Posted on 11/16/2006 9:54:57 AM PST by presidio9
The US Roman Catholic Church has asked a criminology school to delve into the darkest pages of its history by probing the causes of a priest sex abuse scandal.
At a meeting due to end Thursday in the eastern city of Baltimore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to disburse 335,000 dollars to fund the first three phases of a study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
"It will be a groundbreaking study, never done before in the US, nor in the world," Bishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, told AFP.
"We don't know what would come out of it, but we are going to tell the truth," said Aymond, of Austin, Texas.
In 2002, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice had made a list of complaints and pedophilia cases in the US Catholic Church since 1985, when one of the first scandals came to light with the case of a Louisiana priest.
The university will now look into the "social and historical context" of sex abuse to see if such cases are more frequent in the Church than in the rest of society, notably in schools and youth clubs, Aymond said.
The Church wants to "look at what is unique" in the priest sex abuse crisis, he said.
The first part of the study would be completed in 2008 and made public, although the names of suspected priests would be omitted.
In the second part, the university will evaluate the Church leadership's response to sex abuse cases.
"We want to see where we failed and made some mistakes, and learn from those who handled it well," Aymond said.
The study will also paint a psychological profile of pedophiliac priests by reviewing cases in treatment centers.
The review will aim to show "to what extent is a priest sexual abuser profile the same as the psychological profile of the non-priests who are sex offenders," Aymond said.
The university will also interview abuse victims and examine education at seminaries over the decades.
The majority of priests accused of sex abuse were trained in the 1960s and 1970s in seminaries where psychological tests and sexuality education have since been introduced.
A final phase of the study will make proposals on how to prevent sex abuse and help victims.
"Our goal is to ascertain the causes of the clergy sexual abuse crisis and if we need to change any method we have now," said Teresa Kettlekamp, the executive director of the bishops conference's Office of Child and Youth Protection, which was created in 2002, in the wake of the sex abuse scandal.
But the study would also be useful to schools and youth groups, Church officials said.
"The pathology of abusing children isn't unique; it's a societal problem," Kettlekamp said.
"We are hoping it will be a big, big help to the society in general," she said.
At last you have something right there. But it's also far more difficult today to be faithful in marriage, it doesn't mean that one cannot do so, or ought not be expected to do so.
Again fine with me but why is it an absolute requirement. Where did Christ require it and make it an obligation. He never did. Thats why requiring it is wrong.
So, in your opinion, Christ made a stupid mistake in choosing twelve males as His Apostles.
Too bad He didn't have you around back then to straighten Him out.
Or . . . there is the outside possibility that He knew more than you do.
Just putting that out there.
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All the more reason it is important to keep the tradition of the Church, and to strive to follow in Christ's footsteps. Celibacy is a way to devote one's self to God and the Church more completely. It is a freedom, not a restriction.
the priesthood is not an obligation. It is a freely chosen ministry.
No one is compelled to the priesthood against his will.
Your hopeless and you will never change your uncompromising attitude. Thats why evangelicals are spreading and Catholics are declining.
I'm glad they're doing a serious study on the problem, and I hope they'll listen to the results and take the suggestions to heart.
Christ did not require his apostles to be unmarried.
I don't think so. There will always be men who cannot live up to the demands of the celibate life, but if they have serious preparation, it can be done. Unfortunately, in the late 60's, seminaries began to tell the young men that they wouldn't have to worry about living a celibate life because the Church was SURELY going to change her rules about priests being able to be married. So they no longer prepared the young men for a life of chastity and ordained them on false pretenses.
From what I've seen, it's not celibacy that's the problem with many priests, it's loneliness.
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Sometimes less is more. Remember, Christ started with only twelve.
Well, perhaps.
The problem is certainly more complex than "celibacy," but I have to think that the current-day sex-saturation of media and society, celibacy places a tremendous amount of stress on men who are called to a life of practicing it.
And, for whatever reason, the priesthood also seems to offer a great deal of attraction for a certain segment of the homosexual population. Perhaps they think they can use enforced celibacy as an escape from urges they dislike; or they think it's a turn-on and a pickup opportunity. I suspect both motives are in play, actually.
If you combine the stress with the inherent mindset, you're bound to have problems.
He was not just an Archbishop but also an exorcist in Africa until 1983, when he was forced to resign from his see at the age of 53 and was replaced.
The whole matter was kept quiet - but apparently his work as an exorcist was very unsuccessful.
It isn't an absolute requirement. No one is forced to join the priesthood, and everyone who does knows what he's getting into.
And married men go into the priesthood in some circumstances, too (esp. former Anglican priests and protestant ministers).
The Latin Church, in the light of the words of Our Lord and St. Paul, demands celibacy for priestly candidates because we consider the priesthood a 24/7 job that allows little personal time and certainly not enough to raise a family.
And I'm glad you at least aren't defending what you've been asserting above. Celibacy is definitely scriptural, it is not a Medieval invention. Its abolition will not solve any of the Church's problems.
In ages past, celibacy has weeded out a lot of people who would otherwise have come to the priesthood for the wrong reasons. This can remain true even today, as long as we're willing to root out the homosexual menace.
Um, that's not true either.
The point is no one is forcing a man to be a priest. That is where the choice lies. Not once you become a priest. You seem to want to define the role of priest as you want, which is not how the Church operates. You seem to admire and study history, which is good. You should then know that, before the "Reformation", it was never acceptable to presume one could know better than the Church.
Granted there wasn't preistly celibacy in the first few hundred years of the Church, but there were many other things that weren't present in the Church in early years, that is present today. The Bible is one of those things too.
We Catholics have a respect and admiration for historical precident, but we aren't bound to it. We believe that the initial deposit of faith continues to be revealed to us today, and thus, our Faith continues to grow, as a mustard plant from a seed.
So back to your original point: "celibacy should be optional for the preisthood [because] you are excluding a vast amount of highly qualified individuals [because of the celibacy rule]."
First of all there's no evidence for that. As I stated before, the fault of these scandals lies in individual people, individual men who seem to have made a wrong choice when entering the priesthood. That doesn't necessarily mean that the vocation itself is somehow wrong. Indeed, you even agree there's nothing wrong with celibacy itself, as long as it's voluntary (right?). But you actually seem to be making the claim I said you could only possibly make, that is, that celibacy is only wrong for PRIESTS! Which really makes no sense, does it? Do you think that ONLY priests should NOT be celibate? If not, then what's the problem with making it a requirement for the priesthood, the priesthood being a VOLUNTARY choice in of itself?
Secondly, there are plenty of married individuals who commit amoral sexual acts, who despite that, are "quite qualified" or "educated" in the Faith. The Reverend Haggard comes to mind.
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Perhaps he needed the benefit of his own expertise.
Christ lived in a male dominated society. Things are different now. If he chose the 21st century to reveal himself I can guarantee you that women would be chosen.Fact is that in his entourage women played major roles but the writers of the gospels, all men never reported on those events. Again the male dominated society. Mary Magdaline was a major player and it was she who first witnessed the risen Christ. So here Christ elevates women to the same level as men. Get the message?
From what I've heard, of almost every priest who was found to have molested young men, most parishoners had some sense that something was amiss, they just couldn't pinpoint it. There have been some instances where people openly talked about how wierd the priest was, but they still let their kids go off alone with him.
Does he go out of his way to be alone with the kids in the Parish? Does he get angry if anyone questions why he would do that? If he does, I'd probably be suspicious. If he doesn't, and because of that, you don't get the feeling he might be involved in anything like this, he's probably not.
In case you want more reference, this also comes from 1 Cor:
"Are you free from a wife? Do not seek marriage. . . . Those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would
spare you that. . . . The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided." (7:27-34)
This is not, of course, an exhortation for everyone to be celibate, but it certainly explains the reasonableness of the Church's attitute toward the subject. She wants her priests' attention to be undivided.
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I know I am. You're not a Catholic.
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