The abuse of children is a human problem which crosses all socio-economic groups, religions and cultures. To single out the Catholic Church, as being uniformly bad, is decidedly unfair.

Statistically, 1.2% of all child abuse cases have taken place in the Catholic Church, 11% of child abuse takes place in other religions, and 88.8% of all child abuse is perpetrated by teachers, coaches, people whom the child knows or within the child’s own family. Therefore, one can deduce that child abuse is a universal prolbem and not just a Catholic problem. Of course, 1.2% is 1.2% too much. There are sick people everywhere who abuse children. They come from all walks of life and all religions. In fact, when I was a little girl I was molested by an old, white protestant minister. If we just focus on the Catholic Church then we are missing 88.8% of the child molesters who prey on our innocent children.

I don’t believe that members of Catholic Church are as uniformly bad as you do. I was a Catholic for a long time and had many positive experiences with priests and other religious. I also had negative experiences with some, although not to the terrible extent that you witnessed. I am very careful not to stereotype or generalise.

As for your religious beliefs, I am glad that they provide you with a sense of purpose and meaning in your life. I am an agnostic so I don’t believe in god but I also don’t believe that it’s improbable that there is one.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply and I wish you the best with your experiences into the future.

Thank you for your contribution.

It seems that you are willing to accept the findings of these ‘grand jury’s’ Perhaps they are correct. Perhaps not. Practically every jurisdiction outside of the US considers them an ineffective means of discovering the truth (or even prosecution). I agree with them on that.

You consider the grand jury findings convincing. I do not. That is where we will have to end our discussion. I do, though, respect fair and balanced judicial proceedings, such as the ‘Ferns Investigation’, which, although critical of the Catholic Church, was based on solid evidence and careful reasoning. I suggest that you get rid of your pseudo-judicial ‘grand jury’ reports produced by politician D.A.’s and try tracking down a copy of the Ferns Report. There is a judicial investigation in Canada that will also probably produce findings critical of the Church, but nothing like the anti-Catholic diatribes found in the Philadelphia and other US grand jury reports. That way you can criticise the Catholic Church until your heart’s content, but not compromise your intellectual, and moral, integrity in the process.

I’ve visited your website and I should inform you that I’m not a Catholic or even a theist at all. I have no religious interest in ‘defending’ the Catholic Church.

Once again, thank you for your contribution, and I wish you well.

Tysen

“In Long Island, a Church official, in response to a question about an abused child, responded ‘It’s not my responsibility to worry about the boy. My job is to protect the bishop and the church.’ At the same diocese, which had a team run by two lawyer-priests, one such lawyer- priest explained that meeting the victim was a waste of time because the statute of limitations on the abuse had expired. Monsignor John A. Alesandro, a member of the team, at a meeting with a victim who had come to talk about his abuse, started the meeting with the words ‘You know, the statute of limitations has run out.’
Unfortunately, the legislators had not foreseen the need for laws which would make it a criminal offence for a bishop to transfer child molesting priests from one parish to another. Bishops may be held for obstruction of justice, endangering child welfare or even conspiracy. In Westchester County, New York, a grand jury concluded an inquiry by accusing the Church of cover-ups and urging state lawmakers to eliminate the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases.
‘The grand jury finds the actions of diocesan officials who were responsible for making and implementing policy reprehensible’ is what the Suffolk County grand jury concluded. It spent nine months investigating the Diocese of Rockville Centre, a Long Island diocese – the sixth largest in the US – with 1.3 million Catholics in a hundred and thirty-four parishes in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. According to their one-hundred-and-eighty-page report, Church officials protected at least fifty-eight paedophile priests for decades. To that end they employed sham policies and a bogus ‘intervention team’ to trick and silence victims, cover up crimes, avoid scandals and minimise financial consequences. The report speaks of a Church that purported to help victims of sexual abuse but instead intimidated the victims to avoid lawsuits and publicity. In fact, the Catholic Church ran a deception programme.
The sex-offending priests were shuffled from parish to parish and often allowed to minister to children. Abusive priests were protected under the guise of confidentiality and their histories were mired in secrecy. Thus, when an abusive priest was transferred to a new parish, his records did not go with him. Already in the mid-1980s, the diocese established an Office of Legal Affairs which was internally known as the ‘intervention team’. Victims and their family members were immediately put in touch with a priest who, unbeknown to them, was also a lawyer. An internal memorandum of 1993 specifically instructed all diocesan officials referring victims not to divulge the fact that the priests were also lawyers. This team of three, of which two were high-ranking lawyer-priests, met with victims and their families supposedly to discuss possible avenues of action. ‘In reality, the grand jury said, ‘the office and the intervention team had one purpose, protecting the diocese’. The ‘intervention team’ treated crimes of priests as sins which were not to be reported to law enforcement officials. The team ignored any recommendations for psychiatric treatments. Their job was to suppress legal claims and to do this, the grand jury reported that the team employed aggressive legal strategies… [to] defeat and discourage lawsuits, even though diocesan officials knew they were meritorious. (i.e., their job was to prevent justice from being done.) . . . Victims were deceived, priests who were civil attorneys portrayed themselves as interested in the concerns of victims and pretended to be acting for their benefit while they acted only to protect the diocese.;
Of all cases investigated by the grand jury, they found only one in which, a priest was defrocked. His crime? Having an affair with an adult woman! Suffolk County District Attorney, Thomas J. Spota, added,
High-ranking prelates protected 58 colleagues from disgrace rather than protecting children from these predator priests. … Time after time, and despite overwhelming evidence that priests were committing crimes against children, they were willingly sacrificing the truth for fear of scandal and for monetary considerations.
Joanne C. Novarro, a spokeswoman for the Rockville Centre Diocese called the grand jury report unfair. William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights reacted ‘I resent the fact that …(D.A.) Spota is being awarded medals for engaging in a wild goose chase.’
(Double Cross, by David Ranan, p. 327-328)
This is not a holy system with a rare “rotten apple”. This is a rotten system, an institution that is rotten to its core. And this situation in one diocese isn’t some renegade operation unknown to the Vatican, as is evident from the fact that the Vatican couldn’t respond with shock and revulsion. In a similar situation in nearby Boston, instead of punishing the embattled Cardinal, the “Holy Father” rescued him and gave him a plum position in “the Holy City”, in the bosom of “Holy Mother the Church”.
See much more at my http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/ web site.