The pope and sex abuse scandals

[Guy355]

A Jewish teacher claimed that when the pope hears about a priest who abuses children in his parish, he simply moves him to another parish and thinks that that’s the way to solve stuff. Is it true? An answer from a Catholic point of view is needed to counter said claim. Thanks.

-Guy

 

[epan]

A Jewish teacher claimed that when the pope hears about a priest who abuses children in his parish, he simply moves him to another parish and thinks that that’s the way to solve stuff. Is it true? An answer from a Catholic point of view is needed to counter said claim. Thanks.

-Guy

I don’t know about the Pope, but at least one archbishop was flagrant about it. I think the Benedict cleaned all that up, and Canon Law requires that action be taken against the priest.

 

[agnes_therese]

A Jewish teacher claimed that when the pope hears about a priest who abuses children in his parish, he simply moves him to another parish and thinks that that’s the way to solve stuff. Is it true? An answer from a Catholic point of view is needed to counter said claim. Thanks.

-Guy

When someone makes a claim like that, it’s on them to provide the proof.

 

[livingwordunity]

Most of the sexual abuse accusations are from the 1960’s or 1970’s. When the Pope found out that there was sexual abuse in the Church he immediately condemned it, and there were policies that were put in place to deal with it and to do whatever is humanly possible to prevent it. Since the Pope isn’t God, the only way he can know if there’s a sexual abuse going on is if someone tells him about it. It’s ridiculous to think he can know and control all the individual actions of over a billion Catholics who are spread out all over the world. Here’s why some people continue to blame the Pope for this even though they have zero evidence for their slanderous allegations:

“The foe and enemy of the Church despises and passes by those whom he has alienated from the Church, and led without as captives and conquered; he goes on to harass those in whom he sees Christ dwell.” - Saint Cyprian of Carthage, Epistle 56

And Jesus has something to say about it:

“Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” - Matthew 5:11

.

 

[manualman]

There’s zero evidence that any pope ever did this. Archbishop Rembert Weakland seems to have tried to pass of the blame for his OWN negligence on that account on JPII, but it was pretty thoroughly discredited quickly.

A terrible blunder several bishops did make was to fundamentally misunderstand what sexual abuse IS and take the wrong response. For a time, our society (not just bishops) was convinced that humans were so innately good that only mental illness could explain such terrible crimes. While any catholic, much less a bishop should have known better, a number of bishops fell for that reasoning and instead of tossing out such predators on their rears in care of the police, they sent these abusers for treatment for their “illness.” It was misguided, lazy and had the veneer of compassion (which covered over the real motive of being able to avoid a public brouhaha), so too many bishops took the bait and went for that approach. It doesn’t work, because counseling and therapy don’t WORK for people who don’t want to change.

Hopefully all bishops have learned the lesson to distinguish between genuine and false compassion by now. It was certainly a lesson (re)learned hard enough.

 

[stephe1987]

Yes, that did happen with some bishops in some dioceses. But the pope himself? I don’t think so. I don’t think he has time to micro-manage every priest of every diocese in the world. Nor does he know everything that goes on in every diocese in the world. There are too many priests to keep track of. That is why there is a hierarchy: the person closest to the problem needs to solve it. It is up to the pope and the cardinals to make policies to help end sex abuse and the cover-up of child molesters.

And more importantly, where is the evidence that the pope did this? People need to stop accusing people of things without any evidence. Guilty until proven innocent it seems.

 

[MarcoPolo]

A Jewish teacher claimed that when the pope hears about a priest who abuses children in his parish, he simply moves him to another parish and thinks that that’s the way to solve stuff. Is it true? An answer from a Catholic point of view is needed to counter said claim. Thanks.

-Guy

What Pope? What incident? Examples? There’s nothing here to refute.
Once we have names and dates and evidence, then we can respond to this person.

 

[Guy355]

Okay thanks for the help.

 

[TMKJ]

Hello! I’m new here…and Catholic. I recently spoke with some Protestants who claimed that Catholics were not Christians. They were talking about the pope and all of the scandals and his recent statement about the LGBT community. I am really not sure how to respond to such attacks as “the pope is the antichrist”. I am often asked how I could still go to a Catholic Church after all of the “bad” things that have happened. I will have to admit that I too, have struggled with how the alleged sex abuse was handled. I’m wondering how the rest of you Catholics deal with that spiritually.

 

[jonathan_hili]

The pope isn’t responsible for the movements of priests in a diocese: the local bishop is. Certainly, some bishops are guilty of turning a blind eye (for whatever reason) to abusive priests. If one wanted to use this as an attack on any particular pope, I’d want to see some substantial evidence that supports such a criticism.

It’s understandable that the sexual abuse within the Church is detestable and a considerable source of scandal, so I sympathise with your position, TMKJ. But I think some perspective is in order here. So, consider these couple of points:

(i) Protestant denominations are not squeaky clean - in fact, no religions or social institutions are. Wherever you find people, you can find an immense capacity for evil. The situation in the Church looks worse because it is concentrated in a single institution (as opposed to diffused among hundreds of Protestant denominations), is the focus of media attention, is especially heinous (because of the Church’s moral standing with many people), and because - frankly - it’s big bucks and big ratings.

(ii) Jesus’ apostles weren’t exactly a great bunch themselves. Of the Twelve, Judas betrayed Jesus to his death, Peter denied him, and the others fled like little girls (no offense meant to little girls).

 

[SamH]

While a major issue I would be much more concerned with school districts moving teachers from district to dictrict with their unions protecting them. A practice that continues to this day.

More US school children are sexually abused in a single year than the entire 50+ years “priest sex abuse” scandal.

hofstra.edu/pdf/about/administration/provost/hofhrz/hofhrz_s03_shakeshaft.pdf

 

[Jessie5000]

A Jewish teacher claimed that when the pope hears about a priest who abuses children in his parish, he simply moves him to another parish and thinks that that’s the way to solve stuff. Is it true? An answer from a Catholic point of view is needed to counter said claim. Thanks.

-Guy

First, it is the role of the Bishop to assign priests to parishes or to move them around for he is responsible for all that happens in his diocese. I believe that your Jewish teacher was trying to underscore the fact that the Catholic Church has handled sexual abuse cases very poorly by moving priest around and trying to cover up abuses and skirt accountability. This is changing and there have always been good Bishops as well who have not done so. At the higher levels there is evidence the Vatican has also handled these cases badly but this also is changing. Hopefully, the situation shall change.