I don’t think all preists are pedos, nor do I think that the church condones such crimes. However, I do wonder why the church handles these situations so slowly and so terribly!?!?!? Does not make sense.
Yes, it does makes sense. The Church handled these problems about as badly as most organizations do. It’s made of people, and people are flawed.
It actually does better now, too, unlike many organizations the LSM hasn’t targeted who therefor ignore the problem.
>>However, I do wonder why the church handles these situations so slowly and so terribly!?!?!?<<
1. The Church handles cases now, much differently than they do now.
2. Because the Psych communtiy told Bishops that these guys were “cured” or “curable” and there was nothing to worry about.
This is just as much a Psych problem as a Church problem. I worked Psych in the 90’s.
The term "mortal panic" is instructive, and it is driven by the 24/7 news cycle. Back in the 1890s, a young New York reporter, Jacob Reis was assigned to cover the NY police department. The man he had replaced simply passed on the information provided about crimes for the papers. Reis, however, was a good-getter, a very personable guy who got along well with patrolmen on the beat. He made a point of pumping them on information about crimes, and thereby uncovered many stories that had gone by the wayside before. His editor lied histories and encouraged him to get more. Pretty soon the paper was full of such stories with headlines such as" Crimewave sweeps East side, " and such. Finally the police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, called him in and asked him to lay off and showed him that the number of crimes was actually no more than in past years. But now the public was frightened and demanded action.
Now all these stories about bad priests covered a period of forty years, and complaints and convictions are all treated the same. Obviously for a period of time, there was a rash of new incidents. Such things had always happened: priests who were drunks, thieves, phlanderers. But they had always been relatively few. Now they were relatively many: 500 whereas there had been fifty. There was a rash of child-abusers, and obviously, many bishops did not want to hear the news. Furthermore, in the age of psychology, they wanted to think tolerantly. and not to throw malefactors into a "pententiary" -- an actual one, but to bring in the mental help folks rehabilitate them. In other words, they were looking evil in the eye and they blinked.
And all of this was happening when there was a crisis of vocations in the priesthood. After Vatican II, seminaries emptied out; thousands of priests asked to be relived of their vows. Ditto, nuns. Many, many priests lost their sense of mission, even their faith. To fill the void, unqualified men were ordained, and bad priests were left undisciplined. No longer was the Gospel the driving force. For many years political power had been a major factor in the Church as it grew rapidly in numbers. There was even hope that the nation could be converted to Catholicism. But after Vatican Ii, the very thought of converting the nation was treated as an unworthy goal. Ecumenism is the order ofthe day, and all distinctions between Cstholics and others must be minimized. Among these was a priesthood consisting of a corps of the ablest men in the Church. In the '70s we have a kind of "hollowing out" of the priesthhood, and this scandal is the bitter fruits of this loss of faith.
>>1. The Church handles cases now, much differently than they do now<<
Well there’s a sentance that makes no sense.
They handled things differently then. Cases today are turned over to the police.
Reality, psychiatry was something people believed in back then, we now know that mentally ill people are sick and they can’t be cured by talking.