Posted on 05/16/2011 10:48:24 AM PDT by bronxville
Did Joel Osteen elect to handle the accusation internally and simply transfer the accused to another church or did you notify the legal authorities?
This is truly shocking:
“The refrain that child rape is a reality in the Church is twice wrong: let’s get it straight — they weren’t children and they weren’t raped,” — Bill Donohue President
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
Source: http://www.catholicleague.org/nytstraighttalk.php
No, I said nothing like that.
However -- my own opinion -- accusations of illegal activities shouldn't be made to the Church (or any organization like it), but directly to the police. If someone molests my kid (such that I have a reasonable belief that laws were broken), I'm not going to work through a middleman, I'm going to go to the cops. Whether the accused abuser is a teacher, priest, relative, etc., doesn't matter one bit.
“27.3% of accused priests were accused of performing oral sex on the victim. 25.1% of accused priests were alleged to have been involved in acts of penile penetration or attempted penetration”.
Bill Donohue sure does have an odd idea of the definition of inappropriate touching.
Excellent post.
WOW. You gave me a link for a USA study of 200 pages where none of what you wrote in post 8 is documented as such...please provide the link as in post 8 due to time restraints and respect for posters.
“The guidelines are respectful of episcopal autonomy and do not attempt a universal template....”
The statement clearly says that in some jurisdictions, the church should not cooperate with the civil authorities (because, they claim, this would be dangerous). The Catholic church is leaving it up to individual dioceses or bishops or whatever to decide whether they think its “safe enough” to report the crime of child rape or whether it’s best just to deal with it inside the church.
This is really no different than sharia law. A muslim imam in Detroit might decide he believes muslims are so hated in America that he won’t turn in a mosque member that raped a kid to the Detroit police because he won’t get a fair trial. They’ll just have a sharia trial and kick the guy out of the mosque or whatever. In the same way, the Catholics are saying, “Hey, Bishops, you decide if you think it’s too dangerous to bring in the civil authorities if one of your priests raped a kid.” If so, just have a little church trial with church law and deal with it that way.
Everything there is in the .pdf file. I can’t do the reading for you.
For example the stats on what type of abuse occurred page 33 of the 158 page pdf.
“Another giant lie by the Catholic League:
In fact, the data show that “inappropriate touching” has been the most common form of abuse, and that most of the victims were postpubescent males, meaning that homosexuality was at work.
False. From the US Conference of Bishops report page 27:
“27.3% of accused priests were accused of performing oral sex on the victim. 25.1% of accused priests were alleged to have been involved in acts of penile penetration or attempted penetration”.”
I just checked page 27 and the FALSE information you’re promoting here is NOT there...what’s actually written on page 27 is the huge peak between the mid-sixties and mid-seventies.
Why do you want to spread lies and slander?
However -- my own opinion -- accusations of illegal activities shouldn't be made to the Church (or any organization like it), but directly to the police.
This is what has bothered me from the beginning of this scandal breaking. People apparently claim that the Church should have reported their child's molestation by a cleric as if the police would hang up on them if they did it. "What? Who are you? The kid's parent? Please! Unless you are a Church employee I hardly see how you can be credible. Please stop calling me and find some way to get the bishop's office to do it." Really? Who are these people?
Who gets mugged on a bus and then complains that the bus driver didn't report the crime? Who finds out their kids were molested by a teacher in their school and waits for the principal to call the police? And what kind of a person would then cover up their own negligence and failure to act by demanding a policy at the school making the principal call the police? No real parent would have needed them to. I really do find it impossible to accept.
Priests molesting teenage boys in their care is pure evil. Parents not reporting that crime and instead hoping that some random clerk in the Church will do it for them is equally evil. No, that is wrong. It is more evil. Random priests may or may not care, but a parent is a parent and their children should be able to turn to them and count on them.
In some places and some times, that's absolutely true.
The Catholic church is leaving it up to individual dioceses or bishops or whatever
Not quite, but they're also not willing to box themselves into a corner for all time. What happens when some "forward-thinking" country announces that it's "sexual abuse" not to teach the wonders of homosexuality or birth control in schools? (Parts of Europe and Canada are already almost there.) Should the church make "reporting" that "abuse" mandatory?
As far as the US is concerned, the American bishops made it explicitly part of their policy to report all abuse cases to the civil authorities back in the mid-1990's.
“False. From the US Conference of Bishops report page 27:
“27.3% of accused priests were accused of performing oral sex on the victim. 25.1% of accused priests were alleged to have been involved in acts of penile penetration or attempted penetration”.
Everything there is in the .pdf file. I can’t do the reading for you.
For example the stats on what type of abuse occurred page 33 of the 158 page pdf.”
You posted clear-cut statistics in post 8. I’ve asked you for the link for that specific post and you gave me the full USA Conference Report. Next you source page 27 of the same report and when I check the page IT’S NOT THERE!!! You’ve lied once and are passing this false propaganda all through this thread.
Please give me the link for post #8 as you obviously have it in your possession.
You missed the quoted information on the very next page, numbered 28. That’s some investigation you did there.
The reason many of these people turned directly to the church first and not the police is that they were raised to believe in and trust the church and its authorities. The church and their families had been telling them since birth that the church was the good guy, the world was evil. They trusted a priest more than a cop. (Which, as a general rule, is probably not a bad idea.) The church was the ultimate moral arbiter...indeed, it held power over whether they got to heaven or not. Of course these people would go to the church in times of crisis. Then the church would promise to make things better and they’d trust the church to do so. If you try to put yourself inside their heads, it’s not at all hard to understand.
“Everything there is in the .pdf file. I can’t do the reading for you.
For example the stats on what type of abuse occurred page 33 of the 158 page pdf.”
You are beyond the pale. Page 33 does NOT outline the type of abuse.
In the same way, the Catholics are saying, “Hey, Bishops, you decide if you think it’s too dangerous to bring in the civil authorities if one of your priests raped a kid.” If so, just have a little church trial with church law and deal with it that way.
Totally false claim. See post 20.
I am simply stupefied by all the people who think that churches should mediate between police and victims, as if the cops won't talk to anybody who doesn't work for the employer of the criminal. If you are robbed by an employee of the phone company do you then have to try to convince AT&T to call the cops and report it? What exactly is it, I want to know, that keeps all you people from calling the police yourselves, and forces you to demand that all these big institutions do all the talking to the cops on your behalf?
I care nothing for the danger child-raping-priests may be put into if the church cooperates with civil authorities. The worst thing that could happen to them is exactly what they deserve: death.
And as for the American bishops: What, they didn’t think it was wrong to rape kids before 1995? Am I supposed to be impressed by your claim?
Ephebophilia is where most of the homosexual-pedophilia abuse derived in the Catholic, mainline Protestants, and other denominations come from and which CONTINUES to happen in the decentralized denominations.
You did NOT get those statistics from page 27. Please provide the link where you got them as outlined in post 8.
You LIE.
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