Therapy led to soaring abuse rate in Irish Church

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The Church in Ireland has been embroiled by sex abuse scandals since last Summer. Just this week, in fact, Cardinal Sean Brady has been under intense pressure to resign after it was revealed that he did not inform police about the abuse of children by one of Ireland’s most notorious child abusers, Fr Brendan Smyth.
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Of course, the Church has actually been rocked by these scandals since the mid-1990s, but the publication of two official reports investigating abuse by priests and religious have been published since last summer and as a result the saga of clerical sex abuse has rarely been out of the Irish headlines since then.
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Read more here: timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7068604.ece
 
I think this ‘therapy’ way of dealing with these Priests was what they used to do. Things have changed. Like the Child protection system that has been put in place in the Irish Church. Things are a lot more robust now, let’s pray that such big scandals never happen again!
 
lemonbeam said:
I think this ‘therapy’ way of dealing with these Priests was what they used to do. Things have changed. Like the Child protection system that has been put in place in the Irish Church. Things are a lot more robust now, let’s pray that such big scandals never happen again!
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Yes. Obviously, the heirarchy didn’t do this with any malice of forethought. They actually thought that therapy helped. Sadly, they didn’t learn anything from the initial repeat offenders and continued the cycle until the scandals became public. Now, all the Archdiocese I know of have robust child protection programs in place.

I pray that the new safety programs; awareness and caution on the part of parents; and the new criteria for the sexual maturity in the formation of priets will all ensure that we don’t have this happen again. It is a sad chapter in our Church history.
 
Misguided compassion?

But the Murphy report itself is* very** interesting about canon law. It points out that a big problem with this law isn’t that it was used, but that it wasn’t used. *
It says: “The Church authorities failed to implement most of their own canon law rules on dealing with child sex abuse…canon law appears to have fallen into* disuse** and disrespect during the mid 20th century**.** In particular, there was little or no experience of operating the penal (that is, the criminal) provision of that law… for many years offenders were** neither prosecuted** nor made accountable within the Church.” *
Why did it fall into disuse and disrespect? *
It was because priests and bishops began to regard it as being overly legalistic and too focused on punishment. They decided it lacked compassion.
Therefore, they stopped using it. No longer did priests accused of child abuse face a canonical trial and the possibility of “defrocking”. **
Instead, and with disastrous consequences, they were sent for therapy and then, “cured”,* they were reassigned to ministry. **
The bottom line is that if canon law had been used properly, fewer children would have been abused.
Civil authorities would still not have been informed, but priests found guilty of child abuse under Church law would have been punished and** likely removed from ministry making it** more difficult for them to offend again.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7068604.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2
 
Catherine_S said:
Misguided compassion?

But the Murphy report itself is* very*** interesting about canon law. It points out that a big problem with this law isn’t that it was used, but that it wasn’t used.
It says: “The Church authorities failed to implement most of their own canon law rules on dealing with child sex abuse…canon law appears to have fallen into** disuse** and disrespect during the mid 20th century**.** In particular, there was little or no experience of operating the penal (that is, the criminal) provision of that law… for many years offenders were** neither prosecuted** nor made accountable within the Church.”
Why did it fall into disuse and disrespect?
It was because priests and bishops began to regard it as being overly legalistic and too focused on punishment. They decided it lacked compassion.
Therefore, they stopped using it. No longer did priests accused of child abuse face a canonical trial and the possibility of “defrocking”. **
Instead, and with disastrous consequences, they were sent for therapy and then, “cured”, they were reassigned to ministry. **
The bottom line is that if canon law had been used properly, fewer children would have been abused.
Civil authorities would still not have been informed, but priests found guilty of child abuse under Church law would have been punished and** likely removed from ministry making it** more difficult for them to offend again.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7068604.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2
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That’s what I think is at the heart of it. These Priests wanted to cure the sex abusers by therapy, and with compassion, and that’s how the cover ups started. Everyone of those that was involved in the cover up needs to be sacked, or resign, the Church needs a clean slate and the only way it can be done is for all those people that where involved to be sacked or resign as I said.
 
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