continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.
you must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals
That's the nearest he comes to admitting that the secular arm - the law, courts, prison - have any role to play.Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.
THERE is only one conceivable reaction to the fast-spreading crisis in the Catholic Church: horror. After decades of obfuscation, the church has to be called to account for what has happened.
Since abuse allegations first emerged in the early '90s in Britain and Ireland — and later that decade in Australia — the denials, both those of officials and those which ordinary Catholics told themselves, have shifted several times. Initially, the church authorities declared it was just a few bad apples, but last year the Ryan report exposed decades of systematic abuse of thousands of children in Ireland. Another line of defence was that it was a particular Anglophone problem with roots in Ireland's excessively deferential Catholic culture, which had then been exported to the US and Australia.
Now this explanation is falling apart as abuse allegations emerge across Europe in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. Last year, scandal erupted when stories in Spain and Mexico alleged that Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of a religious order, the Legion of Christ, and much favoured by Pope John Paul II, was found to have fathered several children. After allegations of child abuse, the entire order — with institutions in several Latin American countries — is under investigation by the Vatican.
Oxford church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch argues that this is as he predicted in his book The Reformation. In 2003, he warned that when allegations of child abuse spread to non-Anglophone countries, the results would be "catastrophic" for the church. Old cultures of deference have succeeded in repressing the truth for longer, but now even they are disintegrating.
Another defence put forward by many loyal Catholics has been that the incidence of child abuse by religious figures has been broadly in line with secular society, but this argument looks increasingly unsustainable.
The current issue of Catholic weekly The Tablet carries a thoughtful article by the head of Berlin's Institute of Sexology and Sexual Medicine, which acknowledges that the church's celibacy requirement may have appealed — misleadingly appearing to offer a solution — to paedophiles' conflicted sexuality. While the debate about disproportion continues, what is increasingly clear is that the church's determination to preserve its institutional power and authority repeatedly involved suppressing the truth — even when that put children at further risk.
This is utterly bewildering to faithful Catholics raised to revere and trust the institution and its priests. But it is equally disturbing for those vaguely anticlerical Catholics who have tended to regard priests as a necessary embarrassment, an unavoidable irritant whom they did their best to avoid while still finding great inspiration in the faith.
The latter position is hard now to sustain; what the crisis starkly exposes is that one of the defining characteristics of Roman Catholicism has been the central role of the priest, and that it is fundamentally flawed for two reasons.
Both are rooted in the mediaeval theology that when a man becomes a priest, his nature is fundamentally changed — he becomes a different sort of human being. As such, he first no longer has the normal human sexual needs and, second, he has a particular authority which deserves (and expects) unquestioning respect. Both assumptions are still widely evident in the Catholic Church today.
Priests belong to a church hierarchy which owes much to the Roman empire. The pattern of obedience to superior authority ensured that there was no system of the checks and balances essential to prevent abuse of power. Nor has there been much tolerance for challenge and debate; an entire institutional culture has increasingly been dominated by the imperative of self-preservation.
Modernity has only exacerbated these tendencies; the Catholic Church became more centralised around a strengthened papacy in the 19th century. The result has been an astonishingly successful global institution in some respects, acquiring millions of new adherents over the course of the 20th century in Africa and Asia. But the necessary impetus for reform has been crippled.
The crisis simply accelerates what is already happening: the drift away from a model of religious experience that younger generations find increasingly unintelligible. Despite all the talk of inquiries to ascertain the truth and "rebuild confidence in the church", such initiatives are very unlikely to achieve that outcome. Inquiries prompt more lurid headlines as they expose further the scale and detail of the abuse.
The church's loss of moral authority is only a part of a bigger picture. Financial ruin provoked by compensation claims is another — as the Boston archdiocese well knows. And one of the most acute and pressing consequences of the abuse scandal is that it exacerbates the problem that the church is running out of priests as vocations collapse; a model of religious practice based on the Mass will be unsustainable in many parts of Europe within a decade or two.
There will be plenty celebrating the Catholic Church's plight, but it is also important to acknowledge that this is more a tragedy than anything else — for the victims, their families, their congregations, and for those causes on which the church has proved a trenchant champion, stirring lazy consciences on the arms race, global inequality and capitalist excess.
"As Jesus said, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,'" the pope continued. "We must send a clear message to these hundreds—perhaps thousands—of children whose sinful ways have tempted so many of the church's servants into lustful violation of their holy vows of celibacy. The church forgives them for their transgressions and looks upon them not with intolerance, but compassion."
It's not just Ireland, Theo, and it's not just individuals. It's the whole perverse fucking system.Theophilus wrote:Paragraph 11 is being interpreted by some in the Catholic press as an instruction for all the Bishops in Ireland to stand down, and to allow a new generation to take charge of clearing up the mess. I don't think this group of bishops in Ireland can ever regain the trust of people, and probably nor do they deserve to.
), and to piously set people up as being morally beyond reproach and therefore above others ... sexual heirarchy imposed and endorsed by religious fiat = a path of repression to manipulation and abuse.Who thought that?Lion IRC wrote:Until then, don't anybody think child abuse is something which only ever happened (happens) in Catholic churches/schools.
Your argument is full of holes and incorrect. To suggest that the catholic church is being scapegoated is wholly baseless.Lion IRC wrote:Hi Charlou,
Lots of people doing NOTHING.
Do you accept that pedophiles infiltrate various institutions - not just the church, but also scouts, police, schools, hospitals, sporting clubs, next door neighbor's home, then strategically manipulate their way into circumstances where their victims trust is abused?
Whatever criticism is levelled at the heirarchy of the catholic church is equally valid for those in charge of every other situation given above - including parents.
* Lack of vigilance
* Skepticism of victims
* Couldn't happen here culture
* Naïve/incompetent recruitment and screening of job applicants (visiting neighbors)
* Cover-ups and white washing by people who could have prevented it
It should also never be forgotten that pedophiles are the root cause of the problem. Even if you hunt down every single complicit person in the RCC - even if the RCC ceased to exist there will still be people somewhere in police uniforms, doctors scrubs, netball coach tracksuits, scout master attire, chaplain robes, etc. PRETENDING to be something they are not.
Lets hope people dont become complacent in thinking that the reassuring attack upon the scapegoat catholic church which they see day in, day out means we can all breath easy about child abuse. Insofar as that attack is well-deserved I have no problem and feel that much good will come out of it. But don't anyone think for one second that a big blow has been struck against the scourge of child abuse. Pedophiles and their ilk who prey on the weak and have zero moral conscience with respect to impersonating and infiltrating positions of power are legion. The church was just one of their many "safe houses"
When the young children of the world are properly fed and housed, when child pornography has disappeared, when nobody is selling drugs to them, when bullying in schools is extinct, when sexual abuse by people in adult positions of power is made systematically impossible then child abusers will be forced to look elsewhere.
Until then, don't anybody think child abuse is something which only ever happened (happens) in Catholic churches/schools.
Lion (IRC)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ma ... atholicismThe cover-up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic church is not about sex and it is not about Catholicism. It is not, as Pope Benedict rightly argued in yesterday's distressingly bland pastoral letter, about priestly celibacy. It is about power.
The urge to prey on children is not confined to the supposedly celibate clergy and exists in all walks of life. We know that it can become systemic in state and voluntary, as well as in religious, institutions. We know that all kinds of organisations – from banks to political movements – can generate a culture of perverted loyalty in which otherwise decent people will collude in crimes "for the greater good".
In none of these respects is the Catholic church unique. What makes it different – and what gives this crisis its depth – is the church's power. It had the authority, indeed the majesty, to compel victims and their families to collude in their own abuse and to keep hideous crimes secret for decades. It is that system of authority that is at the heart of the corruption. And that is why Benedict's pastoral letter, for all its expressions of "shame and remorse", is unable to deal with the central issue...[snip]
What a clear lack of understanding of the situation. The Catholic Church had a tight grip on the whole of Ireland. People used to cross the street when the priest walked down the road to give them a clear path. This is an institution that had all the power of the Chinese government. Even the government and police were afraid of them, they could destroy careers and reputations with one official letter to the public. They thought they were above everyone else including the law and this is were your comparison with other institutions fails.Lion IRC wrote:Hi Charlou,
Lots of people doing NOTHING.
Do you accept that pedophiles infiltrate various institutions - not just the church, but also scouts, police, schools, hospitals, sporting clubs, next door neighbor's home, then strategically manipulate their way into circumstances where their victims trust is abused?
Whatever criticism is levelled at the heirarchy of the catholic church is equally valid for those in charge of every other situation given above - including parents.
* Lack of vigilance
* Skepticism of victims
* Couldn't happen here culture
* Naïve/incompetent recruitment and screening of job applicants (visiting neighbors)
* Cover-ups and white washing by people who could have prevented it
It should also never be forgotten that pedophiles are the root cause of the problem. Even if you hunt down every single complicit person in the RCC - even if the RCC ceased to exist there will still be people somewhere in police uniforms, doctors scrubs, netball coach tracksuits, scout master attire, chaplain robes, etc. PRETENDING to be something they are not.
Lets hope people dont become complacent in thinking that the reassuring attack upon the scapegoat catholic church which they see day in, day out means we can all breath easy about child abuse. Insofar as that attack is well-deserved I have no problem and feel that much good will come out of it. But don't anyone think for one second that a big blow has been struck against the scourge of child abuse. Pedophiles and their ilk who prey on the weak and have zero moral conscience with respect to impersonating and infiltrating positions of power are legion. The church was just one of their many "safe houses"
When the young children of the world are properly fed and housed, when child pornography has disappeared, when nobody is selling drugs to them, when bullying in schools is extinct, when sexual abuse by people in adult positions of power is made systematically impossible then child abusers will be forced to look elsewhere.
Until then, don't anybody think child abuse is something which only ever happened (happens) in Catholic churches/schools.
Lion (IRC)
Yes, I would agree that there was a systematic failure (and there probably still is one in many places, though in the UK much progress was made with the independent Nolan report).Charlou wrote:It's not just Ireland, Theo, and it's not just individuals. It's the whole perverse system.Theophilus wrote:Paragraph 11 is being interpreted by some in the Catholic press as an instruction for all the Bishops in Ireland to stand down, and to allow a new generation to take charge of clearing up the mess. I don't think this group of bishops in Ireland can ever regain the trust of people, and probably nor do they deserve to.
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