Head of U.S. Bishops Vows to Stop Abuse ... A panel of Catholic lay people charged by the prelates with investigating the abuse crisis, the National Review Board, issued both a survey tallying molestation claims and costs from 1950 to 2002 and a companion study explaining how the problem happened. The survey found 10,667 abuse claims over the decades. About 4 percent of all American clerics who served during the time studied - 4,392 of the 109,694 priests and others under vows to the church - were accused of abuse. The percentage of abusers in society at large is unknown because studies are inconclusive. ... I can't figure out who I am most upset with: the Priests or the Church for covering up.
A calling which requests men to be asexual for their entire lifetimes is unnatural. There should be a constitutional amendment against it.
If Catholics would spend as much time policing themselves as they do trying to control the rest of the world this wouldn't be such a massive blight on their faith.
After a little more thought, I have decided that covering up these assaults is morally bankrupt and completely unrepresentive on what Christianity stands for. The decision makers who propagated this trajedy should be excommunicated and subjected to criminal prosecution. No exceptions. Implementing a real zero toleration policy and allowing priests to marry may go a long way to fixing the problem and building confidence back into the venerable institution.
I assume that you are a scholar on the Catholic faith. please, do tell of your wealth of information about the faith which supports your inflammatory post. What a jerk.
what I find kinda surprising is the low number of accused priests that had known previous abuse ( the most common was an a priest's father ). Usually you've got to have been abused yourself for you to be that messed up in the head to abuse others. But that doesn't seem to be the case with the priests. Out of the 4392 priests accused, only 274 had known abuse history and only 198 being sexual abuse. http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/cleric4.pdf (page 36)
Fifty plus years of deception and cover-ups of the worst kind of abuse a child can face – I don't think you need to be a scholar of the Catholic faith to understand where their focus should have been long before the 21st century. The saddest part is they knew from the top down this abuse was going on and sought any means to hide the fact to the world. ........... The Observer has obtained a 40-year-old confidential document from the secret Vatican archive which lawyers are calling a 'blueprint for deception and concealment'. The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of 'strictest' secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication. They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to 'be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.' It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the 'worst crime', described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with 'youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)'. Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication'. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1020400,00.html -------------------------- Will any of us every look at a priest again and not think of this shame? I can't think of anything else to describe it except a blight on their faith. ........... Pope John Paul II on Thursday for the first time addressed the sex abuse cases plaguing the Roman Catholic Church. The "scandal" casts a "dark shadow" on all priests, he said. "At this time ... we are personally and profoundly afflicted by the sins of some of our brothers who have betrayed the grace of Ordination in succumbing even to the most grievous forms of the mysterium iniquitatis (the mystery of evil) at work in the world," the pope said in his annual message to priests worldwide. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/3/21/145315.shtml
I'm Catholic and I dont spend my time trying to control the world. The abuse didnt happen in every Church. I know this is a horrific problem within the Church, but I hate that people are going to use this problem to knock Catholics and their faith. Like you just did. Stop with the ridiculous generalizations.
Exactly. I couldn't have put it better myself. Trying to police the rest of the world? The Catholic Church has been a key force in the battle to bring democracy to the Iron Curtain and other totalitarian states. Thousands of priests and nuns have been murdered by statists in the fight for freedom. KC, do you hate Catholics? What about the huge number of Catholic clergy that are NOT abusing people and doing the work of God. Statistics show that sexual abuse per capita amongst priests is lower than the rest of the population as a whole. I see this as an attempt by evil forces beyond our control to attack, demean and eventually destroy mother Church.
Sorry that was a poor generalization; I don't hate Catholics at all. The way some members of the leadership went about covering up this abuse upset me and I should have made my post clear on what I was angry about - apologies to those I offended. KC
Bingo! That is exactly what I was talking about. Notice the lacl of substance in King Cheeta's response to my post. He just keeps hammering on sexual abuse. Thanks for starting the season of Lent off on such a high note KingCheetah.
My first post was poor, but my second focused on the core of the problem. How can you say it lacked substance? Hammering on sexual abuse - have you read the thread title? What else should be discussed in this thread?
yeah its all the work of the Illuminati, there is no reason to be alarmed that 10k+ cases of sexual abuse have occured...its all an evil plot. You think that the percentage of sexual abusers in the US is higher than 4% (the percentage of clerics who abused) http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/prev3.pdf
i think KC's point was people in glass cathedrals shouldn't be throwing stones. ie, the church should shut up about how harmful premarital & homosexual sex is to society when these cases of abuse/cover-up are an actual threat to it.
So . . . . if you have stole. . . why speak on theivery? Even if it is from you parents when u was five the point IMO is yes the COVER UPs are bad probably the worse part of it But . . is this enron . . all the to the top of is this a bunch of mid level managers making decisions the chairman knows little to nothing about 5000 priest our of how many priest in the world? Rocket River I'm not Catholic . . yes the covering up is bad but let's not condemn a religion because a few bad decisions
The priests that have committed these terrible acts are far fewer than the genuinely good priests who help out their community. The one's that sexually abused are just the loudest known of the bunch since it is grabbing peoples attention when the media spreads it. It's the same way with stereotyping all NBA players as thugs just because a much smaller % of them have committed misdemeanor/felony acts, or the same way as stereotyping all white people as racists just because the KKK are the loudest bunch and most noticeable bunch that the media portrays when a hate crime is committed by a white person. Speaking as someone that has been sexually abused as a child by a black teenager, I don't view all black people in the same light as that one person who abused me. Admittedly I find it harder to trust the guidance the priests give when I go to confession, or seriously take what they say after reading the Gospel during mass, or trusting whether a potentially evil man can even turn bread into the body of Christ, but those are situations I've gradually overcome as I've come to realize a far higher % of the priests out there are truly good people just trying to help others in the only way they know how. And that's by following in Christ's footsteps as best as they can. Yes some are misguided and truly evil people that shouldn't even be associated with the Catholic religion, but those evil people shouldn't even be considered priests at all, much less Catholics. Because if they were truly priests and Catholics they would of never committed such terrible acts at all. Yes the Church is at fault for covering up those evil people, but it's better now that these coverups are finally being accounted for and hopefully resolved in the near future so that things can go back to normal, and the Catholic church can focus on its committed goal of making the community around them better.
Apology accepted and I felt the same way about how horrible it was that the church hiearchy engaged in way too much CYOA when it came to perverts in their ranks. I was disgusted with it as well and I even considered leaving the church.
I really haven't been following this closely, but can anyone explain this to me? Why haven't the accused priests been prosecuted? Why haven't the authorities who knew what was going on and didn't do anything to stop it been prosecuted? Is raping a child less of a crime when it's committed by a priest? And why do any of those people still have jobs? People who have been here for a while know that I have respect for people's religious beliefs, but as long as anyone who aided in the cover up is still working for the church, the church has zero credibility. Zero. This stuff makes me very mad, but it should make Catholics madder.
