Posted on 04/29/2002 5:00:20 AM PDT by american colleen
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:07:44 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Thanks for the explaination.
That's right. I think the faithful will blame the individual priests and/or Cardinals (and rightly so!),and overlook the role played by the "system" (Vatican)in covering this up and allowing it to continue.
(but it sounds like you think it should).
You betcha! This is just more proof that ALL organized religions are evil. They have nothing to do with religion,and everything to do with wealth and power.
If you can't trust a priest to be alone with your kid, why would you ever give money to the church (which supports said priest) or trust him or those who back him about anything?
Because of blind faith,and the need some people have to believe.Their faith gives them the emotional comfort they need,and it's going to take something a LOT more powerful than a few priests molesting children to make them give that comfort up.
A Mass never does that, for anyone or any mortal/grave sin.
Thanks for the explanation.
Cardinal Law is beginning to look like an enabler of the worst kind. Who's more guilty...the enabler or the abuser, who in many cases is psychologically unfit for his position?
The problem with faith (and relying on it) is that while strong, it can be fragile, that is, subject to catasrophic failure in the face of a crises that makes those who have had blind faith question whether they've been fools. Such was the situation in the Reformation, and such, I think, may be the situation now.
That said, I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. He certainly has changed his tune since the old days.
A friend of mine, and I went to a couple of local Parishes yesterday to pick up bulletins..we do this just to read the latest heterodox Catholic news. Anyway, we compared the weekly collections from what they were previously.
I don't know if it's due to the scandals, hard times or what, but collections had dropped about a third at the ones we checked out...when $32,000 a week becomes $19,000, I bet someone notices.
If YOU covered up pedophilia over and over, YOU would be hauled in.
But I think you are speaking of those that have blind faith in men. The test (for me, anyway) is to look at what and how the Catholic Church teaches and believes and decide if you believe that is the Truth and the Way of Jesus. My faith in men in the Church has certainly changed, but my faith in the Truth of the Catholic Church is the same, and possibly stronger.
I'd say that Cardinal Law IS an enabler of the worst kind. In fact, I think he is more guilty than any one perpetrator as his actions/lack thereof, have enabled many perpetrators.
All he ever had to do was to ask himself "What would Jesus do?"
Yes, but the diocese should be using some discernment here, and tell their lawyers what to do -- not the other way around. As someone noted above, it's a sensitive situation, and lawyers are not especially noted for their sensitivity. (Apologies to sensitive lawyers. ;-))
Quite frankly, the Pope should hire outside attorneys, have them come in and review the files of all priests alleged to have committed sexual abuse, and also find out if bishops & cardinals knowingly moved these people around, and present the findings to the Pope. Then the Pope defrocks his people who were part of the collusion, puts in replacements who have a heart for God and their hands in their pockets, and lets them defrock the priests at the local level where the allegations are legitimate. The Church openly makes restitution - spiritually and psychologically and financially in each case. The police are made aware of who the abusers are, and the local DA's can decide who to try.
If this doesn't come from the top, I don't think anything of any lasting significance is going to happen. The cardinals are already disagreeing among themselves about one strike and you're out.
I'm not a Catholic, but have much respect for my fellow Catholics and I sure hope the lay people are not going to settle for anything less.
It does appear that way.
Lest I be misunderstood, I much prefer the adversarial legal system of the United States with all of its flaws to the therapeutic model of the old USSR which is the only feasible alternative. In the USSR, if the government charged you with misbehavior, you must be guilty because the state is always right. Thus the real question was why were you guilty and will you cooperate in rehabilitation if applicable.
Many Americans are tempted to raise militant ignorance of legal standards to an art form, as in the reaction to the OJ verdict in the criminal matter when the fact was that the state did NOT prove him guilty in the contemplation of our law. Not having learned its lesso, the same police department in LA has already claimed that the murder weapon in the Robert Blake case was retrieved from a dumpster next to the car where she was shot and today admitted that the gun was, in fact retrieved from a landfill, the department has previously claimed that Blake wore rubber gloves and today claims that his hands were covered with powder residue from the firing of the gun. If we think we KNOW what happened, we may be tempted to demand "justice" regardless of the facts and regardless of the law. Blake may well be guilty but California has to PROVE him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and that effort is not assisted by the LA PD arguing with itself in public and making utterly inconsistent evidentiary claims which can lead to "reasonable doubt" and acquittal.
In any event, the answer to the AmChurch problem of liberals posing as Catholics, liberals who are comfy and cozy with al social revolutions such as lavender lifestyles among the clergy, liberals who continually substitute their non'judgmental Kumbaya for the hammer of justice within the Church is evident no matter how much smoke is blown by those who love the liberals.
Start with a total purge of the lavenders. That they are protesting outside churches is reason enough but virtually all events complained of result from the love that formerly dared not speak its name and now will not shut up. One of the really great things about Catholicism (the real thing not the AmChurch kind) is that due process can be dispensed with when necessary. Thus, hang 'em high!
Second, shut down every seminary in America and lay off their entire staffs. Create four regional seminaries overseen by an archbishop with all necessary authority, no other responsibilities and total power to conduct ongoing purges. Seminaries are no place for ANY sort of female authority and no place for the atheistic presumptions of psychology and psychiatry. Put men's men of orthodox persuasion and performance in charge of everything from administration to janitorial service. Anyone who must then be discharged for misbehavior should be held fully and publicly accountable with oceans of publicity.
There is a move in the Boston archdiocese to create a network of parish councils to stick generally uninformed lay opinions (often liberal) in the faces of the clergy. Abolish the parish councils there and do likewise anywhere else that this particular form of inappropriate "democratic" busibodiness raises its head.
Speaking of which, it would also be a good time to abolish the National Bishopps' organizayions here and elsewhere since they are forever behaving as though morality were determined by a democratic vote of bishops posing for secular cameras. Let each bishop take responsibility for his own diocese and face punishment, including firing, for dereliction of duty.
For those who note the reluctance of the Roman Catholic Church to submit to knuckle under to soi-disant "authority" in the form of transitory governments, you are right. Pope Pius XII warned the Church during the 1940s that knucling under to the government as though it were a higher power will, inevitably, lead to the loss of the freedoms necessary to those nations and their people. The likes of Fr. Shanley have violated criminal laws whose validity is not contested by the Church. The state serves the Church's interest and many other good interests if it puts Shanley behind bars for as long as possible, along with every similar abuser and every bishop or religious superior who has tolerated the pattern of abuse by negligence or worse.
That does not mean that the state may substitute its judgment as to Church matters or demand that bishops or others act as their henchmen in politically popular prosecutions. In our country, it was the state and not the Church that demanded separation of Church and state or whatever is represented by the First Amendment right of freedom of worship and non-establishment clause. The Roman Catholic Church is far more permanent than any government including ours. To the extent that the state can temporarily succeed in attacking the Church structure, make no mistake about it: EVERY Church is thereby threatened.
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