Catholic Priests Caught Molesting Children Again

Nursefoxfire said:
Why aren't these pedophiles in jail?
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These men are protected by the Church.
They may confess the sin, which as far as the Church is concerned, settles the issue, as a confession is sealed, and can't go any further than the box.
That the confessor should refrain from absolution of the sin until the criminal turns himself into the secular authorities never occurs to these guys.
It would be admitting there is a higher power that must be invoked than mumbling some incantations and lighting some candles to remove the harm of the crime.
As apparently many priests are the culprits, CYA by covering up these crimes is SOP in many archdiocese.
The Church is slowly and reluctantly admitting to the criminal aspect, and having the secular authorities handle these guys.
There's all kinds of things that are "sins", but not crimes, but the sins that are crimes can't be handled in the confessional, but in the courts.
 
I Ratant said:
.
These men are protected by the Church.
They may confess the sin, which as far as the Church is concerned, settles the issue, as a confession is sealed, and can't go any further than the box.
That the confessor should refrain from absolution of the sin until the criminal turns himself into the secular authorities never occurs to these guys.
It would be admitting there is a higher power that must be invoked than mumbling some incantations and lighting some candles to remove the harm of the crime.
As apparently many priests are the culprits, CYA by covering up these crimes is SOP in many archdiocese.
The Church is slowly and reluctantly admitting to the criminal aspect, and having the secular authorities handle these guys.
There's all kinds of things that are "sins", but not crimes, but the sins that are crimes can't be handled in the confessional, but in the courts.
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I know, it was more of a rhetorical plaint on my part.

I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that a member of an organization can be publicly shown (by that organization) to have committed a felonious act, and the local legal body can't prosecute him. And this happens over and over again with members of the clergy (not saying the RCC, specifically, because I believe there have been other clergymen who've been discovered to have abused children in their care).
 
Nursefoxfire said:
I know, it was more of a rhetorical plaint on my part.

I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that a member of an organization can be publicly shown (by that organization) to have committed a felonious act, and the local legal body can't prosecute him.
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Is it true that they "can't"? I don't know.

Although I would find the claim that the statute of limitations has expired to be very disturbing. A priest commits a crime and if the church covers it up long enough, then he can't be prosecuted?

Given the conspiracy that happened to silence the activity, it really makes it hard to defend a statute of limitations.
 
The civil authority can't do anything if they're not alerted to the situation.
I'd bet the Church puts a lot of pressure on protesting parents, to keep them quiet.
And shifts the offending priests to different parishes in the diocese, or to different diocese altogether.
Definitely a conspiracy to aid a crime.
 
Nursefoxfire said:
I know, it was more of a rhetorical plaint on my part.

I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the concept that a member of an organization can be publicly shown (by that organization) to have committed a felonious act, and the local legal body can't prosecute him. And this happens over and over again with members of the clergy (not saying the RCC, specifically, because I believe there have been other clergymen who've been discovered to have abused children in their care).
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Abuse by members of the clergy is not specific to the RCC but the way the RCC deliberately and knowingly covered-up child abuse for generations and valued potential harm to the church as being more important than the suffering of children does seem to be unique to the RCC.
 
If this happened once, i could see people saying it was an isolated incident, and going on with their belief.

But when it is shown to be a constant systematic conspiracy to keep known pedophiles out of trouble, i don't understand how people can still look at the organization as a whole and say " They are some allright guys. No one is perfect."

The fact that this happens so much should be evidence that the faith does nothing for the morality of , even its higher ups, and one could make the argument, that said higher ups have less morality than your average joe.

But as long as one does not have to think about the fact that when we die, we die, i guess it is all right. Personal comfort does, and should trump doing any real good in the world. ( obvious sarcasm)
 
Title of OP should be "Catholic Priests Molest".

Sticky and keep adding them daily/weekly/monthly.

This isn't even news anymore, how in the hell is there even a Catholic Church?
 
Resume said:
No, the rcc isn't the only offender, but it is a world contender regarding institutionalized child rape.
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Perhaps, but that is not a point I was responding too. But I would suggest the Boy Scout movement would run rings around the Catholic Church in that area
 
MG1962 said:
Perhaps, but that is not a point I was responding too. But I would suggest the Boy Scout movement would run rings around the Catholic Church in that area
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Yeah, I've seen Bill Donohue attempt that argument. The subject isn't Boy Scouts but priests raping children and the attempt to cover it up. It's a worldwide conspiracy involving thousands of victims and an organization that claims moral authority.
 
Resume said:
Yeah, I've seen Bill Donohue attempt that argument. The subject isn't Boy Scouts but priests raping children and the attempt to cover it up. It's a worldwide conspiracy involving thousands of victims and an organization that claims moral authority.
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Sure, then stick that point, and dont get chirlish when your throw away coments are demonstrated as incorrect
 
MG1962 said:
Sure, then stick that point, and dont get chirlish when your throw away coments are demonstrated as incorrect
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Sorry, the subject of child rape makes me all, I don't know, churlish.
 
The announcement was a major embarrassment for Cardinal Justin Rigali, who, in response to the grand jury report, had initially said there were no priests in active ministry “who have an admitted or established allegation of sexual abuse of a minor against them.”
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So, to my reading anyway... these are not new abusers, but instances where nothing was done when it should have been.
 
MG1962 said:
Ummm no

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/rel...ons-uncovered-in-Church-of-England-files.html
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That does not seem to show anything like what we have learnt about the RCC's handling of child abuse for generations. With the RCC covering-up all such abuse was a policy of the church for generations, the upper echelons of the RCC knew about the abuse and formulated the policies to prevent the abuse becoming known to the public and never once considered that the abuse of children was as important never mind more important than any in their view harm to the church.
 
Darat said:
That does not seem to show anything like what we have learnt about the RCC's handling of child abuse for generations. With the RCC covering-up all such abuse was a policy of the church for generations, the upper echelons of the RCC knew about the abuse and formulated the policies to prevent the abuse becoming known to the public and never once considered that the abuse of children was as important never mind more important than any in their view harm to the church.
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And the cover-up evidence chain appears to ascend the ladder all the way to the chief funny hat guy.
 
Darat said:
Help me out here - what is a "grand jury report" and is the report available online?
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I was foreman on a grand jury in New Mexico for 6 months. We were selected with the standard jury notices that go out every so often. It wasn't anything special.

Basically (and with 50 states, I'm sure it varies), before the prosecutor could file felony charges, the case had to go before the grand jury and get approval to prosecute (an indictment). The District Attorney (or an assistant DA) would present evidence to the 12 of us before a judge and some witnesses would be called. We could ask questions of the witnesses. There was no defense case called, and the defendent wasn't there. He could show if he and his attorney wanted, but he testified he would't get to do much beyond respond to questions from the DA and the jury, which is basically showing up to court so you can get cross-examined, and nothing else. Naturally, no one ever showed up.

During those 6 months we would be called up whenever there was a case, and each case only took a few hours. We didn't have to find 'beyond reasonable doubt' that a crime had been committed for an indictment. Rather, our ruling was based on 'probable cause,' which as you can imagine, isn't that hard to prove. I think we only failed to indict once.

There was nothing preventing the DA from calling another grand jury and trying again if we failed to indict. Double jeopardy doesn't apply to this process.

Who we were, and what we discussed, was secret. It would be public that a grand jury had indicted John Smith for charges X, Y, and Z, but that's about it.
 
pgwenthold said:
Although I would find the claim that the statute of limitations has expired to be very disturbing. A priest commits a crime and if the church covers it up long enough, then he can't be prosecuted?
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To be fair, if anyone covers up a crime long enough, one can escape prosecution.

One good thing that has come from this is some jurisdictions have changed their laws governing the statue of limitations for molestations, so it's easier to prosecute such cases when they're uncovered.
 
I Ratant said:
The civil authority can't do anything if they're not alerted to the situation.
I'd bet the Church puts a lot of pressure on protesting parents, to keep them quiet.
And shifts the offending priests to different parishes in the diocese, or to different diocese altogether.
Definitely a conspiracy to aid a crime.
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Quite. And in every state that I know of, conspiracy to commit a crime carries at least the same penalty as the crime itself. Half the Bishops and Cardinals in the U.S. probably should be in jail. But until recently, it was political suicide in some areas for prosecutors to pursue charges against such filth. In some places it might still be so.
 
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