"On Sept. 26, The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts notified lay leaders of the First Baptist Church of Winchester that their pastor, the Rev. Lawrence French, had been found guilty by a church panel of sexually molesting three boys between 1960 and 1982.
"But First Baptist is a congregation that reveres its pastor. And so a dozen church elders decided unanimously that French, who says he is innocent, should remain as pastor. Convinced that the 72-year-old pastor could not have committed the alleged offenses, they also concluded that it would be unfair to French to notify other members of the church about the allegations."
OK? Do you see it? There are other churches, protestant churches, in which the accused are protected and the accusation is kept silent.
It's not just Rome. Hope you can see that now...sometimes it is just human nature.
It's not just Rome. Hope you can see that now...sometimes it is just human nature.
Nobody ever said it was just Rome.
The issue is and remains that the Roman Catholic church was just not in denial about the problem, but knew about it and either didn't do anything or went out of its way to cover it up until FORCED to deal with it as damage control after the bad publicity.
All the attempts to commend them for doing the *right* thing fail because until the light was shown on what was going on, they WEREN'T doing the right thing. They only resorted to that when they had to.
If they did the right thing in the first place, we wouldn't be having this constant barrage of stories like this.
Also, appealing to *human nature* doesn't hold water with those professing to be Christians. If one is a Christian, they have the Spirit of God living within them. It's not just the human nature any more. We are no longer slaves to that nature that we should obey it's whims and demands.
We are called to a higher standard by God, that standard is laid out for us in the Scripture that the Catholic church does everything in its power to dismiss, and any Christian has within them the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the *human nature* and do the RIGHT thing. Not the convenient thing, or the expedient thing, or the easy thing.
The right thing.
And the right thing to do is laid out in Scripture.
"The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts...the governing body of churches...withdrew recognition of French's ordination."
This is precisely what the Roman Catholic church does NOT do. The hierarchy of the RCC hides these priests and keeps them at their jobs, in contact with vulnerable children and unsuspecting families.