I think it’s pretty simple:

“These people should be fired.  What’s the catholic word for fired?”

Chad,

I think the word, or phrase, you’re seeking is from John 8; “Neither do I condemn you. Go, (and) from now on do not sin any more.”

I don’t understand either.  Once you defrock the priest - he’s not in jail, he’s the community with no affiliation to any institution.  What happens then?  Yet - the media are clamoring for defrocking?  It is a sign or symbol. I think it also has to do with tearing down the laws of the Church.  In doing so, they are also pulling down the principles of our own laws.  Once due process goes for the Church - it goes for us all.

Chad,
It’s not that simple…you need to read what Jimmy wrote more carefully.  In Catholic theology, once ordained, a person is always a priest.  Even a “defrocked” priest is still a priest.  It simply means that they aren’t allowed to celebrate any of the sacraments under official Catholic auspices, except under certain emergency conditions.

Yanking the abusive priests from their pastoral assignments essentially does the same thing in a quicker way (laicization against a priests will necessitates an ecclesiastic trial, which can be lengthy and expensive)

The one issue that is worth bringing up is whether a non-laicized priest who has been removed from pastoral ministry is still being supported financially by the Church.  I am not sure what happens in that case.

On this issue, I’m not sure how much is intentional malice by the media, and how much is simply ignorance.  I guess, in charity, we have to assume ignorance.

According to Weakland, the defrocking was the victims’ idea.  What they explicitly said that they wanted was for the sleazeball to die a layman rather than a priest.  That construct is not about protecting victims or future possible victims.  Whether the corpse wears a collar or not in the grave simply makes no difference.  The devil will take no more or less glee in tormenting him for eternity; if he repents, heaven will not rejoice more or less.

What seems plausible to me is that the desire to have Murphy defrocked was only secondarily about punishing Murphy, it was first about having the Church take the victims’ side in the dispute, that was still lurking in the deaf community decades later, between those who had been abused and those who were Murphy’s supporters.  A lot of those people had already died by the mid-90’s, but plenty were still alive and still defending Murphy.  Bertone told the Wisconsin bishops that what the victims had asked for was not within the power of the CDF to give them, at least not anytime soon, but if what the victims really wanted was for the Church to vigorously and publicly take the side of the victims against Murphy, then that was within the local bishops’ power to do even without the CDF.

The irony is that the most effective way to do this was not within the power of the CDF or the local bishops.  The most effective thing would have been a NYT-ignited s***storm against Murphy.  Sure, the bishops would have had to cooperate to make it work, but the only folks who had the power are the ones who buy ink by the barrel.  So if you want to point to who really did “too little too late” that would be the NYT which ignited the s***storm in 2010 rather than 1995 when it would have done a lot more good.

Dave Mueller, yes, I understand that.  Both of our comments attempt to show the ignorance that so often goes with these calls for “defrocking”.  Mine was just shorter and a failed attempt at humor!  :)

If you were deaf you would see why people tend to get annoyed with the blatant cover ups of child abuse by the Vatican.  Yes medias wil over-egg things, but in this case every word appears to be true, the Pope has not answered his critics, this, rather than puts him above suspicion makes him the centre of the cover up, we don’t want to hear what his press says, we want HIM to answer to the alleged crimes and we want all these priests named, and put in to a court of law,justice must be seen to be done HERE, not in the hereafter.  The bottom line here is not how it affects the Pope and his following, by these poor and abused deaf children, we see Catholics protecting the Pope, but unaware of how others are seeing it.  When he comes to the UK, deaf will be there to meet him, and they will want answers.

I think the real issue here is the some in the media’s and culture’s real hatred for Pope Benedict and the moral teaching he and the church stand for. If they can make even one small crack in his credibility they believe the world can dismiss him and the church. This isn’t about just priests and victims. There are people out there with grudges and are looking for revenge, not to forgive. Let’s continue to pray for and thank God that we have such a brave, strong pope as Pope Benedict XVI who does not shy away from the truth including matters of abuse. For as our Jesus has said the Truth will make us free.

MM,
You don’t have to be deaf to be annoyed (indeed, more than annoyed) about child abuse or the associated coverups.  It’s unclear, though, exactly what Pope Benedict XVI has to answer for.  He has already apologized to abuse victims in the name of the Church when he has met them, and I’m sure he’ll do so again. 

His personal responsibility for the case with Fr. Murphy, though, is ZERO.  While the abuse was happening in Milwaukee, Father Ratzinger was teaching theology in Germany.  You might as well blame a Target employee in Ypsilanti, Michigan for not noticing that a Target employee in Tuscon, New Mexico was embezzling money.

Yes, MM, please tell us in exactly what way you think the future Pope Benedict engaged in a “blatant cover-up” in this case. Because I simply don’t see it. If you are going to make an accusation, you have to prove it, or at least supply evidence. I don’t see that happening with any of the people who come on this site to scream and carry on. You certainly don’t see it with the press.

Cathyf, very smart comments. I was going to say the same myself.

To my mind, Murphy’s forthright public confession and repentance would have done a lot more good to the deaf community than laicization which would only have satisfied the victims’ desire for vengeance; it would not have really healed their hearts. And the rift in the community would have been healed if everyone knew he was guilty, and if there had been a chance for forgiveness. Given that Murphy was old and ill (I don’t think anyone in the Vatican really thought he was dying at that point), this measure was perhaps the best one that could be taken. Bertone suggested that this should be done, and that he should be laicized if he didn’t repent. There is a lot of pastoral wisdom behind this suggestion, I think.

Actually, the bishop could recommend laicization for him even without a trial if he were “morally certain” he was guilty (and he certainly would be if the priest confessed), and Murphy also could have been laicized volontarily—remember all the priests who lined up to do so in the 70’s? At any rate, the memo makes it clear that there was no real opposition to laicization on the part of the CDF, though I think one or more of the bishops at the meeting who perhaps didn’t understand Italian that well may have gotten that impression.

why defrock or lacitize quickly or remove from clerical state?
It shows the seriousness of 1) the crime 2) what the priesthood is 3) for other priests.
It doesn’t mean that aren’t/can’t be forgiven.  It does mean that action is serious.
I look at it this way.  Sometimes those abusers are not capable of apologizing.  They aren’t.
This allows the victims and others to see the seriousness of abusing.

There is also the temptation to abuse the power/authority that someone in that position has (priesthood/leader).  When that is completely taken away, the power is no longer there.  They no longer have even the opportunity to “slip” through the cracks.  It’s gone.
Just my thoughts.

If the abuser publicly admits his guilt, confesses and does not walk in the wrong path any more, the Church accepts him Our God is more interested in saving than punishing. The Press wants a “trial by media” and sensationalise the whole issue They want this because they think by their such maneaure the Church can be destroyed.If the Church is destroyed, their agenda of premarital sex, infidelity, homosexuality and all such devilish ways will have no real opposition. It is only wish, Jesus is alive always and the Church will uphold His teachings under all conditions the devil can create

Thank you, Jimmy.  My very first impression when reading the New York Times story on the pope was, “When did they become experts on laicization and how it serves as punishment?”

They want a one world government where everyone can be controlled evenly and they know they can’t get that as long as the church stands. They dislike anyone beig raised above them morally and would rather drag everyone through the mud thus making all the same with dirt. These are the same people that have helped to create a society that is so saturated by sex on demand and pornography that now there are people with “sex addictions” because mastering one’s desires is no longer seen as the correct thing to do. They also love to ignore the sexual abuse of children committed under the guise of the United Nations.

I am not interested in the religion or its leader frankly, I am concerned that at most junctures of Vatican response the abused have been ignored, accused of making things up, then coerced to sign papers to say nothing. There can be no doubt the abuse has taken place, and the Vatican response to the deaf abused was “It is ‘Petty gossip’” was undeserved.  I am not a Pope basher or religious objector.  I see 200 deaf children abused in America, 150 in Ireland, 35 in Scotland, 16 in Rome itself in the last YEAR.  I’m sorry, but an edict faxed out by the Vatican and with a papl signature won’t cut it.  In fairness,  abuse took place by Anglican clerics as well, theygot the same criticisms.  The child comes first, that is in the bible, yet is being abused by those most trusted to uphold it.  We don’t see a genuine apology, we see the gathering of Catholics to protect their pontiff instead.

“...remember all the priests who lined up to do [laicization]so in the 70’s?” Perhaps that exodus was due in no small part to priests’ awareness of what was going on by so many and the increasing subversive subculture.

We don’t see a genuine apology, we see the gathering of Catholics to protect their pontiff instead.

Yes, against genuine calumny. Lies to not heal injustice, they compound it. The “petty gossip” is pure distortion of the Holy Father’s speech.

The “petty gossip” quote was not likely even in response to the abuse news, and even if it was, it was in regards to the scurrilous accusations against Pope Benedict, *NOT* referring to claims of abuse in general.

The “petty gossip” flap is yet another way the media has twisted the story.

You’ve targeted the critical issue, that media latched on to defrocking and failed to report that these priests, for all practical intents and purposes, were totally discredited and without standing. This is the first venue where I’ve seen this important distinction clearly conveyed.

MM, you’re asking for justice to be done HERE (to use your typographical styling). Murphy was not tried HERE by the prosecuters in the 70s.  How is that the fault of the Pope?

Here’s a theory for you:

I’m actually beginning to wonder if this latest campaign isn’t a skillful (and astonishingly successful) smoke screen.  Look, Benedict has been fighting the vatican to clean out the “filth” for a decade now, and there are those who are still fighting back.

A very interesting question of timing (at least to me).  From Jason Berry’s article about Marciel Maciel and the Legion of Christ

Maciel left a trail of wreckage among his followers. Moreover, in a gilded irony for Benedict—who prosecuted him despite pressure from Maciel’s chief supporter, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state from 1990 to 2006—Maciel left an ecclesiastical empire with which the church must now contend. The Italian newsweekly L’espresso estimates the Legion’s assets at 25 billion euros, with a $650 million annual budget, according to The Wall Street Journal .The order numbered 700 priests and 1,300 seminarians in 2008. On March 15 of this year, five bishops, called visitators, from as many countries, delivered their reports to the pope after a seven-month investigation. A final report is expected by the end of April.

Interesting timing…  March 15…  End of April…  The Legion is fighting for its life, and only under this pope was Maciel ever punished.  Carlos Slim, a big-time supporter of Legion schools, owns a chunk of the New York Times, and basically saved the Times from bankruptcy last year.  And so now the Times has launched a campaign against the pope right this very instant in the weeks between the submission of the report, and the decision about what to do about the Legion.

The decision that the pope faces right now at this very moment (not some decision decades back) is whether the Legion is salvageable or not.  On the one side there are those who are arguing that Maciel was the “perfect hypocrite”.  That although he buggered seminarians (proven is “more than 20, less than 100”) starting from the founding of the order in 1941, although he had at least 2 families with 2 different women, although he has been accused of molesting two of his own sons when they were 7 or 8, although he stole millions of dollars from the coffers of the organization, much of it to lard down “charitable donations” to church officials who could—and did—protect him from punishment until Benedict became pope, even though he did all that and more, his teachings, the order’s rules and practices—his legacy—are fundamentally sound.  On the other side are those who believe that the Legion is not salvageable, and, among other things, wonder if there are other corrupt perverts who found the Legion a comfortable shelter, who are even to this day committing abuses on current victims.

So, in my mind, the questions are this:  Has the New York Times weakened the pope enough that he cannot mop up the corruption of the Legion?  Is the Legion corrupt enough even after Maciel’s death that there is abuse going on right now that Benedict will not be able to end?  Is everyone at the Times an unwitting dupe, or are there some who realize that they are being used by the Mexicans to prevent the pope from cleaning out “the filth”?  Do any of the baying hyena’s demanding Benedict’s resignation realize that they personally might be just as much an accessory to horrific crimes as those long-ago bishops who shuffled pervert priests around?

Maybe the argument that the New York Times is making is “Sodano and all of the other vatican brass who took fat envelopes of cash to look the other way while Maciel lived a life of utter depravity for decades are really no worse than Pope Benedict.”  The Murphy case, or the case in Munich, they are thin gruel, but it’s all they’ve got.

Just read the latest cases that the NYT has reported on. In this one, they accuse the pope of slowing down the investigation when all the evidence they present suggest that careful discernment was being pressed. The priest in question was defrocked within two years. Apparently, NYT’s requirement is that the Church rush to judgment. Their big announcement was that the letter involved was signed by Ratzinger. I guess they thought that was smoking gun even if nobody had been shot. My head is spinning!

Okay, the thing is that when a priest is ‘laicized’, that doesn’t stop him from being a priest, it only more or less permanently removes him from any active ministry.  That’s fine, as far as it goes.  It doesn’t tell us everything. 

One important aspect of such a provision is that it also (I think) removes the requirement of the priest to keep his promise to be obedient to his bishop and successors.  That means that the bishop now has little effective control over the ‘former’ priest.  That, it seems to me, would be worse than him remaining a priest and being kept in highly restricted ministry without contact with likely victims.

Joseph D’Hippolito—Weakland?!?!?  Are you out of your mind?!?!?  The sorts of filth that Maciel has been accused of (e.g. traveling to Thailand and spending Legion riches buying group sex with 7 & 8 year old boys enslaved in the sex trade) is in a totally different universe from anything we are talking about in the US.  Nah, if Carlos Slim called in a marker from the NYT it had nothing to do with some decades old case.  It would be about some current top brass of the Legion being allowed to continue to get away with whatever rape / pederasty / buggery they learned from their filthy founder.

I agree with the medieval church that the cleric who commits one of the four Sins That Cry Out to Heaven For Vengeance* forfeits forever the honor and the dignity of the state of the holy priesthood. (The Sins That Cry Out to Heaven for Vengeance are: 1) willful murder; 2) the sin of Sodom; 3) to oppress the poor; 4) to defraud the laborer of his wages.)

Up until the last century or so, priests who were found guilty of such heinous crimes were removed from their priestly ministry . . . but not turned loose upon the civilian population, but instead remained under the authority of the bishop and sent to live in a cloistered monastery to pray and do penance for the rest of their lives.

This method of dealing with priests who commit crimes of real depravity such as murder, sodomy, preying on children, does not indicate a lack of Christian forgiveness, as some here and elsewhere have suggested. Instead, this method recognizes that as individuals before God we can all hope for eternal life and to be renewed in the Christian community. But that high official station within God’s own kingdom, the right to exercise priestly authority, once lost through one’s own disgrace, is lost forever.

Imagine a general observing his troops in battle. At a crucial moment he receives word that the woman he loves his been killed not far away, and on hearing the news, he leaps on his horse and rides to her, only to discover she is alive and well - the news was a ruse, a trick. Meanwhile he learns that his own army has been crushed by the enemy, that if he has been on hand, the battle might have gone differently.

The woman might still love her general; she even marry him; other people might forgive him, and receive him kindly, but would ever be a “man among man” again? Would the President ever trust him again? Would his own men trust him . . . with their lives? No. No. Never. Forgive, yes. Trust, no. That is gone and gone for good, once lost.

And we need to be able to trust our priests, our bishops, our men of God.

So, priests who have harmed children should have been forgiven, should have remained under Church jurisdiction, and should have been placed where you place men you can no longer trust - in remote, cloistered monasteries to pray, work, and do penance.

And I think any adult-on-child sexual predator should also be committed to places where you place men you can no longer trust. (It’s too bad our present laws generally don’t permit this.)

The dictionary says “defrock” means “to deprive (a monk, priest, minister, etc.) of ecclesiastical rank, authority, and function”.  Therefore, if a child abusing priest is defrocked, he no longer has rank, authority and function in the church.  Joe Public apparently believes that’s a good thing.  Do Catholics not believe that’s a good thing?  Or do Catholics think that child abusers should have authority and function in the church.

What about this 1985 letter with Ratzinger’s signature on it Jimmy?  What’s your take on that?

The press is hyperventilating because harboring an unrepentant pedophile is abhorrent behavior.

Hyperventilating?  Is that what it’s called when the press evenly reports the facts?  Didn’t Richard Nixon use that same logic, years ago when he was involved in a little cover up?  You’re blaming the messenger here,  I think you’ve gone beyond being an apologist (which is just a sorry thing to be) into being an enabler, which means you are actively part of the problem.  In order to save itself, Catholicism needs hard, relentless critics, not a bunch of sycophantic yes-men.

“Is that what it’s called when the press evenly reports the facts?”

See, what I don’t get is, why is it called “evenly reporting the facts”, when although children have been victimized in so many other situations, but the press consistently and reliably skews its coverage so as to make it appear that one particular institution is the hotbed par excellence of these sorts of crimes, while all the others . . . not so much.

I would hardly call that an instance “the press evenly reporting the facts”?

I would call it more of “pursuing a vendetta.”

Many people support Senator Joe McCarthy to this very day, saying he was “evenly reporting the facts.”

History reveals that Joe McC had the numbers of quite a few KGB agents operating in the U.S. But Joe also smeared and ruined some good and innocent loyal Americans.

Witch hunts typically result in many things: evenness and factualness are not among them.

Men who have been proven to have harmed children should be dealt with ruthlessly. Men who are merely obnoxious to the news media for purely political differences reasons should be defended.

The dictionary says “defrock” means “to deprive (a monk, priest, minister, etc.) of ecclesiastical rank, authority, and function”.  Therefore, if a child abusing priest is defrocked, he no longer has rank, authority and function in the church.  Joe Public apparently believes that’s a good thing.  Do Catholics not believe that’s a good thing?  Or do Catholics think that child abusers should have authority and function in the church.

Catholics of course believe they should be removed from ministry. By laicization, it means that they no longer serve as an authority in a church. Holy orders is also a sacrament like baptism. It can’t be erased because once the sacrament has been given, it is a permanent feature of the soul. That’s what we mean by once a priest always a priest.

I don’t think Joe Public is concerned with “once a priest always a priest” theology.  Joe Public is focused on whether child abusers have authority and function in the church, and not just in the pulpit.  To Joe Public, “removed from ministry” is very broad.

“Joe Public is focused on whether child abusers have authority and function in the church, and not just in the pulpit.”

The abusers have been removed from positions of authority and function in the Catholic Church. And that’s good. But the news media continues to focus our attention today on incidents that happened many years ago, and in which the guilty parties are now dead, laicized, beyond the reach of the law due to statute of limitation, or a combination of the three. The fact that the bad guys are out of the ministry isn’t particularly mentioned or clarified. It’s all done very cleverly, to put the Church in the worst possible light. And the fact that someone saw someone’s signature over a letter that included a suspicious reference to something somewhat inappropriate that someone might have witnessed back in 1985 is splashed all over the front page news a quarter of a century later.

Why doesn’t the “New York Times” update its name to “New York Old News” and be done with it?

re: the “petty gossip” quote, it was fabricated by Reuters about the Pope’s Palm Sunday address, but then repeated by Cardinal Sodano in his unusual speech before Easter Mass. (Anybody have a copy of his remarks for us to look at?)

Some observers thought it was odd that he broke protocol and spoke, and also odd that he brought up the abuse, since it allowed the press to inject the abuse story into a story that otherwise would have been free of it.

re: the focus on defrocking

Let’s remember that lawyers are framing this story for the media as they leak the documents out. The more they discredit the Church, the more money they stand to make. So they’re working hard to convince the NYTimes and others that delay in defrocking is a horrible offense. (Perhaps it would even count as special evidence under civil law suits?)

Also let’s recall that the Vatican has geopolitical significance. Intelligence agencies are known to plant stories in the newspapers. They could be acting as an accellerant.

With the usual caveats about conspiracy theorizing, attacks on Iran have been rumored for years. If attacks are truly in the works, the Vatican’s anti-war voice needs to be taken out of the picture. Hawks have an interest in feeding these flames.

I don’t think Joe Public is concerned with “once a priest always a priest” theology.  Joe Public is focused on whether child abusers have authority and function in the church, and not just in the pulpit.  To Joe Public, “removed from ministry” is very broad.

Yes, and I imagine there is no magic answer that will satisfy Joe Public expecially given the distorted information he gets from the news. Removing a priest from his parish and duties is easy to do because all it takes is the bishop’s command. To “defrock” him however requires a canonical trial, meaning everything Joe Public generally knows about trials. Evidence, testimony, rulings and of course, large blocks of time to do it all.

Marion you said “The abusers have been removed from positions of authority and function in the Catholic Church”.  Have they?  I think the public awaits to hear the pope officially declare that.  And yes, the press focuses attention on things in the past perhaps because the public is apparently not convinced that the Catholic Church has fully addressed them. There seems to be a view that the Catholic Church is secretive and has been hiding things.  Is the Catholic Church fully open to public inspection?

I understand what Chad was trying to say, and I get his humour.  As you can see from this BBC quote:
“AP published a letter, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1985, resisting Stephen Kiesle’s defrocking.

The Vatican says he was exercising due caution before sacking the priest.”

They rephrase defrocking as sacking.  They think it’s the same as being fired.  As several people have pointed out, this would actually make him more of a danger as he would no longer be answerable to anyone but himself.

Somehow overlooked is the fact that Fr. Kiesle, the young priest in the Oakland diocese who molested six boys was arrested in 1978, pleaded no contest and received a three-year suspended sentence.  So why no hue and cry from the Usual Suspects about the dereliction of the district attorney and the civil courts? 

The bishop of Oakland acted promptly to remove him from any clerical duties.  No Vatican action whatsoever was required.  After being ousted from the ministry, he later volunteered at a youth ministry - but another worker there alerted the bishop’s office and he was promptly ousted from that, as well.  The news is silent on whether he gave into his impulses at any time after this.  (In the Wisconsin case, the ousted priest went for 24 years without any evidence of such activity.  Back then, it was believed that Therapy could help one control homosexual impulses.)  I suppose if there had been any further instances, the lawyers would have trumpeted it. 

The priest himself requested laicization in 1981.  His application went into the queue—there were lots of liberal priests asking to be relieved of their vows back then.  (The CDF did not have jurisdiction over sexual cases back then, and it is not clear if the CDF was informed of the particular background of this particular case.) 

JPII had introduced a stricter policy regarding laicization in 1980, and that contributed to the backlog.  One policy is that such requests would not be granted unless the priest was at least 40 years old.  The file was evidently lost in 1981 during the reshuffling as Card. Seper was replaced by Card. Ratzinger. 

The bishop of Oakland wrote again in September of 1985 asking about the status of the case.  He received a form letter in reply—this is the letter which had to be translated from the Latin by the media (which means it may not mean what they think it means).  It amounted to, where the heck is that file, hey, we’ll get back to you.  The priest—who had already been deprived of the ministry in 1978—was laicized in 1987, when he turned 40.  This was less than two years after Ratzinger took over the case, reviewed the evidence, etc., and was most likely signed off by Ratzinger himself.  (Surprisingly, the plaintiff’s attorney did not include the actual decision in the documents he graciously supplied to the NYT.)

At this point, remember, Kiesle had only a lewd conduct misdemeanor on which he had pleaded no contest.  He had attended counseling and saw his probation officer regularly.  Between the initial offense and his defrocking, there were no further charges of lewd behavior. 

In 2002, 24 years after the Church had removed him from the ministry, and 15 years after he had been formally defrocked, Kiesle was arrested on 13 counts of child molestation.  All but two were thrown out due to statutes of limitation.  He pleaded no contest to molesting a young girl[!] in 1995 (17 years after being kicked out of the ministry and eight years after being defrocked).  There is no hue and cry from the Usual Suspects because the civil courts followed their own procedures and dropped charges on 11 counts, or that they allowed the statute of limitations to lapse. 

Sheesh.  The US Dept. of Health 2006 report on Child Maltreatment concluded that 0.5% of all such children were abused by “professionals.”  Clergy is a subset of professionals and Catholic priests are a subset of clergy.  Nussbaum and Nussbaum write that “the 2007 Annual Report prepared by the Catholic bishops identifies fifteen allegations of childhood sexual abuse in the American Catholic Church from 2000 to 2007—an average of less than two per year. The 2007 Associated Press investigation identifies 2,570 public school teachers who, from 2001 through 2005, had their teaching licenses ‘taken away, denied, surrendered voluntarily, or restricted’ as a result of sexual misconduct with minors—an average of 514 per year.” 

Sure, it’s all about the children?

Great information, Mike.

It’s amazing what the media won’t stoop to. They have pie on their face again. By trying to make the pope look bad, they lead to Catholic guys like you uncovering how the civil authorities dropped the ball (several times).

So why aren’t they going after the civil authorities?  Same old story- anti-Catholic bias and hypocrisy.

So… the guy was defrocked….. and then he still molested some children.

Lot of good “defrocking” did for him.  Pretty much made him free from Church scrutiny to do what he wanted.

There seems to be a view that the Catholic Church is secretive and has been hiding things.  Is the Catholic Church fully open to public inspection?

That is a bit like asking the CIA how they really do all there spying stuff. If they told you, would you believe them? It’s kinda the same thing here. We often hear calls for the Vatican to open their secret archives (which aren’t really secret any more than a special collection at a library is) and we will finally have the truth. Well, not really because if the Vatican allows people to go on a no-limit fishing expedition, all they would say is, “Ok, what did you do with the incriminating documentation?” The Vatican can simply never do enough to satisfy the gainsayers because ultimately it isn’t about the abuse. Today it’s abuse. Tommorow it’s a recycled Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust scandal. The next day it’s the Church-sexual-teaching-causes-AIDS-in—Africa canard. And on and on and on.

You are correct.

“There seems to be a view that the Catholic Church is secretive and has been hiding things.  Is the Catholic Church fully open to public inspection?”

John, what specifically are you asking for? Do you mean Joe Six-Pack should be able to walk in off the street and say to the Parish secretary, “Hey, lady, let me take a gander at the confidential personnel records of your church going back, say, the last six years. Oh, and make me two double-sided copies of each one.”

I mean, what are we talking about here?

And my next question is, whatever it is you want the Catholic Church to do to be more transparent, why shouldn’t that also be required of the public schools and also other religious organizations, too, while we’re at it. They have raped children and cover up every bit as much, if not more so, and therefore must be watched and monitored with the same vigilance. Right?

As a mother of four young children in public school, I demand equal reporting and prosecution for all abusers.  Not this extreme cherry picking.

What we are seeing folks, is the secular institutions trying to take down the leader of the Catholic Church as retribution and to SILENCE All of us.

And it is BACKFIRING.

We need to push back with the facts, admitting where we were wrong, BUT most of all using our collective wisdom AND the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to bring out the truth.

We’ll all benefit from that.

Marion, the public school system does not proclaim itself the beacon of God’s word, does not require its teachers to vow obedience to God’s word or hold them out as if they have, and does not hide behind Vatican immunity claims and dress itself like a sanctuary for sheep to safely graze.  Those who put themselves on a pedestal claiming to speak the truth tend to get the most attention and criticism.  Meanwhile public schools are often perceived by the public to be one step above zoos open to just about anything. Public expectations are very different for churches and public schools.  And therefore the reactions in regard to failure can be very different as well.

@ John:
Do you really think child molestation is okay as long as the public’s expectations are low?  School teachers are not put on a pedestal and claim to speak truth to their students?  Hiding behind union rules is somehow more acceptable? 

I’d be curious to learn what “Vatican immunity” is involved here.  Those who were actually guilty of crimes were punished, often long ago.  If Church officials then believed therapy was effective and offenders could be salvaged, back then everyone believed it.  The civil courts certainly did.  They sentenced that Kiesle to probation on a misdemeanor.  Years later, long after he had been defrocked, they threw out 11 of 13 charges against him that had suddenly popped up because the statute of limitations had expired.  (The Church threw out that bar.) 

The notion that there are some sins too terrible ever to be forgiven, committed by people who can never be reformed is a relatively new one, reflecting the anxiety of the post-modern age over the effective abandonment of children to “professional caregivers.”  The day-care center mania was an earlier example of this.  One should be ever-wary of accusations brought long after the fact against those dead or senile; esp. when it has become a public panic.  That is why English Common Law and other codes had these safeguards built in.  But we have decided the safeguards can be cut down in order to get at the devil.

O.S., nothing in my post said anything about child molestation being “ok”.  The public does not think child molestation is “ok” at public schools.  The issue is why the public apparently reacts more strongly when it hears about child molesting priests.  I think many people hold priests as representatives of the church/God to a higher standard than they hold public school teachers as representatives of society at large, just as they may hold what is supposedly holy above what is profane.  I also suspect that the publicity given to the Church’s alleged secrecy and immunity also fuels speculation that the Church has undeserved protection beyond what the public schools enjoy.

On “Vatican immunity”, here’s a quote from a recent news story: “At the heart of two lawsuits that are working their way through the federal courts lies one question: Does the Vatican control its Catholic bishops?  The answer could determine whether the Vatican can be sued in U.S. courts and be forced to open up its secret archives… [A]ttorneys for the plaintiffs are filing requests for thousands of documents in the Vatican archives, and even demanding to take a deposition from the pope. ‘I want to unearth every evidentiary trail that leads from every offending priest directly to the Vatican and ultimately take the depositions of every official, all the way to Rome and to the pope himself, says plaintiff’s attorney Anderson.”

Your claim that “Those who were actually guilty of crimes were punished, often long ago” is widely disputed.  The public believes many guilty have escaped prosecution entirely and that many who were punished got off lightly as you pointed out yourself (“They sentenced that Kiesle to probation on a misdemeanor.”).  Even if all the molesters were punished long ago (which itself has not been proven), there remains the issue of wrongdoing by other Church officials who perhaps acted with negligence or reckless disregard or in conspiracy or some other legal theory that imputes wrongdoing and responsibility to parties beyond just the actual child molesters.  People wonder if civil authorities might be able to better prosecute the guilty, including the molesters, if the Church shares all that it knew and knows and if it were more forthcoming in openly encouraging the victims and those in the know to come forward.  If so, that may help avoid the problem of “accusations brought long after the fact” by helping to make the accusations more timely.

Fine, John. Then, let us also open up all the case files of instances of child molestation in other religious circles, in public and private schools, and non-profit organizations, and let these victims be brought forward for help and assistance, and any perpetrators of abuse or cover-up be punished.

Absolutely. The victims should be supported and assisted, and the perpetrators punished.

All of them. ALL OF THEM, JOHN. Not just the Catholic ones. There is no just reason to single the Catholic Church out for this necessary and important procedure you propose and which I fully support.

I support it. I support it FOR ALL VICTIMS OF ALL PERPETRATORS.

I’m ready. Are you, ready, John? Let’s roll.

@John
nothing in my post said anything about child molestation being “ok”. 

When one category accounts for 67% of all cases and another category accounts for less than 0.5% of all cases, to focus on the second category while ignoring the first amounts de facto to a “pass” given the larger category. 

I also suspect that the publicity given to the Church’s alleged secrecy and immunity also fuels speculation that the Church has undeserved protection beyond what the public schools enjoy. 

Well, yes.  The publicity is supposed to lead you to speculate precisely those things. 

On ‘Vatican immunity’, here’s a quote from a recent news story: ‘At the heart of two lawsuits that are working their way through the federal courts lies one question: Does the Vatican control its Catholic bishops?  The answer could determine whether the Vatican can be sued in U.S. courts and be forced to open up its secret archives…’

None of that had to do with immunity.  Nor was it a news story.  It was a press release by plaintiff attorneys using selected documents and a bold assertion that the trail does in fact lead to the Pope they love to hate. 

Also “secret” archives is a misnomer.  The word in Latin (secretus) means “separated, apart from.”  Scholars have always had access to them. 

Your claim that “Those who were actually guilty of crimes were punished, often long ago” is widely disputed. 

Of course.  Got to keep the pressure on.  It is especially disputed by those who hope to make money from the dispute.  But note that Kiesle was disciplined by the church pretty much as soon as he was convicted (nolo contendere).  Shanley, the progressive homosexual advocate known as “the hippie priest” back in the day, was accused and eventually admitted to several homosexual encounters, about half with adolescents.  This is what the homosexual community calls “chicken hawking.”  His confession came in 1993, and the bishop of San Bernadino dismissed him from the ministry in 1993.  Not until 2005 was he tried by the civil courts, and that was based on the testimony of someone claiming suddenly recovered “memories” from twenty years before. 

The other notorious case, that of Geoghan, resulted in his being defrocked in 1998.  There had been prior accusations, but no arrests.  (Because there were no charges brought, he was transferred, but not dismissed.)  Charges were brought over an incident in 1991 in which he grabbed a 10-year old boy’s buttocks in a swimming pool.  He was defrocked in 1998 (seven years later), and civil court convicted him in 2002 (eleven years later).  Of the two other cases against him, in one the alleged victim refused to testify and the other was dropped because the statute of limitations had passed.) 

The public believes many guilty have escaped prosecution entirely and that many who were punished got off lightly as you pointed out yourself (“They sentenced that Kiesle to probation on a misdemeanor.”). 

Of course.  The public is supposed to believe that.  The getting off lightly thing was the responsibility of the district attorney, not the bishop.  He pleaded to a misdemeanor because the charge - public lewdness - was a misdemeanor.  A very wide range of activities are lumped together under child molestation.  (And the definition of child does not match the Darwinian one.)  Example, a young man plead no contest to sexual contact with a minor.  He got off with public service and counseling.  Sounds bad.  But he never touched the boy.  He had gone to pick him up as a favor and on the way back, parked the car, whipped it out, and “flogged the monkey.”  He was horny for his girl friend, he told the boy.  This is not exemplary behavior; but neither is it sodomy.

People wonder if civil authorities might be able to better prosecute the guilty, including the molesters, if the Church shares all that it knew and knows

Heck, they wonder the same thing if lawyers would share what they knew, or doctors, or psychiatrists, or news reporters. 

that may help avoid the problem of “accusations brought long after the fact” by helping to make the accusations more timely. 

At least some of the “long after the fact” accusations are instances of piggy-backing by people hoping to cash in.  There were some cases here locally that blew up that way.  And a big case in Cleveland IIRC in which the accuser’s own boyfriend spoke up and said he [the accuser] was a chronic liar. 

But just as was the case with the day care center mania, the mere accusation is sufficient.  Defense is forbidden.  Caution regarding the rule of law is punishing the victim.

So, John, do you think that children abused sexually by their parents or teachers are somehow “less molested” than those by priests?

Please explain.

After all, it’s all about the protection of children in the end, isn’t it?

Or is it about getting the Catholics????

Marion and Olde Statistician, you are spot on.

Now, if you were SILENT about the public school abuse plague that is STILL going on, John would be happy.

He only wants the public to focus on the sins of the Catholics, not on the public at large.

Marion, you said all the victims should be supported, not just the Catholic ones.  I don’t have a problem with that at all, and I don’ think the general public does either.  But it hasn’t been proven that “all” the “Catholic ones” have been supported (or any particular percentage at all) or that the state doesn’t support victims other than the Catholic ones, for indeed the state handles non-priest cases every day.  And in terms of “singled out”, as far as I can tell, public agenda is often focused on high profile/pedestal targets like supposedly obedient priests or supposedly profitable Enrons or hypocritical leaders.  Of course as others have pointed out, there are also times when daycares and schools come under the public spotlight.  I don’t find it all surprising or necessarily totally inappropriate that such targets be chosen by a society that has limited resources.

The Olde Statistician, I don’t buy your 67% vs 0.5% comparison as saying the public thinks child molestation is ok as long as it’s not done by a priest.  Whether it’s a case from the 67% or from the 0.5%, cases go to court, and for all I know, non-priest cases are criminally prosecuted more severely than priest cases. There’s also the matter of whether offenses by priests are as likely to be reported by the victim as offenses by non-priests, even if there’s greater public outrage toward offenses by priests.  This is yet another matter of opinion that has not been studied and has been disputed over the years.  On the other hand, I might expect priest cases to perhaps have greater civil litigation (when and if the cases see the light of day) because the Catholic Church might have deeper pockets than your average child molester.  If so, I don’t think that’s necessarily inappropriate.

You said “None of that had to do with immunity”, but that’s your opinion. You and the lawyer can disagree.  As far as I’m concerned, everyone and anyone who is beyond the legal reach of someone’s lawsuit or criminal prosecution has a degree of immunity, not the least of which is the Pope as head of state.

You said “The getting off lightly thing was the responsibility of the district attorney, not the bishop.” In society, everyone has responsibility.  It’s not just the district attorney’s.  He can only do so much by himself.  As I said earlier, it’s questionable how much Church officials or anyone (including the victims) knew but did not provide to the district attorney or to the victims not to mention what Church officials perhaps should have known but chose not to know.

You tried to compare the Church with lawyers, doctors and news reporters, but the Church is not A lawyer or A doctor or A news reporter.  Are there some similarities?  Yes, but there are also great differences.  The Church is a large and powerful worldwide organization, widely respected (at least in the past and relative to other groups), that grooms children and their behavior and is widely seen as requiring submission of its members under threat of eternal damnation.

You also seemed to downplay the seriousness of the criminal offense involving the boy you mentioned by saying “sounds bad but he never touched the boy“, but I don’t buy that as necessarily or generally the case even if was in that instance.  Many children can be seriously, even devastatingly affected even if there’s no sodomy, to the point of perhaps rejecting the Church and salvation.  And that might be all the more a concern when the abuser is a priest.

“And in terms of ‘singled out’, as far as I can tell, public agenda is often focused on high profile/pedestal targets like supposedly obedient priests or supposedly profitable Enrons or hypocritical leaders.  Of course as others have pointed out, there are also times when daycares and schools come under the public spotlight. I don’t find it all surprising or necessarily totally inappropriate that such targets be chosen by a society that has limited resources.”

John, what in the world are you talking about?

Children continue to be harmed and victimized now TODAY, John, in a variety of settings - homes, public schools, Protestant, Orthodox, and non-Christian religious organizations. Not in Catholic ones, though. I assure you this is true. Don’t believe me? Don’t think so? You’re a smart man - you think about this: You don’t think seeing colleagues’ districts being sued into Chapter 11 has a way of getting even the most clueless or recalcitrant bureaucrats to put rules and procedures in place that do an excellent job of slamming the door on adult-on-child sexual predators entering the system and of smoking out and eliminating any remaining within the system? If you don’t get that, and understand that Catholic circles are now - TODAY - among THE safest in the world for children and young people when it comes to these sorts of predators.

Meanwhile, other children in other settings TODAY continue to be harmed.

John, you are proving to us once again that the media fixation on the loathsome and disgusting conduct of a small minority of Catholic priests during the 1970s and 1980s which overshadows to the extent of virtually eliminating any public attention to the plight of children being SIMILARLY HARMED TODAY RIGHT NOW IN 2010 by equally loathesome and disgusting predators in other circles is not about “The Children” and is about, as George Weigel wrote, strangling the Catholic Church morally and financially.

John, you hate the Catholic Church so much that you are more interested in seeing it strangled morally and financially, than you are interested in having public attention focussed on the children CURRENTLY being harmed in other circles, then have the decency to stop crawling stealthily on your belly, but instead stand up like a man and say so.

P.S. “Limited Resources” indeed! Wretched folly! Worse than wretched! “Yes, we have the resources to demolish the reputation of a Church that has finally gotten its act together, but not the resources to focus public attention on the plight of children and young people being harmed today.” “Limited resources?” is your excuse for these bad priorities? On what planet do you think such reasoning would actually fly, actually hold water. What has happened to our educational system in this country that people are actually not able to put a logical sequence of thoughts together, but think no one else can, either?

P.P.S. “Limited Resources”. So said Marie “Let Them Eat Cake” Antoinette, Queen of France, at the time of the French Revolution. “I don’t have the resources to assist the starving poor; I need a new diamond necklace.”
Sure, we all have “limited resources”, John. I am not a bazillionare; I have to set priorities on the use of my money, and I do. You probably do, too. And so do those running the news media. This is not about “resources”; it’s about “priorities.”

P.P.P.S. all this is a reminder that the major news media have made it abundantly clear to anyone with eyes to see that their agenda is NOT about assisting children currently in need of our help, but instead damaging the reputation of the Church.
How about *that* for “priorities”? Such good they’re doing - they should be so proud. “The American People’s Right To Know” - our intrepid and heroic news media exposing the bad guys and bringing you the facts.
Damage the Church. Ignore present-day bad guys. Overlook present-day children being harmed. Oh, and damage the Church.
This is their set of priorities, people.
It would surprise me if some of these guys actually jump for joy and high-five one another when accounts of another instance from the 1970s or 1980s in the Catholic Church come to light.

The major news media’s continued commitment to evade its responsibility to direct the public’s attention to the plight of children currently being harmed in other U.S. settings is incontrivertible evidence of their purpose and intention to damage the Catholic Church’s reputation, and not to assist children or help to stop crime.

The horror of these stories makes our brains freeze up, I think, so it’s important to keep repeating this.

We are being manipulated by these guys, people. And I for one, don’t like it.

To repeat, We are being manipulated by the news media indeed.
And do you know what our good friend John here and those who think as he does would have Catholics say while being so manipulated?
I know. They want us to say, “Thank you, sir. May I have another?”
Hmph. Nothing doing.

The press treats the Catholic Church differently than it treats civil authority because the Catholic Church claims to be distinct from all civil authority.  No civil authority asserts the magisterium of the Catholic Church in guiding man.  No civil servant claims the moral authority of a bishop.  I expect much more from a bishop than I do from any civil servant.  Perhaps the press does also.  Expecting the press to treat a bishop as the press would treat a district attorney, school board president or any public servant is not realistic.  Lightening bolts cannot be compared to lightening bugs.

“Lightening bolts cannot be compared to lightening bugs.”
This is about children currently today being harmed in non-Catholic circles, and instead of drawing the public’s attention to their plight, the press expending its “limited resources” on continuing to churn stories about past malfeasance by Catholic hierarchy which no longer represent a threat to children and young people. Meanwhile children continue to suffer. Today.
Look, you can think up excuses and spin it and paint gold leaf on it from here till Doomsday. For the news media, there is little interest in assisting current victims and at-risk children. All the interest is in harming the Church’s reputation.
If you think that is a good set of priorities, Joseph Condon, then I would say that your priorities are seriously out-of-step with those of the majority of decent, caring, intelligent people.
As for me, I insist that the news media should be focussing its “limited resources” on helping to expose and put away bad guys operating today, on assisting children at-risk today.
How hard would that be? Well, it would mean that the news media would have to get off its hateful vendetta against the Church. But I don’t think they can do that.
So we’re kind of stuck with things as they now are, aren’t we?
Doesn’t make it defensible.

John, here is my question for you:  If the current Legion leadership includes corrupt perverts, and you help the New York Times “bring down” Pope Benedict so that he no longer has the ability to dissolve the order, are you going to take responsibility for all of the abuse perpetrated by the Legion from here on out?  You want bishops to “take responsibility” for failing to defrock priests fast enough in the past—are you willing to take responsibility for preventing Benedict from defrocking perverts in the present?

Some people don’t get it!  The cries of the people are not about the fact that 5% of the priests molested little children - that’s bad enough - but worse is the way it was hidden.  If you worked with children in, say, the boy scouts, you must be finger printed, never be alone with one boy, etc.  And, most importantly, any hint of molestation must be reported to the police as soon as it is discovered.  That is what people are upset about.  The fact that the church they trusted let them down.  They didn’t follow the law.  They didn’t report these evil priest to the police.  They are upset because the bishops who tried to protect the priest aren’t in jail too.  It will take three generations for the credibility of the pope to return to a position of moral authority.

The press is hyperventilating about this because they are run by leftists who are anti-Catholic bigots.

If the Klan ran newspapers, would anyone expect favorable coverage on any black people or Catholics?

“are you willing to take responsibility for preventing Benedict from defrocking perverts in the present?”

I’m answering for John: No! The agenda is to harm the reputation of the Church, and nothing else. Not to protect children; not to neutralize predators. It’s to harm the Church’s reputation. Period. Full stop. End of story.

Down with Children! Up with Predators! If that’s what it takes to harm the reputation of the Church of the Holy Father the Pope. Whatever it takes.

Another predator priest from the 80s comes to light? Uncork the champagne and strike up the band! Whoo-hoo! More fuel on the fire of the Church’s public reputation.

Meanwhile, children are being harmed in the present elsewhere? Hush! Don’t want to much attention on that - might be a distraction from the goal of painting the Catholic Church as the Haven of Slimeballs. Can’t have that!

That’s John’s angle, and the angle of the mainstream news outlets.

We are being manipulated, people, and I for one, have no intention of replying to these hits with “Thank you, Sir! May I have another!” like the NYT expects you to.

Bob, in the case of the Wisconsin priest, it WAS reported to the police, and the police dismissed the case.

In the case of the Oakland, CA priest, it was reported to the police as well in 1978, and the civil authorities gave him 3 yrs. suspended sentence…...

Why don’t you go after the police, the district attorneys, etc.

Oh… they’re not the Catholic Church.

Also, Bob, don’t forget that it was after he was laicized that the offending CA priest married and then molested again.  Several times.

So defrocking does not stop molesting, nor does a married man stop molesting.

What all of you have neglected to consider is this: Molesting children is a criminal offence.
Knowledge of a criminal offence and not reporting it is also a criminal offence.
Regardless of any defrocking or other action by the Church they had knowledge of a criminal offence and didn’t report it.
It doesn’t matter whether it is a Church, a Temple or a Synagogue the basic principle is that criminal acts must be reported to the police. The Church did not do this.
They clearly had knowledge that criminal acts had taken place, hence the disciplinary action. They cannot deny that they had knowledge of crimes that they did not report.
What this boiled down to is that the Church took disciplinary action of its own and did not report the crimes. Which is acting above the Law, as if Church action was enough.

@John
I don’t buy your 67% vs 0.5% comparison as saying the public thinks child molestation is ok as long as it’s not done by a priest.

The figures come from Child Maltreatment 2006, a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  <

I said “de facto,” meaning that it has that consequence, regardless whether the stampeded herd realizes it or not.  When disproportionate attention is paid to a fraction of one percent, it necessarily mean that proportionately less attention is paid to the 67%.  It would be like an industrial plant in which Machine A accounted for two-thirds of a serious defect and Machine G accounted for a fraction of a percent—and then making a big deal about going after Machine G.  It ignores the Pareto Principle and misallocates resources. 

There’s also the matter of whether offenses by priests are as likely to be reported by the victim as offenses by non-priests 

At this point you are imagining “facts.”  I prefer to deal with actual ones.  Are teenagers really less likely to report offenses by priests as offenses by their Uncle Jim or [more likely] Mom’s current live-in boy friend or third husband?  [How dare you accuse dear old Uncle Jim!!!  Go to your room!!]  The 66% category is “parents, other relatives, unmarried partners of parents, friends, or neighbors.”  Live in boy friends increase the risk factor for abuse by 1300%; but no one is campaigning to control cohabitation. 

because the Catholic Church might have deeper pockets than
your average child molester. 

Bingo.  It’s about money.  The Church’s pockets are not nearly as deep as atheists and other fundamentalists dream.  Most of it is tied up in historic treasures - artwork, buildings, etc. - regarded as the joint heritage of mankind. 

As far as I’m concerned, everyone and anyone who is beyond the legal reach of someone’s lawsuit or criminal prosecution has a degree of immunity, not the least of which is the Pope as head of state. 

No one has accused the Pope of molesting children.  Most of the homosexual priests have been reigned in, and they are now going after “second or third derivatives.”  (We saw this in the Asbestos Mania, too.  After they had driven the manufacturers out of business, they went after the users.  Then they went after anyone with asbestos cooties.)  The complaint here is that a large bureaucracy did not move as fast as those with hindsight think they ought to have moved—and not even move to punish the offender, because the offenders had already been punished and removed from the ministry (sometimes more quickly than secular authorities had moved).  Defrocking was a separate process and not one necessarily tied to the homosexuality problem.  It was governed by laws and policies usually not geared toward empty poses for the cameras.  All it would accomplish, since the offender had already been suspended from ministerial duties, would be to place him entirely outside ecclesiastical supervision and discipline, where he could do whatever he wanted—as Kiesle did. 

You said “The getting off lightly thing was the responsibility of the
district attorney, not the bishop.” In society, everyone has
responsibility. 

Responsibility = 1/n^2, where n is the number of people who share responsibility. 

It is the decision of the district attorney’s office whether to seek felony or misdemeanor charges (and in this they are often bound by the law.  What Kiesle was charged with was in fact a misdemeanor in civil law.)  The DA’s office also decides if the statute of limitations applies, whether to seek a plea bargain, offer probation instead of a trial, and so on.  He cannot unilaterally decide to ignore the law, not in the USA.  If the statute of limitations galls—how can there possibly be an expiration date on =this= crime!—then it is up to the state legislature to change it.  (Except SCUSA ruled that the efforts of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts [as the Bay State names its legislature] to eliminate SofL for this offense was unconstitutional.)  The Church is not allowed to interfere in the civil government.  (In the old separation model of the Middle Ages, the Church had its own courts and could send the offender to a monastery high in the Alps or in the wilds of Prussia, the equivalent of solitary confinement on bread and water.) 

You tried to compare the Church with lawyers, doctors and news reporters, but the Church is not A lawyer or A doctor or A news reporter. Are there some similarities? 

The similarities lie in whether they can be compelled at law to divulge what they know. 

The Church is a large and powerful worldwide organization… that grooms children and their behavior and is widely seen as requiring submission of its members under threat of eternal damnation. 

I love the “widely seen” part.  Do you want to tell us how Jews were “widely seen” in Europe?  Or how blacks were “widely seen” in the South? 

You also seemed to downplay the seriousness of the criminal offense
involving the boy you mentioned by saying “sounds bad but he never touched the boy“, but I don’t buy that as necessarily or generally the case even if was in that instance. Many children can be seriously, even devastatingly affected even if there’s no sodomy 

Indeed.  But in the case in point, no one was a religious figure at all; and it was the DA’s decision to offer probation, counseling, and public service.  It irritates people who wish to lump a wide range of substantively different activities under a single sound-bad name, but there really are degrees of these things.  Even murder is divided into gradations of seriousness.  Oh, but not this!  We are invited by the terminology to suppose that all such accusations are accusations of man-boy rape. 

But there is no evil but that good may come of it.  One consequence of the scandals is that progressives have toned down their advocacy of child sexualization and on this one issue at least, the libertines have become puritans.

Olde Statistician, you say you want to deal with actual facts, but whatever figures we have to discuss about the amount of attention different groups receive or the actual amount of child abuse or how much responsibility or independence so-and-so had or didn’t have are opinions, speculations, perhaps rash, perhaps wild, perhaps not, perhaps whatever.  Who is to say?  Who has the final analysis?  That’s what I point out.  Short of God and the final analysis, what universally accepted objective measure for attention, harm, responsibility, independence, fairness, etc. is there?  Even if we had precise figures for a particular year or number of years, it remains that a year, a decade, a century, etc. is a drop in the bucket of time.  As the clock ticks, the spotlight moves on.  For months at a time, Nancy Grace is carrying on about one missing girl, and then it’ll be someone else as the spotlight moves on.  Some people will tune in, others will tune out, and as always, the spotlight moves on.  Wherever the spotlight may be, no matter how long it seems to linger, I rejoice and give thanks.

Cathyf, you asked me question premised on current leadership including corrupt perverts and me helping the NYT “bring down” Pope Benedict, but I didn’t see any explicit mention of an albino monk.  Nevertheless, you asked me what happens.  Well… in Who-ville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day!  And the minute his heart didn’t feel quite so tight, he whizzed with his load through the bright morning light and he brought back the toys!  And the food for the feast!  And he… HE HIMSELF!... the Grinch carved the roast beast!

Who is to say?  Who has the final analysis?

Let’s add “What is truth?” to that.

Regardless of any defrocking or other action by the Church they had knowledge of a criminal offence and didn’t report it.

That’s not true…he was reported to the police in this case, and received a suspended sentence of three years.  Sheesh.  Quit repeating the same old tripe…it’s not even true.

Bob, I’m going to try and answer everything you brought up.  Apologies for the ugly formatting this will certainly end up with.

“Some people don’t get it!  The cries of the people are not about the fact that 5% of the priests molested little children - that’s bad enough - but worse is the way it was hidden.”
I agree that it’s horrible how it was covered up, and believe that anyone involved in covering up accusation should be removed from their positions.  That said, I differentiate between applying due process while a priest is under a “suspension” and cover-up.

“If you worked with children in, say, the boy scouts, you must be finger printed, never be alone with one boy, etc.”
I was fingerprinted 10 years ago, with a full background check, in order to lead the music at one of our masses (with teen musicians).  Other requirements (such as not being alone with one child in a closed room or any other suspicious activity) were covered in a seminar that not only laid out what our behavior was to be like, but also how to spot suspicious behavior in others and to whom it should be reported.

“And, most importantly, any hint of molestation must be reported to the police as soon as it is discovered.”
As mentioned above, that was covered in training I received 10 years ago in the Archdiocese of Detroit.  All people involved in any way with children at any parish in the Archdiocese must go through the same training and background check.  It also applies to the Catholic schools within the Archdiocese.  (I can’t speak for how it is being handled elsewhere).

“That is what people are upset about.  The fact that the church they trusted let them down.”
Yes, it did.  Well, more specifically, people with in the Church, the local leaders, let them down.  The leaders have made a tremendous effort to correct their failures, to put in place better protections for the children, and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“They didn’t follow the law.”
In some cases this is true.  In other cases it’s not.

“They didn’t report these evil priest to the police.”
It depends on which cases you’re talking about.  The current ones, the so-called smoking guns…in these cases the abusive priests were reported to the police and either not prosecuted (statute of limitations) or got a civil wrist-slap.  The Church punished those priests more than the civil courts did, removing one priest from active ministry before eventually officially “defrocking” him.

“They are upset because the bishops who tried to protect the priest aren’t in jail too.”
Blame the civil authorities, then, and not the Church.  The Church doesn’t send people to jail, and (perhaps unfortunately) any statutes of limitations have surely expired on “failure to report a crime” cases from the 70s so the civil authorities probably have their hands tied as well.  But the Church should do (and has done) things to correct this.

“It will take three generations for the credibility of the pope to return to a position of moral authority.”
For some people, the Church will never have a position of moral authority, and they will continue to undermine the moral authority of the Church in the eyes of those who accept the Church’s authority.  And that’s all this really is.  This is not an attempt to help the children (as has been pointed out by numerous people), it’s an attempt to destroy the Church.  And they’re trying to do it by blaming the Vatican (more specifically, the Pope) for the inactions of local ordinaries or their staff.  But, like I said with my example of what the Archdiocese of Detroit has done, a lot has been put in place to prevent this from happening again.

I’m wondering if catholics have read online of the Pope to be confronted when he goes to the UK with a view to him being arrested.  Whether that is legally possible is doubtful, but British deaf people are not going to let the visit go without them drawing huge media attention to the Vatican’s complicity in the cover up, nor, the Pope’s part in it when he was a Cardinal, his signature is on a letter to the Vatican advising them to bury child abuse issues to save the catholic church being discredited.  This shows to me as a lay deaf person, thinking of the children was the last thing on the mind, how does this acquaint with the catholic icon of mother, and CHILD ?  I don’t think anyone is in any doubt the Vatican and Pope has handled the whole issue very badly.  I’m not a catholic ‘basher’, feel immense sadness and some anger in the way these deaf abused are being treated as in the wrong here.  I don’t feel the Pope is above man’s law.

Dawkins is a joke, as is his “arrest the Pope” idea.

What Vatican complicity in cover-up?  The Vatican didn’t get information on Murphy until late in the game, long after Murphy had been moved, reprimanded, etc.  In addition, the Vatican told the Bishop to stop allowing Murphy to interact with the deaf community (immediate action taken once they were made aware of it).  It was handled poorly by +Weakland.

One other thing: make sure you understand how Church officials use the word “scandal”.  It is not about protecting the Church from scrutiny or lawsuits or public scandal akin to “Celebrity X’s boyfriend is cheating on her”.  It’s not about protecting the image of the Church in the eyes of the world.  It’s about preventing harm to the innocents involved.  Yes, that means they were interested in protecting the children, and their parents.

And don’t think I have no interest in seeing deaf people protected.  My 3 year old has partial hearing loss.

“the Pope’s part in it when he was a Cardinal, his signature is on a letter to the Vatican advising them to bury child abuse issues to save the catholic church being discredited.”

Uh….I must have missed that letter.  Could you share it with us, please?

“I don’t think anyone is in any doubt the Vatican and Pope has handled the whole issue very badly.”

That’s true.  I am not in doubt.  The Vatican and Pope has not handled the issue very badly.

The context of this is Jeff Anderson’s suit of the Vatican.  He makes sure to push a misrepresentation of the whole matter.  He needs the false impression that access to children by priests was controlled by the Vatcian and not by the local bishop to even justify sueing the Vatican.

He is trying to orchestrate popular demand to force changes of laws.  This is why his office slowly releases a new case every few days.  They had had the documents all along, but why waste getting two juicy articles by letting the press have both details at once.

Suing the civil authorities for not properly sentancing Kiesle is not possile, you can not sue the government for wrongful non-inprisonment.  So no lawyer has any interest in bringing such details up, and the press is failing to do any real investigation.  Much easier to just read documents handed over by Anderson.  Did the American press translate from the Latin, or did they just accept Latin translations supplied by Anderson?

Mark Shea nailed it:

To quote Robert Bolt’s St. Thomas More, “This is not Reformation. This is war on the Church.” And it is using abused children as human shields. These people have not the slightest interest in knowing or caring what they are talking about. Point out that a slanderous misrepresentation of Pope Benedict has not a dram of truth to it, and the reply is: “So, once again, you fail to see the real issue here, and are more concerned about the problems of the Church and its survival, than of ridding the organization of pederasts and their enablers.” Because, of course, the only way to Save The Children is to lie about the Pope.

Please demonstrate how we are ignoring the “Redwood plank” in the Church’s eye. 

Ignoring would mean that the Catholic Church in the U.S. would NOT have made any progress since 2001.

Joe, are you aware of the progress your church has made, or do you only look for the bad?

The Catholic Church had six credible cases of sexual abuse last year. This is six too many, but it demonstrates that the Catholic hierarchy has not ignored sexual abuse in America- quite the opposite.

Excuse me for giving the facts, which seem to hurt you, but the cases being brought up are OLD ones. Perhaps ones that were handled badly, but the media has plenty sex abuse to deal with presently in the public institutions and in broken families, but they are IGNORING IT.

And if you want to try to blame the pope, it was Ratzinger who opened up old cases of sexual abuse, created guidelines to streamline examining cases of abuse, and met with victims in America.  Those victims responded positively to his reaching out.

Sorry, Joe, sounds like you’ve bought the secular hook line and sinker.

Hope you didn’t pay too many pieces of silver for it.

Joseph, the Church cannot be ignoring the problem if it has made the great progress it has in the U.S.  I’m glad that you admit that.

As for the European Catholics, they can learn from the American situation. Indeed, what I have read is that new Vatican global guidelines are going to be modeled in part on what the American church has done.

Pope Benedict would not be using the American model if the Americans had ignored sexual abuse.

Some bishops have not handled situations well- and they should be dealt with according to civil law and church law.

Thanks for the Noonan article. I read it, and I agree with much of what she says.

As for the changing of the guard and the old-boy network, this article suggests that this is happening:

“Vatican Disses One of its Own on Sex Abuse”

“Thursday night’s statement is a milestone from the Vatican. Rather than defending Castrillón Hoyos’s September 2001 letter, the statement essentially concedes that it’s an embarrassment, but insists that subsequent action by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Ratzinger amounted to a repudiation of the attitude it implied.

In effect, this is the first time the Vatican has conceded that a senior Vatican official committed an error in judgment on the sexual abuse crisis—albeit one later corrected by the future pope.”

http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/vatican-disses-one-its-own-sex-abuse

I am certainly not a National Catholic Reporter fan, but this article is informative and does seem to point to good things in the future.

I hear you loud and clear, but you admitted to an anti-Catholic bias in the media.

The Church should have been able to clean itself up without the help of the media on its tail. I imagine God can use even the media to help the continual reform of His Church.

I think that the European Catholics should take and will take a clue from us here.

Also, if the media spotlighted sexual abuse here and was behind getting the story out, why, Joseph, do you believe that the public institutions which have such rampant sexual abuse TODAY, along with cover-ups, are not doing what the Church did-make progress on preventing sexual abuse?

That’s a fair question, especially if you agree that an anti-Cathoic bias exists in the media.

So do you think the Globe is infallible and guided by the Holy Spirit?

It doesn’t claim to have the fullness of the Gospel (to my knowledge) but they sound superhuman in ability.

A bit of rough sarcasm, Joe, but it does demonstrate a point- the Globe isn’t infallible. And courageous in the face of Boston’s “Catholic” personality….?  Yea, the likes of the Teddy Kennedy pro-abortion, pro-homosexual acts type Catholics who want to see the Church brought low.

I think you’re idealizing both the Globe and the majority of Boston’s Catholics.

I will also google the name of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, another faithful Catholic, to see what policies he has undertaken to improve the ways the Church has dealt with sex abuse.

What is your interest in all this?

Tragically, there are so many members of the Church who still do not grasp the two central issues regarding the sex abuse scandals. The first is that sexual abuse against a child is always a crime, and as such all cases must be reported to the Police or the civil authorities for independent investigation.  The second point is that bishops should not and cannot be expected to conduct such investigations.  They are not qualified, nor do they have the resources to carry out proper criminal investigations, seize evidence, interview victims and potential witnesses etc.  It has been suggested in another blog on this website that “The Catholic Church has much more experience in dealing with these matters (sex crimes) than any police force, and that of course is the Church’s job.” It has also be suggested that “My preference (is) to see the local bishop initiate such a delicate inquiry (into alleged criminal acts) rather than the local constabulary. It will, at least, ensure that the priest’s reputation will remain untarnished until he is shown to be UNMISTAKABLY GUILTY of the alleged offense. Sorry, but the Church can no longer have a bishop or senior church official investigate criminal acts.  It is the same as having a senior school official investigate criminal allegations against a teacher, or a senior scouting official investigate criminal allegations against a scoutmaster.  It is inviting disaster.

Several posts refer to the fact that children are being sexually abused every day by persons other than priests, such as parents, relatives, teachers etc. and also that the media is biased in its reporting of cases involving priests. There is also criticism of civil authorities for allegedly not pursuing these cases.  What has been completely ignored is the fact that sexual abuse against children is extremely hard to prove, as is rape.  Most rapes, sadly, do not result in prosecution and conviction, very often because the victims do not want to face the humiliation of a trial in which they will be attacked in any way possible by the defence.  In cases of sexual abuse against children it is extremely difficult to obtain a criminal conviction on the word of a child without corroboration so convictions can be even more difficult to secure.  We seldom hear of either rapes or criminal child sexual assaults being committed in front of another witness!  Even when such cases are brought to court, the prosecution must still satisfy a jury that the case is proved beyond all reasonable doubt.  To suggest that the Police do not do their utmost to secure convictions is nonsense.

On the issue of a biased media, the media reports on a huge variety of criminal and other activities every day, mostly on a local basis.  But if there is something about a case that stands out it could attract wider national, or even international attention. A politician committing an indecent act in a public toilet is major news, as is a film director who has sex with an underage girl, or a priest accused of sexual molesting an innocent child. A bishop who is alleged to have tried to cover up a sexual abuse scandal or who fails to take action against a priest, is off the scale – and will undoubtedly make international news under the present circumstances.

Judging from reports from the Vatican and from other senior Church leaders, it is now recognized that cases of alleged criminal sexual abuse must be reported directly to the civil authorities for full and independent investigation.  To do otherwise invites more adverse publicity for the Church.  It is unfair to bishops and is manifestly unfair to victims.  If it has not already done so the Church must now set out clear guidelines to be followed in all such cases, and those guidelines must be conveyed to the public so that the Church is operating with complete transparency.