Posted on 06/19/2011 8:40:56 AM PDT by Cardhu
CNN) - As a young man studying for the priesthood, Patrick Wall imagined life as a professor and football coach at a Catholic university.
It didn't work out that way. Two decades later, Wall has not only left the Catholic Church, he has become one of its most tireless opponents.
He's an ex-priest, driven from ministry by the feeling that his superiors used him to help cover up sex abuse by other clergymen.
And he's using the training he gained as a priest to work with victims of abuse who want to take the church to court.
Since 1991, Wall says he has consulted on more than 1,000 abuse cases, helping lawyers pick apart defenses mounted by dioceses from Alaska to Australia.
Now a senior consultant at the law firm of Manly and Stewart in Southern California, Wall spoke to CNN on the sidelines of a recent conference for legal and religion scholars at Cardiff Law School in Wales.
In Philadelphia, where four priests and a Catholic school teacher were indicted on sex abuse charges earlier this year, Wall says he is helping the district attorney build an unprecedented criminal case not only against the clergy, but against an archdiocesan official who supervised them. The priests – one of whom is the church official – and the teacher have denied the allegations.
The case is potentially historic. Wall doesn't know of another case where a U.S. prosecutor has gone after an official at the top of the church hierarchy as well as the suspected abusers themselves.
Prosecutors are trying to convict a vicar – the man who supervised the priests in the archdiocese – with child endangerment because they say he allowed suspected abusers to have contact with young people.
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(Excerpt) Read more at religion.blogs.cnn.com ...
Wall hopes the threat of prison time will change the way American bishops respond to abuse allegations in a way that civil lawsuits have not.'
"In the civil cases, we have taken over $3 billion, but you're not getting a lot of change in the system," he says.
There is no point arguing these claims anymore. Those who so desperately hate the Church will always fond or create excuses to do so and those who administer these threads will always always facilitate them.
“In the civil cases, we have taken over $3 billion, but you’re not getting a lot of change in the system,” he says.
///
he is right. not much change since 1991.
...because the problem was largely fixed by then.
graphs of actual data, show that since 1991,
the rate of abuse is way below even public schools.
and public schools are specifically immune to suits
(confirmed by the US Supreme Court),
even though abuse there is orders of magnitude higher.
http://the-american-catholic.com/2010/04/18/the-timeline-of-abuse/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2721377/posts
http://catholicknight.blogspot.com/2010/03/catholic-sex-abuse-scandal-and-cover-up.html
“ Consider the statistics: In accordance with a requirement of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.
Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.
“[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a “Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up” and by asking “Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?”
No, they didn’t. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether. “
...20 years ago, this was a valid issue.
now, it is simply greedy men making money they can’t get from schools, or small individual churches.
and atheists and liberals who hate the Catholic church, because it is the one institution they fear most.
like the “flak heaviest over target” saying,
the Catholic church is the most hated and persecuted in the world.
i actually had a female English professor, tell me that her Christian church, has more in common with and was closer to ISLAM, than the Catholic Church.
Sorry about the multiple post, I kept getting:
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So I did and you got multiple posts.
So she embraces Izlam or she hates her 'Christian' church???
And she's an authority on the Catholic church as well...
I think she pulled your chain and likely is a bonified Catholic...
“[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?” she said. “The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
Ya right...Individual teachers are molesting up to two hundred students at a time...And all the rest of the teachers are pedophiles and are covering up for each other...
Couldn't they have gone after change first and held the threat of going after money over the heads of those they wanted to change? I think this guy and those making the claims all got what they wanted which is cash and a name for themselves. It would take a lot more than this article for me to think this guys is an exception to that.
Couldn't they have gone after change first and held the threat of going after money over the heads of those they wanted to change? I think this guy and those making the claims all got what they wanted which is cash and a name for themselves. It would take a lot more than this article for me to think this guys is an exception to that.
A "bonified" Catholic..........LOL??
Is that like a beatified Catholic?
Perhaps you mean...."bona fide"......
Apparently the Pope is now showing more concern than you do.
Naw, that's the new language...Kinda like Ebonics for White people...
I stated a fact unrelated to my level of concern and will repeat it in case it didn't sinking the first time. Those who hate the Church will always find an excuse to do so. You apparently are no exception.
Since you attempted to assign motive to my posts I will ask yours. What did you hope to accomplish by this thread? Some measurable change in Church policy beyond the reforms already enacted or something more personal and sinister?
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