Posted on 03/16/2013 12:59:25 PM PDT by mojito
A South African cardinal who helped elect Pope Francis has described paedophilia as a psychological illness and not "a criminal condition".
The Catholic Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fox Napier, said that people who were abused as children and became paedophiles were not criminally responsible for their actions in the same way as somebody "who chooses to do something like that".
Cardinal Napier, who was among the 115 cardinals in the conclave at the Vatican that elected Pope Francis earlier this week, called paedophilia a "psychological disorder".
He said: "What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and put them right. If I as a normal being choose to break the law knowing that I am breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished ...
"From my experience, paedophilia is actually an illness, it is not a criminal condition, it is an illness."
The cardinal spoke of two priests he knew who were abused as children and went on to become paedophiles.
He told the BBC: "Don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished when he was himself damaged."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
OK! He’s outta here.
Next!
Testing the limits.
Is that his excuse?
The dudes been reading too many “Church Traditions” and catechisms instead of the Bible. Jesus said it would be better to have a millstone around ones neck and thrown into the sea rather than lead a little one astray.
You don’t throw people in jail for “criminal condition[s],” anyway. You do it because of specific acts. And mental states, but only as they relate to the act.
String him from a tree.
Exactly how long has this Cardinal been diddling little boys?
Tactics from the playbook “How The Homos Mainstreamed Sodomy”.
All the kiddy rapers need is a nicer sounding word for what they do and what they are.
The same way that homos got “Queer” replaced with “Gay”.
It’s a mental illness that results in criminal acts / behavior that has devastating results to the victim. I wonder how many times prison wardens have been told, “but I’m not guilty”. I’m not surprised to hear this explanation after so many of the priests were charged with pedophelia in the last decade.
It is odd the Cardinal would say such a thing, since the Church has such a long history of diligently aiding in the criminal prosecution of priests accused of molestiing boys.
SAMBLA?
This Cardinal Napier has either been misquoted, OR is a teacher of error. Everybody has an inborn inclination to do one sort of evil or another; that's called "concupiscence," as this Cardinal should know, and it is an innate feature of our fallen human nature.
We are all born ith these characer flaws (ref: "Original Sin"), and it is our responsibility --- with the grace of God --- to overcome them.
That's in the Catechism.
If one accepted this "totally therapeutic" account of human action -- "It's just a sickness" --- one would have to say nobody is responsible for anything, because we are neither responsible for our genetic inheritance nor our early childhood development and environment.
It was wrong for Napier to say this. It was in violation of what Christ teaches us through the Catholic Church about human freedom and responsibility. I shows a failure to protect children from the predations of others.
It was anti-Biblical.
It as anti-Catholic.
And it was just plain stupid.
Acting upon those inclinations, however, is a crime.
If this guy really said this, I fully expect the next news item to be all about his immediate removal from the Church. Anything short of that would be unacceptable and fuel for the sickness and criminal act.
That doesn't make them any less criminal and it doesn't mean we don't punish them.
For whatever it's worth (and in this case it's not worth anything) "Wilfrid Fox Napier" is a very posh English or Irish monicker.
I was surprised to find out that the cardinal is actually non-white (not that it should matter to anybody who's not a genealogist).
You’re not paying attention. Now that Homosexuality edges more acceptable as ‘normal’, Pedophilia is seeking such social acceptance.
A.P.A. Publishes a New Study:
Not All Pedophile Relationships are Harmful
Few laymen are aware that the American Psychiatric Association recently redefined the criteria for pedophilia. According to the latest diagnostic manual (DSM—IV), a person no longer has a psychological disorder simply because he molests children. To be diagnosed as disordered, now he must also feel anxious about the molestation, or be impaired in his work or social relationships. Thus the A.P.A. has left room for the “psychologically normal” pedophile.’
Just a matter of time, probably in our lifetime that children will be recognized as ‘sexual beings’.
My heart breaks, I can barely take any more of this.
It may be a mental illness but that’s totally different form saying that the actions are not criminal. The headline is misleading and gives a wrong impression. Just like PTSD is a mental illness but killing oneself or others as a result of it doesn’t make the actions innocent.
So, is he saying, then, that homosexuality is a mental aberration? I believe it is. It used to be classified as such, until the ‘stealth vote’ in the APA.
Why don’t you read the full quote rather than the headline. All the headlines that came up in a Google search break off his quote with “condition” —implying that he said pedophilia is not criminal at all.
But he said, even in the Guardian story, that for those who were abused as children it is not criminal in the same way as for those who were not.
Get that? It’s criminal either way but for those who were abused, it criminal in a different way.
You idiots fell for typical MSM slander.
Do you not agree that having been abused as a child is a mitigating circumstance?
Or do you just not give a damn?
No you are flat wrong. Rarely does mental disorder totally eliminate culpability but it is taken into account in assessing culpability in a lot of crimes. That’s all he was saying.
I agree fully with all you said. But I fear this may be indicative of something worse.
I fear a homosexual/pedophile cabal has institutionalized itself within the Church, and this diseased, satanic cardinal is speaking for it. Worse, in announcing it in this way he is saying that he’s secure in the belief that the new pope will do nothing about it.
He is not making a blanket statement about homosexual orientation nor about homosexual acts. He was specifically referring to those who have a same-sex orientation and were also abused as children.
It may be the case that a high percentage of those with the orientation were abused as children—we don’t know because the gay lobbey sabotages most research.
But he was speaking of a specific subset of homosexuals—who themselves were victims of criminal acts.
He said it’s not a criminal condition and that paedophiles weren’t criminally responsible.
But you can put your head in the sand all you like.
Calumny and rash judgment on your part.
He did not say that.
not criminally responsible in the same way. That means he is saying that they ARE criminally responsible.
Can you read?
Here is an English translation from the Web. For the real thing in Latin see http://www.liturgialatina.org/pontificale/091.htm
If the degradandus [the cleric to be degraded] be an archbishop, the degrading prelate removes his pallium, saying: We deprive thee of the rights and privileges of the episcopal dignity, symbolized in this pallium, since thou hast abused them.
Then, even if the degradandus be a mere bishop, the degrading prelate removes his mitre, saying: We strip thy head of this miter, emblem of the episcopal dignity, since thou hast befouled it by thy ill government.
Then one of the ministers brings the Book of the Gospel to the degradandus, which the degrading prelate takes from his hands, saying: Give us back the Gospel! Since thou hast spurned the grace of God and made thyself unworthy of the office of preaching, we rightly deprive you of this office.
Then the degrading prelate removes the ring from the finger of the degradandus, saying: Rightly do we pull off thy ring, the sign of fidelity, since thou hast made bold to rape God's own bride, the Church.
At this time one of the ministers brings the degradandus a crosier, which the degrading prelate takes from his hands, saying: Thy shepherd's staff we take from thee, that thou shalt be powerless henceforward to exercise that office of correction, which thou hast brought to disarray.
Then the ministers take off the gloves of the degradandus, and the degrading prelate lightly scrapes thumbs and hands with a knife blade or a shard of glass, saying: We hereby deprive thee, to the extent of our powers, of the grace of spiritual blessing and of sacramental anointing, that thou shouldst forfeit the office of sanctifying and of blessing, and their effects.
With the same knife blade or shard the degrading prelate lightly scrapes the head of the degradandus, saying: We utterly erase and eradicate the consecration, blessing and anointing bestowed upon thee, and we put thee out of the episcopal order, whence thou returnest unclothed.
The ministers remove the shoes from the degradandus. Thus ends the ceremony.
Totally irrelevant.
I think he's mostly talking about packers, who propagate by raping young boys. Many of these go on to become the next generation of disease-ridden, boy-raping whack-jobs.
The Cardinal is speaking too 'pastorally', and in terms of forgiveness of the person committing the crime, in my opinion, and not considering the ramifications of the actions of the pedophile on the victim of his crime. This is the kind of thinking that got so many Bishops in trouble throughout the world in the sexual abuse scandals. They were acting as 'fathers' to their priests, thinking they needed to 'pastor' them. The Bishops weren't thinking in terms of punishment for the priests' actions, which they should have been doing simultaneously.
people who were abused as children and became paedophiles were not criminally responsible for their actions
IN THE SAME WAY
That means he says they ARE ARE ARE ARE ARE ARE ARE criminally responsible but not in the same way as those who were not abused as children.
You are falling for a leftist (Guardian) trap.
What part of mitigating circumstance do you not understand?
But go ahead and love the Leftists when it suits your prejudices.
What part of “the same way” don’t you get? The headline
is
a
LIE, it intentionally distorts what he said. Since when do we form our judgments based on headlines from lying leftist newspapers
in
the
same
way
What the hell are you talking about, none of this applies to me.
Although "rash judgment" is honored as if it were a Gift of the Holy Spirit around here.
This has clearly been a problem for a very long time.
Most bishops probably have "experience", in the sense that this particular moral failing will have passed across their radar screens (if not been their own) enough to be desensitized.
I'll give you an example. I knew a guy who had a busy family practice, until he was (credibly) accused of molesting young girls. He committed suicide.
Now, I have no interest in molesting any young people. And, if it was my daughter, I'd be leading the lynch mob.
But the thought DID cross my mind, "what a hard, lonely life he had, in solo family practice". The thought didn't last, but I DID think it.
The American Church's "child safety initiatives" miss the point.
These abuses have been tolerated by men who know how hard and lonely the clerical state is, they are now relentlessly exposed (Luke 8:17), and the bishops bear the guilt and now must atone, which they have yet to do.
It’s a moral problem. Even if pedophiles have some psychological problem that encourages them to act that way, as individuals with free will, they don’t have to go along with it. And that’s where the Church would normally have intervened...until after Vatican II, when they decided to follow Freud instead of the moral teachings of the Church. (Although even Freud didn’t think pedophilia was okay.)
The Church is not an organization that can impose or enforce civil law, so essentially, the legal aspect is beyond the Church. But what they most certainly should have done is to have enforced the moral law. A priest caught doing anything like that should have been sent right away, not to a therapy program, but to one of the old monastic jails that existed up until Vatican II.
The problem is that even if all of these men had been turned over to the civil authorities immediately, they would simply have been processed through a “psychological” system and then released. Look at the guy in NY who just killed some poor woman and raped her 10 yr old daughter...after being found with hundreds of images of child pornography on his computer and being sentenced to wear an electronic bracelet (which he cut off).
Once upon a time, the sentence for rape and particularly the sexual abuse of children was the death penalty. But that hasn’t been true for decades. Bring those things back and then I’ll believe that the civil authorities are serious about stopping pedophilia.
BTW, most of the Catholic cases weren’t pedophilia (adults going after a pre-pubescent child of either sex): they were adult gay males pursuing teenage boys. In other words, the problem was homosexuality - which the psychologists were forced to drop as a disorder about 20 years ago.
Most child molesters (true pedophiles) are married men and most of their victims are related, including their own children.
are you sure he out of there?
leftists will be praising him and then condemning the church at the same time.
hypocrites
Yes, and most of the scandals in the Church were not caused by "true" pedophiles.
But, as the link to St. Peter Damian showed, this was as much an issue in 1047 as in 1967.
It was not acceptable in 1047, and the Liber Gomorrhianus CLEARLY AND ACCURATELY described the soul-destroying nature of clerical pederasty.
The issue I was pointing to was the unique moral failing of the shepherds and the fact that they STILL do not acknowledge exactly WHAT they did and WHY.
I would think that any higher up in the Catholic church would avoid that comment if for no other reason it could be construed as self serving.
Well he would be if I was the pope. Hopefully the new one will see it the same way.
I read something last night, maybe it from out in deep field, but it said this guy seems to think the Pope is not really the boss, just Bishop of Rome.
I guess that remains to be seen.
OK Francis,
This is the perfect test case for ya pal.
Splain the facts of life to this very confused puke.
He said: "What do you do with disorders? You have got to try and put them right. If I as a normal being choose to break the law knowing that I am breaking the law, then I think I need to be punished ... "From my experience, paedophilia is actually an illness, it is not a criminal condition, it is an illness."
I would have expected a cardinal in the Catholic church to recognize that raping a child is fundamentally a sinful behavior, before they would believe it to be aberrational behavior. It should be a warning sign to everyone that if a religious organization trains its highest members to looks to psychology for expert advice on dealing with sinful behavior, they prove themselves to be scripturally illiterate and bankrupt, rejecting God's Word in favor of psyschology.
One would think that, in the decade+ that the Catholic church has been dealing with this issue, that we could finally trust this to be an area inside of bishops' competence. It's telling that bishops and cardinals are still receiving and giving bad advice on how to act, on what authority the bishops recognize and seek out.
No one should expect "psychological treatment" to end sinful behavior. But that's what many bishops have believed, however, and look at what fruit it has yielded - more than $3,000,000,000 awarded in damages and settlements by Catholic dioceses within the United States alone. Whole archdioceses have declared bankruptcy, a financial act manifesting the spiritual bankruptcy they'd fostered inside for generations.
In the vocabulary of some, not mine. In polite society, I will refer to them as homosexuals. A more accurate word is queers, if the things they do aren't queer, nothing is.
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