Sex crimes and the Vatican

[michaelmac]

Is the bishop trying to keep victims from getting justice? Or is he trying to keep them from taking away the contributions that I give with intent to see them used on catholic ministry?

Justice and money are rather different. And the church only has as much money as the faithful choose to give. Any ‘justice’ that amounts to a payoff isn’t justice, it’s just another injustice. One victim gets money instead of healing and inummerous more victims receive no spiritual or physical help from an impoverished church. So sad.

If the Church was offering victims all the help they need you could use that argument, But till they do and they say sorry that means anything ,The church is attacking the BBC it was people like the exbishop of Birmningham who allowed children to be raped ,You have the head of the church in Britian who covered up abuse ,then he said sorry but i have done nothing wrong ,In the whole abuse scandal not one who covered up the abuse ,Tried to find out the long term effects of abuse on the victim ,Then you have people talking about the church being the only one started by Christ ,the church has never followed Christ teaching on children ,till that day happens ,the church will be attacked and rightly so yours michael

 

[Saint_Michael]

I do not find the instructions in this document to be in any way morally corrupt or faith-shaking.

I honestly don’t know how anyone can read that document and not find it faith shaking. This thing floored me, to actually see in writing form the Vatican instructing our clergy to behave “in a most secretive way” when dealing with sexual malfeasance is very disturbing. That’s the tip of the iceburg, the document is sickening.

I don’t expect perfection from a Church, but I also don’t expect grave sins to be covered up, and dealt with secretly under orders from the Vatican. Can anyone tell me if out of the 5,000 allegations were the authorities notified once by the Bishop in charge of the accused cleric? No one finds this incredibly disturbing that this document is instructing Bishops to handle cases of priests being accused of sexual malfeasance with “utter secrecy” even threatening excommunication and the fact that no Bishops that were in charge of accused clerics notified authorities?

To where do I go? I go no where, this Sunday I sleep late and watch football I guess… This isn’t Christ’s Church, no way no how. The leadership of this church has shown themselves to be more worried about politics and care little for the actual victims in these acts. It’s spelled out clearly in the document. In 39 pages the victim is regarded as little more than a problem needing to be kept quiet. The Church needs to repent and beg forgiveness for their sins.

 

[Caesar]

I honestly don’t know how anyone can read that document and not find it faith shaking. This thing floored me, to actually see in writing form the Vatican instructing our clergy to behave “in a most secretive way” when dealing with sexual malfeasance is very disturbing. That’s the tip of the iceburg, the document is sickening.

I don’t expect perfection from a Church, but I also don’t expect grave sins to be covered up, and dealt with secretly under orders from the Vatican. Can anyone tell me if out of the 5,000 allegations were the authorities notified once by the Bishop in charge of the accused cleric? No one finds this incredibly disturbing that this document is instructing Bishops to handle cases of priests being accused of sexual malfeasance with “utter secrecy” even threatening excommunication and the fact that no Bishops that were in charge of accused clerics notified authorities?

To where do I go? I go no where, this Sunday I sleep late and watch football I guess… This isn’t Christ’s Church, no way no how. The leadership of this church has shown themselves to be more worried about politics and care little for the actual victims in these acts. It’s spelled out clearly in the document. In 39 pages the victim is regarded as little more than a problem needing to be kept quiet. The Church needs to repent and beg forgiveness for their sins.

I actualy have to agree with antonius on this one.

It has to be remembered that this is how the Church traditionaly operated- in fact, this is how most institutions traditionaly operated. The idea of everything being made public is quite recent.

And if you no longer believe that the Catholic Church is Christ’s Church, then that is a sad issue. So stay home, sleep late, watch football, and carry on until the day you die.

 

[michaelmac]

I actualy have to agree with antonius on this one.

It has to be remembered that this is how the Church traditionaly operated- in fact, this is how most institutions traditionaly operated. The idea of everything being made public is quite recent.

And if you no longer believe that the Catholic Church is Christ’s Church, then that is a sad issue. So stay home, sleep late, watch football, and carry on until the day you die.

Ceasar, we are not talking about any institution we are talking about A CHRISTIAN CHURCH , Whose leadership is moraly bankrupt ,Survivors of abuse have talked about the re action from the leadership of the church in this country ,And so far every thing said and done is what we thought would happen , Instead of looking at how world wide the cover up has been they attack the BBC , If the document was from any other institution ,your first thoughts would be cover up yours michael

 

[michaelmac]

O’Gorman rejects criticisms of ‘sex crimes’ TV report

Patsy McGarry Religious Affairs Correspondent
03/10/2006

One in Four director Colm O’Gorman has rejected Catholic Church accusations that parts of Sunday night’s BBC Panorama programme “Sex Crimes and the Vatican”, in which he was the reporter, were “false and entirely misleading”.

Archbishop of Birmingham Dr Vincent Nichols said yesterday that part of the programme dealing with the Pope was “false because it misrepresents two Vatican documents and uses them quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the Pope”.

The documentary examined the Vatican’s 1962 Crimen Sollicitationis document, which in practice, it said, could offer “a blueprint for cover-up”.

On the programme Colm O’Gorman said “the man in charge of enforcing it for 20 years was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man made Pope last year”.

Last night he said the central thesis of the programme was based on a conclusion of the Ferns Report, published last October and unreservedly accepted by then Apostolic Administrator of Ferns diocese, Bishop Eamonn Walsh.

Page 15 of the Ferns Report observed of Crimen Sollicitationis, “it is of interest to the inquiry as it also specifically dealt with how priests who abused children were to be handled and imposed a high degree of secrecy on all church officials involved in such cases. The penalty for breach of this secrecy was automatic excommunication. Even witnesses and complainants could be excommunicated if they broke the oath of secrecy”.

Noting the 1962 document did not deal just with the confessional, Colm O’Gorman said other elements in it concerned “external obscene acts with minors” as well as priests and bestiality. “Animals don’t go to confession. It’s about time the church stopped trying to spin these issues,” he said. The Vatican had also ignored three written requests from Panorama to put forward a spokesman for the programme, he said

In a letter to BBC director general Mark Thompson yesterday, the Catholic primate of England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, said the accusations against the Pope were “malicious and untrue”.

Yesterday Archbishop Diarmuid Martin agreed that “attempts to use secrecy the wrong way” had taken place where clerical child sex abuse cases were concerned, but that responsibility for this lay “not with the Vatican or the Pope, but at a local level”.

The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said the programme “highlighted, yet again, the enormity and the endemic nature of sex abuse in the Catholic Church”.

A spokesman for Ireland’s Catholic bishops said that since a document circulated by Cardinal Ratzinger in 2001, directing that all clerical child abuse cases be referred to Rome, five men had been dismissed from the priesthood in Ferns diocese. He could not say how many had been dismissed in the other 25 dioceses.

 

[TradyDaddy]

If this dosen’t speak loudly for Sedevacantism, nothing does. We’ve been wandering 40 years in the dessert with no leader. I’d struggled with the theory, but no longer.

 

[FightingFat]

Ceasar, we are not talking about any institution we are talking about A CHRISTIAN CHURCH , Whose leadership is moraly bankrupt ,

I think abuse is horrendous, but I think that’s a bit of a sweeping statement Michael.

michaelmac:

Survivors of abuse have talked about the re action from the leadership of the church in this country ,And so far every thing said and done is what we thought would happen , Instead of looking at how world wide the cover up has been they attack the BBC , If the document was from any other institution ,your first thoughts would be cover up yours michael

I too am a victim of abuse, and my knowledge leads me to better understanding of the kind of institutionalisation that breeds the perfect atmosphere within which abuse can take place. Undoubtedly that is somewhere where secrets are kept. I am also aware that there were tons of this kind of institution up until recently. When what happened to me happened, my own PARENTS reacted by keeping it secret! How can we blame individuals in the Church? Perhaps now there is better understanding about the need for transparency we can make sure these things never happen again?

 

[lucybeebee]

It seems to me that no one (in the Church or outside the Church) really talked about sexual abuse until about the 1970s. The question I have is how do Catholic clergy compare to sexual abuse rates when compared to other religious groups during the same time period? Since Protestant groups can often just vote a minister out at the slightest hint of wrongdoing, how do they compare to us and our hierarchical system? How do Catholic clergy compare to sexual abuse rates in the school systems, public and private? It seems to me that much more abuse seems to be happening in the school than in any religious setting. Due to the emotional nature of this issue from people within and outside the Church, I wonder if we will ever be able to have a relatively accurate picture of this problem and the correct way to solve it. Given that everything the RCC does is a news item, I also wonder if another religious body in the same situation would have received this much scrutiny.

 

[FightingFat]

If this dosen’t speak loudly for Sedevacantism, nothing does. We’ve been wandering 40 years in the dessert with no leader. I’d struggled with the theory, but no longer.

OK- this I find a little difficult to understand. Perhaps a good way to look at this for you would be to consider the Credo;

Credo in unum Deum,
Patrem omnipotentem,
factorem caeli et terrae,
visibilium omnium et invisibilium;

Got that? Ok what else;

Et in unum Dominum, Iesum Christum,
filium Dei unigenitum,
et ex Patre natum ante omnia saecula;
Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine,
Deum verum de Deo vero,
genitum non factum,
consubstantialem Patri,
per quem omnia facta sunt;

Now what does the Creed tell us about the Church?

Et unam sanctam catholicam et
apostolicam Ecclesiam.

What can we understand from this profession?

 

[pnewton]

Then you have people talking about the church being the only one started by Christ ,the church has never followed Christ teaching on children…

Never? This is a rather broad, sweeping and false statement. What teaching are you talking about specifically or do you mean to say Catholic teaching actually encourages child abuse. You totally lost me on this. Perhaps you confuse the teaching of the Church with impeccability, like so many others?

 

[michaelmac]

Never? This is a rather broad, sweeping and false statement. What teaching are you talking about specifically or do you mean to say Catholic teaching actually encourages child abuse. You totally lost me on this. Perhaps you confuse the teaching of the Church with impeccability, like so many others?

The church quotes from from the bible ,When it wants to attack homosexuals ,so why has it never quoted Christ to stop the abuse of children ,Instead it covered up abuse by its own members yours michael

 

[fix]

The real scandal from reading this document is not in the nature of the instructions themselves, but rather that its directives regarding penalties and jurisdictional communications were often not followed. While I am repulsed by the horror of the sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy, I do not find the instructions in this document to be in any way morally corrupt or faith-shaking.

Exactly.

 

[pnewton]

The church quotes from from the bible ,When it wants to attack homosexuals ,so why has it never quoted Christ to stop the abuse of children

I am glad to say that this is not true. In fact, I was able to find this done the first place I looked. From the Charter for the Protection of Children or Young People:
usccb.org/ocyp/charter.shtml

Jesus extended this care in a tender and urgent way to children, rebuking his disciples for keeping them away from him: “Let the children come to me” (Mt 19:14). And he uttered a grave warning that for anyone who would lead the little ones astray, it would be better for such a person “to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Mt 18:6).

 

[pnewton]

If this dosen’t speak loudly for Sedevacantism, nothing does. We’ve been wandering 40 years in the dessert with no leader. I’d struggled with the theory, but no longer.

This is incredibly off-topic, unlees you confuse, like many, infallibility with impeccability. What does the criminal behavior of priest have to do with the valid election of the Pope? This is the conection (leap) you are making. Denying the papacy doesn’t seem very traditional (or Catholic) to me.

 

[bones_IV]

I honestly don’t know how anyone can read that document and not find it faith shaking. This thing floored me, to actually see in writing form the Vatican instructing our clergy to behave “in a most secretive way” when dealing with sexual malfeasance is very disturbing. That’s the tip of the iceburg, the document is sickening.

I don’t expect perfection from a Church, but I also don’t expect grave sins to be covered up, and dealt with secretly under orders from the Vatican. Can anyone tell me if out of the 5,000 allegations were the authorities notified once by the Bishop in charge of the accused cleric? No one finds this incredibly disturbing that this document is instructing Bishops to handle cases of priests being accused of sexual malfeasance with “utter secrecy” even threatening excommunication and the fact that no Bishops that were in charge of accused clerics notified authorities?

To where do I go? I go no where, this Sunday I sleep late and watch football I guess… This isn’t Christ’s Church, no way no how. The leadership of this church has shown themselves to be more worried about politics and care little for the actual victims in these acts. It’s spelled out clearly in the document. In 39 pages the victim is regarded as little more than a problem needing to be kept quiet. The Church needs to repent and beg forgiveness for their sins.

Saint Michael, your anger is understandable. But listen, based on what I’ve seen post on this thread, you seem to be under the assumption that the priest is somehow above frailty. I got news for you Saint Michael, priests are human just like everyone else. From where I sit, the clergy scandal seems to have been concocted in the very pits of Hell. For the weak of the Faith it will never be forgotten. Catholicism, since its beginnings in America, has always been subject to the abuse of its enemies, so now we probably should expect this old prejudice to continue. I would like to point out to you that, serious studies show that pederasty in the Priesthood is the least among all classes of men in America - somewhere around 1/2 of 1%. I invite you Saint Michael, to forgive, but some people will not do it. If you don’t think that this sin can’t be forgiven then don’t bother praying Our Father anymore.

 

[geezerbob]

I believe I read where someone, Church Militant, I think, did some research and found that the BBC had run two documents together to create a false impression. The one dealing with secrecy had to do with the seal of the confessional, not the abuse scandal, but the way they were presented would lead one to believe that they both dealt with abuse.

I will try to find the other post later today and put it here for all to read. Perhaps it will clear up some misunderstandings.

 

[fix]

I believe I read where someone, Church Militant, I think, did some research and found that the BBC had run two documents together to create a false impression. The one dealing with secrecy had to do with the seal of the confessional, not the abuse scandal, but the way they were presented would lead one to believe that they both dealt with abuse.

I will try to find the other post later today and put it here for all to read. Perhaps it will clear up some misunderstandings.

Yes, that is part of it. They intentionally misuse the document about the seal of confession.

 

[bones_IV]

“It is a tribute to American journalism that the lies told by the BBC have not been widely disseminated in the United States. The 1962 document that the BBC refers to had absolutely nothing to do with covering up priestly sexual abuse. Quite the contrary: it dealt specifically with solicitations that a priest might make in the confessional. In fact, it prescribed penalties for any priest who, ‘whether by words or signs or nods of the head’(my emphasis) might convey a sexual advance.”

catholicleague.org/06press_releases/quarter%204/061003_BBC.htm

 

[Saint_Michael]

“It is a tribute to American journalism that the lies told by the BBC have not been widely disseminated in the United States. The 1962 document that the BBC refers to had absolutely nothing to do with covering up priestly sexual abuse. Quite the contrary: it dealt specifically with solicitations that a priest might make in the confessional. In fact, it prescribed penalties for any priest who, ‘whether by words or signs or nods of the head’(my emphasis) might convey a sexual advance.”

catholicleague.org/06press_releases/quarter%204/061003_BBC.htm

But in the event of sexual malfeasance within the confessional how is the priest to be dealt with? According to the document authorities are specifically not to be notified. The victim is to be encouraged not to go to the authorities. The event is to be handled in a “most secretive way”, if a Bishop speaks of it he is excommunicated.

Do you honestly believe this communication isn’t going to raise an eybrow when the evidence is sifted through and it’s apparent that after 40 years and 5,000 allegations the Bishops who were aware of these allegations not once notified authorities, and kept it secret?

 

[michaelmac]

I am glad to say that this is not true. In fact, I was able to find this done the first place I looked. From the Charter for the Protection of Children or Young People:
usccb.org/ocyp/charter.shtml

Why did it take a scandal to implement Christs teaching ,In the church set up by Christ yours michael