Posted on 01/27/2002 8:52:51 PM PST by churchillbuff
Nation: Parishioners in Boston divided over Cardinal's apology
Copyright © 2002 AP Online
BOSTON (January 27, 2002 8:09 p.m. EST) - Lori Sciurca said she regularly attends Sunday Mass but her faith has been tested by reports that church leaders repeatedly reassigned a priest accused of sexually molesting children.
"I think the apologies have gotten awfully old. There's a lot of singing and dancing and sidestepping," the 41-year-old social worker said before morning Mass at the Arch Street Chapel. "But, I also think there are many good priests in the archdiocese."
Similar conflicting sentiments were expressed by many Catholics on Sunday as Cardinal Bernard Law issued a letter apologizing for reassigning the former Rev. John J. Geoghan to a new parish in 1984, although he knew Geoghan had been removed from two parishes for molesting children ....
Like I said - Ive got a problem with the dogma to an extent, but plainly some of these threads get hateful -
As an Orthodox Christian and the son of an Orthodox Christian priest, I have always understtod that the attitude of our Church around the world has generally been one more of physical survival (having lost 100,000,000 to Communism, Nazism, and Islamic tyrannies this last century alone), and these discussions about relative degrees of sin seem somehow to miss the point. Also, if we would have a priest who falls into sin (heresy, murder, perversion, etc.) that person would be "defrocked" after a clerical trial, and I am aware of several instances of men being forced out of the priesthood on such issues.
As far as the remifications of allowing priests to marry, since the Orthodox Church follows the apostolic tradition for 2,000 years now, we may remember that many famous people in history have been the descendants of Orthodox priests. Andrei Sakharov was the grandson of a Russian Orthodox priest, and Nikolaj Tesla was the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest, just to name two off the top of my head.
If his mother-in-law was anything like mine, he was definitely a saint!
Perhaps you better keep them out of Protestant churches too.
Clergy Sexual Misconduct: Just a Catholic Problem?
Taken from an old thread on FR...
The intent of this directive is to take the 'option' of just moving these guys around as many lax, liberal bishops have done and giving Rome the info so they can move with some alacrity to take the guy out of circulation. This is not meant to circumvent the secular courts.
God desires the conversion and salvation of all his people, even those consumed with hatred.
If true, that means that the Pope, who is infallible on matters of faith and morals, says it is morally okay for the Church to keep incidents of child molestation hidden from the knowledge of the proper authorities and the identities of pederasts secret from an unsuspecting public.
Now, that can't be right, can it?
No, it's not right. You are very confused about the entire issue. The Pope didn't issue a "secret directive" he published it, like he publishes all of the other official documents of the Church.
And it doesn't say that accussed priests would face a "Secret internal church trial" instead of a civil trial.
The "secret directive" is to make sure that Rome is told of any such accusations, precisely to stop one local bishop from attempting to hide such things, like Law seems to have done.
And the secret internal church court would be to decide what to do with the man and his priesthood. It is an addition to whatever civil and criminal penalties he would face in the regular law courts of the country. Not instead of.
SD
If I remember correctly, in the Bible, someone (Christ? St. Paul?) said it was best for a worker in the Church to remain single if that individual found it possible, because the individual could devote all his efforts toward the Church. But men who still desired to be married were allowed to be married. Seems like good advice to me.
It might be hard for them to weed out the flood of married or going-to-be-married seminarians which might result if the Catholic Church allowed married priests.
The Eastern Rite (or the Byzantine Rite?) of the Catholic church also have married priests. At least they did some years back. They hold allegiance to the Pope and had masses in the vernacular before the (Latin) RC Church did.
The conservative orders generally don't produce diocesan priests, and many of them never wind up in the US.
The most well-known conservative diocese is Lincoln, NE (under Bp. Bruskewitz.) Their recently-built seminary does have a lot of men: but keep in mind that they admit men from *all over the country,* many of whom have been rejected by their home dioceses for being too "traditional." This does NOT translate into a significant gain in the # of new priests for the US, compared to the enormous outflow that's going to hit over the next 10-15 years as the majority retire.
Oh, but it does. Or could. If the reasons why these "too traditional" men are being rejected is exposed and changed. If all of the semenaries were actually working to bring out good, orthodox, men for the priesthood, we would see a huge difference.
Lincoln and the others simply point out the way and expose the pretenders.
SD
Thank you for this post! You introduce a breath of both fresh air and sanity into a discussion that too rapidly gets bogged down in sludge.
The priests of both Orthodoxy and of the Eastern Catholic Rites (in union w/ Rome) show that married priests *can* serve faithfully. I think the issue of ordaining married men has to be kept somewhat separate from pedophilia, because as long as the current sorry state of the Catholic priesthood persists, Catholics WILL end up simply ordaining married heterosexual pedophiles as well as unmarried homosexual ones. Personally, I believe that Catholic bishops should be given the right to ordain *either* married or unmarried men as they see fit in their own dioceses, based on their own knowledge of local conditions.
All of your comments seem valid to me but there would be a lot of resistance from people who don't want any change. Any way, some of the Priests would want to marry twelve year old boys.
Peace.
Get real. How many family men do you think will get in line for a thankless job that pays $10,000/year?
I have a better solution. How about if the seminaries stopped persecuting the orthodox, believing Catholic men who would make fine priests? Some of these diocesan seminaries go very far out of their way to make sure that they only graduate liberals who toe the line on priestesses and everything else.
Your solution is the problem. The Church should have been more selective. The Church looks like it was setup by some inside clique pushing for this result. I have read instances of men being rejected as candidates because they were 'too conservative' and politically incorrect. There is no reason why these men ever became priests. Like the Marines say 'a few good men'.
Unfortunately, while Pope John Paul was out of the Vatican travelling, the infrastructure of the Church has about collapsed. Priests, brothers, sisters are down, people not believing in the Real Presence, preaching against sin is a thing of the past. What is needed is for the next Pope to be like General Patton. Maybe he might slap Kennedy around.
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