It's probably best you don't. I just finished watching it and absolutely disgusted and pissed off. Wow, I don't even have words to express my feelings.
So I watched the whole movie (thanks for the link). I can see how someone who is easily angered could be very, very angry after watching it. It made me angry, too, not to the extent of wanting to see someone raped, tortured or killed (which I still think is a crazy thing to say), but it is very aggravating how smug this rapist is talking and how his superior covered up for him, and how the whole attitude in the Catholic church seems to be to cover up for "their own" rather than pursuing these monsters and working with the respective states to make sure they are delivered to justice. That's really unacceptable and makes my blood boil, too. It's also clear that this ******* who raped children still does not seem to have understood what he has done and he doesn't REALLY seem to feel as bad about it as he should. I kind of wanted to punch him throughout the whole film. Also, the church should pay reparations to the victims rather than paying this guy a pension. Lastly, I don't understand (aside from the church) how this guy is even walking free - seems pretty clear to me that he is still a danger to children right now. As I posted above, this is not exclusive to the Catholic church, though. It seems that pedophiles look for jobs where they are in charge of children. Seems like the same thing is happening to at least the same degree in madrassas in the UK and probably worldwide. I think the film is very well-made. The only thing it neglects to shed light on is what I mentioned above. It also links Ratzinger sort of casually to all of this - it could have explored more how much he actually knew. To me, it is clear that he should have done more to investigate these things and work with the authorities. But to what extent he was in the know would be interesting.
I am too am sickened by the how the church covered up for these pederast. One thing I am wondering about though is that a lot of these reports about child molestation among the church have come from the First World where the Catholic church is waning in power. Does anyone know how much of child molestation by priest is known about in the Third World where the church is still powerful? It seems to me that while the laws and pluralistic societies of the First World are exposing these abuses that in places in Africa where there aren't rule of law or pluralistic societies this could be an even bigger problem.
I'm actually uncomfortable with people beating up on pedophiles, even rapist pedophiles, to the extent that people typically do. They are monsters, of course. But there are worse monsters in this movie. There is something wrong in pedophiliac brains that means they either spend their lives resisting their most fundamental urges or they indulge who they are and become society's greatest monsters (because they do society's greatest crimes). It's right in my mind to be angry that these people are as they are, but I expect that most of them hate themselves at least as much as they're hated by society. Most of them anyway. If the priest that stars in the documentary is any indication, I'm obviously wrong on this point. For he is a smug kid-****er. Maybe it's mostly priest kid-****ers that feel smug about their 'issues' as they are taught again and again that it's okay to be as they are and to act as they act. The distinction in this case is that there are authorities above them that do not share their monstrous illness, that were informed, over and over again (times oh about a million), and there was a systemic, decades long cover-up, including reassigning kid rapers so they could rape new kids, instead of calling the cops or even giving over evidence when the cops find out on their own. Victims of pedophilia are harmed more royally than pretty much anything else I can imagine. But the real bastards here aren't the violators, the rapers, that do the heinous crimes but the completely sane people that helped them to do the rapes and kept the police from knowing about them. They should all be in prison. But the bishops should get much longer sentences than even the child-molesting priests. Because they made a decision, as a group, to (a) let this happen, and (b) prevent anyone from stopping it happening.
^ that's ludicrous... The insanity of child molestors thinking makes their crime less bad then those above them? No. I can just as easily point to those above them as having mental problems that force them to look away in order to consolidate greed and power. May e they hate themselves too, no? I refuse to just chalk it up to these rapist pedophiles natural brain function, even if they hate what they're doing. That's a stupid "free" pass. You can't chalk up bad acts to mental insanity of sorts. No doubt, everybody is at fault, responsible and should "rot in hell" so to speak. But the pedophile rapists most of all, no doubt.
None of the kids should be surprised. It's in the advertising: Spoiler Watched part of the movie. It's pretty sickening and I don't know that I'll finish it as my rage just kept rising. Not sure I'll sleep well tonight due to rage. I wonder what small percentage of cases we actually hear about. Ugh.
Yes, you actually can "chalk up bad acts to mental insanity of sorts." I'm just saying you can. It happens in courtrooms all the time. But kill the pedophile for all I care. Just kill the guy that sent him to a different parish knowing he would rape again twice then. What I'm saying is there's a guy that has sick tendencies and he acts on them. While wearing the collar. That is ****ing horrible. But then there's this whole system, that doesn't have kid-raping urges, that's covered it up forever, allowed and encouraged it to continue, and systematically frustrated law enforcement's efforts to bring the kid-rapers to justice. I'm sorry, but yeah. I do think that's even more ****ing horrible. Especially when that system comprises a church with a worldwide congregation as large as Catholicism.
"In January 2012, O'Grady was sentenced to three years in prison in Ireland for possession of child p*rnography." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_O'Grady
Wow. Thanks. The film was from 2006, I think. So it is true that he has learned nothing, as one could already guess from the film. That guy should really never walk free again, I am pretty sure he continues to be a threat to children.
Religious followers tend to believe that such people don't require oversight, that they would never do anything wrong. They think that such people have extraordinary tolerance and patience. Imagine if you had proposed a security camera even with stringent protection of the information. They would have been furious. "Is this how you treat holy men??? This is a house of divinity!!". Right. Rest assured, this is a problem with any ideological group which claims to represent the supernatural, and succesfully rejects oversight. The more you give a person power, the more than person is likely to abuse power (the abuse is a test, and a succesful test gives them a rush), but unfortunately in religious circles it seems the norm is to assign less oversight to the most powerful. Never in a million years would I leave a child with any authority figure unsupervised, no matter how nice they seemed. Not a CEO. Not a Priest. Not an Imam. Not a Judge. None. No matter how much they smiled. No matter how otherwise regular they appeared to be. If I did that despite knowing what we know, I would be a f***ing moron. I find it very disturbing that they did not even re-consider their beliefs. Just went somewhere else. Continued to act the same way, live the same way. They must believe that it is the work of spirits or demons or satan or whatever. How can a person rape a child, get caught and outed for it, and still be able to smile while talking about it? Is that not pure insanity and madness? How does one continue to work for the person who covered this type of thing up? Disgusting.
The problem isn't that the ones who covered up for these priests are inherently evil or actually encouraged them to molest children but that they valued the institution more than they did the law or even morals. Just look at the Penn State example where the evidence shows that the AD, school president and Paterno were aware that something was very wrong with Jerry Sandusky but were concerned about how this might hurt his reputation and by extension Penn State football. This is a even bigger problem with the church where the church is both venerated and also declares itself to be the arbiter of morality.
I just have a problem with arbitrarily labeling one (the rapist pedophile) as a true mental illness that somehow diminishes the personal responsibility of the crime while labeling the other (lust for power and greed, etc.) as just normal people doing bad things. To me, it's just as "mentally insane" to have the information and do nothing like the church did (or like Paterno did). Why is one a mental illness and other just being a bad guy?
First of all I never said mental illness should absolve a pedophiliac rapist of bad acts so please don't say again that I diminish the personal responsibility: that is untrue. You indicated that there was no such thing as an insanity defense and I was only reminding you that there is. As for why "one is a mental illness and other just being a bad guy..." Corporations are NOT people, my friend. One is a rapist and is sick by our societal definition that it is sick to be sexually attracted to children let alone to act on it. The "other" is not a "bad guy," it is a whole Church, a whole power structure, led by a man in a funny hat in Italy, and successfully and meticulously covered up by hundreds of persons in high authority positions throughout the world. And those people, even more than priests themselves by virtue of their positions, are in positions that are supposed to represent the utmost contract of trust with their parishioners. Yes, the priests betrayed that trust in an unforgivable way. But when you realize that the entire Church allowed and willfully abetted the priests in these crimes and in the continuance of these crimes, it can't be anything but obvious that their crime is worse. Are all thousand or whatever of these bishops and archbishops up to the Pope "insane?" And did they, in spite of that group insanity, still manage a cover-up so broad? I think not.
JayZ: You're debating a straw man. You should watch the movie. And, again, please stop accusing me of downplaying the crime of child rape. I already said I was okay with punishing the kid raper in any way whatsoever. I believe the parishes have greater responsibility than one sick individual. Even if you consider pedophiliac rape to be evil, you must consider those that make it possible as an ongoing concern to be even more evil. And that's the whole Catholic Church. I'm not aware of even one renegade bishop that stood up to this most terrible corruption.
I don't think he's absolving the rapists at all. There's a difference in someone who is mentally ill who commits a crime like this and someone who knows full well that it's wrong and covers it up.
