Posted on 08/16/2018 9:46:36 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
This week a grand jury reported on documents from six Catholic Church dioceses in Pennsylvania that revealed 300 “predator priests” have been accused of sexually abusing over 1,000 children.
The grand jury report states: “We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands. Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent… But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all.”
This report has sent shock waves through the world, akin to the 2002 Boston Globe report on a priest accused of molesting more than 80 boys who was shielded by the Catholic Church.
The grand jury rightly stated: “There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale.”
The Catholic Church is not alone. Many churches and religious institutions have been accused of perpetuating sexual abuse, to various degrees.
In Evangelical Christian church circles, amidst the #MeToo movement, high-profile leaders have been accused of sexual assault. Leaders like Paige Patterson, the president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, was forced to retire after it was reported that he told a rape victim to forgive her attacker instead of calling the police.
Further, in 2017 an assistant pastor at Agape Bible Church in Thornton, Colo., got 13 years in prison for sexually assaulting a young girl repeatedly for 2 years. The police discovered that church leaders and the girl’s father decided to not contact the police and to simply handle the matter “internally.”
In the Mormon church, there have also been scandals, such as the recent case of Joseph L. Bishop, a retired president of the Provo Missionary Training Center, who admitted to molesting at least one female missionary. News reports state that the victim reported the incident to her local bishop, but that the local bishop ignored it because he “wasn’t going to risk sullying the reputation of someone based on that kind of a report.”
In 2017, six Mormon families tried to sue the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for allegedly covering up child sexual abuse by a church member of children as young as 4 and 6 years old. And another suit against the Mormon church claims “Native American children were sexually abused while enrolled in the church’s Indian Student Placement Program.”
There have been accusations of sexual abuse amongst Orthodox Jewish Rabbis, international Buddhist leaders, Muslim pilgrimages, and more.
The list could go on and on.
The hierarchical structures, theology, and policies vary wildly between these different institutions, and so likely will their collective responses and solutions. Each institution will handle allegations of abuse differently – but there can be no doubt that heightened media attention surrounding these issues is socially beneficial for putting churches of all faiths in the hot seat to update and enforce vigorous measures for effective, correct justice in light of abuse.
Many people are asking: why does sexual abuse happen in churches? The heartbreaking reality is wherever there are people – especially when some have greater power or authority than others or where an institution desires self-preservation – there is the possibility of sexual abuse. Sometimes the power differential is in the boardroom at work. Sometimes the institution seeking self-preservation is a Hollywood production company.
And sometimes, the scene of sexual abuse is the church.
If you are a member of a faith community, inquire with your church about the policies and procedures for reporting sexual harassment or abuse. Clarify if leaders are ever left alone with children, at what point after receiving a report the church would call the police, and talk to both fellow members and leadership about ways these policies and more could be improved. Consider asking them to adopt Keeping Children Safe’s international child protection standard, which has been adopted in more than 4,000 organizations worldwide. Ask the church to post this information publicly as well.
Let’s strive for churches to become places of reform, healing, and justice.
-- Haley Halverson (@HaleyCHalverson) is Vice President of Advocacy and Outreach at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
You think I am RC?
Why do you think that?
There is a lot of cleaning house that needs to be done in both camps.
Is God going to say, “you only had one pervert, you’re ok”? Why is the RATE such an important issue to you? You think this crap doesn’t in protestant denominations also?
Something about the board in our own eyes
Being RC and $2 will get you a cup of coffee.
Being P and $2 will get you a cup of coffee and glass of water.
You're being deliberately obtuse. Homosexuality is pervasive in the catholic clergy. Gays make up the vast majority of priests in every diocese I have had contact with in the last 20 years or so. When I was a kid, even a newly wed man, the majority of priests I knew were 'manly' men. Not so any more. Some diocese had policies that only allowed homosexuals in their seminaries. Altoona PA is one such and we see what that has wrought.
So no, the issue isn't that 'we' have less. We are all sinners. The issue is that the hierarchy of the catholic church in this country, and most western countries, has actively sought to promote an anti-Christian homosexual agenda and that has brought disaster on their heads. And they richly deserve it.
Do I think this happens in Protestant congregations?
I think adultery is probably the sin of choice for ministers.
But let’s take your point—this shit happens often. And everywhere.
But if it happened at your Congregation, if it was raping a little boy, how do you think the Deaconite would have handled that?
THAT is the difference.
It isn’t about the priests being pedos. It’s about them being allowed to be pedos after it happening and being reported.
Does that make sense (seriously). I think the discussion gets held up on the sin, not the coverup. If the priest had been perp walked to the local police department—or better yet, gotten the crap beaten out of them by the Dads—and the Bishop stood up, apologized, and cooperated...things would have been a LOT better for everyone.
Is this reasonable?
“But they were passed from one place to another. They were not stopped. Why not?”
Because the Lavender Mafia practiced omerta. Who was supposed to stop them? How?
“Why are they above the law? It’s not the failure of men and their desires, it’s the failure of management to not stop it—and thus allow it to happen more and more.”
Who is “management?” Are you talking about the bishops? They’ve been Lavender Mafia since the 50s at the latest. I would like to know exactly who “management” was that should have stopped it.
“THAT is the failure of the RC Church that is the most horrific part of this.”
Again, who exactly failed? You say “the Church” failed, but who is that? And what should they have done, given that the Lavender Mafia had kept the lid on it?
Before the evilstream misleadia blew the gaff on it, almost no one outside the Lavender Mafia had any idea how bad things were.
People who are so eager to blame the victims need to reflect that Satan is much smarter than we are, that he is the father of lies, and that he was intent on preventing interference with his plan.
Sorry, but most pederasts are not homosexuals. It’s perversity, to be sure, but it’s about power over others. And did you notice the mention of girls?
If the first preset that had this reported on him had been arrested and tried...that would have gone a long way towards ending it.
One of the things that seems to be missed is that many, many of these 99 in Pittsburgh were multiple offenders.
There was no deterrent. I guess eternal damnation gets washed away. A 6 year stint in a maximum security cell block would have stopped most of them.
Your solution is TOO obvious.
This is the religion forum ... So all I have to say is that your statement contradicts itself.
And did you notice the mention of girls?
Did you notice that every time this comes up the perps are male and the victims, overwhelmingly, are also male?
Big Media, which is run by sodomites, is doing its demonic worst to hide the obvious fact that clerical sex abuse is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, homosexual in nature and committed by a network of sodomites in positions of power.
They're queers.
Big Media is lying to you.
I'd think that would be obvious to everybody on this forum.
You’re being deliberately obtuse. Homosexuality is pervasive in the catholic clergy.
And we have a lot of it growing in the protestant church. We are not exempt. We may be behind the curve because we aren’t centralized quite as much but we are just as bad.
You tell a homosexual in your church in private to repent and turn to God and see what happens. I have seen a pastor exiled for this...…………….
We agree on one thing. Pedophiles and homos are the same thing...……………………….
Every system that confers power to people attracts at least some people who want to abuse that power. Government, organized (even loosely organized) religion, and other systems always produce abuse. The type of abuse depends on the structure and how it exposes vulnerabilities.
Huh? When did I infer this was bigotry? Try again, please.
I was a twelve year old kid in Springfield MA in 1972. I knew what was going on. All of my friends knew what was going on.
Several of them got raped. They told their parent. They told the cops. They told the teachers.
No one did anything because the Bishop ran half the schools. The Bishop controlled the DA, and the cops. My friends were told by the church that they would go to Hell. And not today’s hell...old school Catholic scary hell.
So, if you ask me who failed, it was the entire culture in a predominately catholic community. It was the power that this religious cult had over its parishioners. It was the power to damn people to hell—and back in those days people took that stuff seriously.
I knew the feeling when I was twelve. I thought it had gone away until I “felt” it again with our new Parish Priest. The first time I shook his hand and looked into his eyes I saw the evil that had been familiar to me.
Six weeks later, the parish uncovered several complaints about his past. The parish—the richest one west of Boston, kicked him out. We had the money to tell the Bishop what to do.
The Priest “retired” to the Cape with his fag boyfriend.
Those are the people who are to blame. The Bishops and Cardinals passed these predators around. They did not want to turn on someone of their brotherhood. Their bonds with their evil brothers were greater than the lives of these kids.
That’s what you got from that response?
Thanks for playing. Go pray to a statue that some priest won’t rape your grandkids.
Was the homo raping kids?
If so, why didn’t you call the cops?
Right, if you don’t get the response you want go make stupid anti-Catholic remarks. Brilliant.
Btw, I stand by my original post.
Does that make sense (seriously). I think the discussion gets held up on the sin, not the coverup. If the priest had been perp walked to the local police department—or better yet, gotten the crap beaten out of them by the Dads—and the Bishop stood up, apologized, and cooperated...things would have been a LOT better for everyone.
When I grew up, many years ago, in one church the deacons requested that an adulterous couple stand up in church and confess their sin and ask for forgiveness. They did and it put the whole town in an uproar. It never happened again...…………... meaning the public confession and apology.
I have to laugh. I make several points in a post, relevant to the discussion. And you respond to the least of them, with a pedantic argument tool well known to any freeper that has tangled wit you.
To suggest that dealing with you and your inability to have a discussion and even acknowledge that anything is “wrong” with the church is the same simple mindedness that tells children that what clearly happened, didn’t happen because “he’s a priest.”
I do feel sorry that you cannot get passed your impression of your church. It has been an evil protector of horrible men for decades. Don’t mistake your faith in Christ for faith in your corrupt church.
You cannot even read. You read into other people’s comments what you want to read and then go on a rant, including remarks about statues that reduce your argument - whatever it is - to absurdity.
I stand by my original post.
I am here to tell you that sodomites were deliberately escorted into the priesthood through seminaries, for whatever reason.
My greatest struggle in the UMC was at the hands of homosexuals.
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