Pope Francis

If you are fully adamant about that aspect, which you have the right to be, then most other Christian faiths allow that, Islam allows multiple wives, etc.
It’s a non-issue for the Catholic Church.

Surely not a non-issue…cloistering of males fairly evidently produces bad results. If you took away the vow of celibacy I’m fairly certain the child rape would reduce massively.

First, everything that has happened inside the Church is sick, sick, sick, unforgivable, and burn-in-hell actions, including the cover-ups.
Second, read above, to see that I am not denying anything, nor making any excuses for those sick people.

As to your contention above, a neutral site has the facts and comments about clergy sexual abuse, below.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/do-the-right-thing/201003/six-myths-about-clergy-sexual-abuse-in-the-catholic-church

4 percent of Catholic priests in the U.S. sexually victimized minors during the past half century. No evidence has been published at this time which states this number is higher than clergy from other religious traditions. The 4 percent figure appears lower than school teachers during the same time frame, and certainly less than offenders in the general population of men.

This of course does not comfort those who were abused or their families. It shows how sick and prevalent such predators are throughout society.

If Catholic clergy aren’t more likely to be sex offenders than clergy from other traditions, then an all-male clergy can’t be blamed. Having women clergy doesn’t stop sex offenders from offending.

Research tells us that about 80 percent of clergy sex offenders abuse post-pubescent teens, not pre-pubescent children. So the phrase “[pedophile] priest” is a misnomer. You might say that it doesn’t matter. Both categories involve victimizing minors. True, but the risk factor profiles, as well as the evaluation and treatment prognoses, are very different between the two groups. Besides, while people may be worried about young children being victimized, they may neglect the more likely victim: the teen.

Let me be very clear: The sexual victimization of children by priests (or by anyone for that matter) is inexcusable. Church officials protecting offenders rather than victims is also inexcusable. There is much to be angry about. Many get even more upset when accountability and responsibility in the church doesn’t seem to occur.

Many reasonable and thoughtful people argue that the Catholic Church should allow married men, women, and those who are homosexual to be ordained as priests and deacons (as the Episcopalians do) to prevent clergy abuse from occurring. But the current data on clergy abuse just doesn’t seem to support these arguments.

The author is a professor at a Jesuit university and at Stanford.

This topic is Never easy to talk about, much less use just statistics like above to correct some misconceptions.

The laity of the Church want BIG upper-level heads to roll for all these abuses, and the original letter a few days ago is one such way to bring it upfront.

1 Like

It looks to me more like a way to roll back liberal reform, including obviously some of the apparent “heresy” Francis has promoted, and maybe even going all the way back to the Second Council. The sexual abuse is just a convenient hammer for that, and Francis has set himself up for it by being entirely obtuse on the issue. But he’s no different than the rest of the Catholic Church in that regard. It’s a blatantly obvious and hypocritical ploy.

I agree. Even if they allowed priests to marry, what attracts them to the Church is the power to get away with it. menaing they do it because they have the inclination, so they join someplace wher ethey not only can share such inclinations with similarly minded people but most importantly, have the power to do it so by using their Church authority AND get away with it due to the fact that others will cover and justify their actions.

Where else can you have a pedophile evacuated by helicopter, moved to a different region, rape again, be moved again, wash, rinse, repeat?

2 Likes

let me be clear. The Catholic Church in 2002 put in place best practices in child protection that are clearly working. All accusations of abuse are reported to law enforcement, a team of qualified lay people review all reports of problem behavior, all church personnel including volunteers receive safe environment training, a zero-tolerance policy is in place so that no one with credible accusations are allowed in ministry, and an independent auditing firm conducts yearly audits to keep everyone focused, honest, and on target with these best practices.

Great.

There have been an increasing number of examples of sexual abuse cases from mainline protestant and evangelist churches as well.

I believe this, but the issue is largely with the way the CC has handled these cases. That’s happened throughout the church as a whole.

It’s clear some in the church would like to pin it all on the gays and secular society and a couple of convenient piñatas, wash their hands of it, and reboot.

The Spotlight team came up with a figure of I think 6% as a likely rate of abusers from priests in Boston i.e. a rise of 2%. Any opinion on that? I’m guessing there is conflicting research on the issue, since there’s conflicting research on every issue. Spotlight also claimed that 50% of priests are not celibate.

I agree that the most heinous crime of the Church is its protection and enabling of the priests in question.

1 Like

We all agree on the sick heinous nature of these crimes AND the cover-ups.

:point_up_2: This was a bombshell only weeks ago.

:point_up_2: and this.

Neither examples make it any better for any sexual abuse of a minor or adult, whether individually or in an organization.

Here is the original letter with the list of dubia:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5983408-Open-Letter-to-the-Bishops-of-the-Catholic.html

The pope has the authority to allow that. They made up rule later on. It would seem like a good idea. Let the individual choose.

Married priests are allowed in certain circumstances, e.g. the various Eastern-rite churches.

1 Like

:disappointed::disappointed:

I don’t understand this pope. He’s all over the place.

?

Celibacy rules…what a joke. It’s not even so much the dearth of priests, it’s that everyone knows the Catholic church is full of sex pests. If they ain’t fuckin’ each other, they’re diddling children, or they’re knocking up the women of whatever backwater village they’ve been assigned to. No one who truly believes in the tenets of Catholicism wants anything to do with these nasty asses.

:joy:

No bread for you!

I get the feeling he makes it up as he goes along.

Yeah? Speak for yourself, lady. :noway:

I was able to find that he asked for “bold proposals” to solve their Amazon issues, but did he ever say anything more explicit in support of the idea?

1 Like