It is effective denial.
Rape is sex with someone who is not consenting. Minors cannot consent. Priests raped them.
To parse words is to minimize what happened by priests to children.
I think if the PA AG is going to be fair from a Constitutional perspective then you can’t make a set of laws for one group and a different one for another. If this was just to get the Catholic Church, then that is a problem.
No one is out to get the Catholic church with this report. They are holding the Catholic church to account because it did not and refused to police itself. It covered up. It acted as a criminal organization. It gave up it's right to be self policing. It was evil.
I have always said that this was more about homosexual ephobile scandal, which historically has been seen an distinct from true pedastry. Liberal Dems want to use pedophile because that is still a term that resonates with the majority of U.S. Ephobile links it more with homosexuality since the victims are young males nearing, at or past puberty (12-17).
Again, you are using this to minimize the evil. Both are equally evil. It is evil that individual catholics are not out full force demanding justice for children, but are instead parsing words. Again, this is evil. In other words, cases like the former Cardinal McCarrick.
Homosexuality in your priesthood is just one problem. The worse problems are that your leaders accept homosexuality FROM THE VATICAN DOWN. The worse problems involved covering it up and spreading the evil to other parishes.
No it is not. Rape is Rape, Inappropriate touching is something else. Both are wrong, but one is far more serious. Inappropriate touching is not rape. The overwhelming majority of these cases do no involve rape. Most involve fondling, groping, another group involves sexual acts that do not involve carnal relations, to put it nicely. Forcible rape, No, not true.
And I am not minimizing anything. McCarrick should have been removed for using his office to recruit young men (sexually immature and confused) to seminary and ordain them as priests to use them for his sex partners. Under U.S. law, not illegal, unless he forced himself. Benedict put him in Catholic House arrest, Francis let him out. Only when McCarrick was found to have credibly fondled/groped a 16-17 year old teenage male (which occurred back in 1971) did Francis strip him of his title of Cardinal and put him back in “Catholic House Arrest”.
Where was moral outrage in the state of Alabama, which is a super majority Bible Belt Protestant State in which Judge Roy Moore, credibly accused with groping and inappropriate touching of several 14-16 year old teenage women. He received the majority of the white Bible Belt Protestant vote. The argument was he repented, did not rape anybody, yada, yada, yada,
Now I expect morally Catholic Bishops and Priests to do better than secular judges. But legally, the charges were the same. Statute of Limitations had passed, although Moore is still alive. So should we go back and change statute of limitations for Bible Belt Protestant Judges, credibly accused of fondling and inappropriate touching of young teenage women.
I have no problem with examining the records. I want transparency but in PA, the AG is pushing for a law to change the statute of limitations for only the Catholic Church.
Now I agree there are two camps in the Church, the social justice who see feminism (women’s priest; abortion) and homosexuality as issues that need to be changed. I do believe there is a Lavender Mafia in many Big City Catholic Dioceses, from the Bishop on down. There are Bishops that are entirely orthodox. So there are Catholic leaders wanting to water down the moral sexual teachings. I agree, and that includes a segment of those in Rome.