The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #128156   Message #2878415
Posted By: Smokey.
02-Apr-10 - 06:03 PM
Thread Name: BS: Clerical child abuse Part 94....
Subject: RE: BS: Clerical child abuse Part 94....
It seems to me from reading various reports, testimonies, Vatican documents, etc., that practically every sort of abuse imaginable has been perpetrated under the protective umbrella of the Catholic Church over the years. Entirely accountable for, as Jim rightly says, by opportunity. The same happens in every other walk of life too, but less so due to the lack of the (sometimes unwitting, sometimes intentional) support network provided by the Church and their somewhat creative use of 'God's law', which, whenever they can get away with it takes precedence over real law. I can't for the life of me see why it's relevant what proportion of it is homosexual abuse - it all needs to be stopped as quickly as possible, and such is the diversity of the problem, there is no easy solution to be found by singling out one form of abuse by one subgroup, whatever size it happens to be. Eliminating homosexuality or celibacy in the priesthood would never, for example, prevent nuns from beating young girls half to death or torturing babies.

The only way to prevent the abuse is to completely remove the opportunities. Half measures are merely half solutions - and then only if you're lucky. The only way for the Church to regain its credibility(?) is to do this themselves voluntarily and pull out of all care situations until such time as they can prove to have tidied up their act and convinced humanity that they can be trusted. Yes, it's drastic and would disappoint a lot of good, honest, and well intentioned people, but that is part of the crime committed by the abusers and those who have knowingly not prevented them or assisted in bringing them to proper justice for whatever reason. The many good and decent people who were unfortunate enough to be born into Catholicism have been done an unimaginably huge disservice.

Just as an aside - I'm certainly no expert, but from what I understand of 'Jesus', his advice would be for them to donate their colossal wealth to the poor, particularly as that's where an awful lot of it came from, one way or another.