Disgusting. Not just the blatant hypocrisy of excommunicating someone for not being celibate while protecting an admitted child molester, but according to the article, nuns are left vulnerable to coercive pressure and even more blatant types of rape.

I especially loved the part about nuns being considered a safer alternative to prostitutes, especially in light of the prevailing mythology that sex with a virgin will cure STDs.

Don't you hate it when someone quotes an article or an interesting thought but has no idea where it came from? This comment is going to be like that.

As these scandals began to ravage the Western world about ten years ago, someone somewhere said (paraphrase) Listen, we're talking about the Vatican here. They're thinking globally at all times. It's not like Google, who can decide to pull out of China and just concentrate on the other 75% of the world's population.

There's something to this. In Rome, they're serving markets where their product is expressly prohibited by law, and markets where their customers receive no electronic communication anyway, places where illiterate people have no knowledge of how American jurisprudence and sexual mores operate. The Church isn't going to spin into a Tiger Woods-style press-conference tizzy, responding to every sex scandal the way Tylenol did when someone slipped poison into some bottles, or how Jack in the Box handled some bad meat, or how Toyota handled a few "runaway" throttles. The Vatican has been doing Public Relations for millennia.... They've forgotten more about such things than Madison Avenue ever knew. They have to consider how every word applies to every person on the planet.

Anyway, I thought it was a good point, if not a comforting one. MAYBE, maybe this burgeoning scandal means that the typical Western values about fidelity and sexual integrity are taking root over so much of the world that the Vatican can no longer be terse and stoic about such things, compartmentalizing their responses.

I'm looking for a silver lining. Work with me, people.

On the other hand, I have no idea how marriage and fidelity usually work in Zambia.... Do you? Not asking how you WANT them to work... What would a Zambian man on the street [Savannah? Forest? Desert?] think of this story?

Wikipedia: Today the country still faces steep challenges from poverty and AIDS.

Consider this.

Maybe the Catholic approach to sexuality isn't the worst foolishness at work in Zambia.

It is very simple, actually.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger was not the head of the Church (and may not have had the authority to de-frock a priest unilaterally). By 1998, Father Murphy was dead. His crimes were decades old, and, as I understand it, confession and penance had occurred.

In 2010, he is the head of the Church and has the authority to excommunicate. The Priest's behavior was ongoing. It violated doctrine and, it appears, the Priest was not willing to change his behavior.

Apples and oranges.

-Jut

Jut, he could have called the cops.

And while I couldn't find out if a Cardinal could defrock a priest, Ratzinger most definitely had Pope JP II's ear. Some have said that he was in fact making all the decisions while the Pope was serving as a figurehead in his increasing disability.

In short, I do not buy the idea that there was nothing that Ratzinger could have done about this. He isn't called "The Rat" for nothing.

Jut: Maybe but he IS the pope now and has the ability to excommunicate pedo priests. He uses said power to excommunicate a married priest but not the pedos. So no not apples and oranges at all. He clearly holds sex between consenting adults are a more egregious offense than being a pedo.

Really, I hope the Catholic Church implodes in such a spectacular way that the debris can be seen from space.

It's time.

"Jut, he could have called the cops."

Ditto.

"Jut, he could have called the cops." They could always resurrect the inquisition for shit like this. Not only would it be acceptable by cannon law, it would placate the worried parents and put the fear of God (slow torturous death first) into these bastards.

Jut omitted the fact that in 1996, then-Cardinal Ratzinger's office, the CDF, did not have jurisdiction over priest sex abuse cases. Such cases could not have crossed his desk until 2001 when church law was changed to move jurisdiction to the CDF.

Their priorities are perfectly clear: protect the reputation & authority of the Church at all costs. By getting married, Father Mbewe committed a very public act of defiance against the Church, for which he had to be swiftly & severely punished. But if he had raped a nun or molested hundreds of little boys, he would have just been moved to another parish if need be, the victims would have been intimidated or bribed into silence, and the Church would carry on as if nothing happened.

> Their priorities are perfectly clear: protect the
> reputation & authority of the Church at all costs.

Don't be too pompous about it. If you're truly right, being all hard-boiled and cynical will only confuse matters.

If your teenage son threw a rock through a neighbor's garage window and the neighbor got all pissed off and came over to talk to you, would your first "priority" be to do something like 'protect the lives your wife & children and the sanctity of your home from all assualt'?

Of course it would.

"Jut, he could have called the cops."
-Patrick (with a "Ditto" by Sabrina.)

No, he could not have. If, as I understand, those things were revealed in the confessional, there is a privilege issue that arises. You may not like it, but it is there.

Vlad, good effort to change the subject. The article had to do with what the Cardinal did THEN and what the Pope is doing NOW.

I reiterate: "Apples and oranges."

If we were talking about what the Pope is doing NOW about pedophile priests, I might agree with you. But, we are not.
-Jut

I wonder: if some pederasts had been caught and charged for multiple child rapes, escaped custody, went on the lam, and were sheltered by some friends or their employer only to be caught again -- would they and the people who helped them escape and hide be criminally charged?

The answer is yes.

They'd also have to be segregated for their own safety away from the main prison population once they were incarcerated.

Funny, isn't it, that even robbers and murderers can't tolerate a child-raper. How, then, can the Church?

Pope Pedo Protector may not have had the power to kick out the pedo priest, but he dd have the power to stop the investigation and let him live out his live free of criminal or ecclesiastical punishmnet

Breaking news from Los Angeles:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100409/ap_on_re_us/us_pope_church_abuse

"The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the Universal Church", according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature."

"Jut, he could have called the cops."
-Patrick (with a "Ditto" by Sabrina.)

No, he could not have. If, as I understand, those things were revealed in the confessional, there is a privilege issue that arises. You may not like it, but it is there."

Actually, no. He was convicted and actually served probation for it. He should have been disrobed then and there.

Wait, you know what, scratch that. I am thinking of another case.

Vlad: They don't have to "resurrect" the Inquisition for events like this. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - in which Ratzinger served as Prefect - IS the Inquisition, just renamed by Pope Pius X in 1908. Check out "Roman Inquisition" on Wikipedia here, particularly the "See also" column.

From the AP article: "tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory" and "he admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap." There is no *desk* large enough for me to *head* into right now.

Crid, very interesting comment about the Vatican's need to "think globally." I get that the Vatican won't necessarily make a big press show of negative events, and that they do consider worldwide mores and effects; maybe that was the precise reason for Ratzinger's decisive action in the case of Mbewe - i.e., a priest in poor, distant Zambia will probably not make news; a defrocked abuser in America most certainly will. It was a crappy reasoning, to be sure, and one that meant the "good of the universal church" was served by throwing children to a wolf while pretending to be tough on celibacy rules. It amazes me how often throughout history people have acted "for the good of all," while simultaneously committing the most damnable ideas and actions to paper, without considering the "all"'s reaction if those documents ever came to light.

Jut: No, he could not have. If, as I understand, those things were revealed in the confessional, there is a privilege issue that arises. You may not like it, but it is there.

That is incorrect. The privilege of confidentiality in the confessional is null and void when there is harm or threat of harm to someone else.

You think Timothy McVeigh's confessor would have been protected for not revealing that McVeigh planned on blowing up a building? I can assure you, the laws of this land regarding confidentiality would not have protected him.

"He should have been disrobed then and there."

I think the disrobing has been part of the problem.

And see, I was very deliberately not making that joke in my comment... :P

Patrick,
There is a privilege issue when the confession is about the past.
You are right though, there is no privilege for future acts. But, they have to be pretty clear (like your case with McVeigh), not some vague threat to public safety.

And, there is not even repentance if you are planning to carry out the future acts.
But, this guy presumably was confessing for past acts (and genuinely believed that he could refrain from such conduct in the future).

Or, do you think he went in there, confessed his sins, and said, "I am going out to abuse more people"? No, he probably tried not to do it again.

Bottom line: I still think the privilege applies.

-Jut

Jut: Bottom line: I still think the privilege applies.

And you'd still be wrong. Confession to acts of child molestation leaves reason to assume that such acts would be committed in the future.

And even if not, even if there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he would never molest another child, let's carry your assumption, which is an assumption since you've admitted you don't know, to the logical conclusion.

If a man confessed to an unsolved murder, do you think the laws of our land would respect the confessor's soi-disant right to confidentiality? No, it would not even recognize he had a right to confidentiality. Had Timothy McVeigh not been apprehended, do you think he could go to a confessor and admit the crime, and the confessor not be obligated to notify the authorities?

He would not. And failure to disclose the matter would place the confessor in a legally tenuous position.

"No, he could not have. If, as I understand, those things were revealed in the confessional, there is a privilege issue that arises. You may not like it, but it is there."

There is a privilege for past bad acts.

But the point is that the priest should not give absolution until the confessor has made reparations to the victim. That is where the system broke down.

In this case it should have been going to the police and admitting it to them as well. That the confessor wasn't advised that he needed to do this made them bad actors in this case but not legally liable.

Satisfaction

1459 Many sins wrong our neighbor. One must do what is possible in order to repair the harm (e.g., return stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered, pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as much. But sin also injures and weakens the sinner himself, as well as his relationships with God and neighbor. Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused.62 Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin: he must "make satisfaction for" or "expiate" his sins. This satisfaction is also called "penance."

Patrick: "If a man confessed to an unsolved murder, do you think the laws of our land would respect the confessor's soi-disant right to confidentiality?"

Yes. It does. I do expect that Timothy Mc Veigh's attorneys were not required to rat him out. The whole point of the attorney-client privilege or the priest-penitent privilege is that it protects people so that they can admit what they otherwise would not admit.

That privilege disappears when you are dealing with future acts because, at that point, the attorney or priest can (and must, in some cases) act. In actions of the past, there is no stopping them and the attorney or priest can do nothing to stop them.

And, that makes sense. You can not confess to future acts and, thus, the whole purpose of the priest-penitent privilege is gone.

And, to suggest that a priest should know that someone is going to re-offend is NOT a basis for breaching the privilege. If that were true, you could say an attorney should rat out every DWI client he has, because there is a high-rate of recidivism there and the attorney should know the person is going to screw up again.

No, there has to be imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury in order to breach the privilege.

Jim P.: I do not think the system broke down, though. Even assuming that absolution never took place because no reparations were made, that would not abrogate the privilege. The privilege is still there. It protects the communications with the priest, even if the priest does not absolve the person. As long as the person is seeking guidance or penance, the privilege must be protected, even if the person does not succeed in making amends.

-Jut

Jut you areithout a doubt one of the biggest idiots I have EVER met.

You dont think the system broke down?

The guy was permitted to rape hunndreds of disabled children.

And then, only when age stopped him from continueing, he pleads for forgivness in order to secure his position in the chuch so he wont be homless as he dies.

If you think that is how the system should work then you have problems

Remember the 80s?

So my question is, did all these Priests build a hidden tunnel in which they lured the children into satanic orgies?

Just saying, mass accusations have happened before.

In this particular instsance the letters of the preist in question have him confessing

Lujlp,
First of all, we have not met.

Second of all, if I am one of the biggest idiots you have ever "met," you need to get out more.

The Church is not a law enforcement agency and the Church has a role in trying to provide spiritual guidance to people.

Did the Church screw up? Yeah, I think so. It was treating as a moral problem what people now look at as a mental problem. But that does not mean the system broke down.

Is the Church required to have a hotline to the police precinct? Absolutely not!

-Jut

I suppose it depends if Priests are mandatory reporters or not. I know as a teacher I can get into trouble if I don't report abuse suspicions.

But seriously, if it were my kid, I wouldn't wait around for the Church or School or anyone else, I'd file the charges myself. Any parents who knew about the abuse and didn't report it are, IMO, more guilty than the church.

One needs to understand the nature of the Catholic Church to see where these priests see the need to justify their actions.

It is a well known fact that previous popes had mistresses (one actually had her living in the Vatican). Several Popes were the bastard sons of previous popes.

Vows of Celibacy in the Catholic Church are not broken when a priest has sex, vows of celibacy are broken only IF a priest marries. A priest can have all the sex he wants and then can absolve the individual.

There are also indications that nuns are concubines for priests. There are cases where aborted babies and dead babies have been found in nunneries.

This is why the Bible equates the Catholic Church as the Harlot in Revelation called Babylon.

Celibacy should not be forced on any man including priests. The Bible does not place this on priests the Pagan church of Rome does.

The priesthood is attractive to gays for obvious reasons and to child molesters as an easy way to get close to children.