Posted on 02/05/2004 9:58:28 AM PST by pseudo-justin
Click on URL for a copy having hyperlinked footnotes.
Even those devoted exclusively to adults (like psychiatry and geriatric care) seem to attract their share of adult abusers.
The vulnerable are ALWAYS subject to being taken advantage of.
Where are the Catholic-bashers now? This bump's for you.
Of course, this isn't to minimize child abuse by anyone. What made this scandal noteworthy was the fact that some bishops covered up child abuse by priests and that they transfered some abusive priests.
However, this scandalous behavior is complicated by the fact that the bishops were taking the advice of the psychiatric community regarding the possibility of rehabilitating abusive priests.
True enough. What is noteworthy about this report is the attempt to compare the extent of abuse within the Church to other groups. I think the report shows decisively that:
1. abuse is not exclusively a Catholic thing
2. abuse is not predominantly a Catholic thing
3. the celibate Catholic clergy, as a group, have fewer abusers present in their ranks than other "helping professions".
4. it is extremely difficult to maintain that there are clerical practices (e.g. celibacy, a culture of secrecy, lack of accountability) that makes abusers more attracted to the clerical life than to some other life.
5. it is extremely difficult to maintain that there are clerical practices or a clerical culture that makes clerics more likely to abuse than their non-clerical counterparts
Wow.
Which explains why there are 6 posts to this thread. Bookmarking...
Irrespective of this attempt to minimise the scandal of moral corruption of endemic sexual perversion within the Roman-catholic hierarchy,...
Minimize? Or to put in truthful context?
...the indisputable Fact remains, which is the authoritative apostolic teaching that homosexuals including paedophiles will not inherit the Kingdom of God ( refer the apostle Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 6:9-10), and it is therefore glaringly obvious that homosexuals do not, repeat Not, belong in any church...
I agree that those with homosexual tendencies should be excluded from the priesthood, since they will be presented with many near occassions of sin.
Let's look at 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:
"Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders 10nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 1Why single out homosexuals? What about the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, homosexual offenders, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers? If you're going to exclude homosexuals, you're going to have to exclude all of these people too. There won't be many people left in Church. Remember, Jesus came to save sinners, which is all of us.
Their homosexuality is proof that they are depraved, and as such, they pollute any church to which they affiliate.
All sinners "pollute" their churches.
If we assume for argument's sake that Roman-catholicism is a “church,” though many will vigorously dispute this assumption on explicit Biblical grounds,...
Please cite the biblical grounds for me. That's a pretty serious allegation.
Question: Does transubstantiation occur in a Mass in which the celebrant is a homosexual and-or a paedophile?
This is like asking whether transubstantiation occurs in Mass when the priest is a sinner. If this were the case, then the host could never be validly transubstantiated.
Keep in mind that it is Christ who confects the Eucharist as High Priest acting through the priest.
The conditions for a valid confection of the Eucharist are the following:
Validly Ordained Male Priest
Intent-The priest must have the intent of doing what the Church does, that being the intent to make Jesus physically present via the miracle of transubstantiation at the consecration.
Matter-For the Western Latin Rite Catholic Church, valid matter consists of wheat unleavened bread and grape wine.
Form-The key phrases which confect the Eucharist are "This is My Body" and "This is ... My Blood," which when said by a priest with the proper intention and matter (explained above), truly show the priest acts in the Person of Christ.
It also follows that bishops who have deliberately retained sexually-perverted priests in the priesthood even though those bishops have known of such priests' perverted sexual behavior, are also personally guilty of having nullified and compromised the Mass and of having jeopardised the spirituality of the people under their personal pastoral care.
They're not guilty of nullifying and compromising the Mass. But they could very well be guilty of negligence in allowing these priests to come in contact with children, and of having greatly "jeopardized the spirituality of the people under their personal pastoral care."
I'm still convinced the Boston Globe spent so much ink on this to try to reduce the Church's influence in matters of morality in this state. Already the media and legislators have made statements to the effect that the Church shouldn't say anything about the homosexual marriage issue because it has no credibility.
God's Word ALWAYS has credibility. All humans are imperfect, but Christians are called to spread God's Word to those who need to hear it.
Your homework, should you choose to accept it (and should you be intellectually capable of completing it), is to learn the meaning of the word "Donatist". When you learn the meaning of that word, in historical context, you will have an answer to your question.
The rest of your post is flame-bait, and I perceive that you are a master of such.
I think this is absolutely right. To confirm your point, let me refer you to this website put together by the rector of Holy Cross Cathedral in Boston. It contains most interesting facts about who the driving forces were behind the media's efforts to destroy the Church's credibility. Really, the whole thing was driven by academics at Boston College, MIT, and Harvard. Mostly by faculty who are involved either in the homo promo crowd or who stand to profit big from genetic research.
Obviously, none of the facts that he rasises exculpates episcopal dereliction and decadence. It only answers these sorts of questions:
1. Why Boston, why now, when most of these cases are many years old, already reported, or simply not at all news?
2. Why the Catholic Church when other large sectors (e.g. public schools) are surely more likely to have far higher rates and raw numbers of cases of sexual abuse and predators in their ranks?
I conclude that the main aim of the people driving the movement had nothing to do with child advocacy in any sense. Primarily, it has been a smear campaign by homo promos and genetic researchers. Inadvertently, and not at all to the credit of the media, the exposure has helped the Church start setting her own house in order.
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