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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsProsecutor: South Boston priest downloading child porn when he was arrested
http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/08/01/boston-police-south-boston-priest-charged-with-possession-child-pornography/TxNJT3DG3maIEkRapuL7mK/story.html
The computer at the South Boston rectory where the Rev. Andrew J. Urbaniak lives was downloading child pornography when Boston police detectives entered the building on Monday, a prosecutor said at Urbaniaks arraignment today on child porn charges.
Urbaniak, 39, mostly kept his head down during his arraignment in South Boston Municipal Court where he pleaded not guilty to charges of possession and dissemination of child pornography. Judge Michael Bolden set bail at $10,000 cash.
For the past four years, Urbaniak has been assigned to Our Lady of Czestochowa Church in South Boston where he is currently the pastor. In the wake of his arrest, the Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement saying Urbaniak is now on administrative leave and is banned from performing his religious duties as a priest.
Urbaniaks faculties have been suspended and he is not allowed to function as a priest in the Archdiocese, the statement said. The Archdiocese is fully cooperating with law enforcement. The Church prays for all those impacted by these events and is committed to providing for the pastoral care of the parish during this difficult time.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)one of the Polish priests imported to help resolve the priest shortage in the US. Poland is often held up as an example of a place where Roman Catholicism is uncontaminated by the modernism of the West.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)It has nothing to do with modernism, but that's been the charge since the eighties from inflammatory conservatives. I wish for the labeling and finger pointing to stop and just say it's a violation of trust and crime and should be handled by the secular authorities. After all, for years the churches said that governments were ordained by God to carry out His Will. Now they want to be the Government themselves again, and attack all secular authority. I hate that.
hedgehog
(36,286 posts)and/or a result of living though the sexual freedom of the 60's. Thus, a young Polish priest would never be a problem, right?
As you say below, at least some of the clerics are learning to turn these cases over to the criminal justice system.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)I was given a history book by a Catholic friend about the Rennaissance in Italy. In it were the complaints of women married to nobles who were pedophiles, with details about the Pope himself doing the same thing. It was an older book and not religious at all, not anti-Catholic. It was neutral, just described the way the wealthy and powerful lived, and didn't even condemn them, simply said what went on, just as English history details the life of Henry the Eighth, not pretty reading, anymore than accounts of the French Revolution were.
We were talking about things that I found depressing about modern life. He gave it to me and said he wanted me to know that in that period of great creativity and change, there were problems there, too. That people do all sorts of things, no matter who they were.
I think Americans were sold a narrow view, prejudiced view, especially in the Reagan era. Yes, they blamed the excesses of 'free love,' the pill and the struggle for equal rights for gays as contributing to AIDs, babies born out of wedlock, divorces, or not getting married, etc. And they howled that it was costing tax dollars to care for all of them and that there would be chaos but didn't show how well the social safety net they were screaming about promoting some general ickiness, I guess, worked in Europe as they didn't discriminate the way we did.
And goodness knows the conservatives have just gone further down into the cesspool of navel gazing and hatred. I guess in a way it's good some of us are as old as we are and remember a different time. I feel bad for young people brought up into this bigoted religious era that is so knee jerk with so much judging of others instead of honoring equality 'under God.'
They profess we are 'One nation under God,' but forget that means we are all together, too. All of us, and we are not God, no right to condemn each other. Instead conservative religion lords it over the rest of us that they don't approve and that's not right at all. I'm not a Christian any longer but that was my take on the best of religion, that it was a Namaste thing.
If you believe in equality, you want a secular government, that way your rights to believe as you will - or not believe - will be protected by such institutions that don't demand conformity. Which was in the inquistions and pogroms of the past (which seem to be coming back again) that would oppress anyone who dared to not be 'thinking right.' That is the ultimate freedom to think and feel and be what you are. This is being greatly disrespected, just as pedophiles do with children.
Hope the guy gets some time and is barred from ever being around children again.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)No, I'm sure it couldn't have anything to do with the job requirements including the foregoing of anything resembling a normal adult sex life, which, at the very least, might scare off a lot of applicants who are wired for normal adult sex.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)I know at least one of the Boston Diosese pedophile priests was from Canada, working in the very French Canadian area of Bellingham, MA.
There was massive priest abuse in Ireland.
The church is a Massive worldwide version of Penn state, concerned far more with protecting the brand then protecting the children. In fact if it wasn't for the bad press and the financial impact exactly NOTHING would have ever changed here. Rome has spat in the faces of Boston Catholics by cointinuing to give Cardinal Law the elite status of one of 4 Arch Bishops of Rome. That shows how little they truly care about what their organization has been doing for almost 2 thousand years.
Marrah_G
(28,581 posts)There is not ounce of my being that believe the Vatican or the Arch Dioceses of Boston cares one bit about the well being of Catholic children.