Posted on 05/25/2002 1:00:44 PM PDT by EggsAckley
16 Priests Have Committed Suicide CLEVELAND (AP) - At least 16 Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children, including 12 priests in the United States, have killed themselves since 1986, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The numbers were found in an investigation by the Plain Dealer after the suicide April 4 of the Rev. Don Rooney, a priest in the Cleveland Roman Catholic Diocese who faced allegations that he sexually abused a child.
Suicide is rare among priests and is considered a sin by the church, though in modern times, the church has expressed more understanding for mental distress.
The Rev. Stephen J. Rossetti, director of the St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., a treatment center for abusive priests, recently sent an e-mail to every U.S. bishop urging care in investigations involving priests and saying he feared more priests would kill themselves as additional accusations were made.
After the e-mail was sent, a priest accused of molesting two boys in Connecticut hanged himself at the center, where he was being treated. It was the first suicide at the institution in its 25-year-history.
``Imagine you're a priest,'' said Kalman Kaplan, a psychology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies suicide. ``People see you as a teacher, an educator, someone carrying on the moral tradition from one generation to the next. Now it's being publicly exposed that you have abused children.
``Where do you go from here? Your whole identity is shattered. The shame can be overwhelming, the options few.''
After Rooney killed himself, Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla preached a message of forgiveness at Rooney's funeral Mass.
``The meaning of Father Rooney's death is hidden from our eyes,'' Pilla said. ``Yet, we cannot conclude that his life and death had no meaning or were rejected by God.''
Certainly. Those who caused the suffering will be judged and punished by the Eternal Judge.
The Eternal Judge who said "My ways are not your ways."
High-fiving over the suicide of anybody is unseemly.
When it came out that Timothy McVeigh died with the Sacraments, there were many on FR who were outraged, because McVeigh might have "cheated" the State out of the opportunity to "send him to hell."
2) Did anybody notice how only 2/16 were in the United States? It appears this problem isn't confined here; just that here it has become public knowledge.
Ari
For most people that is probably true. However there are special punishments in the Hereafter reserved for church officials who abuse their office. That's even worse.
I sat and talked with her about it and although she espouses the same things I do (Catholic teaching,) she said "Mom, it is very cool to be gay." She thought there was something wrong with her, not that there might be something wrong with them!
No Christian talks like you talk.
O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell; lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy. Amen.
When I saw your post to sinkspur, I did a search on your posts (to figure out where YOU were coming from) and I noticed that in almost every single post of yours, you are a name caller. I don't think that is necessary and/or Christian. That is all.
Peace.
So long as their degenerate behavior was known only within the 'brotherhood' there was no embarrassment, no shame, no need to contemplate the 'unintended consequences'. But, "....Now it's being publicly exposed you have abused children." the phony pretend is washed away to expose the evil for what it is. Ain't reality a bitch. What a bunch of no-good hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil advisors on morality we have in His Church. Makes you want to run down to Chruch and give all you've got to assure funding of those Homo activities within each of the dioceses throughout America.
This is becoming more and more like the Muslims that won't condemn the 911 attack. "Oh, sure, what they did was wrong....BUT (insert lame excuse here)."
It was evil to do. It was ten times as evil to hide. It is a hundred times as evil for the church to stand there and act like this isn't a problem, or blame the victims. More and more, I worry that the Bible's "whore of Babylon" may end up being the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, protecting it's corrupt homosexual priests.
I don't pretend to have the data to say that the problem would go away if priests were allowed to marry. But I tell you brother, if the church wasn't worried about losing half their priests if they actively rooted out the homosexuals, they would have a huge pool of heterosexual men who would be willing to become priests.
Can anyone provide data on the ratio of boys/girls abused in the ongoing investigation? I bet that's a little factoid that the press is avoiding like the plague!
I guess what I'm really asking is, is there really a significant statistical correlation between priesthood and pederasty? Or does the media merely pay more attention to it than they do to child sex abuse in general?
Another agenda, like, 'what does God have in mind'?
...more like home churching.
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.