Posted on 05/22/2022 9:44:39 PM PDT by Morgana
“My question is why report it to the SBC and not the police?”
DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER!!! NO MORE PHONE CALLS PLEASE
It took only 15 posts for someone to say what should be said too.
REPORT IT TO THE POLICE NOT THE CHURCH.
Dude it’s what people are NOT saying that bothers me.
What about the victims? I don’t care if they are Baptist or Catholic victims who is speaking for them?
When do victims get a voice? When do they get prayed for?
When the “good pastor” falls from grace it’s always “Well lets pray for him” but no one is praying for the victims. That is what makes me angry.
All of this is sickening, but meanwhile, nearly the entire DNC and FedGov (with some uniparty) are going all in to sodomize preschool through 12th grade, across the whole country.
And that is for those who weren’t aborted, and body parts and blood sold for profit —
That’s just not possible! Only idolatrous Catholic clergy abuse children!
/sarc>
CC
Because they made themselves accountable. That’s the import of this report. They had the ability to warn individual parishes about abuse, and they instead chose to claim they had no say, when of course, they hardly would’ve needed to assert nonexisting ownership authority to get the local parish to reject the applications of known sex offenders.
Don’t get me wrong: it’d be an interesting legal case. But morally? They make the Catholic bishops look like saints.
The Catholic bishops’ great crime was that they ignored their own doctrine (the Nicene Council and a 1962 document from Pope John XXIII demanded “those who scandalize children” to be cast out of the Church), and instead looked to secular psychologists, who told them that pedophilia was a curable mental illness. So they’d send the priests off to therapy retreats, and when the secular psychologists said the priests were “cured,” they’d send them off to a new parish, just like every other priest. When this scheme didn’t work, and the abuse continued, and they bishops realized that juries were holding them accountable, they behaved to the victims like they were utterly ignorant of any potential harm.
The Southern Baptist Convention could have learned from the Catholics’ experience to avoid abuse. Given a choice between preventing abuse or feigning ignorance, they chose to feign ignorance.
At least 135 teachers, aides charged with child sex crimes this year alone Foxnews ^ | 5/19/2022 | Jessica Chasmar
It is indeed more prevalent, but there is also more frequent interaction, yet nothing excusable regardless.
Very well-stated. I thought your recommendations were universally accepted 20 years ago; it is a little shocking that they weren’t.
In the early 1990s, I was trained never to be alone with a student. It was presented as self-defense, rather than suspicion, but of course, the only difference is the feelings of the student-teacher.
The SBS suffers from lack of centralized leadership, but the report here is mainly over leadership's response at the EC committee level. Below are excerpts o this length report:
Because the SBC is not a church, it has no role in ordaining pastors.27 Both initial ordination and recognition of previous ordination are addressed on a local church level.28 Every cooperating church decides individually whether or not to ordain an individual, or whether to require ordination of its pastor or ministry staff.29 The SBC does have the right to determine whether local churches are considered “in friendly cooperation” with the SBC – in other words, whether a specific local church is remaining in good standing with the SBC.30 To be deemed in friendly cooperation, a church must: (1) have a faith and practice which closely identifies with the SBC’s adopted statement of faith, (2) formally approve its intention to cooperate with the SBC, (3) make financial contributions through the Cooperative Program, the SBC’s Executive Committee or Convention causes, or any other Convention entity during the fiscal year preceding, (4) not act in a manner inconsistent with the Convention’s beliefs regarding sexual abuse (emphasis added); and (5) not act to affirm, approve, or endorse discriminatory behavior on the basis of ethnicity.31
In connection with the new amendment, an EC committee – the Credentials Committee (“CC”) – was tasked with considering issues of whether a church is “in friendly cooperation” under Article III.37 ..According to the SBC Bylaws, the CC is to consider the matter of whether a church is in friendly cooperation with the Convention, review any information available to it, and make inquires of a church.38 If the CC forms the opinion that a church is not in friendly cooperation, the CC submits a report to the EC stating the CC’s reasons for its opinion.39...The SBC is under the direction of the Messengers, i.e., the representatives of local churches that cooperate with the SBC.43 The Messengers convene once a year at a two-33 day meeting in June.44 At the annual meeting, or convention, the Messengers confer and determine the officers, programs, policies, and budget of the Convention.45 The Messengers elect the officers of the SBC, including the President, 1st and 2nd Vice Presidents, Recording Secretary, and Registration Secretary.46 The term of office for the SBC president is limited to two consecutive one-year terms, and a president is not eligible for re-election until as much as one year has elapsed from the time a successor is named.47
Because the Messengers are so numerous and meet only once per year, the day-to-day functioning of the SBC is managed by the EC, the “fiduciary, the fiscal, and executive entity of the Convention.”48 According to the SBC, the EC does not control or direct the activities of Convention entities, although it reviews their financial statements and recommends the Convention annual operating budget.55...There is currently no individual designated for Human Resources, so Finance handles HR matters under their oversight of EC staff payroll and benefits. In addition, there is no designated General Counsel or Chief Compliance/Integrity Officer in the current organizational structure....
36 Directors of church relations and mobilization for Hispanics, Asian Americans, African Americas and other church affiliations. The Communications office houses Baptist Press, the convention news service, as well as general convention communications. The Finance office is responsible for finance, annual meeting/events planning, information technology, and facilities. The Chief Financial Officer is the head of the Finance office. There is currently no individual designated for Human Resources, so Finance handles HR matters under their oversight of EC staff payroll and benefits. In addition, there is no designated General Counsel or Chief Compliance/Integrity Officer in the current organizational structure. The EC is not presently operating with a full staff due to resignations and staff changes since 2021. According to the up-to-date EC Staff Directory on the SBC.net website, the organizational structure is as follows: the President’s Office includes the Interim President and CEO with three supporting staff members; Communications includes a Vice President and ten supporting staff members; Finance includes an Interim CFO with five supporting staff members; and Great Commission Relations and Mobilization has a vacancy in the Vice President position, but has five supporting staff members.63 In total, there are currently 26 EC staff members compared to 31 EC staff positions reflected on the December 2021 organization chart. The EC also has the responsibility to conduct the general work of promotion and publicity for the Convention in cooperation with the entities.64 The EC manages and funds Baptist Press, which provides the convention news service to interpret and publicize the stories of Southern Baptists in order to keep the more than 47,000 autonomous churches, 41 state conventions, 1,114 local associations and over 14 million members, connected and informed. In addition to the EC, as described above, the SBC undertakes its work through 11 other ministry entities, as well as an auxiliary called the Woman’s Missionary Union.65
In this section, we lay out a chronology of the EC’s response to sexual abuse issues from January 1, 2000, to June 14, 2021. We cannot and do not describe in detail every EC action or communication; rather, this timeline aims to provide a concise yet comprehensive account of the EC’s conduct over those two decades. ... 40 Thus, the EC’s response to sexual abuse allegations over the years was largely driven by a small cadre of staff as well as the SBC’s long-serving outside lawyers, whose senior positions and institutional knowledge allowed them to control the information about, and management of, issues related to sexual abuse at SBC churches
Tragic in any case, though the difference likely is that of the most abuse being of females vs. males.
But the report offers few details on the nature of such.
Bottom line …at the root of most abuse in churches are gay males. Christianity needs a ZERO tolerance policy regarding homosexuals. It’s one thing the Muslims do correctly. Gay males are predators and the majority will offend if given access to children in certain settings.
Oh if only they would allow them to marry then this wouldn’t happen…
Oh wait..
While sometimes sadly and tragically necessary, the reason for first going to church leadership is because the church should be self-governing. Do you want the state to also hire pastors? Do approve sermons? To require PC pronouns?
Once the state is allowed to stand where it ought not then it can easily justify presuming more interference. Thus sexual child abuse is not be tolerated not only due to the iniquity of it and its effects on the child, but due to the precedent it results in enabling. Yet if a body is not sufficiently controlled from within, by God and conscience, then it must be controlled from without. Yet again, as with police entering homes, while too often necessary, it sets a precedent than can easily lead to abuse of power, and thus self-governance is the first recourse, not going directly to the state as the first recourse.
The devil seeks conquest over any church that represents his adversary, which conquests can be by doctrinal compromise and or in practice, and in submission to proxy servants of the devil from without, as in Communism. Which are looking for a pretext to control the religious bodies.
And which a church fosters by not effective engaging in church discipline are regards morals, as the State is to punish evil doers, but not require religious assent in matters of worship and faith. Though the two are related, and the Western state increasingly is requiring assent of faith (from effectively teaching an exceedingly vast, systematically ordered universe, with billions of suns, and very finely tuned for life with its irreducible complexity and scope, came to be by natural processes, without an Intelligence, to the premise that the social engineering of the Left is good).
Church self governance is for civil matters not for criminal ones. If a pastor stabs a deacon is that suppose to be handled in house? If there were real men in the church the pastor would be running to the police because he would be terrified of what the men of the church would do to him, especially the fathers of the children abused.
I know of a church that found out about their maintenance guy abusing kids.
Within minutes the police were involved.
That’s how it’s done
I do believe that Pope John XXIII’s prohibition against gays in the priesthood would’ve prevented a significant portion of the abuse in the Catholic Church. The reasoning then was that those who had psychological problems with their sexuality could not be expected to endure the emotional rigor of celibacy. Not mere chastity, but celibacy.
Sexual deviants have sought out roles in society where they can access children in private; the Boy Scouts suffered huge scandals at about the time of the first wave of reports about Catholic priests (early 1990s). And even then, people murmurred, “Scouts? Hell, you should see public schools.”
But there has also been a Satanic attack on the Catholic Church, specifically. (See “Wind-Swept House”). Saul Alinksy, dedicated to Satan, was a disciple of Cdl. Bernadin, the one-time “American Pope” whose minions caused so much of the Church’s legal problems. He stands credibly accused of the most horrifying profanations and Satanic rituals. Why? Well, Alinsky used Satanism to keep “weak, nice” people from reading his books; it’s possible Bernadin used it to make the allegations seems so over-the-top that they couldn’t be real. But I also believe that Satanism is a pscyhological desire to cause harm, and that even if the Satanist thinks it’s all hocus-pocus nonsense, it still is a delight in evil causing evil. IOW, Satan.
“Church self governance is for civil matters not for criminal ones. If a pastor stabs a deacon is that suppose to be handled in house?”
Thank you Luke thank you!! God have you Wisdom!
If your kid is abused you take your kid to the hospital or doctor and call the law on the way. Then you let your lawyer tell the church. IT’S JUST THAT SIMPLE.
Beat me to it!
Wonder how many Protestants who threw the first stone now want their stone back?
There are numerous mistakes in this story. SBC in my world stands for small block Chevy.
Lack of centralized leadership is not a bug, it's a feature.
The entire upper rungs of the organization could crash and burn into ashes, and faithful member churches would not be changed in the slightest.
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