Guilty Until Proven Guiltier (Book Review]

TFP ^ | Tuesday, 29 March 2011 | John Horvat II

[GonzoII]

Guilty Until Proven Guiltier

Written by John Horvat II   

Tuesday, 29 March 2011 19:54

Share

Tweet

No one denies that some priests have terribly abused minors, and some bishops failed to act properly to stop this unspeakable harm. This is the qualifier that must be placed before any rational discussion of the sexual abuse scandals.

However, there is a story that is not being told. In the hysteria surrounding these scandals, many innocent priests are being falsely accused. No one tells their story. David F. Pierre’s book Double Standard: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church is a book that does much to expose this grave injustice.

The book is incredibly focused. It does not seek to enter into the details of many of the cases he cites. His message is simple: There is a double standard involved in the prosecution of abuse cases. There is a one-sided bias that assumes any priest who has been accused is “guilty until proven guiltier.”

The author cites case after case of media mistreatment of the scandals. One finds total publicity for those making accusations and little exposure for the priests to proclaim their innocence. The slightest charge receives a media uproar whereas the rampant abuse in the public schools and administrative cover-up get almost no coverage.

Decades-old cases involving deceased priests are treated as if they happened yesterday and are constantly rehashed by the media. One often sees all the efforts the Church has made to remedy the situation ignored by activists and reporters.

However, the worst part of this attack is that the priests themselves are marked forever as an accused. When priests are exonerated, their innocence is rarely reported and some are taken out of their ministries “just in case.” Some of these are priests with excellent records of decades of parish work without incident. The priest who has every right to his good reputation is not given this right. A number of priests have even refused to plea bargain and admit to a guilt they do not have. One of these chose to go to prison until he can establish his complete innocence.

Mr. Pierre cites numerous cases of false accusations – and false settlements which again are rarely reported. Many dioceses without the resources to get involved in many lawsuits simply make a joint settlement which assumes guilt on decades-old cases and besmirches the good names of the dead who have no defense. At times diocesan officials did not even ask for specifics about the time and place of alleged abuse, turning the settlement into something similar to “a trip to an ATM machine.”

Indeed, there is a double standard which the book well documents. In the name of one scandal, another one has been created by those leading the charge to associate every Catholic priest with abuse. There should be one standard – the standard of justice where everyone is innocent until proven guilty and not “guilty until proven guiltier.”
 
 
 
To purchase Double Standard: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr., please click here or our Amazon.com link. A percentage of what you pay will benefit the TFP.

---

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites

 

 

[sitetest]

Dear GonzoII,

“...and some bishops failed to act properly to stop this unspeakable harm.”

A relatively small percentage of priests were guilty - perhaps around 4%. However, I've read that roughly 2/3 of the bishops engaged in cover-ups.

As a body, the bishops are guilty, guilty, guilty. And as a body, they brought about the current travesties of “zero tolerance” and “guilty before proven innocent.” They are guilty of these crimes, as well.

But here's the problem: we laity NEED these processes to be in place to protect us from the perfidies of the bishops. Without “zero tolerance” and “guilty before proven innocent,” we have no protection from the natural tendency of the bishops to display their innate clericalism, manifesting itself in this case as a natural desire to protect even the guilty priests from harm and exposure.

And then, perhaps only 4% of priests were abusers, but the question is, how many of their brother priests had some inkling of what they were doing, and chose to sit on their hands about it?

The hierarchy of the Church has enough guilt from these crimes to damn them all to Hell about a thousand times over. And have enough guilt left over to damn most of the rest of humanity to Hell at least once.

The bishops are the legitimate successors of the apostles, and when they teach in union with the Roman See on faith and morals, they are infallible. But we would do well to guard against their doings and not to emulate them, as many [most?] of them are wolves in sheep's clothing.

And most of the ones who aren't wolves are just dumb as a box of rocks. In fact, many of the wolves, too, are pretty stupid, too.

And this is one of the proofs that the Catholic Church is the Church founded by Jesus. No other badly, incompetently-run organization with such a class of governing dunces could have survived 20 years no less 2000 years.

sitetest

[Venturer]

It wasn’t the laity that brought this on the Church.

The Bishops who hid that 4% brought this on them.

How can we not be suspiscious when this has been going on for so long and is still going on.

[kiryandil]

If all these priests become Boy Scout Troop leaders, the Left wouldn't know what to do...

Their freaking heads would explode.

[kitkat]

***The Bishops who hid that 4% brought this on them.***

No, the psychiatrists who told the Catholic church that pedophiles could be cured brought this on. The Church sent such offenders off to be cured and then re-instated them. The psychiatrists then made the amazing announcement that pedophiles could NOT be cured. So, who was to blame? The next step will be the Proddies, the Jewish faith having been already supremely attacked by the media.

[Running On Empty]

IMHO, there is plenty of blame to go around.

All involved were/are somehow to blame.

Meanwhile, do we lay people REALLY remember to pray daily for our priests?

If not, let’s take a good look at ourselves.

[Running On Empty]

Ping

[Rashputin]

You got that right. It’s been about fifty years, but I remember when liberals inside and outside of the Church were crying and wringing their paws over how harsh the Church was to people who were “ill, not evil”. Both pedophiles and homosexuals were being treated “horribly” by the Church and the Church needed to become more enlightened in their dealings.

I might dig around and see if I can find some of that pop psychology and “expert opinion” from that era. I remember it because the folks I lived around were mostly Catholics and livid over the very idea of doing anything other than hanging pedophiles. Homosexuals, they just wanted defrocked, excommunicated, and put in prison for breaking sodomy laws (they still had those then).

[sitetest]

Dear Rashputin,

You are right that the reigning orthodoxy in the 1960s and 1970s was that these crimes were readily-treated illnesses. I was in graduate school at the time (early 1980s) for clinical psychology and I remember the tide was just turning. We students were much more inclined to back disclosure laws requiring psychotherapists to report child molesters to the authorities. Our professors were often horrified by our uncivilized views on the topic.

Nonetheless, no one told the bishops to depart from the ways of God to follow the ways of the world. One may heap blame and scorn on the therapeutic professions without reducing the damnable guilt of the bishops by one iota.

sitetest

[Rashputin]

"Nonetheless, no one told the bishops to depart from the ways of God to follow the ways of the world."

I agree with that, and furthermore, no one told American Bishops to see themselves as a separate Church and go their own leftist way on things. IMHO, the whole mess is a symptom of Bishops wanting to be accepted by the "progressive" elements of society as opposed to being part of the One True Church. The same disease spread like wildfire through Protestant ranks as well beginning at about the same time. What was suddenly so attractive about social acceptance in the sixties is something I've never understood.

[kitkat]

***All involved were/are somehow to blame.***

Yes, of course. Guilty until proven guiltier. Sarcasm not removed.