What to say in light of the sex abuse scandals?

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Hi all. I haven’t seen another thread about this, but I’m sure it exists somewhere and I hope someone can give me guidance on that.

Anyways, I hear a lot about the controversy with sexual abuse scandals in the Church. I just read an article about the resignation of Cardinal Rigali in the midst of such a scandal, and I didn’t bother to scroll down to the comments section because I know what they say. It’s hurtful because it attacks a part of what I am - Catholic - and it’s getting to the point when I say I’m Catholic and I’m automatically accused of supporting pedophiles. I know there’s a lot of ignorance on the Internet, but this anti-Catholic hate is starting to spill over into the real world, as I’m currently in college and people tend to get liberalized here. Also, as such, I’m only 21 and I don’t know too much in the ways of apologetics and church policy and whatnot.

Long story short - What do I say when people ask why the Church supposedly covered up these abuses? I know the Church must have some reason behind it, but I don’t know entirely what to say and the people who ask end up justified in their hating because even a Catholic doesn’t know.
 
First and foremost, The Church did NOT supposedly do this. Certain people in The Church’s authority did, but not The Church. They alone are not the Church. This is how I frame it. You do not need to explain or justify anything, for the crime can never be so.

This then leads to my question to any scoffer: “Did the sex abuse crisis happen because of the Church’s teachings, or because certain individuals deviated from the teachings?” If they blame the Church teachings, I insist they show me in official church documents (eg. the Catechism) where it states that abusing children is acceptable. Now if they do not concede, or just want to mock the Faith, then they are pointless to continue in conversation. Do not waste time with insignificant anti-Catholics.
 
I thought Cardinal Regali retired due to reaching the mandated retirement age.
 
What I say is, “Yes, certian people in the church are guilty of unspeakable acts against children. There is NO excuse. I’m crushed by the behavior of them, because I love my church. My church is composed of sinful people, and there is alot of work in it that still needs to be done. My faith in Jesus Christ has never wavered, though. And the Church is still the best way to get to Him.”
 
I cannot understand why Bishops in the '80s and '90s would just ‘move’ priests who had received enough complaints, around from parish to parish, apparently in hopes that the problem would just go away. Had they dealt with the problem head on then, they would have saved the Church a ton of problems down the road. But Satan is always attacking the Church, and this was certainly a grand opportunity for him.
 
There wasn’t ONE abuse scandal, there were several. That’s the first thing to understand. One scandal is that more than a few sexual deviants managed to make it through a supposedly rigorous discernment, examination and educational process (seminary) to become priests, another scandal is that too many of the faithful refused to recognize that priests are as human as anybody else and shouldn’t be assumed to be perfectly virtuous due to their position, but should have to earn personal trust the same way everybody else does. The next scandal is that there appear, in some places, to have been enough of these predators to form a network that protected each other and covered for each other. Lastly, there was a scandal of negligence on the part of many bishops who abdicated their job of sheperdhing and attempted to delegate it to secular psychologists (whose views frequently were majorly at odds with church teaching), who attempted to treat sex abuse somewhat like alcoholism: a problem that could be corrected or at least controlled.

The bottom line is that the Church is and always will be made up of flawed humans. People make mistakes and sometimes commit malicious acts. But the glory of the Church isn’t from us human members, it is from the Grace Christ offers us through the sacraments. This is why, for all her flawed members, the Church has ALWAYS been a force for net positive change in history.
 
Protestants have had the exact same problem to at least the same degree. That’s the first thing I always say. Back in those days(as most of this happened 30-50 years ago) it was the prevailing wisdom that you send such people to a counselor and they would be cured, and that is what happened with a lot of them. We know better today and have better protocol for dealing with this. Don’t let it bother you.
 
mozier speaks the truth.

Christ himself said that within the church there would be wolves amongst the sheep waiting to devour them. Don’t dispair, the church cannot be overcome by sin and scandal for it is guided by the Holy Spirit. The wolves both inside and outside the church wish to take away your hope and you distroy you faith. Be a light in these dark times and that is all you can do.
 
I am a former Catholic who still likes and respects Catholics and the institution. I sometimes find myself responding to attacks on the Church over the abuse scandals because I find the use of the scandal to attack Catholics generally to be irrational. everything the Church teaches could still be true, even if the abuse scandal was 10 times as bad. The Church never promised that there would be no child abusers in its ranks. On the other hand, I also find myself responding to Catholics who try to minimize the horror of what has been revealed. If I were the OP I would say that every act of abuse is bad, every act should be reported to the police (maybe not from confession), and that assorted Bishops, Cardinals and Popes have done a really bad job in dealing with these abusers. Why? A mixture of ignorance, foolish optimism about abusers stopping their offending, a failure to distinguish the pastoral care of sinners from the need to separate abusers and children, and pride hidden behind a concern for ‘scandal’. But I wouldn’t let any of this worry my Catholic beliefs, except maybe the acceptance in canon law of a low age of consent, which can only encourage the abusers.
 
The Church is a hospital for sinners. All in it are sinners and many fail to live up to its propositions.

Also, it would be important to take a look at the John Jay Report. The predominant molestation was adult male on post pubescent male aka homosexuality. This is something the press is suppressing. It is important to know the facts.
 
Some good comments above. I would add:
  1. It is clearly very wrong what certain priests did and more wrong that certain bishops failed to address the wrongs in a proper way.
  2. I would also say that the priests who did it were much less than 3% of ALL priests. And, as some of the priests were in the same dioceses, the percentage of Bishops who failed in their duty to correct was even a smaller percentage. While the acts were horrible and indefensible, we must realize that 98% or more of the Bishops did not fail. NO organization of human beings can be perfect and it is unreasonable to dismiss the Catholic Church and all the good that it does, because a very few failed.
  3. The Pope is a Bishop. The first among equals. It is expected that individual Bishops carry the responsibility for correction in their OWN dioceses. Once the Bishops realized they had erred in a major way, there were sincere apologies and large financial settlements. It took some time for the seriousness of this problem to be recognized by the Vatican. But once it reached the Pope, he did take action. Pope Benedict XVI has also taken strong action on this matter.
  4. Subsequently the Pope and the US Catholic Conference of Bishops issued strong directives that should better prevent and more quickly investigate and take stronger action to stop future instances.
  5. Finally and MOST IMPORTANT: Because I believe that Jesus Christ is indeed the Living Son of God and that Christ did indeed establish the Catholic Church and promised that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, I cannot use the scandal as an excuse to cut off my relationship with Christ and deny myself the Holy Mass, Holy Communion and Reconciliation for MY sins. When I stand before God’s Judgment, I will not be asked to answer for the sins of others but only for how faithfully I stood with Christ in MY life. I cannot leave Christ because others sinned.
 
TigerLily12 said:
Long story short - What do I say when people ask why the Church supposedly covered up these abuses? I know the Church must have some reason behind it, but I don’t know entirely what to say and the people who ask end up justified in their hating because even a Catholic doesn’t know.
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There are two valid considerations where the bishop must use prudence.

One consideration is the fact that they are not to give scandal to the priest, whether innocent or guilty. In such situations, discussing the failings of others is always on a need-to-know basis, limiting the sphere of publication to the least number necessary to fulfill the obligation. Allegations fly and the truth of matter may not be incontrovertible. Therefore, it is a matter of prudence for the bishop to weigh the likelihood that the priest is indeed a sex offender. Or, was the crime old enough with no further offense that the priest may be deemed a non-threat.

The other consideration is the one we all see and in 20-20 hindsight can say without hesitation should have been the more important consideration. That is, safeguarding the public from an alleged paedophile, which is a predator behaviour on innocents.

The bishops may or may not in each of the individual cases been caught in an error of judgement that demonstrates a weakness in the virtue of prudence.

It is the darkest interpretation of the events to assume that the bishops were guilty of falling prey to a third consideration… to expose the priests to the law would be an embarrassment to the arch diocese.
 
I’ve been asked the same question.
Being fairly new to Catholicism, I have simply said something to the effect of-
the Catholic Church is blessed by being one large, united church in every way. Other religions are so divided up and into so many smaller sects that it’s impossible to clump them together into a singular trusting faith. They become even more numerous and divided when you get into nondenominational groups. There are just as many pedophiles, drug addicts, etc in each and every one of these religions. Unfortunately, due to the size of the Church and the blessing of it being united combined with media sensation… Catholics have received the backlash that all are guilty of, whereas the smaller ones escape because it’s one tiny church with 200 people or only 50 churches in comparison. The media prefers the big story. I’m aware of the exact same thing occurring in other churches and they moved them to another area as well… Not all are innocent and not all are guilty.

It’s a very simplistic approach, but each person that has asked the question and received this answer from me has dropped it there and agreed.
 
Rascalking said:
What I say is, “Yes, certian people in the church are guilty of unspeakable acts against children. There is NO excuse. I’m crushed by the behavior of them, because I love my church. My church is composed of sinful people, and there is alot of work in it that still needs to be done. My faith in Jesus Christ has never wavered, though. And the Church is still the best way to get to Him.”
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Nicely said.
 
And we also have to be careful that we don’t play the game of putting what we know in AD 2011 back onto bishops in AD 1970. Especially when a lot of those bishops are dead and we don’t know what and when and why they knew what they knew and made the decisions they did.

We also have to remember that for much of the abuse history timeline, the doctors and lawyers and police officers --EXPERTS in the field, compared to bishops who did not have the medical, legal, or ‘experience’ credentials-- the EXPERTS claimed that the abusers could be CURED, and that they SHOULD be given the chance to have a ‘fresh start’ without baggage, and the police often were just as anxious to ‘spare the abused’ the trauma of a possible trial.

The majority of the U.S. abuse cases took place when not just the Catholic Church, but every institution- protestant churches, schools, ‘businesses’ and homes-- were told that abusers could be cured, should be given a second chance, and that it was in the best interest of the accused not to face the trauma of a trial.

THEN the EXPERTS in the late 1980s and 1990s did a volte face. SUDDENLY the doctors were telling us that pedophilia could NOT be cured. Suddenly the lawyers were all for “the need to know previous history”. Suddenly the police were all for "letting the victim have their say in court.’

IOW, the experts changed their minds, but not when most of the abuse took place. They changed their minds later.

But to the average ‘reader’, since the current ‘stand’ is all for ‘incurable, need and know, and let the victim speak in court’, they ASSUME that the bishop during ANY period of time and the doctors and the lawyers and the abused all felt EXACTLY THAT WAY that they feel now. And that’s not the case and it does a disservice to everybody to PRETEND or to IMPLY that a bishop making a decision in AD 1970 was doing it with the knowledge of 1990 or more. He wasn’t and he didn’t.

Now, the bishop who didn’t act properly AFTER 1990 with full knowledge is a different story and I’m not condoning anybody who really did have the knowledge but acted improperly. But it isn’t fair to the memory of a now-dead bishop making a decision based on what was known in 1970 and what was enforced by every single group and institution then, acting in GOOD FAITH, but which has now been ‘changed’, to act as though he did so improperly, immorally, and only for ‘bad motives.’
 
The Cure for sexual abuse scandals is to disburse hush money “reparations” from clerical retirement funds. Period. End of scandals. The self-policing would be more than adequate. Judith A. Reisman suggests the Church sue the “sexperts” trained by pro-pedophile Kinsey-ites who promised cures for perversion when their whole paradigm is that children love sex with adults. This is consonant with the “Lolita” mindset of perverts who blame the victim for “seducing” them. The USA media has refused to air the BBC documentary, “Kinsey’s Paedophiles.” Here’s a YouTube link:

youtube.com/watch?v=htAUysRPvNs

Google “Judith Reisman” for her saturation bombing of entrenched perversion.
 
TigerLily12 said:
Hi all. I haven’t seen another thread about this, but I’m sure it exists somewhere and I hope someone can give me guidance on that.

Anyways, I hear a lot about the controversy with sexual abuse scandals in the Church. I just read an article about the resignation of Cardinal Rigali in the midst of such a scandal, and I didn’t bother to scroll down to the comments section because I know what they say. It’s hurtful because it attacks a part of what I am - Catholic - and it’s getting to the point when I say I’m Catholic and I’m automatically accused of supporting pedophiles. I know there’s a lot of ignorance on the Internet, but this anti-Catholic hate is starting to spill over into the real world, as I’m currently in college and people tend to get liberalized here. Also, as such, I’m only 21 and I don’t know too much in the ways of apologetics and church policy and whatnot.

Long story short - What do I say when people ask why the Church supposedly covered up these abuses? I know the Church must have some reason behind it, but I don’t know entirely what to say and the people who ask end up justified in their hating because even a Catholic doesn’t know.
Click to expand...
First off, I agree with a reply from someone who said something along the lines of this: it was NOT the Church’s policy to cover this up.

It wasn’t. It was the work of leaders who had gelatinous spines. They decided to allow wolves in shepherd’s clothing to abuse the most vulnerable members of the flock by moving them from place to place. That’s the story. Point blank.

Personally, I think those who allowed many to suffer these abuses should have had a heavier hand coming down on them from Rome. If I were a bishop and I found out that was going on in MY diocese, from the get-go, I would suspend the priest’s faculties, allow the proper authorities to do their job. If the priest were cleared, I would restore his faculties and do everything in my power to clear his name of any tarnish. If the alternative were true, well, use your imagination.

Basically, the priest abuse scandal was caused by a lack of leadership. What’s so scandalous about the situation isn’t that priests were abusing minors, but that it was covered up by certain members of the clergy. I think that’s what sparks so much outrage against the Church. In any case, though, it’s our responsibility to let people know when they attack the Church for what happened, they’re attacking the wrong people. These people should be invited to do research into the matter and find out which bishops were allowing this.

I still think the bishops who are guilty should get the can, though. I’m not saying the Church did anything wrong. I’m just saying the Church could have done better when this exploded.
 
A classic theory in psychology is the frustration aggression hypothesis. Applying it to this situation we would say that frustrated sexual desires are transformed into aggressive impulses. Thus, how to avoid frustrated desires?

I was at a mass once where the priest from the pulpit talked about how disturbed he was by the immodest dress of women in the parish. And I agreed with him then and to this day. Women behave through their dress very poorly in church. It’s a form of protest against the priesthood and the offenders know this very well. It is because of these women that God’s house is reputed a whorehouse by many non Catholics.

The hierarchy in my opinion should defend themselves against such temptations by enacting a decency law for Eucharistic reception. Let these immoral women with characteristic zero consideration for anyone or anything but their bleached hair go to hell if they choose. You can blame them for the abuses on the children. A priest is vulnerable and should be protected by his parish in return for the protection his sacrifice affords them.

Thus the root problem is that of many problems in society: feminism.

No where as in psychiatry and psychology are the effeminate in control. I blame them also for many reasons. See my last post in An Impudent Theology: Stigma, the Brain and Catholicism.

I’m personally very grateful you started this thread. I learned a lot from the postings and from the fact that someone cared enough to elicit opinion.
 
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