Hypocrisy redefined by the Catholic Church

[EDnurse]

Originally Posted by shorebaby

I don't see the hypocrisy, the Catholic Church never claimed that their members did not suffer from the same shortcomings as society as a whole. I do however see typical anti Catholic bashing rearing its ugly head.

I beg to differ. Maybe you don't see the hypocrisy because you don't want to look. Were you raised as a Roman Catholic? Could you be worshiping the institution, as in the Roman Catholic Church, instead of God? Where is your moral compass?

My ancestors have all been Roman Catholic for centuries. The moral compass that I inherited from my family and the one instilled in me by educators, nuns and priests in K thru 12 and beyond tells me the following:

1. The mere thought of sexually abusing a child is a sin. ("...we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone..."). Do you think that only applies to the people in the pews and not to the people at the altar?

2. Committing the act is not only a sin, but also a crime. It is not a shortcoming. Being habitually late for work or appointments is a shortcoming. Pedophilia is a crime punishable by civil law.

3. Never mind hypocrisy. When you hide, shield and protect the criminal who committed the crime, you become an accomplice. Jesus Christ died for the forgiveness of sin, not to place the Church hierarchy above the law.

4. We all know that there are sinners everywhere. I am not disputing the fact that a lot of the RC clergy has done a lot of good. However, let's not forget that the Roman Catholic Church has held, for centuries, that the Pope is infallible in matters regarding faith and morals. That is dogma. It is that dogma that gets the hierarchy in trouble when they fail to do the right thing. "To whom much is given, much is expected"-Luke 12:48.

5. I grant you that nobody is perfect and that applies to priests. But what I will not accept or condone is the systematic covering up of these criminals and the systematic lying to protect the cover up. It was the hierarchy's policy to hide and transfer these pedophiles. They did not do it out of compassion for the sinner or because of the shortage of priests. They did it to protect the Church as an institution.

6. The Church and too many of its followers are trying to change the subject, point fingers at other people/circumstances, use excuses like, marxism, homosexuality, pornography, the vow of celibacy, the shortage of priests, etc. to justify the Church's actions in this matter. "An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.”—Pope John Paul II.

7. When we attend Mass, we have to confess our sins and we have to ask God for forgiveness. The Church even has a sacramentt for that. It's called reconciliation. There is no justification for covering the crime.

Your accusation of "typical anti Catholic bashing rearing its ugly head" has no merit. I looked at the whole situation with the moral compass the Church instilled in me and I used the yardstick they gave me.

I am not hurting the Church. The Church is hurting itself by refusing to come clean and do the right thing in an expeditious manner. CENTURIES went by before John Paul II apologized to Jews, Galileo, women, inquisition victims, etc. No wonder the Church is dying in Europe.

[Ceist]

Originally Posted by dcsldcd

Yes it was mostly a homosexual problem. It is a sick mind that assults children and a decent man that found he could not come to terms with the issure of celebacy would have left his priesthood instead of raping little boys.

As I have said the church should suffer as much as the raped children have suffered. The Catholic church has lifted many and done many good works but it is clear they did cover this problem up and they did reassign these sick priests instead of booting them out and alerting the police. Wewill probably never know how widspread the problem was. One thing is clear is if we look at the Catholic church as a society, gays pose a real danger.

I'll let these studies speak for themselves:

National Institutes of Health – PubMed (Groth and Birnbaum, “Adult Sexual Orientation and Attraction to Underage Persons.”)

“The adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male”

National Institutes of Health – PubMed (Groth and Birnbaum, “Adult Sexual Orientation and Attraction to Underage Persons.”)

“The belief that homosexuals are particularly attracted to children is completely unsupported by our data.”

Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics(Jenny and Roesler, “Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?”)

“A child’s risk of being molested by his or her relative’s heterosexual partner is over 100 times greater than by someone who might be identifiable as being homosexual, lesbian or bisexual.”

Journal of the American Medical Association -
Sexual Abuse of Boys Definition, Prevalence, Correlates, Sequelae, and Management William C. Holmes, MD, MSCE; Gail B. Slap, MD, MS JAMA. 1998;280:1855-1862.

"One study noted that 98% of these male perpetrators self-identified as heterosexual."

Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality -(Stevenson, “Public Policy, Homosexuality and the Sexual Coercion of Children.”)

“A gay man is no more likely than a straight man to perpetrate sexual activity with children.”

Journal of Sex Research -Freund, Kurt; Watson, Robin J.; Rienzo, Douglas. “Heterosexuality, homosexuality, and the erotic age preference.” Journal of Sex Research 26, no. 1 (1989): 107-117

“Homosexual males who preferred physically mature partners responded no more to male children than heterosexual males who preferred physically mature partners responded to female children”

A general article showing how some conservative religious anti-gay groups misrepresent and distort studies like those above.
Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation

[Ceist]

And from the researchers conducting the John Jay report into the sexual abuse by Catholic clergy:

A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops on the roots of the clergy sex abuse scandal found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said Tuesday.

The full report by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice won't be completed until the end of next year. But the authors said that their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse.

Gay Priests No More Likely to Abuse, Study Finds - ABC News

[tvdxer]

Wouldn't a great number of these cases be better termed as "homosexual acts" rather than "pedophilic acts"?

The definition of a "pedophile" is one who is attracted to prepubescent children. Many of the men molested - the majority I believe - were at least undergoing puberty at the time of their abuse, if they weren't already fully developed. They were not really "children" or "little boys" but adolescents. It's a fact that nobody wants to confront, but the problem is homosexual priests, or at least priests engaging in homosexual acts, rather than pedophile priests.