sure.
I know that the male to male victims of ANY AGE was 83%.
There were toddlers that were victims.

Okay, so teen boys were not the GREAT majority of victims, but they were the majority. I think otjm’s point still stands!

 

[FiveLinden]

I for one don’t care if the priests were mostly abusing 10-year-olds or 17-year-olds or adult seminarians/ nuns/ laypeople who felt intimidated by the priest. What they all did was wrong and we need to own it. Splitting hairs over terminology is not going to help in any way. It would be the equivalent of Bill Clinton claiming he “didn’t inhale” or “didn’t have sex with that woman” within the legal meaning of the term “have sex”. The Church would look completely crass, out of touch, legalistic, and lacking in crediblity.

I agree with the comment above that these acts have NO defense. NONE. Catholic priests did it, and the buck stops with the Catholic Church

I like your approach Bear. I do see a difference between sex with children and sex resulting from taking advantage of vulnerable adults and, of course, sex with consenting and freely-choosing adults. But the first two in my view while not equally bad are each very bad indeed. The most shocking statistic from the Australian Royal Commission that I quote from time to time is that in one order of brothers, no less than 40% of the brothers were credibly accused over the (long) period examined. I used to argue strongly with my fellow on-believers that there was not a particular ‘Catholic’ issue here but rather a general societal issue. The Australian investigation changed my mind. However my general impression is that children are probably now as safe in Catholic domains as they are anywhere given the determination to solve the problems that seems to be present just about everywhere. I guess that is, in part, 'owning it.

 

[Loud-living-dogma]

We can act like this was mainly or only happening in our Church, but the fact is that lots of people were preying on children in this horrific way. In the UK they currently have an ongoing investigation that is very wide in scope. Our Church definitely has its share of horrific history and blame, but we have in fact addressed and corrected many things since the 2002 scandal.

https://www.iicsa.org.uk

 

[1ke]

Yeah. It’s not like marriage where you both must be free of mortal sin and have the will and capacity to consent.

Correction: whether the couple is “in mortal sin” or not is not relevant to the validity of the sacrament.