As much as I disagreed with Pope John Paul II on matters of faith, I respected him a great deal. I took great care to write an obituary for the man in which I praised him on several fronts.
I wonder what he'd have made of this child sex abuse scandal. Would he have referred to the rape of children and the systemic cover-up of same as "petty gossip"?
Michael Coren, as usual, misses the point when he suggests (without citing any references) that "the number of occurrences in the Catholic Church is neither higher nor lower than any other denomination or religion and the same as those in education, sports and any other institution that involves a power dynamic between adults and youth". That may or may not be true. Generally, the response to such allegations in the secular sphere is immediate and forceful. The historical response to child-rape by Catholic priests has been a wink and a nudge, and if it gets really bad, the priest is moved off to some other parish and rewarded with a whole new crop of victims to molest. This recent dismissal of allegations as "petty gossip" shows the Church doesn't get it, either.
Individually and collectively, we define ourselves by what we choose to allow. This is, I am convinced, one of the reasons "evil" exists. The proper, dare I say "Godly", response to child sexual abuse is first to comfort and heal the victim, second to remove the perpetrator from any opportunity to offend again (thus perhaps healing him as well). This is worlds apart from what the Catholic Church has done in such cases, and that is the real outrage here.
2 comments:
The ONLY way the Catholic church coudl regain any sort of dignity, class or 'Godliness' woudl be for the Pope to defrock every SINGLE priest, bishop, cardinal, Pope administrative person who raped or helped to cover up the rape of children immediately. Then defrock himself and turn them all over (including humself)to the authorities for criminal prosecution.
Oh, and allow priests to marry so they can stop raping boys.
Agreed on the first two things. The third...do you think these priests would rape children if they had wives? I mean, I'm all for priests marrying--it's done in pretty much every other denomination--but what's needed even more than that is some *very* stringent psychological testing before ordination.
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