Who can say? Just the Lord
working in mysterious ways.
Posted on 07/07/2014 10:16:41 AM PDT by Welchie25
Asking for forgiveness, Pope Francis told abuse survivors that “despicable actions” caused by clergy have been hidden for too long and had been “camouflaged with a complicity that cannot be explained.”
“There is no place in the church’s ministry for those who commit these abuses, and I commit myself not to tolerate harm done to a minor by any individual, whether a cleric or not,” and to hold all bishops accountable for protecting young people, the pope said during a special early morning Mass for six survivors of abuse by clergy. The Mass and private meetings held later with each individual took place in the Domus Sanctae Marthae - the pope’s residence and a Vatican guesthouse where the survivors also stayed.
In a lengthy, off-the-cuff homily in Spanish July 7, the pope thanked the six men and six women - two each from Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany, for coming to the Vatican to meet with him. The Vatican provided its own translations of the unscripted homily.
The pope praised their courage for speaking out about their abuse, saying that telling the truth “was a service of love, since for us it shed light on a terrible darkness in the life of the church.”
The pope said the scandal of abuse caused him “deep pain and suffering. So much time hidden, camouflaged with a complicity that cannot be explained.”
He called sex abuse a “crime and grave sin,” that was made even worse when carried out by clergy.
“This is what causes me distress and pain at the fact that some priests and bishops, by sexually abusing minors” violated the innocence of children and their own vocation to God, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicreview.org ...
It’s a touchy matter to be sure. It’s not possible in every single case to determine whether the crimes reported took place; and sometimes in other cases crimes are not reported for years if ever. But it happens in all parts of Christendom.
Holding a Mass is one of the Roman Catholic ways of asking Christ to come and heal a situation that was marred by sin. To do that, of course, Christ can’t just be left at the altar; He needs to be embraced by all parties, both the offenders and the offended, to walk with them wherever they go.
Oh, there are most certainly explanations out there:
[Faithful Departed author Philip] Lawler points out that while less than five percent of American priests have been accused of sexual abuse, some two-thirds of our bishops were apparently complicit in cover-ups. The real scandal isn't the sick excesses of a few dozen pedophiles, or even the hundreds of priests who had affairs with teenage boys -- the bulk of abuse cases. No, according to Lawler, it is the malfeasance of wealthy, powerful, and evidently worldly men who fill the thrones -- but not the shoes -- of the apostles. In case after case, we read in their correspondence, in the records of their soulless, bureaucratic responses to victims of psychic torture and spiritual betrayal, these bishops' prime concern was to save the infrastructure, the bricks and mortar and mortgages. Ironically, their lack of a supernatural concern for souls is precisely what cost them so much money in the end.
-- Excerpt from the thread Kneeling Before the World"....One aspect of the John Jay report she found particularly helpful was the language it used to describe different ways bishops have responded to reports of abuse in their dioceses -- either as "innovators" or "laggards." The report describes innovators as those who "understood the harmfulness of the (abuse) acts and moved to implement policies to reduce abuse and remove abusers early on." It conversely notes that the response of other bishops "lagged behind, thus creating an image that the church generally was not responsive to victims." The report said the media "often focused on these 'laggards,' further perpetuating the image that the bishops as a group were not responding to the problem of sexual abuse of minors."
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The actual report names five categories of bishops: innovators, early adopters, early majority, later majority, and laggards. Very odd that no category is given for bishops like Milwaukee's Rembert Weakland, a category that might be called something like "perpetrators" .
-- Excerpt from, and personal comments made on the thread John Jay report not just about mistakes in 1960s, says sex abuse expert
A few dozen pedophiles?
Hardly. THOUSANDS of homosexual/pedophile priests were involved in the scandal. It impacted just about every diocese in the nation.
Well-said, Hi-Tech. Pope Francis is taking steps in the right direction — in Our Lord’s direction -— both symbolically and substantively, for the sake of cleaning out this filth of entrenched clerical vice and being a channel of healing for these victims of depraved conduct.
I offer my prayers. Please, I hope everyone will pray.
I certainly hope and pray that priests will become believers if they weren’t believers already. One of the saddest stories is that of unbelievers who worm their way into church ministry. Then when the story breaks, it spreads shame and embarrassment and grief all around.
Those who have offended would not necessarily need to be kicked out of the church ministry, but could be assigned to roles that will not pose that temptation to sin while Christ is helping them get their hearts straight, for example being chaplains for older adults.
Worldliness is not a new concern. Martin Luther had that concern about his church. If Luther had had more patience, a solution might have eventually worked its way into Roman Catholicism. But at this juncture it is like talking about an alternate universe. We must make the best out of what we have now; and centering ourselves anew upon Christ is imperative if the world will not swallow EVERYBODY up.
I don’t get joy out of seeing anyone professing Christ take a stumble and fall, even if I disagree with his theology. Much trouble in Christendom could be healed if Christians took a “Bless you in spite of that” attitude rather than a “Damn you for that” attitude. Because blessing is not endorsement, and blessing will lead to mending erring ways.
Who can say? Just the Lord
working in mysterious ways.
Some recent news about homosexuality ... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2559021/Being-gay-DNA-researchers-claim-controversial-new-study.html
Five percent comes to about two thousand accused.
We were raised in the same diocese as kids, and knew a lot of the same people. That was disturbing, because we started going over in our memories any priests who were sort of suddenly reassigned and/or never heard of again.
"I always wondered why Fr. D. was transferred from being Asst. Headmaster at the Boys' Prep School to being chaplain at a retirement home. Do you suppose...?"Fr. O was so popular at St. Patrick's. Why did he get reassigned to (basically) "Our Lady of the Mudhole"?
"People said old Fr. M got sent to rehab for an alcohol problem. I wonder if that's all there was to it."
"Fr. E. was such a successful fund-raiser for the Seminary. They said he'd be impossible to replace. But---now he's in Ghana???"
In short, it put a cloud of suspicion and speculation around a lot of people --- innocent or guilty --- when we just didn't know what the story was. That's the kind of sudden drop of confidence to zero you experience when you no longer feel you can trust your bishop.
Over the last dozen years, things became clearer: not everything, but some things.
For one, we were talking mostly about an era (1970's-1980's) when the across-the-board consensus, and not only in the Church, was that an adult man who formed sexualized relationships with adolescent boys needed psychological counseling to help him understand and control his problem. Get counseling, plus stop drinking, and the guy would be cured, or at least good for another 20 years.
There was also a consensus that what the young victim needed was not to be "re-traumatized" by having to testify in criminal court proceedings, but to be healed by therapy/counseling. The Church would provide it or pay for it.
This was not just for priests. Back in xxx County, where we were raised, we knew of a Juvenile Court judge (yes, a judge!), an eminent and trusted Family Practice doctor, and a middle-aged unmarried man who had volunteered for decades with the Boy Scouts ("He's a real Christian!") who were pedos or at least ephebophiles (somewhat different psychiatric profiles). They were dealt with substantially the same way: no criminal charges, victims and offenders alike were whisked off to therapy under the guise of "sabbatical", "He's working on a book," "extended vacation" or "He's being treated for depression."
I think, also, that you had a combination of (1) perps who were outwardly affable, lovable, pious, generous, and experts at deception, leading a pathetic, freakish evil double life, and ... (2) bishops/superiors who genuinely couldn't imagine that a member of the clergy could do such things, couldn't believe it had gone from "a warm, affectionate guy" to "boundary issues" to "molesting" to "rape."
Does this make things right? No. No way. Not at all. But it gives you one view of the interior of the thing.
The bishops weren't thinking and acting like consecrated men who can teach, govern and sanctify in the name of Christ, but thinking like shrinks and acting like social smoothers and damage-controllers. I'm not saying "that's the way it was in 2/3 of our dioceses in the 1980's", but "that's the way it looked in the blue-collar Catholic city and diocese I grew up in.
“The 2004 John Jay Report was based on a study of 10,667 allegations against 4,392 priests accused of engaging in sexual abuse of a minor between 1950 and 2002.”
“Around 81% of these victims were male”
“The 4,392 priests who were accused amount to approximately 4% of the 109,694 priests in active ministry during that time.”
Source: Wikipedia.org Heading: Catholic sex abuse cases
Your analysis only goes so far. The unknown part, the hidden part, the part that hasn't been fully revealed, is how many bishops engaged in cover-ups because they, themselves, were complicit in the crimes against young victims, or they were compromised as active homosexuals, even if not victimizers of minors, but subject to blackmail.
How many bishops RIGHT NOW are actually homosexuals where someone's "got the goods," and thus, these bishops don't act all that bishoply? One wonders when one sees a good and decent priest publicly punished for denying Holy Communion to self-professed Buddhist lesbians whether the punishing bishop has something to hide.
sitetest
How many bishops RIGHT NOW are actually homosexuals where someone's "got the goods," and thus, these bishops don't act all that bishoply? One wonders when one sees a good and decent priest publicly punished for denying Holy Communion to self-professed Buddhist lesbians whether the punishing bishop has something to hide.
Hence my suspicions about the USCCB-funded John Jay report's "reponse" categories, above, in post #3
The core issue here is the POLICIES of the Catholic Church.
In Eastern Europe and the Middle East Catholic priests have always been permitted to marry.
In 1929, the Vatican actually passed a decree which prohibited married Greek Catholic priests from relocating to the United States.
What were they worried about? That American Catholics would discover there is nothing wrong with priests being allowed to marry?
The Catholic Church’s policy of mandatory clerical celibacy was a factor in causing the Great Schism in 1054 between the Catholic and Orthodox Church and it was also a factor which caused the Protestant Reformation in Western Europe in the 1500s and 1600s.
There is NOTHING in the Bible which requires priests to be celibate. To the contrary, 1 Timothy 3:2 permits a married clergy. Priests in the Bible were in fact expected to be married. The Lord commands us to be fruitful and multiply. Even the Pope has recently stated that celibacy is not part of Church dogma and is subject to change.
The key to this issue is to screen out homosexuals before they are ordained but that will not happen because it's too politically incorrect and would cause a furore amongst the liberal elites for which the Church currently has no stomach. The Church, in its Catechism calls homosexuality "a disorder" and it is for this reason that a little over 50 years ago, a decree was issued that homosexuals should not be ordained.
The document entitled “Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders” was promulgated by the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for Religious on February 2, 1961 and said.....
“Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers”.
The consequences of ignoring this decree have been disastrous.
Sure, some homosexuals will slip through the cracks but there has to be a hierarchy of measures in place and first among these is the reform of the seminaries. For those who make it through to ordination, it's incumbent on the bishops to act like true pastors if and when these men committ abuse. However, the Church must be proactive and state clearly that sexual disorders, including but not limited to homosexuality, are a deal breaker for ordination to the priesthood.
"Who am I to judge" is a recipe for disaster when it comes to screening applicants for the seminary. It's essential that a judgment is made on the suitability of candidates for ordination. If those with a fondness for Latin and traditional liturgies can be shown the door, then so can those with same sex attraction disorder.
Have you not seen a better screening process in the last 5-7 years? Would really like your opinion. God bless.
**He called sex abuse a “crime and grave sin,” that was made even worse when carried out by clergy.
“This is what causes me distress and pain at the fact that some priests and bishops, by sexually abusing minors” violated the innocence of children and their own vocation to God, he said.**
He didn’t pull any punches, but told it as it is/was.
**I offer my prayers. Please, I hope everyone will pray.**
I add mine.
And many more family members and friends have been accused. Also teachers are 10 times ahead of the priests, but we only hear about the priests.
Sigh................
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