Posted on 08/12/2018 6:25:54 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Within the past quarter-century, sexual abuse by clergy has been a high profile scandal within the Catholic Church. Most recently, the detestable accusations against Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick have rocked the Church and re-opened the discussion on how to handle cases of clerical abuse.
While it may be tempting to encapsulate clerical abuse as a modern phenomenon, fallen human nature and sin have existed since the Garden of Eden, along with it those who would use their position within the Church to sexually prey on victims.
In our modern world, the Church has responded to the sex abuse crisis with guidelines on how to deal with those accused of transgressions. From Pope Francis’ “zero tolerance” policy to guidelines issued by the USCCB, the Church has tried (and often failed) to properly handle cases of sexual abuse within the Church. These methods often include psychological assessments, 3rd party investigations, canonical punishments, removal from public ministry, laicization, and handing over the case to secular authorities.
But in the ancient Catholic Church, the punishments for clergy who sexually preyed on victims were not as relatively urbane as these modern approaches.
Saint Basil the Great, a Doctor of the Church, writing in the 4th-century, described how the early Catholic Church dealt with those guilty of sexual abuse among the clergy.
“Any cleric or monk who seduces young men or boys, or who is apprehended in kissing or in any shameful situation, shall be publicly flogged and shall lose his clerical tonsure. Thus shorn, he shall be disgraced by spitting in his face, bound in iron chains, wasted by six months of close confinement, and for three days each week put on barley bread given him toward evening.
"Following this period, he shall spend a further six months living in a small segregated courtyard in custody of a spiritual elder, kept busy with manual labor and prayer, subjected to vigils and prayers, forced to walk at all times in the company of two spiritual brothers, never again allowed to associate with young men."
This harsh punishment may seem barbaric to the modern sensibility, but given the gravity of crimes of sexual nature, especially perpetrated by clergy, perhaps the time has come to listen to the wisdom of the Church Fathers and apply this type of justice.
In the 11th-century, another Doctor of the Church, Saint Peter Damian, stormed against the widespread clerical sexual abuse and sexual misconduct of the time. He decried the impunity with which bishops and abbots conducted themselves, as clerics were above, and not subject to the secular authorities.
In a letter to Pope Leo IX, Saint Peter Damian demanded reform, ecclesial accountability, that priests be handed over to secular authorities for punishment, and other actions to weed out the cancer of sexual abuse in the Church.
Aiming directly at the hierarchy who enabled such an environment, he wrote:
“Listen, you do-nothing superiors of clerics and priests. Listen, and even though you feel sure of yourselves, tremble at the thought that you are partners in the guilt of others; those, I mean, who wink at the sins of their subjects that need correction and who by ill-considered silence allow them license to sin.
"Listen, I say, and be shrewd enough to understand that all of you alike are deserving of death, that is, not only those who do such things, but also they who approve those who practice them.”
There are still men who say nothing but believe that Wolves, Coyotes, Buzzards and crows have to eat too.
God gave those abused children to the parents, HE expects them to protect those little ones.
In the Ten Commandments, we mis-translate the Commandment as “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain” and think it means don’t say God damn or some other curse.
In reality, a better translation from Hebrew is “Don’t use God’s name as cover for bad deeds.”
This is in line with the one thing God can never forgive - doing evil in God’s name. God can forgive murder, rape, child abuse.
But why never forgive doing evil in God’s name?
Because when someone does evil in God’s name, makes people think God is evil. How much of the rise of atheism in the past hundred years is because major wars and fascism were done with the complicit endorsement of the church? How many people became virulent haters of faith because they were molested by priests? Evil was done in God’s name, and it turned the victims and those who knew about it away from God permanently.
That’s why God cannot forgive evil done in his name - he loses the souls of those who need him most.
Rape and kidnapping used to be capital crimes and police were allowed to shoot perps fleeing from those crimes in the back.
I miss the good old days.
Amen!
And it flourishes in a clerical culture where young (but legally adult) seminarians and young priests also get hit on.
Anyone who's unchaste with peers will be unchaste with subordinates as well. Corrupt six ways from Sunday.
I always wondered what kind of man swears an oath of celibacy....one group is pure in thought and devoted to God....the other is quite the opposite. One now has to opine on which is the larger group in the Catholic church!!!!!!!
AD 528
In that year some of the bishops from various provinces were accused of living immorally in matters of the flesh and of homosexual practices. Amongst them was Isaiah, bishop of Rhodes, an ex praefectus vigilium at Constantinople, and likewise the bishop from Diospolis, in Thrace named Alexander. In accordance with a sacred ordinance they were brought to Constantinople and were examined and condemned by Victor the city prefect, who punished them: he tortured Isaiah severely and exiled him and he amputated Alexander's genitals and paraded him around on a litter. The emperor [sc. Justinian I] immediately decreed that those detected in pederasty should have their genitals amputated. At that time many homosexuals were arrested and dies after having their genitals amputated. From then on there was fear amongst those afflicted with homosexual lust.
Internet History Sourcebook
Source please.
Here is a great article from Msgr Pope on the current crisis.
God bless.
You nailed it right here: or involved themselves.
It's the ONLY reason, whatsoever, that someone would cover up and thereby be complicit in the abuse.
And therein lies Catholicism’s problem.
It’s the ANCIENT church that dealt with them that way. After a few hundred years, that all changed.
So this problem has been undealt with for well over 1,000 years.
Not a very good track record.
Like Israel,the Catholic Church has preserved a long, long written record of sin and grace: the downfalls, the repentances, the restorations. The Old Testament record of God's people contains hints about similar seasons of human iniquity (the Baal-Peor incident in Hosea comes to mind). I suspect we'd find recurring eruptions of human iniquity all along, if we have some way to look into the record.
What was *your* church doing about sexually offending clergy, say 700 years ago?
Do you think it is time to listen to the Doctors of the Church and use harsher penalties to address sexual abuse in the clergy? Share your comments below!
Yes.
This could be followed by house arrest, alone, at Sula Sgeir north of Scotland, population zero, if the Scots would let them in. Flogging would be a nice touch. Weekly. Not too much. I wouldn't even break the skin.
And they could watch the puffins breed.
And they could watch the puffins breed.
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