If you’re still in denial, let’s look at what’s been going on among those Baptists:
1/6/11: Sturdevant man gets seven years for sexual assault [of minor]. (Pleasant Street Baptist Church volunteer; pastor gushes about how nice he was. Note, nothing in headline links him to church.)
12/30/10: Rio Linda [First Baptist Church] pastor arrested for [six counts of] child molestation. UPDATE: 1/1/11: Rio Linda church stands behind pastor after arrest.
12/26/10: Dallas County [Greenville Baptist Church] pastor accused of sexual assault
12/20/10: [ANOTHER] Dallas County pastor accused of sexual assault.
12/17/10: Kimball pastor charged in possession of child porn. [Wave a few million dollars and I’m sure some victims will show up.]
12/11/10: Norfolk former Baptist pastor jailed for sex assaults.
That’s FIVE fresh arrests in the past month. (I won’t count the first article, since the arrest is older, and the man wasn’t pastor.) Still, that’d be an average of SIXTY arrests per year. Given that the Catholic Church is FOUR TIMES larger, that would be the equivalent of THREE HUNDRED in ONE YEAR, or six a week. Not 300 abuse cases, mind you, but arrests. And yes, all five of the ones I’m counting are sexual abuse of minors by pastors.
And yet, no database to track perpetrators. No policy for revoking credentials by the Baptist seminaries. No policy put forth by the SBC. (And don’t get claim that it’s just because they’re independent congregations; the SBC has policies for EVERYTHING.) No plan for reform of the seminaries. Just denial, obfuscation, and deliberate unaccountability.
Oops. I counted a child-porn case as a sex-abuse-on-minors case. Oh, well, here’s an article from Dec. 8 to make up for it:
[Son Rise Baptist Church] Pastor faces sex abuse charges [of sodomizing a minor.]
There is a significant difference between some Baptist pastors and priest guilty of similar crimes. Normally, if a Baptist pastor gets accused, revoking their “creditials” means nothing. Baptist pastors are hired by local congregations. They act independent of one another. And there are precious few (I won’t say completely) congregations that will take them on. Their careers are finished for the most part.
The Catholic Church looks upon priests as adminsters of God’s grace through the Eucharist. When a priest has been accused of such a sexual crime, history has shown that not only are they moved around into another post, but the Church has attempted to cover up their actions. These priests right to adminsters God’s grace are seldom, if ever, revoked-even for the most eggregious offenders.
Trying to minimize the Catholic Church problem by pointing to the Baptists is rather foolish. Juries have awarded billions of dollars of restitution to victims of the Catholic Church. You don’t see that sort of thing among the Baptists. And Catholics would do well to quit blaming everyone else and feeling sorry for themselves as if they were the victims. Instead they need to start cleaning up their Church. But as long as you believe that everything coming out of the Vatican is true and correct, that will never happen.