Being poor is not a crime, but armed robbery is.
Just because it’s an illness doesn’t mean it’s not a crime. We’re learning a lot of criminal behavior stems from mental illness, still harming people and breaking the law.
Let the Cardinal spend his days in the prisons curing them.
WRONG. THIS is the thinking that protects these monsters. They do NOT belong in society, much less the priesthood. Anyone who thinks this should be defrocked immediately. They are not legitimate priests. Until-and unless- this kind of thinking is purged from the Church it will deteriorate. The idea of religion is to RAISE one up from the abyss of sin-not descend into it and excuse it. Sick-evil men covering up for each other and this Catholic is sick of it.
By his thinking, no one is guilty of anything. We are all shaped by our environment and genetics, but unless one is truly mentally ill, we also have a free will.
The quickest way to flush this guy out is to ask how this “illness” should be treated. If his answer indicates that he recognizes it as a spiritual “illness” then he is on the right track, but still drawing a wrong conclusion. (BTW, spiritual illness is called SIN.) If he speaks of therapy and forbearance, this man is a monster and we should be asking exactly why he is taking this position. In my observation, those who seek to categorize child molestation as an illness often have a vested in making it seem less heinous.
The Pope needs to address what this Cardinal said.
I’d much rather hear a response against the statements of this Cardinal than hear stories about the Pope going back and paying his own bill. He needs to address a real issue. No one in the Church needs to be saying something like this, much less a Cardinal.
I think thou dost protest too much, Cardinal.
“• Says paedophilia ‘is an illness, not a criminal condition’”
Some of these Cardinals have spent so long studying theology that they forget certain things. In one sense he may be right. Think of this analogy: Is it sinful to have same-sex attraction? No. Is it sinful to act on those attractions? Yes.
What the Cardinal failed to recognize is how his perhaps strictly true theology could be easily misinterpreted.
If the Cardinal thinks that acting on those attractions is not a crime then he is wrong and I hope his mind is made right.
Would not be surprised to find many of the Catholic clergy believe this. It’s why I suspect they often don’t act with the same kind of shock and outrage that regular people do when they discover one of their own is raping kids (boys mostly). So the church’s response is compassion for the poor sick pedophile priest (who is often a known homosexual), followed by an attempt to cover it up.
I’ve been told the Catholic church has really started cleaning house and I sure hope that is true. We can only hope this Cardinal is not representative of the majority of his fellow Cardinals anymore.
Are there paedophiles who do not act on their inclinations? In that case, it is an illness like homosexuality, where one should not act on it, because of the sin, and harm to others such actions cause.
But paedophiles who molest children are criminals, of course! And they need to be brought to justice under the law.
I think some Church officials have completely forgotten that civil society has its legitimate demands, which must be served. One can pray for the sinner all you want, but he still must be brought to civil justice and punished.
This Cardinal should be gotten rid of. If he is blind to reality on this, what else is happening right under his nose?
And people wonder why many Christians don’t consider the catholic church Christians.
It’s an illness when it seems like a good idea. It’s a crime when you act on it.
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.
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.
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.
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.