Seriously, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't detraction the sin of exposure of someone else's serious sins "without sufficient cause"? ... pedophilia is virtually incurable.If you comitted adultery in the past and I knew of it, do I have sufficient cause to warn your neighbors that you are an adulterer and that they should protect their husbands from you?
As to pedophilia, having sex with teenage boys (the crime in focus here) is not pedophilia. It is homosexuality, and really, is not particularly different than the crimes covered by marriage of minors laws and statutory rape laws. Lets get off the whole pedophilia schtick.
Protecting parishioners and their families from a man with a history of sex abuse is "sufficient cause" to blow the whistle.
Is a singular instance a "history"?
If a man comes home early once and has sex with the teenage babysitter, does he need to be permanently seperated from all contact with teenage girls?
In any case, all this is a bunch of nonsensical speculation. As Rod notes about the Priest in question:
"He had been suspended by his diocese in Pennsylvania after formal abuse accusations had been leveled against him. The priest came back to his hometown, Dallas, and got other work -- but was helping out on the weekends in this particular parish. It turned out that the pastor knew all about his past, had concluded that he had been falsely accused, and put him into active ministry in the parish -- without telling the parish, or even his bishop. Now, this priest might well be innocent -- nothing has been proved against him"
http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon/2006/10/orthodoxy-and-me.html
So with no proof whatsoever of anything other than the Priest - Fr. Christopher Clay of the Diocese of Scranton - having supposedly been suspended pending his case being ajudicated (this is the new policy that came out of the 2002 Dallas meeting - make an accusation and the Priest is sent packing without proof or ajudication needed), Rod outed him and the up till now secret accusations by publishing unproven allegations about him in a local newspaper, and simultaneously slandering the rest of the lower clergy as a "herd of moral geldings" (another crime in Canon Law is to encourage animus against the clergy). "Can. 1373 A person who publicly incites his or her subjects to hatred or animosity against the Apostolic See or the Ordinary because of some act of ecclesiastical authority or ministry, or who provokes the subjects to disobedience against them, is to be punished by interdict or other just penalties."
The actual history of the Fr. Christopher Clay case is here:
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2004_07_12/2004_07_02_Adams_ExBishopPriest.htm
Apparently, the Police found no cause to charge him, and his alleged victim declined to sue. Maybe because he was innocent! A priest friend of my family is in this conundrum right now. He was suspended by Bishop Wuerl in Pittsburgh 4 years ago now, and has been forced to sit in suspended animation at an old seminary since then, with no progress being made in his "case" (which apparently centers around him having taken pictures of kids flexing their muscles poolside at a trip he had organized 20 years ago). If this is the level of some of these acusations, they are really quite flimsy.
"As Rod notes about the Priest in question: "He had been suspended ...after formal abuse accusations had been leveled against him...the pastor knew all about his past, had concluded that he had been falsely accused, and put him into active ministry ... Now, this priest might well be innocent -- nothing has been proved against him" "
Since this is what Rod said about this priest, the charge that Rod is guilty of the sin of detraction needs a little more substantiation, wouldn't you say?
You also charge Rod with the sin of taking scandal. This means being shocked-shocked when there was nothing to be shocked-shocked about. For instance, I saw this on an unnamed bee-in-the-bonnet blog:
"Cardinal Karol Wojtyla on a hiking excursion around 1975. His intimacy with this woman is such that he is comfortable being pictured with his knees touching hers. "
Geez! if somebody has a problem with this picture I'd say that's a pretty clear example of "the sin of taking scandal."
In Rod's case, the scandals were real--- and serious. As a journalist investigating the sexual-abuse situation for a major metropolitan daily as well as for the Catholic World Report, he saw and heard a lot more than was ever published. (That in itself shows discretion, not scandal-mongering.)
More than one bishop of Dallas was implicated in cover-ups involving clergy who were guilty of multiple crimes of abuse. You should read up if you don't know this.
"If a man comes home early once and has sex with the teenage babysitter, does he need to be permanently seperated from all contact with teenage girls? "
He'd certainly be separated from contact with MY teenage girls; and from me as well.