POPE GAVE HIS BLESSING (to transfer of pedophiles!)

NY Post ^ | 11 December 2002 | KATE SHEEHY

[Zviadist]

Boston's Bernard Cardinal Law was just following orders from his boss - Pope John Paul II - when he sent suspected pedophile priests back to work in parishes with kids, a damning church document reveals.

The pope, in a 1999 order defrocking a Boston priest with a history of molesting boys, acknowledged that the man "ought to live away from the place where his previous condition is known."

[Petronski]

All the way to the top of the organization: Satan

He told you to post that, didn't he?

[Jael]

To infinity! And Beyond!

[Notwithstanding]

As the article and document point out, the pope did not order or suggest the tranfer of a pedophile priest - he ordered the priest defrocked and within that very order of defrocking he suggested the man make a fresh start elswhere for his own good and the good of those (individuals and the parish) whom he injured. He merely added that if those whom he injured would not be scandalized, then the man need not be sent elsewhere to begin his new life as a defrocked priest.

Nothing new or notable here, move along.

[sailor4321]

Couldn't agree more. The headline is very, very misleading...

[Jael]

Question. It seems that the Pope has made a decree regarding the pedophile. What control does the Pope have over someone who is kicked out of the priesthood? Do they still support those pedophile priest with the thithes of the layity?

[Notwithstanding]

People are not felons until convicted in a court of law.
Criminal charges were not filed by the victims. Prosecutions did not take place.

Maximum Leader = lawmaker, judge, jury, & executioner

[Loyalist]

Parole boards advise released offenders not to go back to their old haunts after they're let out.

Unless these perverts can be declared outlaws in the true sense of the word--meaning that they can be killed with impunity--what more can be done once they're registered and released?

[Maximum Leader]

Maximum Leader = lawmaker, judge, jury, & executioner

Be very afraid if I get any of those gigs. :o)

Seriously though, if someone has committed a felony, he is a felon even before a trial, indictment or conviction (as you can read from the revelant Massuchessetts "aiding and abetting" statute that I've copied below). If you help some you know is a criminal escape justice, then you've become a criminal yourself.

Interestingly there is federal case law (I'm not licensed in Mass., so I don't know how the courts there have ruled) that even if the principal felon has been acquitted of the underlying felony, an accessory after the fact can still be convicted.

Chapter 274: Section 4. Accessories after fact; punishment; relationship as defence; cross-examination; impeachment.

Section 4. Whoever, after the commission of a felony, harbors, conceals, maintains or assists the principal felon or accessory before the fact, or gives such offender any other aid, knowing that he has committed a felony or has been accessory thereto before the fact, with intent that he shall avoid or escape detention, arrest, trial or punishment, shall be an accessory after the fact, and, except as otherwise provided, be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than seven years or in jail for not more than two and one half years or by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars...

[Illbay]

My wife, an ex-Catholic whose family are still "occasional" Catholics, says that in her experience the insulation of the R/C priesthood from the realities of family life lends itself to this kind of thinking.

The priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, pope, etc., live in a sort of "altered" reality where the notion of protecting children, and the protective instincts that people have toward children, are secondary to the protection of their insular society.

In effect, the supposed "benefit" of a celibate clergy--which actually has its roots in the Platonian ideal of the corruption of the physical world and the absolute baseness of carnality even in the bonds of matrimony--of the objectivity they allegedly bring to their vocation is a liability when it comes to truly understanding intimate issues of family and children.

N.B.: I know I'm going to be flamed big-time for this, but please, reasoning and thinking Catholics, understand I'm simply putting forth a point of view from the outside looking in.

I hope that your Church is able to heal this terrible wound.

[Campion]

If he has been laicized, how can they control where he lives?

They can't. But it's apparently customary in involuntary laicizations to tell the bad guy to "get out of Dodge," specifically, not to show up in places where he had previously served as a priest.

[Illbay]

Um, what, exactly, does the "life of a defrocked priest" entail?

[Notwithstanding]

You must have missed the part about NO charges being filed and No prosecutor pressing a case, and victims agreeing/asking that the offense be kept quiet.

Helping someone keep quiet a serious misdeed that COULD be prosecuted but is NOT being prosecuted is no crime. While I am morally appalled at the bishops who made many serious mistakes - who knew the facts, I am not appalled at the pope, who did not know the gory details.

People in very high places are often purposefully NOT told sordid details so that they can stay above the fray. Apparently everyone thinks that the pope should have ordered the man sent to jail.

Blame whomever else you want to, but the pope is blameless here.

[Campion]

Even if the purpose of the memo is to get the laicized priest out of town (and not necessarily to another parish), this is still aiding and abetting a felon. If you helped a rapist skip town, you'd be arrested even if you were confident that the rapist wasn't going to repeat his crime.

The individual in question had been convicted of child abuse in New Hampshire in 1996.

The Pope's decree was written in 1999.

I'm not sure about this, but I believe the perp was actually serving prison time at the time of the decree.

There was no misprision of felony, no aiding and abetting a felon, nobody "escaping justice". There was a order by the Church telling a convicted perp that he was no longer to function as a priest anywhere, and ordering him (once released from prison) not to live in a specific area.

I'm sure you don't want to spread falsehood about the Pope aiding the escape of a felon, when the felon in question was not only not escaping, but was already convicted and imprisoned, so I'd ask you kindly to consider revising your remarks.

[MadelineZapeezda]

Raises the question: just what does it take to get kicked out of the priesthood?

Maybe by previously supporting a Dixiecrat....../sarcasm!

[Campion]

Burns eventually pleaded guilty to criminal charges of sexually assaulting two boys in New Hampshire, and was sentenced to two consecutive four- to eight-year terms in jail.

This statement is really, practically speaking and in the context of the article, a lie, because it seems to imply that Burns was convicted "eventually" sometime well after the Papal decree in question.

In fact, he had been convicted three years before the decree.

[Bohemund]

God bless you for correcting a slander against the Holy Father. The Church has enough problems; the last thing we need is for more critics to go off half-cocked because of incomplete information.

[RobbyS]

Bceause they had friends in the chanceries and even in the episcopacy. In the 70s the priesthood was hollowd out and among those who stayed were many who should not. Guys like McBrien, who are rebels and stayed because they wanted to make over the Church in ther own image. Many queers. In time the scum floated to the top. More orthodox types like Law kept their mouths shut because they didn't want to alert the pious about the poor quality of their priests but also beause they knew that the rebels and perverts had the power to derail their careers. Law fell finally because he was a careerist.

[Notwithstanding]

No one has taught me more about marriage and family life and even about an authentic appreciation for the gift of the sexual act than this pope.

I was married for a half dozen years and had several children when I stumbled upon his thoughts on these topics.

He spent the first 20 years of his priesthood becoming very very close to families and observed them closely and talked with them at great length about the most important things in life. Thus he has great insight - and the insight of an unbiased but very interested observer.

His insights helped me realize just how great a thing marriage and family are and how amazing the marital embrace - sex - was meant to be.

I can only laugh - not in a mean way, for I understand how easily one can draw such a conclusion - at those who think a celibate man (one who has forsaken marriage and family and sex not because those things are bad but to do something ELSE for God) does not understand that which he freely gave up in exchange for priesthood merely because he does not have/live them. It is like saying a male gynecologist cannot treat a woman patient because he has a different body.

[Notwithstanding]

Thanks for clearing up the facts.
There is so much media/bigot-driven misinformation about this story - and you cut to the facts.