What is truly sad is the condemnation without proof. The priest said it didn’t happen but many here have condemned him. What a shame so many are so eager to believe the accuser and disbelieve the priest without any evidence. That seems uncharitable to me.
Exactly. In most legal systems, one is innocent until proven guilty, but in this country it’s perfectly acceptable to make an exception for our Catholic clergy. They are human beings too, and entitled to the same fair & impartial legal proceedings as anyone else. Doesn’t it occur to anyone that in some cases, false accusations are being made? And that false accusations do a great disservice to the true victims of abuse as well as the innocent people whose reputations are forever tarnished?
This is a not a legal issue relative to the Church, it’s one of moral leadership and management. Its long past time for the Church to stop pretending that Canon Law has any validity in nonreligious issues. The Church and its members should to leave legal issues to the State and focus on its moral and leadership responsibility. “Render to Caesar…” works two ways. Defensiveness and overprotectiveness are precisely *why *the Church is in the fix it’s in today over sexual abuse.
The Church pretends no such thing. It has its own legal system, governing its own internal affairs, which is *separate *from the state. The word *separate *is not synonymous with the word *superior *or even *equal. *It is fully within its rights to apply that law as far as these internal affairs go, for example, the decision to restrict the ministry of a priest. The state legal system has jurisdiction over criminal matters, e.g. child abuse. Even a casual perusal of abuse cases will reveal that many priests have been brought before the legitimate authority of the state and were found either guilty or innocent.No private entity, whether religious or not, can interfere with that process. To suggest otherwise is to reveal a glaring ignorance of the facts of our judicial system.
I agree. The case is ridiculous. There was no abuse.
There you go again. Why do you describe it as if the Church has the authority to *punish *anyone. This is effectively an employer-employee relationship. No ones’s going to *condemn *him, whether to the gallows or Hell or even Purgatory! He should however be FIRED. Or if he were a man with the courtage to fulfill his responsibility to uphold the image of his Church, he should resign. Your attitudes belong to a different time, as do so many of the old Canon Laws on the books since popes ruled as kings. Ordination is no longer a shield for misconduct.
There you go again. THE PRIEST DENIES IT.
He paid a settlement.
And you have a serious problem with anger, which I will suggest as politely as you can that you address before you accuse me or anyone else of being backward, superstituous, or whatever goes along with the fashionable liberal attitude toward anyone who follows the magisterium and dares to think that a person who isn’t found guilty by due process of law might just be innocent after all. Furthermore, paying a settlement is not an admission of guilt.
Thank you. False accusations destroy people - their reputations, their livelihoods, and in many cases their very beings as some are driven to suicide. In this sick, media-obsessed age, it is practically impossible to clear one’s good name because, as a certain poster has demonstrated, there are too many people who are willing to believe rumors and falsehoods. It is not only immoral but a grave sin as well, as is paying credence to and spreading the original accusation.
This priest is NOT being returned to the classroom or anywhere else that he might be tempted to violate his vows. As I understand it, the reinstatement sought was that of his priesthood, not of his teaching position. Again - it is being assumed that he was guilty. From the article in the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph (link posted previously by sb981) To date, there have never been allegations of misconduct with persons under the age of 18 years against Father Kiffmeyer. No civil suits were filed, nor were criminal charges brought against him in either matter. He has denied that any sexual misconduct occurred.
In Cardinal Pell’s case, the newspapers announced that accusation in a front page headline with 3 inch high capital letters PELL ACCUSED while the subsequent article which reported him being cleared of any wrongdoing whatsoever was barely 1 column inch buried on about page 35. Why didn’t we get a “PELL CLEARED” in the same way the accusation was reported, when the police determined that the accusations were entirely baseless. However, the mud was slung and some of it stuck. Even now, years later, I have had people tell me that Pell is a child-molester on the basis of that headline. And that the Church must have pulled some strings somehow to quash the accusations.
Well, actually, they do occur. I’ve seen a case in which a “victim” testified very clearly that he had been abused by a particular member of the clergy several times a week for several years; yet, looking at the church records, the clergyman had been transferred across the country shortly after that years-long period began. So the alleged victim clearly was not telling the truth. Couple that with the fact that he said he forgot about the abuse until after he saw news stories about the lawsuits, and you tend to draw an ugly conclusion.
), but think about this: after 20 years or more of service, the priest is entitled to some expectation of being protected. We can’t just kick out every priest accused of wrongdoing (if that were the policy, the athiests would simply accuse every priest; then what would we do?), and in Christian charity we owe it to both sides to treat them the way Christ would (this is why the Church always asks us to pray for the condemned murderer and his victim, and both their families). We can’t prove that he committed the acts he’s accused of committing, so we can’t defrock him. That doesn’t mean he’s entitled to be a chaplain at a summer camp, either; it just means that the bishop will find something for him to do that (I’m guessing) won’t involve children (from the article: He appealed his suspension as a priest – i.e., not his removal from teaching – and “His next assignment is under study by the Priest Personnel Board of the archdiocese”).