Posted on 03/24/2014 9:46:53 AM PDT by Dr. Thorne
Bishop Frank Caggiano has agreed to meet with representatives of national and local victim support groups who Wednesday called for him to hire an outside firm to investigate two priests who have been accused in the past of sex abuse -- one who admitted he hid more than 40 years of abuse complaints.
But Barbara Blaine, president of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said although she is willing to meet with Caggiano, she would prefer to do so after he agrees to the investigation.
"History has shown that meetings don't always bear fruit, but actions speak louder than words," Blaine said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ctpost.com ...
Since it seems all the deviant preists go after boys, shouldn’t they be demanding an investigation of homosexuals?
All parties.
As the Catholic Church begins to clean up the mess, more and more cracks appear in the hierarchy with insiders admitting to the systemic problems that caused the cover ups in many places.
Its not an either / or choice. Investigate all parties. Nobody gets a pass.
First, Pell is from Australia not the United States
If you are really interested in understanding the research on the “who, why, when and how” of sex abuse, you would find that Priests no more likely to commit sex abuse than other men, researcher says (Link)
Penn State professor Philip Jenkins (who is not a Catholic) has written the most objective book on the subject, and he summarizes his arguments in this excellent article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “The Myth of the Pedophile Priest” (Link)
His findings can be summarized as follows:
Priestly celibacy is not the issue – married men are more likely to abuse children than unmarried
Most child abuse takes place within the home.
All religious groups have pedophile scandals, and the
Catholics (while the largest religious group) are at the bottom of the list statistically.
Child abuse is prevalent in all areas of society: schools, youth organizations, sports, etc.
Statistically, of all the professions, clergy are least likely to offend. Doctors, Farmers and Teachers are the professions most likely to abuse children–not clergy.
Among clergy offenders Catholic priests are least likely to offend.
Catholic cases of pedophilia make more headlines because of anti Catholic prejudice and because the Catholic Church is bigger and more lucractive to sue.
Mind you, this is not to deny that pedophilia, wherever found, is a depraved and disgusting act. Particularly so when the offender IS a priest, a group from which we have a right to expect the absolute highest standards. However, Philip Jenkins found, based on his own research and the comprehensive John Jay College of Criminal Justice study, that less than 1.8% of Catholic priests were ever implicated in any category of sexual misdeed -— in other words, over 98% were (and are) innocent.
These are the facts. Which should be important, to those who seek a fact-based view of this problem.
If you haven’t read teh John Jay Study then you have zero idea of what the Catholic Church has done in this regards.
For the Greater Glory of God
Priests no more likely to commit sex abuse than other men, researcher says
http://www.thelocal.de/20110713/36259
Published: 13 Jul 2011 14:14 GMT+02:00
Catholic priests, despite the community suspicion fuelled by widespread child sex abuse revelations, are no more likely to be paedophiles than other men, a top criminologist investigating Church abuse in Germany has said.
Catholic Church to allow access to internal files (10 Jul 11)
In comments to be published Thursday, respected criminologist Christian Pfeiffer told weekly Die Zeit that there were “even indications that priests are under-represented in their age group compared with other men.”
Pfeiffer, a former justice minister for the state of Lower Saxony and director of the state’s criminal research institute, has been commissioned by the Church to investigate the prevalence of abuse among German priests.
Pfeiffer declined to say whether the Church’s insistence on celibacy and its ban on marriage for priests made them more – or perhaps even less – likely to become abusers. But he did say that US research suggested that the broader community trend towards sexual liberalisation had helped combat the tendency towards sexual abuse in the Church.
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“Priests who sought sexual contact (in the US) in violation of celibacy have increasingly easily found adult partners,” he said. “This has apparently contributed to lessening the risk to children and youths that priests assault them.”
In January last year, it emerged that priests at the elite Canisius College in Berlin committed dozens of assaults on pupils in the 1970s and 1980s. The months that followed, more than 200 cases of sexual and physical abuse within the church came to light.
For their research, Pfeiffer and his institute in Hannover have been given access to the personnel files of all 27 of the Church’s diocese going back 10 years, as well as the files for nine representative diocese going back to 1945.
As well as Pfeiffer’s research, a separate project is being led by top forensic psychiatrist Norbert Leygraf from the University of Duisburg-Essen. The studies began in April but were only formally announced by the Church on Wednesday by Bishop Stephan Ackermann, the Church’s representative on all matters relating to child sex abuse cases.
In June, bishops attending the German Bishops’ Conference adopted a resolution allowing the researchers access to the Church’s files, magazine Der Spiegel has reported – a reversal of the long-standing guardedness the Church has employed.
The entire article and link is above.
For the Greater Glory of God
As inspiring as that is, what is it about the Catholic leadership's culture, that attracts homosexuals, Catholic church leadership is known for male on male sex scandals.
you may not know about this because it was was never spoken of in the media, but pope Benedict sent a commission to physically inspect EVERY seminary in the US and root out the ‘lavender mafia’ who ran some of these seminaries.
I am personally familiar with Maryville seminary in Illinois, where his representatives cleaned house.
Frorm this article:
http://www.tldm.org/news8/homosexualityPriesthood3.htm
LifeSiteNews.com reported on September 19, 2005:
Homosexual men may not be admitted to the Catholic priesthood, according to a soon-to-be released document that has been approved by Pope Benedict XVI. The document has been anticipated since before the death of Pope John Paul II and speculation has raged that it would retreat for political reasons from declaring a ban on ordaining declared homosexual men.
In a media update today, Catholic World News says that the text was approved by Pope Benedict at the end of August. The document, to be classed as an “Instruction” comes from the Congregation for Catholic Education and says that homosexual men should not be admitted to seminaries even if they are celibate. It says that homosexuality, understood by the Catholic Church as a moral and psychological disorder, seriously “detracts from their ability to serve as ministers.”
The document is expected to be released to the public after the international Bishops synod in Rome in October.
In 2002, the same year the scandal of widespread abuse of minors by homosexual predators in the priesthood, Catholic journalist and author, Michael Rose, released his best-selling exposé of what he identified as a homosexual underground in the seminary system that reached all the way into chanceries. Rose implicated bishops and seminary rectors as well as priests in enormous network whose objective was to make the Catholic priesthood a “gay profession.” The presence of the “lavender mafia” in US seminaries, said Rose in his book, has led to a clerical culture in which the teaching of the Catholic Church on other doctrinal issues, especially on abortion, contraception and marriage, is undermined or ignored.
Since 2002, the mainstream media and significant portions of the Catholic community have been attempting to paint the issue as one of “priestly pedophilia,” rather than homosexual predation. This, despite statistics that have clearly shown the great majority of abuse victims were young adolescent men and boys in their teens. The scandal has been a disaster for Catholics in the US, resulting in billions of dollars lost to law suits and a number of dioceses declaring bankruptcy.
The controversy over the anticipated document has been fueled by a long delay and speculation that the Vatican intended to back away from an outright ban on homosexuals in the priesthood. As recently as August 31, The Age newspaper in Australia was reporting that an unnamed highly placed Vatican source said the document was to be “shelved.”
Today’s announcement came at the same time as the US Church gears up for a Vatican-ordered inspection of seminaries. Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, the head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services and the bishop appointed by Rome to head the investigation has said that he believes men with “strong homosexual inclinations” should not be allowed to enter seminaries.
A vocal group of homosexuals and their supporters in the priesthood and hierarchy have been advocating that the inspection of seminaries should focus on the issue of “celibacy” rather than homosexuality. This is seen by many as a smokescreen and a convenient back door for bishops who hesitate to support the Catholic teaching which has long been that homosexual men may not be ordained.
The seminary inspection will also investigate faculty members for dissent from Catholic teaching which Fr. Richard John Neuhaus has proclaimed is the root cause of the sexual scandals. In preliminary documents, the Vatican has ordered that areas to be examined include whether “there is a clear process for removing” dissident faculty.
** See LifeSiteNews.com’s extensive Church Abuse Crisis section at http://www.lifesite.net/features/churchscandals/
AMDG
the specifics of Benedict’s action (note they didn’t call him ‘Der Panzer Kardinale’ because he was such a softie!)
http://popebenedictxviblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/vatican-teams-to-investigate.html
Media Advisory, Sept. 21 /Christian Wire Service/ — In response to the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the American Catholic Church, as well as ongoing concerns about the formation of priests, Vatican-appointed teams will inspect 229 seminaries and theology schools in the U.S, from late September 2005 to June 2006. Reports by 117 inspectors will be sent directly to the Vatican in confidential reports.
Just this week came the news that Pope Benedict XVI has approved a new Vatican policy document indicating that men with homosexual tendencies should not be ordained as priests. The new document is in response to a request by the late Pope John Paul II, and will likely be published after an international meeting of bishops in Rome that concludes October 23rd, according to CWNews.com.
Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam
For The Greater Glory of God
According to wikipedia.com, there have been allegations against 4,392 priests in the US, or about 4% of the 110,000 priests who have served from 1950-2002.
Further, according to the John Jay Study, “The problem was indeed widespread and affected more than 95 percent of the dioceses and approximately 60 percent of religious communities.”
And of course no one can defend the way in which the bishops covered up this truly monstrous scandal.
The bishops bought themselves a pass via the John Jay Report, and Catholics continue to buy it hook, line, and sinker:
One aspect of the John Jay report [Monica Applewhite, an expert in abuse prevention strategies] found particularly helpful was the language it used to describe different ways bishops have responded to reports of abuse in their dioceses -- either as "innovators" or "laggards." The report describes innovators as those who "understood the harmfulness of the (abuse) acts and moved to implement policies to reduce abuse and remove abusers early on." It conversely notes that the response of other bishops "lagged behind, thus creating an image that the church generally was not responsive to victims." The report said the media "often focused on these 'laggards,' further perpetuating the image that the bishops as a group were not responding to the problem of sexual abuse of minors."Take note that the bishop-sponsored John Jay Report only provides five categories for bishops' responses: innovators, early adopters, early majority, later majority, and laggards. Take special note that no category is given for bishops like Milwaukee's Rembert Weakland, Cleveland's Anthony Pilla, Los Angeles' Roger Mahony, or Boston's Bernard Law, a category that might be called something like "collaborators" or even "perpetrators".
-- from the thread John Jay report not just about mistakes in 1960s, says sex abuse expert
[Faithful Departed author Philip] Lawler points out that while less than five percent of American priests have been accused of sexual abuse, some two-thirds of our bishops were apparently complicit in cover-ups. The real scandal isn't the sick excesses of a few dozen pedophiles, or even the hundreds of priests who had affairs with teenage boys -- the bulk of abuse cases. No, according to Lawler, it is the malfeasance of wealthy, powerful, and evidently worldly men who fill the thrones -- but not the shoes -- of the apostles. In case after case, we read in their correspondence, in the records of their soulless, bureaucratic responses to victims of psychic torture and spiritual betrayal, these bishops' prime concern was to save the infrastructure, the bricks and mortar and mortgages. Ironically, their lack of a supernatural concern for souls is precisely what cost them so much money in the end.
-- from the thread Kneeling Before the World"The Dublin Archdiocese's preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets," said the report. "All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state"....
-- from the thread Pope calls Irish church leaders to Vatican to discuss abuse report
no they aren't! Where on earth did you come up with that asinine statement?
You are just a protestant spreading disinformation by conflating what is going on on other countries to what happened 20 years ago in the US.
But then that is exactly what I expect from you.
For the past ten years you don’t work with children unless you have passed a criminal background check which I have personally experienced.
AMDG
Yes they are, they are known for other things of course, but when one hears "sex scandal" involving the catholic denomination, the assumption isn't that the catholic leader ran off with his female organist, or a female parishioner, or had anything to do with any female.
Adult Male on male homosexual liaisons was minuscule per the John Jay school of Criminal Law study.
That is totally prot disinformation unsubstantiated by actual results.
You dove out of reality and straight into lala land fantasy when you asserted that Pell’s location had any relevance. I hate to break this to you, but since you make it clear that you are personally unaware here it is; there is only one Vatican. Really, Australian priests look to the same Pope as priests in the United States.
Continuing your little trip into fantasy land, you babbled on about sexual abuse being at least as prevalent outside as in...as if anyone was contending something different. If you read my actual post instead of some imaginary post you wish to contend with, I said investigate all parties.
Nobody gets a pass.
Not that you are personally any different than other weird defenders of pedophiles we have gotten over the years at Free Republic.
When we get police officers who screw kids, there are always posters whining about how nobody complains if it were a teacher.
When it is a sexual predator within a school system, always somebody is upset we might not care if it weren’t a teacher.
When the pervert is within the social services or foster care system, someone always pontificates that we should focus on incest, and abuse within the families.
Sick individuals in every one of those cases.
Nobody gets a pass, Lurking.
And contrary to your insinuation, calling for each party to be investigated in every incident is not singling anyone out.
We need more mill stones.
I never said they were all gone I pointed out that the seminaries had been blitzed by Pope Benedict.
Finn seems to be culpable of covering for a pedophile for which he will hopefully have his A$$ handed to him by the Vatican.
However, ten years in our time is like a second in Vatican time.
The laity fully supports criminal penalties for any clergy who are responsible for engaging in or covering up for pederasty or homosexuality.
AMDG
we worry about what is going on in the US not Australia or Ireland.
The US was the first country to be formally investigated by the Vatican. My understanding is that every country in the world with a seminary will have been investigated, one by one.
If you think that something that took twenty years to fully develop will be fixed in a day you are sorely mistaken.
But the US is actually the poster child for the right way to kick A$$ and take names although it has been slow going.
Nearly every lay Catholic has been directly or indirectly impacted by the scandal and on one wants it to be cleaned up more than the faithful.
If you think other wise you are mistaken.
Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam
“...calling for each party to be investigated in every incident is not singling anyone out.”
you may not be aware but each and every allegation is now 1) must be reported to the local police, 2) fully investigated both by the Church and the police and 3) criminally prosecuted with the priest laicized (removed from the priesthood).
None of this is optional and it has been like this for about 10 years.
If you read my links above you would have known that.
AMDG
Nothing I have ever posted would indicate that I thought sexual abuse could be fixed in a day.
Man is fallen and all sins will be an ongoing problem until after the millennial reign, when God creates a new heaven and a new earth.
Therefore, all sins need to be contended against in every segment of humanity. For a long time the Vatican asserted that the Catholic Church was unblemished. It wasn’t. It wont be in the future.
By the same token, the teachers union have obstructed the removal of predatory teachers in similar fashion.
You are now babbling incoherently about how long ago the bulk of the incidents happened.
1. That doesn’t matter regarding the people to whom they happen.
2. That things have still not been made right is a further blemish on the church, so that does not mitigate things in the churches favor.
3. Some of those criticizing what went on knew about it all those years ago and were trying to get justice done even then. Many of the people who were insisting that nothing was happening then are the same ones who are insisting that its all irrelevant now. It is relevant until things are made right and all parties in the wrong have been brought to justice AND until amends have been made.
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