Posted on 03/16/2013 7:44:17 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
(Cardinal Napier, third from left)
Paedophilia is an illness NOT a crime, says cardinal just days after papal conclave
• Claimed people abused as youngsters who then become paedophiles 'not criminally responsible'
• Says paedophilia 'is an illness, not a criminal condition'
• Says those people do not deserve to be punished because they are damaged
• Pope Francis said that he wants a 'church for the poor'
A South African cardinal who helped elect Pope Francis has described paedophilia as a psychological illness and not 'a criminal condition'.
The Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fox Napier, told BBC Radio 5 live that people who were abused as children and became paedophiles were not criminally responsible for their actions in the same way as somebody 'who chooses to do something like that'.
Cardinal Napier, who was among the 115 cardinals in the conclave at the Vatican that elected Pope Francis earlier this week, called paedophilia a 'psychological disorder.
And just three days into the new role, the pope and the Catholic Church are now faced with fresh child abuse controversy after the cardinal's remarks.
He said: 'What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and put them right.
'If I as a normal being choose to break the law knowing that I am breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished...
'From my experience paedophilia is actually an illness, it is not a criminal condition, it is an illness.'
The cardinal spoke of two priests he knew who were abused as children and went on to become paedophiles.
He told the BBC: 'Don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Correctamundo!
So is paedophilia the desire or the act. If it is the first, I agree with the Cardinal, if it is the latter, I agree with DogByte6RER.
The desires of paedophilia are an illness.
Acting on those desires is a crime.
Slippery slope.
There is something seriously psychologically wrong in the mind of of a pedophile. If a pedophile acts on his/her desire to have sex with a child, then that is rape of a minor, and that is most definitaely a crime the pedophile should be locked up for.
The good Cardinal(Hopefully he is good!)is following the sickness model of explaining bad men and women. If that model was true every criminal from murderer otr thief is a victim of a disease. The Cardinal should stick to theology not criminology.
Having leprosy is not a crime, but purposefully infecting others is.
What a moron. Can we get him a job in the DOJ, or maybe as a chaplain with the armer forces?
The Catholic Church dealth with pedophiles by giving them pyschological treatment rather than going to the police and reporting it as a crime. These priests were sent to these “treatment centers” then let out to go to other parishes and commence their molestations all over again. The parishioners were not told what had happened in their parishes and the new parishes had no idea that their new priest had committed a crime against children.
Child molestation is a crime that has to be stopped. First report it to the police, put them in jail and then give them therapy if it is possible. I have heard that it is very difficult to change pedophiles.
The sickness -vs-crime excuse is ludicrous and applies to no other ‘sickness’. Lets talk pyromania- sick obsession with fire doesn’t mean you don’t incarcerate someone who burns down a building for arson- or murder if its inhabited. How about serial killers? They get their jollies murdering because they like it-hardly ‘normal’ but that doesn’t protect them from incarceration and execution. ‘Sickness’ is the excuse for everything now. I suppose if you are blitzed on medication for the flu and mow a family down with your car you should be excused because you were ‘sick’?
These homosexuals are mentally ill- but so is Charles Manson- he is incarcerated, why shouldn’t they be? Anyone who can in ANY way excuse someone who preys on children should be castrated, gagged with their own severed penis until dead and left in a dumpster for the trash collectors. Same goes for any women who excuse or enable this evil. Anyone who claims to work for God deserves worse.
My family has been Roman Catholic back as far as I can trace it- the 12th century- and I’m going to say this. These priests are not shocked and outraged like ‘regular’ people because they are practicing homosexuals who spend much of their time BENT OVER FOR OTHER PRIESTS. They have to cover up child rape-how can you condemn someone for what you are doing? It’s the ‘brotherhood of the d**k’. If the prosecutions start they will not end-they will all turn on each other-resulting in a clergy perhaps 1/5th the size it is now,if not less. They are having sex with other priests, male prostitutes and some are interested only in children. It’s not just the pedophiles we have to eliminate- its ALL homosexual priests-period.
Brilliant! so you took the words of one disturbed human being and painted 100s of million CHRISTIANS, with that same brush.
as far as Catholics and the Pope being Christian,
Christ made Peter the leader of the apostles and of the church (Matthew 16:18-19). In giving Peter the “keys of the kingdom,” Christ not only made him leader, but also made him infallible when he acted or spoke as Christ’s representative on earth (speaking from the seat of authority, or “ex cathedra”). This ability to act on behalf of the church in an infallible way when speaking “ex cathedra” was passed on to Peter’s successors, thus giving the church an infallible guide on earth. The purpose of the papacy is to lead the church unerringly.
What a disgusting thing to say.
How many similarly ill young people contrive to have sex with these shriveled-up fiends?
Francis needs to purge this crap quickly.
Every time I hear of some criminal “mastermind” who eventually gets caught red-handed, be it murder, embezzlement, or shoplifting, I can’t help but wonder how on earth did they think they would never be found out? Especially with the technology available now? Do they actually believe that they are so intelligent and so slick, that their tracks are untraceable? There’s a malfunction in their mental process at the moment they convince themselves they are invincible, be it lack of morals and ethics, or an over-inflated ego. Sociopaths?
The problem seems to have grown when the Church decided it was alright to allow homosexuals into the priesthood as long as they didn’t practice their inclination. This is like giving an embezzler a job working as a bank teller. This problem as described in Michael Rose’s book “Goodbye, Good Men†which detailed how homosexuals took over certain seminaries. These seminaries became a good hideout for homosexuals who flaunted their sexual proclivities out in the open. Real devout men were pushed out of the seminaries.
BTW, twenty years ago I had a gay neighbor who was very vocal against pedaphiles...saying they give all gay people a bad name. He was also Catholic and would go on tirades when some priest was in the news. His comments against it beat anything I've read on FR.
You need to have a talk with user LouD on this forum. Just more anti-catholic bashing going on here.
Acting on this temptation is invariably one crime or another, and entertaining it pleasurably (as fantasy) is a sin even when not a crime.
I have long felt that the extent Latin church's problem with clerical abuse of minors (I say extent, because no Christian confession, indeed no religion, is free from problems of clerical abuse) was a result of many local churches and dioceses abandoning spiritual standards in favor of secular psychological standards of "stability" in priestly formation. Men wisely seeking to embrace celibacy to flee from besetting sexual temptations, rather than being found unfit for the priesthood and directed toward a monastic life, were deemed "stable", ordained and given parishes. And when abuse was found, the secular "it's an illness" attitude was the basis for sending abusers for some sort of treatment then reassigning them to other parishes -- which I don't regard so much as a willful cover-up as false confidence in ineffective methods of dealing with demonic temptations.
There is actually a good argument to this effect, not mentioned in this article.
The recidivism rate for child molesters may be as high as 90%. (I prefer the term “child molesters” over “pedophiles.” Pedophilia is a desire. Child molestation is an action.)
In several countries they allow convicted child molesters to be surgically or chemically castrated. The recidivism rate for those so treated drops well below 10%, in several European studies.
While those who choose this treatment are obviously a self-selected subset of child molesters, those who really want to stop, to me these statistics indicate pretty strongly that some significant percentage of child molesters suffer from an irresistible impulse they cannot control by themselves.
While making no excuses for those who act on such compulsions, it seems reasonable to me that those with such a condition should not be viewed in exactly the same way as those who choose to engage in such behavior.
Which I think is more or less what the cardinal actually said.
If I had such compulsions myself, I’d cheerfully cut my own throat before harming a child, and I have no problem with the death penalty for child molestation, if that were allowed. But some subgroup of child molesters are not necessarily 100% evil, though their actions obviously are.
We have to agree to disagree, that is not the case as I read the bible, but many of is know, different people will understand it differently. What defines a Christian is whether or not they believe in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice and being saved by grace.
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