Posted on 11/16/2006 9:54:57 AM PST by presidio9
The US Roman Catholic Church has asked a criminology school to delve into the darkest pages of its history by probing the causes of a priest sex abuse scandal.
At a meeting due to end Thursday in the eastern city of Baltimore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to disburse 335,000 dollars to fund the first three phases of a study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
"It will be a groundbreaking study, never done before in the US, nor in the world," Bishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, told AFP.
"We don't know what would come out of it, but we are going to tell the truth," said Aymond, of Austin, Texas.
In 2002, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice had made a list of complaints and pedophilia cases in the US Catholic Church since 1985, when one of the first scandals came to light with the case of a Louisiana priest.
The university will now look into the "social and historical context" of sex abuse to see if such cases are more frequent in the Church than in the rest of society, notably in schools and youth clubs, Aymond said.
The Church wants to "look at what is unique" in the priest sex abuse crisis, he said.
The first part of the study would be completed in 2008 and made public, although the names of suspected priests would be omitted.
In the second part, the university will evaluate the Church leadership's response to sex abuse cases.
"We want to see where we failed and made some mistakes, and learn from those who handled it well," Aymond said.
The study will also paint a psychological profile of pedophiliac priests by reviewing cases in treatment centers.
The review will aim to show "to what extent is a priest sexual abuser profile the same as the psychological profile of the non-priests who are sex offenders," Aymond said.
The university will also interview abuse victims and examine education at seminaries over the decades.
The majority of priests accused of sex abuse were trained in the 1960s and 1970s in seminaries where psychological tests and sexuality education have since been introduced.
A final phase of the study will make proposals on how to prevent sex abuse and help victims.
"Our goal is to ascertain the causes of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and if we need to change any method we have now," said Teresa Kettlekamp, the executive director of the bishops conference's Office of Child and Youth Protection, which was created in 2002, in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.
But the study would also be useful to schools and youth groups, Church officials said.
"The pathology of abusing children isn't unique; it's a societal problem," Kettlekamp said.
"We are hoping it will be a big, big help to the society in general," she said.
Bottom line is that if the Church would allow priests to have physical relationships with women, the priesthood wouldn't have the reputation it enjoys today.
Maybe Pastor Teg Haggard should have been a married Catholic priest. Yeah, that's it.
That's a great place to get one. But you've left the church, right? I mean, you've self-identified as an atheist, right?
I apologize if I have you confused with someone else.
Read Michael Rose's book. The "pool of candidates" is not small, it's really rather large. The problem is that too many of the normal ones were chased away for being nasty things like "heterosexual," "manly," and "Catholic".
And the priesthood is hardly "filled" with men with abnormal sexual habits, though there are some.
Perhaps, if priest were allowed to have a wife or girlfriend they wouldn't have such a 'problem'
Christian men aren't permitted to have sex with their girlfriends, either, last time I checked.
I camped overnight on the Washington Monument grounds to see Pope John II...and hadn't attended Mass in years.
I claim to be an agostic because I have a hard time believing in heaven or an afterlife...but as I get closer to my end, I have doubts about my belief system.
A sound instinct, in this case.
I don't know what ministers or priests you have known, but I've known two or three Protestant clerics, and believe me it wasn't just a job to them.
EVIL! of Homosexual acts and Pedophilia
It was Dr. Carol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University who got the goods on how many public school children that have been sexually abused by teachers. You can find out a lot about it by googling "Carol Shakeshaft" --- I found this: "What is more frightening is that these sexual abuse cases are relatively small in number and scope, when compared to the hundreds of thousands of children in the United States, who have been or are being sexually abused by professional educators over a similar time period. A study conducted for the Department of Education, Educator Sexual Misconduct, found that about 10% of all school children will be the target of some sort of physical sexual misconduct by a teacher during their K-12 grade education.
"Carol Shakeshaft, who authored the study, points out that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops found that about 10,667 children had been victimized by priests between 1950 and 2002. Based upon numerous studies which she has worked with, Shakeshaft extrapolated the number of school children suffering abuse by professional educators to about ten times that of the clergy!
And THIS
"One study of 225 cases of admitted sexual abuse in New York found that none of the cases had been reported to police and only 1 person lost their teaching license..."
And lots more...
How do you know the man hearing confession isn't 'buggering boys now or in the past?'
Well- I ASK him before going into the confessional, or even attending their mass!
Needless to say, they don't appreciate it.
Too damned bad if they're 'insulted'. If they're homosexual, they are not legitimate priests. Any priest who gets defensive, instead of understanding, I consider an imposter.
I think I have a right to ask if the holy rites he would perfom would be as null and void as his vows.
And it's not just about 'buggering boys'.
I don't want priests buggering grown men, or each other either!
If homosexuality is removed from the picture, the pedophilia issue AND the celibacy issue is-for the most part- solved.
This has culled the pool of candidates and as a result, many men who fill this void have 'issues'.
Yet these sicktwisted personalities are frequently "kid-magnets," "Pied Pipers," experts at patiently gaining the trust of vulnerable boys and charming the socks off of parents. Thus their employers (churches of MANY denominations, youth groups, etc.) tried the psychological treatment route in the 60's and 70's because they really thought that (1) therapy could help them, and (b) the criminal prosecution route might re-traumatize their victims, who (they thought) should be offered counseling as well.
It was a disastrously bad policy, but very much in line with the "therapeutic society" movement which was very strong 30-40 years ago.
Why was the Catholic Church targeted for the lion's share of the legal and media prosecution in all this ugliess? Three reasons:
Ya think??
See #291. Thank you.
IMO, that's shameful.
>>>Well- I ASK him before going into the confessional, or even attending their mass!
Needless to say, they don't appreciate it.<<<
WHOA! That is the tough love method. Maybe if we all started asking these questions, some changes would be made!
They should take Origenus as THE example to emulate. To better fight the temptation of the flesh, this early Church father castrated himself. As fas as it is known, no abuse complaints were lodged againt him afterwards.
I know a shrink who's instructor resigned from the American Psychiatric Association after their 1974 San Fran convention when the gays were protesting outside.
He wrote the psychiatrsts who voted for this had a homosexual panic and the next thing they would say was schizophrenia was an alternate thought disorder.
The position I stated in my post was the accepted reason for homosexuality until that political vote in 1974.
Now any psychiatrist who dares to treat homosexuality is treated as a loony by the media, the reason why there's a fairly large failure rate with the Jesus cure is that these psychological issues that lead to the homosexuality is not addressed.
My friend is producing a documentary called Sexually Dangerous about sex offenders/pedophiles, it's on Showtime's website as an upcoming attraction, etc.
Homosexuality is an abnormal behavior, just like many other abnormal behaviors, we all have something, the mangling of this issue is spitting in the face of reality/psychiatry/science, etc.
ROFL!... You know, it may seem harsh... but we start pushing back this Politically Correctness BS. Let's call it WHAT IT IS.
FAGS misunderstand sensitivity, sympathy, politeness for weakness. THEY, on the other hand come at you ready to finish you. They only care about one thing... Themselves.
And I am sick and tired of this :)
Actually, the cause in a word ... SODOMITES.
Secondary cause is many of these sodomites have been promoted to Bishop and Cardinal offering protection and continuance of this problem.
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