Pedophile priests & enabling bishops belong

[SoCalDem]

in the police stations and courtrooms..NOT ON CSPAN...

This is just the kind of thing that keeps blurring the political/religion line..

I know it's news.. but it was news MONTHS ago..YEARS ago.. Priests are men.. sexually frustrated (and sometimes very creepy) men.. A certain amount of men in our society abuse children..priests and non-priests..

It's a law enforcement issue.. end of story..

The bishops who knew, yet said nothing are equally complicit.. There was a very famous NY case where the wife allowed her husband to abuse and kill their daughter.. She went to jail for NOT stopping it.. Same should apply here.. Hedda Nusbaum was her name..I think :)

All these panels and discussion groups and hearings, are dancing around the salient point.. It's a CRIME !!!!It's not just fodder for political discussions and recommendations.. People need to be prosecuted..people need to be fired..

This whole issue is just being dragged out again, so that the "connection" to deviant sexual behavior of priests can be linked in the brains of the same people who hate homosexuals, and pro-choice people, and people who support gay marriage..

Just like 9-11 is tied to everything ...this is the sideshow for the fundies..

How much have we heard lately about:

Valerie Plame??
AWOL??
WMD lies??
548 dead soldiers??
Postwar Iraq fiasco??

I feel badly for the Catholics who are struggling though this, but it is NOT "news" in the sense that we have "known" for years, and the people who had the power to stop it...didn't.. Call the cops.. press charges..
:grr:

[SlavesandBulldozers]

1. somebody needs

to kick in the doors of the Vatican and arrest everybody. The Parkinson's patient with the pointy-hat included.

[Bridget Burke]

2. These cases should be referred directly to the police.

There are ethically questionable matters of sexual harrassment & relationships with adult parishioners. But molesting the underage--sometimes forceably--is a crime. In the past, the parents were embarrassed & went to the Church with their accusations. Perhaps the offender would be transferred. Perhaps there would be a financial settlement.

It was wrong for the Church authorities not to contact the police but they should not have been in the loop. Legal charges requires proof--false accusations are rare but not impossible--but they are the only way to get the guilty off the streets. The victims may need therapy--hushing things up just leads to problems later on.

[pacifictiger]

3. I think

this culture of pedophilia in the catholic church has probably been going on and hidden for centuries. When you consider that it was fairly common practice for wealthy roman empire citizens to be enamored with young boys, to the documentation that several early popes flagrantly exibited the same distorted homosexual behavior, it makes me wonder whether the pedophile priests of today, were not themselves often abused as children by those who came before them, and so on back for generations. This to me is the only thing that makes sense in explaining the systemic practice and ongoing coverup that only modern media has been able to expose. Has anyone asked? Im sure if it is true, and is known internally by the catholic church they would certainly not want that dirty little secret out as well - that way they can call it a modern day aboration. If it were more it would serve to question the very foundations of the catholic legacy.
One also has to wonder if catholic priests were not banned from marriage, and in addition homosexuality was considered a normal occurance in a certain percentage of the population, (I wonder if Jesus was refering to gays when he said "for there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb" matt 19:12) whether this would have solved the problem?