Vatican continues to dodge responsibility for sexual abuse.

Smoke · Nov 16, 2009

Source: Catholic Education Resource Center, Vatican Sets Record Straight on Sexual Abuse

Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, advanced the following points of "clarification" on the Roman Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal:

Silvano Tomasi said:
While many speak of child abuse, i.e. pedophilia, it would be more correct to speak of ephebophilia, being a homosexual attraction to adolescent males. Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80% to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the age of 11 and 17 years old.

Translation: The Church has been infiltrated by child-molesting queers.

Silvano Tomasi said:
From available research we now know that in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases. The Christian Science Monitor reported on the results of a national survey by Christian Ministry Resources in 2002 and concluded: "Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant".1 Sexual abuses within the Jewish communities approximate that found among the Protestant clergy.2

Translation: Protestants and Jews are worse than we are.

Silvano Tomasi said:
About 85% of the offenders of child sexual abuse are family members, babysitters, neighbors, family friends or relatives. About one in six child molesters are other children, while most of the offenders are male.

Translation: Most of the people who sexually abuse children aren't even priests.

Silvano Tomasi said:
According to a major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education, nearly 10% of U.S. public school students have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention by school employees. The author of the study concluded that the scope of the school-sex problem appears to far exceed the clergy abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church and concluded in an interview with Education Week "the physical abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests".

Translation: You don't know that the number of teachers in the U.S. is 150 times the number of Catholic priests, do you?

Silvano Tomasi said:
The Church is very conscious of the seriousness of the problem. The Code of Canon Law stipulates that priests involved in sexual abuse cases must be "punished with just punishments, not excluding expulsion from clerical state"5. The American Bishops Conference issued in 2002 "essential norms for diocesan/eparchial policies dealing with allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests or deacons". The guidelines mention among others that "in case of sufficient evidence the bishop will withdraw the accused from exercising the ministry, impose or prohibit residence in a given place or territory ... pending the outcome of the process." Other national bishops' conferences have taken similar measures.

Translation: We are no longer facilitating and covering up child sexual abuse to the extent we used to. In some cases, we might even consider pulling accused sexual abusers out of your parish.

Silvano Tomasi said:
As the Catholic Church has been busy cleaning its own house, it would be good if other institutions and authorities, where the major part of abuses are reported, could do the same and inform the media about it.

Translation: We aren't the real abusers here. We have been unfairly targeted, and we wish you'd all just mind your own damned business.

gnomon · Nov 16, 2009

It does seem the Archbishop is altering what the issue with the Church was, actually is, over those scandals. That they covered up, excused and moved criminals around rather than doing the right thing.

In light of one Church filing bankruptcy right before the start of hearings on a sex abuse case as well as money from Catholic Churches going to a political effort in Maine to once again treat homosexuals like crap........

I'll quote Stephen Fry:

It's the strange thing about this church: it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say, we with our permissive society and our rude jokes are obsessed -- no, we have a healthy attitude: we like it, it's fun, it's jolly. Because it's a primary impulse, it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It's a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic church in a nutshell.

I find this comparative tragedy by the Archbishop a bunch of nonsense. Yes, the allegations of sexual abuse, aka child rape, in other communities needs to be brought to light as well. Trying to pass his Church off as "not as bad as those others" is not reasonable. It doesn't alleviate the guilt of the Church leaders who covered up the issue, downplayed the issue or even went so far to call it a homosexual problem.

Humanistheart · Nov 24, 2009

gnomon said:
It does seem the Archbishop is altering what the issue with the Church was, actually is, over those scandals. That they covered up, excused and moved criminals around rather than doing the right thing.

In light of one Church filing bankruptcy right before the start of hearings on a sex abuse case as well as money from Catholic Churches going to a political effort in Maine to once again treat homosexuals like crap........

I'll quote Stephen Fry:

I find this comparative tragedy by the Archbishop a bunch of nonsense. Yes, the allegations of sexual abuse, aka child rape, in other communities needs to be brought to light as well. Trying to pass his Church off as "not as bad as those others" is not reasonable. It doesn't alleviate the guilt of the Church leaders who covered up the issue, downplayed the issue or even went so far to call it a homosexual problem.

Well said.

MSizer · Nov 24, 2009

ho hum, just another day in the old life.

monta · Nov 24, 2009

Sadly child molestors have always and will always seek to put themselves in a position of power over children. If they aren't priests they are social workers or teachers etc. It isn't the fault of the priests and teachers who aren't child molestors, until they enable the behaviour by covering their tracks and, are thereby allowing the abuse to continue.

It is a sad state of affairs, but we need to educated children to be able to deal with these situations if they arise and we need to stop blindly trusting people with our childrens safety, there is no reason for any adult who isn't the childs caregiver to be unsupervised with a child, and even this won't offer a gaurantee.

I do wonder though is this problem greater than it had been in the past or is it more reported and more visable. I know in Ireland it was percieved as shameful for the victim and their family and was conspiratorily covered up by priests, doctors and parents in concert.

Sunstone · Nov 24, 2009

It is a great mystery how all those priests keep getting away with committing the same crimes over and over again. But the Church moves in mysterious ways.

zenzero · Nov 24, 2009

Friend Ss,

It is a great mystery how all those priests keep getting away with committing the same crimes over and over again. But the Church moves in mysterious ways.

Is it not mysterious that people still keep going to the same church and priest and committing the same or bigger crime.

That reminds of a story where a well known Taoist mystic is made the judge and a case of robbery brought. He sets the robber free and fines the rich man who is robbed stating, if you did not have so much wealth then you would not have been robbed.
imbalances always tends to find its own balance.

When there will be no church goers there will be no church and the pope will be bereft of any mystery!
For thinkers [ who are the pope's marketing managers?? so there is no mystery when one has to think of firing a whole bunch of them at one go before you have a backup plan {probably}]

Love & rgds

MissAlice · Nov 24, 2009

Well on one hand I can see why they have been covering these crimes up....they don't want to lose their jobs. However unlike your typical worker who can report what's happened, the priests are "suppose" to be people whom you can trust since ideologically it was their calling from god.

Lesson to learn, this is what happens when you commit the sin of lying or covering up someone's dirty work. It just gets worse and worse....

IndigoStorm · Nov 25, 2009

Sunstone said:
It is a great mystery how all those priests keep getting away with committing the same crimes over and over again. But the Church moves in mysterious ways.

Noooooooooooooooo its not a mystery at all! The Vatican is wealthy beyond the belief of the average earthling! Priests abuse and the Vatican pays over and over and over again!

The abused should be so lucky! The average kid gets abused by the paedophile down the road and what does he get? Nada ... zilch ... nothing ... except a life of bad dreams and depression!

At least the Pope gives them enough money to pay for a shrink!!

monta · Nov 25, 2009

IndigoStorm said:
Noooooooooooooooo its not a mystery at all! The Vatican is wealthy beyond the belief of the average earthling! Priests abuse and the Vatican pays over and over and over again!

The abused should be so lucky! The average kid gets abused by the paedophile down the road and what does he get? Nada ... zilch ... nothing ... except a life of bad dreams and depression!

At least the Pope gives them enough money to pay for a shrink!!

Kind of like enforced prostitution only with minors, well that's ok then, I suppose :sarcastic

Autodidact · Nov 25, 2009

Of course, the typical child-rapist doesn't have the weapon of threatening the child with eternal torture if the poor kid says no. The typical child-rapist isn't granted unfettered access to other people's kids. The typical child-rapist doesn't have one of the world's richest and most powerful institutions helping him to find and exploit children, hide his crimes, shield him from the law, and then pay off the victims.

Other than that, yeah, they're just like any other child-rapists.

monta · Nov 25, 2009

Sunstone said:
It is a great mystery how all those priests keep getting away with committing the same crimes over and over again. But the Church moves in mysterious ways.

The church was usually working in collusion with the government, not that the government agencies necessarily advocated abuse, but rather, they profitted from, and turned a blind eye to it. In Ireland people escaped from institutions where they were being sexually abused, reported it to the police and were duly escorted back to the institutions post haste. I believe this is largely the reason why, when the victims sucessfully sued the religious institutions, in Ireland, and were awarded compensation, the religious institutions only paid a minute fraction of the money and the Irish government paid the rest. The governent were in loco parentis of the children, and also constitutionally had a duty of care towards them and they failed in the most heinous manner.

You can't compensate someone for this failure, but they should be given the funds to seek counselling, and we shouldn't forget that most of these children were not educated to the level of their peers and treated as unwaged indentured servants and are at the very least entitled to back pay.

IndigoStorm · Nov 25, 2009

monta said:
Kind of like enforced prostitution only with minors, well that's ok then, I suppose :sarcastic

OMG nooooooooooooooo! I am NOT condoning this .... I have spent a great part of my miserable life campaigning against the sexual and physical abuse of women and children!! I have a kid sister whom I rescued from her abusive husband more times than I would care to remember. Then one day I helped him die .........

Kilgore Trout · Nov 25, 2009

The poor catholic church just can't seem to escape endless persecution. It's amazing the way they've kept their faith over the centuries despite the fact that they're constantly being oppressed.

9-10ths_Penguin · Nov 25, 2009

MissAlice said:
Well on one hand I can see why they have been covering these crimes up....they don't want to lose their jobs.

Why would it cost a bishop his job to turn a pedophile priest over to the authorities, to transfer him to a position where he doesn't have access to children, or to even just warn the other priests of the next parish he goes to?

That's the real issue in my mind, as least as far as the Church itself is concerned. Sexual abuse is a horrible thing, but I don't think that anyone thinks the Church has failed as an institution just because some priests committed these crimes. The real issue with the Church as an institution in my mind is with how sexual abuse was dealt with when it came to light.

The fact that a small minority of priests committed horrible crimes against children speaks only to the perpetrators themselves; the fact that their crimes were systemically covered up and they were repeatedly placed in positions of responsibility over children... that's what speaks to the Catholic Church itself.

Alceste · Nov 25, 2009

I'm glad this got brought up somewhere other than the catholic DIY so I can freely express the full extent of my disgust and outrage. Here's my comment from there...

I'm sorry, but that is absolutely ridiculous. The outrage is not due to the fact that child abuse was occurring - nobody denies it occurs everywhere - but due to the extensive, intentional campaign by senior clergy to sheild the abusers from any meaningful consequence.

IMO, whoever wrote that statement deserves a slap. The fact that clergy of other faiths have been caught abusing children, or that most of the children abused happened to be boys (a veiled attempt to shift the blame homosexuality instead of celibacy and sexual repression), does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to mitigate the culpability of the Catholic church. As they say, "if all your friends jumped off a bridge..."

Doodlebug02 · Dec 23, 2009

Disgusting. This is one of the reasons why I have left the Catholic Church. (My user name should be getting changed shortly.) I admit that I used to defend the Catholic Church on this and yes, I am deeply ashamed of that.

Autodidact · Dec 23, 2009

Yes, and accused me of being a troll for criticizing it...

MSizer · Dec 23, 2009

Seriously, was anyone naive enough to think that the church was going to take responsibility? Please, the catholic church IMO is a disgrace to humaninty.

Doodlebug02 · Dec 25, 2009

Autodidact said:
Yes, and accused me of being a troll for criticizing it...

I apologize for that.

Peace,
Holly

Vatican continues to dodge responsibility for sexual abuse.

Done here.

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