Isn't the practice of clairvoyance a violation of the First Commandment?
Posted on 04/02/2008 6:38:47 AM PDT by Gamecock
....the record of abuse in the Diocese of Oakland has never been fully disclosed.
...Vigneron had been making the rounds of 20 Diocese of Oakland parishes to apologize for 12 priests accused of abuse.
At least two accused diocesan priests and 19 members of religious orders still serve at church facilities...
in the scandal-plagued Archdiocese of Boston and other dioceses around the country.
In 1952, the year Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd High School opened, the Rev. James Prindeville began molesting a 16-year-old girl at the school,
Those victims who have come forward ranged in age from 2 to 17. At least 42 of them were girls.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
But that's impossible! We've been told over and over agin by FR catholics that this was a homosexual issue...
Dear Editor: I read in The Capital Times that the Catholic Church has just added a number of new sins that address pollution, mind-damaging drugs and social injustice. This is appropriate to keep up with the times.However, the Catholic Church is deafeningly silent on the issue of clergy sexual abuse of children.
No one connected with the church that I know of has addressed that issue with the laity. Is it a sin to knowingly assign pedophiles to a round of parishes? Is it a sin to pay victims to keep their mouths shut and then have them sign a statement that if they ever tell about their abuse to repay the money with interest?
I am sure there are scores of Catholics who would like answers to these questions.
Possibly Bishop Robert Morlino could provide answers on a compact disc and send it to all the parishes in the Diocese of Madison.
He could require that the CD be played at all Masses on a Sunday of his choice. He could then require that all priests not express any disagreement with whatever he says or suffer dire consequences.
This action by Bishop Morlino could put these questions to rest once and for all. At the present time, all the Catholic faithful are getting is a lot of papal bull.
Philip Neis
Madison
I remember a long time ago, a great man once told me that “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” He was VERY wise.
Yes, he was.
The John Jay Study (see threads here, here, and outside coverage here) - commissioned by the U.S. Catholic Bishops' National Review Board itself - found that the number of accused Catholic priest abusers equaled four percent of the entire Catholic priest population. The John Jay study's findings are more than conclusive - they're exhaustive of the entire US population of Catholic priests. Surely you're not suggesting that the New York Times would be as more reliable source of information than the John Jay Study?
As I've said elsewhere, every study I've been shown of "Protestant" abuse (which include many of the websites your Google search links to) included volunteers and laypersons. The John Jay Study did not address these groups when they looked at Catholic parishes. If we exclude volunteers and laypersons from the "Protestant" studies (thereby creating a "pastor vs priest" apple-to-apple comparison), we arrive at a roughly 1% abuse rate for all "Protestant" pastors, or (in other words) at least a four times greater likelihood that any given Catholic priest will be a sexual predator, as compared to any given "Protestant" pastor. And that's according to the numbers and studies that Catholics keep telling me about.
Let me throw in one caveat to those comparisons. I found something interesting when I broke down the "Protestant" abuse cases by denomination / affiliation / theological leanings. The more free will / Arminian / synergistic the theology is, and the more independent the association is (as opposed to denominational affiliation), the higher the abuse statistic goes - and conversely, if you just look at the Reformed Protestant denominations, the number of "Protestant" abuse cases statistically drops off the chart by comparison. It's only the average of all "Protestant" pastors that is around 1%. Some independent churches have statistics that are far, far higher than the Catholic average of 4%.
Can you give some examples of "independent" churches?
It is anecdotal, but a Reformed chaplain who served as the chaplain at the prison at Fort Leavenworth told me that in the years he served there he never saw a Reformed chaplain incarcerated, but there were quite a few Arminian chaplains.
Who’s throwing stones? Are you telling me that we should just bury our heads in the sand?
See the thread Quiet Ozarks county shocked by church sex abuse case, especially my post #5 on that thread. As I stated there, without pastoral oversight and accountability that occurs within a denominational environment, indy preachers can pretty much preach or do anything they want.
I did however have the courtesy to come back and acknowledge your post. Which is all that's needed here.
People will read all of the Google links and reach their own conclusions. And on that happy note, I'll take your lead and ghost it. Have fun!
the Catholic Church has just added a number of new sins that address pollution, mind-damaging drugs and social injustice.
Not strictly speaking true. But certianly promoted with amusement by the secular media.
However, the Catholic Church is deafeningly silent on the issue of clergy sexual abuse of children.
That is not only untrue but almost certainly a lie - a culpable untruth. There have been discussions, letters, articles, programs, announcemnt of programs, diocesan background checks, and so on. I volunteer at my Church in a capacity having nothing to do with children and still had to authorize a background check. After this statement, the rest of the letter cannot be taken seriously.
No one connected with the church that I know of has addressed that issue with the laity.
All these questions have been addressed. I would suggest to this writer that he pull his head out and do some reading. I'd suggest "First Things" as a good place to start.
Alex, could you tell me what exactly it is that this letter sums up pretty well?
“accused” means “guilty”?
Isn't the practice of clairvoyance a violation of the First Commandment?
As you have said (and I would agree), "There have been discussions, letters, articles, programs, announcemnt of programs, diocesan background checks, and so on." None of which rise to the level of a categorical, public, "no tolerance" condemnation of the practice. All true. But none rise to the level of a public anathema against sexual predators within the Catholic Church. We Reformers got one, so why not the pedophiles and other sexual deviants?
Take the recent case of the "sweaty naked jogging priest" Father Robert Whipkey. He was seen by an off-duty police office naked on the streets around a public high school, admitted to the same, offered a not guilty plea in court, and had his lawyers strike his prior admission from the official court records. His Archbishop, Charles Chaput, has yet to demand Whipkey be barred from the priesthood for his actions, nor has Chaput made any categorical statements to the media re "sexual predators will not be tolorated within my archdiocese". Instead, the archdiocese has sent Whipkey out of state, delaying the trial, for "some treatment". Five will get you ten than Whipkey gets reassigned to an even smaller parish (as if Frederick, Colorado isn't small enough), or to an administrative position out of public sight.
This is where the letter "sums it up pretty well" IMO:
However, the Catholic Church is deafeningly silent on the issue of clergy sexual abuse of children.No one connected with the church that I know of has addressed that issue with the laity. Is it a sin to knowingly assign pedophiles to a round of parishes? Is it a sin to pay victims to keep their mouths shut and then have them sign a statement that if they ever tell about their abuse to repay the money with interest?
Some independent churches are 10 people and a wood stove for heat.
If one screws up, then you can claim a 10% rate.
Since, however, arminian-like Christianity is far larger than is reformed-like Christianity, one must speak of rates and not of numbers of cases. So long as that is what your stats do, I’m fine with it to a degree.
This morning’s radio mentioned among other things that highly successful executives are more likely to buy 3 or more pairs of sneakers per year.
I am hurrying out today to buy 4 pair. I’m expecting a call from the General Motors CEO search committee by the end of the week.
My point exactly. And the related point was "should denominational ratios be skewed by independent ratios?"
Since, however, arminian-like Christianity is far larger than is reformed-like Christianity, one must speak of rates and not of numbers of cases. So long as that is what your stats do, I’m fine with it to a degree.
That is indeed what my stats attempt to do. AFAIK, no one has ever attempted to quantify abuse statistics to show where abuse runs high (or low) among Protestant, Evangelical, and Independent church leadership. My attempts appear to be the first. And I would agree with you that we should compare apples to apples by keeping it ratios to ratios, and not raw numbers to raw numbers. See especially the thread Teachers Vs. Priests - Unequal Treatment In the Media? in which I say
While 25,000 hypothesized "accusations" is roughly six times the number of Catholic "accusations", 25,000 cases out of 1,600,000 teachers gives us a 1.3 to 1.56% ratio of sexually abusive teachers out of the entire public school system over a fifty year period - more than twice the volume of Protestant pastoral abuse, and less than half the volume of Catholic priest abuse.If we're after equal treatment in the media, I would expect there to be at least double the number of Catholic news stories as Public School stories, and four times as many Catholic news stories as Protestant news stories based on the percentage of perverts that exist with their respective organizations. IMO the disproportionate amount of coverage is the result of increased interest, when those organizations are caught protecting the abusers at the expense of the victims.
Based on your response, I support your research and your efforts.
My only caution statistically would be any type of peculiarity that might actually be the source of differences. One would have to eliminate income level, education, region, etc. as influencing/determining factors.
If, for example, one region of the nation was dominant in prevalence of sexual abuse, but also had a limited number of available denominations, then that would tend to skew numbers against those denominations.
You wrote:
“But that’s impossible! We’ve been told over and over agin by FR catholics that this was a homosexual issue...”
It is a homosexual issue overall. Remember, out of those 42 girls, 24 of them were molested by just two men. The vast majority of kids molested were boys and they were molested by homosexuals.
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