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Posted on 03/16/2013 12:59:25 PM PDT by mojito
It’s a moral problem. Even if pedophiles have some psychological problem that encourages them to act that way, as individuals with free will, they don’t have to go along with it. And that’s where the Church would normally have intervened...until after Vatican II, when they decided to follow Freud instead of the moral teachings of the Church. (Although even Freud didn’t think pedophilia was okay.)
The Church is not an organization that can impose or enforce civil law, so essentially, the legal aspect is beyond the Church. But what they most certainly should have done is to have enforced the moral law. A priest caught doing anything like that should have been sent right away, not to a therapy program, but to one of the old monastic jails that existed up until Vatican II.
The problem is that even if all of these men had been turned over to the civil authorities immediately, they would simply have been processed through a “psychological” system and then released. Look at the guy in NY who just killed some poor woman and raped her 10 yr old daughter...after being found with hundreds of images of child pornography on his computer and being sentenced to wear an electronic bracelet (which he cut off).
Once upon a time, the sentence for rape and particularly the sexual abuse of children was the death penalty. But that hasn’t been true for decades. Bring those things back and then I’ll believe that the civil authorities are serious about stopping pedophilia.
BTW, most of the Catholic cases weren’t pedophilia (adults going after a pre-pubescent child of either sex): they were adult gay males pursuing teenage boys. In other words, the problem was homosexuality - which the psychologists were forced to drop as a disorder about 20 years ago.
Most child molesters (true pedophiles) are married men and most of their victims are related, including their own children.
are you sure he out of there?
leftists will be praising him and then condemning the church at the same time.
hypocrites
Yes, and most of the scandals in the Church were not caused by "true" pedophiles.
But, as the link to St. Peter Damian showed, this was as much an issue in 1047 as in 1967.
It was not acceptable in 1047, and the Liber Gomorrhianus CLEARLY AND ACCURATELY described the soul-destroying nature of clerical pederasty.
The issue I was pointing to was the unique moral failing of the shepherds and the fact that they STILL do not acknowledge exactly WHAT they did and WHY.
I would think that any higher up in the Catholic church would avoid that comment if for no other reason it could be construed as self serving.
Well he would be if I was the pope. Hopefully the new one will see it the same way.
I read something last night, maybe it from out in deep field, but it said this guy seems to think the Pope is not really the boss, just Bishop of Rome.
I guess that remains to be seen.
OK Francis,
This is the perfect test case for ya pal.
Splain the facts of life to this very confused puke.
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."
I would have expected a cardinal in the Catholic church to recognize that raping a child is fundamentally a sinful behavior, before they would believe it to be aberrational behavior. It should be a warning sign to everyone that if a religious organization trains its highest members to looks to psychology for expert advice on dealing with sinful behavior, they prove themselves to be scripturally illiterate and bankrupt, rejecting God's Word in favor of psyschology.
One would think that, in the decade+ that the Catholic church has been dealing with this issue, that we could finally trust this to be an area inside of bishops' competence. It's telling that bishops and cardinals are still receiving and giving bad advice on how to act, on what authority the bishops recognize and seek out.
No one should expect "psychological treatment" to end sinful behavior. But that's what many bishops have believed, however, and look at what fruit it has yielded - more than $3,000,000,000 awarded in damages and settlements by Catholic dioceses within the United States alone. Whole archdioceses have declared bankruptcy, a financial act manifesting the spiritual bankruptcy they'd fostered inside for generations.
In the vocabulary of some, not mine. In polite society, I will refer to them as homosexuals. A more accurate word is queers, if the things they do aren't queer, nothing is.
“You don’t throw people in jail for “criminal condition[s],” anyway. You do it because of specific acts. And mental states, but only as they relate to the act.”
Agreed. However, I think it dangerous to say a mental state that could lead to a criminal act were it acted upon to not be “criminal.” At best a pedophile that cannot avoid (by demostrated actions) acting upon their inclinations should be institutionalized for public safety. Care MUST be taken to ensure that only those showing inability to not act upon their perverse/criminal impulses to be so institutionalized.
Pope Francis has described paedophilia as a psychological illness and not “a criminal condition”. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It may not be a criminal condition. If so, then it is a
terminal, fatal condition. Mark well our words Mr. “Francis.”
Oh I don’t know did not this and homosexuality used to be listed as a mental illness by shrinks in the US? I know homosexuality was until the homos got it removed in what the 70’s?
He many not have said it the way the media is portraying it, but my comment stands. Too many Bishops made the horrible mistake of being too ‘pastoral’ to the priests who were abusing children and young adults, and not tough on them, making them take responsibility for their actions, for fear of ‘scandal’. The priests actions were scandal in themselves, but the Bishops not turning them over to the police was just about as bad.
True, the actual term is "pederasts"
AKA: disease-ridden, boy-raping whack-jobs.
AKA: "gays" etc etc etc.
Well then, apply your statements to them. It’s just plain wrong to ascribe their failings to him. It’s called pre-judice, prejudging. Sure, you’re mad at the bishops in general. Then be mad at them. But be honest in this case.
To do guilt by association is a sin.
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Commitment laws are too loose. I wouldn’t want hospitals to put holds on people for unpopular political views, for instance. As it stands the danger the mentally ill pose to society has to be imminent—according to the narrow definition commonly used—for us to take preemptive action. I could live with a lower standard. At least it would help with the bum problem.
However, we can’t set the standard so low as to apply to types of criminals based on their rate of recidivism. Pedophiles aren’t psychopaths or manic-depressives. They tend to have control of their faculties and are responsible enough for their actions to trial. Just becase there may be psychological causes to their behavior and they tend to be repeat offenders does not mean we get to lock them up with tge mentally incompetent and those who aren’t responsible for their actions.
Though pedophiles may also be psychopaths, etc., and perhaps should be committed on those grounds.
“psychological illness and not “a criminal condition”. “
So, why don’t pedophiles molest children in public in plain view if they don’t think what they are doing is a crime? Of they know it is a crime.
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