Posted on 08/14/2018 4:01:30 PM PDT by marshmallow
Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug 14, 2018 / 02:27 pm (CNA).- A redacted grand jury report on clerical sexual abuse in six of Pennsylvania’s Catholic dioceses was released Tuesday, following an 18-month investigation into thousands of alleged instances of abuse spanning several decades.
The report, detailing allegations made in the dioceses of Allentown, Erie, Greensburg, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and Scranton, was released Aug.14. It reported on evidence of systematic abuse and cover-ups going back seven decades within these dioceses.
About half of Pennsylvania’s nearly 3 million Catholics live within these six dioceses.
The 884-page report was written by 23 grand jurors, who spent some 18 months investigating the six dioceses, examining half a million pages of documents in the process. The FBI assisted with the investigative process.
The report claims to have identified more than 1,000 victims of 300 credibly accused priests and presents a devastating portrait of efforts by Church authorities to, ignore, obscure, or cover up allegations - either to protect accused priests or to spare the Church scandal.
The report also identified a series of practices present in different ways across the dioceses which together amounted to a “playbook for concealing the truth.”
These include use of phrases like “boundary issues” or ”inappropriate contact” instead of explicitly referring to rape and sexual abuse, assigning priests to investigate their peers, instead of using qualified and objective personnel, and a reliance on psychological assessments and diagnoses based upon the self-reporting of clerics.
Due to laws regarding the statute of limitations, nearly every abuse allegation cannot be criminally prosecuted, although two indictments have been filed. So far, one priest, Fr. John Sweeney, has been convicted of sexually assaulting a student in the early 1990s.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
Argue the point with facts, not statistically worthless data.
There are plenty of facts in the report to support your position if you’ll take the time to read it.
Just be sure you have a strong stomach. I have, and it’s pretty sickening.
“No faith, no segment of society is immune from it.”
True, but most were not targeted by the KGB. Ivan spent huge amounts of time and money infiltrating homosexual atheists into Catholic seminaries. They had a great deal of success.
Among the leadership is they have to find a way to preserve your priesthood at all costs..... no matter what the person did, the priesthood, as a thing, must be saved..the church just doesn't seem to care overmuch about the moral and spiritual health of its members, as long as 'the machinery' of sacramental dispensation keeps humming....which then equals an unholy acceptance of perversion.
So we have seen and will continue to see thats serious sexual sin and disorder among their clergy is just not that big a deal to them.........thus the Catholic church has become 'a stage for their clergy', and the laity simply the supporting cast. I don't see that is going to change regardless of current and future exposure of the Priesthood for these crimes.
Everyone can be forgiven if he or she truly repents. But forgiveness doesn’t require pretending that the sin never happened in the first place or covered up.....
A remorseful embezzler who has gone to prison and paid his debt to society is entitled to be forgiven and received into the community as a penitent. But he is not entitled to the expectation that he can resume his job as company treasurer. The nature of his sin, or rather, his crime, means that he has forfeited certain opportunities.
Showering these Priests with a cheap grace, and Bishops who have protected their criminal behavior, then letting them return to their previous life in one form or another under the protection of church leadership stinks to high heaven, and serves to teach lots of lessons, but NOT in forgiveness.
I thought you might post to defend priest sexual abuse.
Good on you for calling it what it is!
If the least is 28%, then one out of every three priests you meet is gay. It is likely skewed higher.
(approximately)
Is the percentage of gay men in the Priesthood higher than that in the general population?
Intuitively I think it is. But I don’t know that the stats exist to prove it.
The worse reality is the cover up and enabling of the abuse by Catholic hierarchy.
When are you going to condemn what went on in the Catholic church instead of finger pointing and making excuses?
Sad, isn't it?
That money talks instead of moral integrity?
What’s really telling and pathetic, is that nothing was done for DECADES until the abuse problem went public and the bad publicity forced the church to make a pretense of dealing with the problem.
If people had not been willing to speak out and complain, it would STILL be going on.
The spiritual lives of people would continue to be destroyed in one of the most reprehensible ways imaginable instead of being shepherded, nurtured, and fed by the shepherds of the flock.
And from the *church* that claims the moral high ground, it’s even more of an abomination. They are the white washed tombs Jesus condemned. All pious on the outside but inside, full of corruption and dead man’s bones.
Ironic that non-Catholics are the ones who are accused of *cheap grace*.
That finger pointing thing again.
“Is the percentage of gay men in the Priesthood higher than that in the general population?
Intuitively I think it is. But I don’t know that the stats exist to prove it.
.........
One AIDS study showed priests dying at 6 times the rate of the feral population.
Someone has known about this for a long, long time.
My mom had a friend back in the 1950’s whose dad was a cop. He kept telling everyone he knew to keep their kids away from Priests. In is predominantly Catholic neighborhood that statement generally drew shock and outrage.
He had apparently been involved in several arrests of Priests in molestation cases. In each case the charges were dropped by either police officials or the prosecutor, always at the request of the Bishop.
The Priest would just get quietly sent on to some other parish. It wasn’t until the mid-70’s that you actually started to hear about this in the open.
I think it’s higher than the stats tell.
There will always be some who won’t admit it.
That’s very interesting.
Posted upthread with reference link.
Most crimes are committed by homosexuals. You can be a homosexual and also be pedophile. Most are.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.