That’s fine to point all of that out. It still does not change anything. Frankly attempting to rationalize or be an apologist by using arguments whose basic premises are “That’s just how we’ve always done it” and “Others do it too” or “We were just following order to move them around” just don’t cut it. These were horrendous crimes to do to young people. I know of several teen boys in my own former parish who committed suicide because of their rapings by one of the priests there. These people have destroyed peoples’ lives because of this. I honestly don’t believe you understand the severity of the impact of this, because of the statements you have written.
It is rather sick to suggest these reasons to somehow diminish or rationalize what has been done here. You say this kind of behavior has gone on for centuries, priests breaking their celibacy vows for hundreds of years. Perhaps then the punishment should be even greater, if this despicable (and hypocritical) behavior has gone on for so long. You sound like you’re bothered that they are finally being called to account for permitting this kind of behavior for hundreds of years, and you’re defending it by saying it’s basically unfair to go after them NOW after all this time we let them skate by, like we’re somehow changing the rules on them in mid-stream, and also that other groups do this too and we’re not going after them.
Do me a favor and list the groups that are doing it to the degree the Roman church has, and have gotten away with it for hundreds of years, and I will take this list and pass it along to the FBI and my local police and get the ball rolling. I am not against going after any group who does this kind of stuff and institutionally sanctions and covers it up.
Further, how you can imply that this is how the Roman church has done things for hundreds of years and have gotten away with it by covering it up, up until recently, first the church has never approved of sodomy calling it sin, and rape sin, and the secular world up until recently also had laws against sodomy (and still do with rape), and you somehow because they’ve escaped detection and punishment that regular citizens would and have gone to jail for, that we’re somehow picking on them? That is how your statements come across.
All my prior statements about this still stand. The Roman church has very little ground to adopt a defensive attitude about this as you are stating, now is the time to be sincerely sorry about it and repent and get all the homosexual priests purged from this denomination.
Frankly you have read intent in to my post that was not there. My intention was to simply explain simple human behavior. The Church moved Offending Priest around because they could.
They did not change their behavior because they were not forced to.
In my post I never said that what they did was correct or moral. I never said that the Church was being picked on. What I did say was that this behavior occurs in other Churches at the same frequency but because the Church is a bigger target that it is publicized more frequently. If that sounds like saying the Church is picked on, well any organization that stands up for moral values is picked on today, especially when it is caught acting immorally.
My intention was to point out that any large old entrenched organization (especially one that is self policing which the Catholic Church was for centuries) will not change its ways of doing thing unless forced to do so by some outside entity.
Explaining behavior is not the same has defending it. I find the Churches behavior appalling in the case of protecting pedophiles. What is particularly appalling is that they have sent these pedophiles away to monasteries for treatment declared them cured and then sent off to new parishes and not warned the Priest at the new parish of their past. This permitted the pederast free reign to offend again.
No the Church deserves to be reprimanded for this behavior. But also you must be aware that this behavior was not limited to the Catholic Church it happened in many other organizations that had an interest in preserving their professions reputation for respectability (I pointed out teachers).
I hope you do not believe that this sudden rash of teachers being accused of molesting children is some new epidemic.