The church’s tender concern for children
Well damn. As Andy Gilmour reminds us in a comment on the last post, the Archbishop’s record on concern for children isn’t what it might be. Isn’t so flawless that he is really the ideal person to be saying what kind of person should be ruled out in advance from eligibility to adopt children. Maybe he really ought to worry about gay couples less given that he did such a bad job of worrying about a priest before.
One of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church in England and Wales has defended his decision to allow a known paedophile to continue working as a priest, despite warnings he would re-offend. A BBC investigation found evidence suggesting Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O’Connor ignored the advice of doctors and therapists that Father Michael Hill would carry on assaulting children.
It may have been just a case of compassion, of believing that the priest had changed and ought to have another chance, but even then, the Archbish could have erred on the side of caution out of concern for children and givent the priest another chance in a different kind of job. But he also, according to the BBC, ignored advice.
Documents seen by the BBC suggest the archbishop ignored the advice of doctors and therapists who warned that Hill was likely to re-offend. Archbishop Murphy-O’Connor has now agreed that boys abused by the priest should receive compensation, but as part of the settlement they were required not to speak publicly about what happened.
What right does the church have to set conditions? And how does the church square that with its vaunted conscience and its boasted principles? Why doesn’t it put the children ahead of its own interests? Why in this case didn’t it simply prostrate itself in guilt and remorse and sorrow and do everything it could to make amends, rather than making conditions and silencing the victims?
In short, what principles? What conscience?
A BBC News investigation in 1999 revealed evidence that some Catholic bishops in the UK were failing to follow the church’s child protection guidelines, allowing priests accused of child abuse to continue working. Since 1994 the Catholic Church has had strict rules in place which state that if a complaint is made against a priest, social services should be informed and the priest removed from parish duties.
Err…
Well, I know “googlebombs” are childish, and that Google has recently tweaked its algorithm to defuse a lot of them, but I am relieved and rather proud to say that my anti-Cardinal Cormac bomb is still “live” a year and a half after I set it. I can’t even remember what inspired it – something he said about the rights of embryos, I think, which didn’t sit well with his paedophile-protecting past.
Anyway, type “vile hypocrite” into Google and hit the “I’m feelling lucky” button to take you straight to the top result. :-)
I think one of the things he said was particularly condemnatory of a certain type of religious mindset.
“We were not aware at that time of [paedophilia’s] addictive nature”
So what exactly would be his motivation for abusing children (I think it is relatively safe to assume that an orientation towards children would count as ‘addictive’)? Surely it’s worse if he was doing it just because? I wonder what kind of assurances they were given that he was a “reformed character”? I’m personally not convinced that they would reflect that the church had “acted sensibly, wisely and responsibly” – if they did then why are they trying to silence the victims. The mind boggles at how religious men who are supposedly paragons of virtue can be so underhanded, deceptive, evasive, dishonest, and morally lax generally.
I recall that the vatican investigations into abuse by priests lead to the pope banning the ordination of men with “deeply rooted homosexual tendencies”.
But single homosexual men are ok to adopt children?
This theological stuff is way too difficult for me.
What raises my blood pressure in the story is “as part of the settlement they were required not to speak publicly about what happened.”
OB commented on that but it really deserves mile-high headlines in flaming red. It isn’t just the right to set conditions which no one ought to concede to the church. They’re insisting the settlement function as hush money. Even when they admit responsibility to the extent that they’ll financially compensate, they are adamant that they merit their misdemeanours being hidden from public view! Even more than material compensation, what the church owes its victims is the most public acknowledgement of what they suffered at the hands of its priests. The attitude they’re showing is a pretty precise reflection of the way some paedophiles are often portrayed as treating their victims (when they haven’t been exposed, that is), offering them toys, chocolate, new clothes, whatever it takes, as long the child agrees not to tell anyone about “our little secret.” By imposing that kind of condition, the church is doing the opposite of saying sorry; it’s perpetuating the abuse on a grand scale. It isn’t, after all, usually the physical side where the damage is done; it’s the scar of carrying around the secret and the church doesn’t want to budge an inch on that. Bastards.
Sometimes the way people carry on anyone would think the only thing Catholics ever do is burn homosexuals and rape children. Perhaps someone could find out:
1) what are the comparative statistics for secular-based organisations dealing with children vs church-based ones, for convictions for paedophile activities?
2) What proportion of out-of-court settlements contain terms other than handing over the money, such as ‘full and final settlement’ and ‘both parties withdraw from further legal action or public comment’? Those kind of terms are a normal way to limit harms to both parties.
Yeah – you’re right, Stewart, I didn’t make enough noise about the silencing. And it’s so damn typical, too. They’re not concerned about children*, they’re concerned about each other. It’s the same with Goldenbridge – they’re way more worried about colleagues than they are about the former inmates of Goldenbridge.
Where do they get off ‘requiring’ the children not to speak publicly about what happened? Bastards.
*The hierarchy, I mean, not the people who actually run the agencies, who I gather are concerned, good at follow-up help, etc.
(Declaration of interest: I am not a catholic, but I know some)
OB, didn’t make enough noise about silencing? I thought that was the strongest point you made.
Strngest, interestingly, rhymes with wrongest.
It is utterly normal for an out-of-court settlement to restrict both parties from speaking publicly on the matter in exchange for the agreed sum. It is called a contract, and it is voluntarily entered into.
Confidentiality limits the harm either party does to the other in future, and lets not forget that rape victims themselves can be treated worse by legal process than by rapists.
It doesn’t prevent anyone, eg yourself, from using the incident to push for social change in any way you want.
ChrisPer: “Strngest, interestingly, rhymes with wrongest.”
Especially when its spelt correctly.
“anyone would think the only thing Catholics ever do is burn homosexuals and rape children”
No. But particular Catholics have been saying a great deal in the past few days about principle and conscience. The point here is that their claims to principle and conscience look pretty pathetic when held up next to their practice, as do their claims to be concerned for children, as do their dronings about family. In fact pretty much everything they’ve been saying looks pathetic. That’s why it came up, remember?
“Those kind of terms are a normal way to limit harms to both parties.”
But they’re not supposed to be ‘normal,’ they’re not supposed to be ordinary or average or worldly, they’re not supposed to be cautious or self-protective, they’re not supposed to be selfish and calculating; they’re supposed to be people of conscience and principle and conspicuous, extra, tender compassion for children. That does not match up well with first turning a paedophile priest loose on children for a second time and then extorting silence from the victims. Does it now.
Nor does the settlement, so far as I know, limit your ability to frame the terms of your argument in a fair-minded way.
Their duty is the care of every person under their authority including the victims and the other millions they are accountable for. Their ability to fulfil that duty depends on the organisation surviving, and dealing appropriately with the issues as they present. Your moral outrage seems to be demanding behaviour which would seriously damage their duty to others than the victims.
‘Extorting silence’ implies that force or threats are used. At this stage I assume that traditional procedures along this line were not followed; rather they paid for agreement to silence. Would the victim benefit from less silence? Given that the report itself is in the media, it seems that the benefits to possible future victims should have already been gained by the exposure.
Look there are plenty of reasons to think that the archaic RCC is the last group of people one should look to for moral anything.
It may be said the RCC has had it’s hand in assisting or causing more human misery than perhaps any other single organization that humanity has ever produced. It happens to alot of organizations when they start putting rules ahead of people.
My real question is why would any ADULT human being give him/herself over to the authority of another individual on these matters. Exactly why would a ‘pope’ have more knowledge than you yourself do on most issues? And if you an adult and actually believe another human may be infallible on anything frankly your simply a sucker no different than those who fork money over to supposed psychics and other assorted charlatans.
It amazes me people actually support these notions AND give their hard earned money to a group of people who have spent millions covering for pedophiles.
And the funny thing is it wasn’t a year or two ago that I read a paper written by a priest lamenting the fact that the RCC was becoming a haven for homosexuals. I suspect there may be some serious self denial going on among many RCC priests.
“Their duty is the care of every person under their authority including the victims and the other millions they are accountable for.”
Care? Care? What care? What are you talking about? They’re a church, not a giant global hospital. What do you mean duty? What duty? Assigned by whom? Who are all these millions they have a duty to care for that they would be unable to fulfill if they failed to silence the victims of their own negligence and self-concern? What do you mean under? What do you mean under their authority? What do you mean accountable? What on earth can you mean ‘accountable’? When have they ever been accountable? Have you read Marie-Therese’s article? Or the testimony of the sisters who worked there? And what is this ‘under their authority’ nonsense, anyway? They’re not a monarchy, not any more; no one is under their authority.
“Their ability to fulfil that duty depends on the organisation surviving, and dealing appropriately with the issues as they present.”
What ability? To fulfill what? What duty? What do you mean ‘dealing appropriately’? What issues? What issues does the Catholic church ever deal with appropriately?
“rather they paid for agreement to silence.”
Yes we know. And they shouldn’t have. They should have apologized without reservation and with all the energy they could muster, and they should not have paid a penny for agreement to silence.
What a pompous load of sycophantic old garbage. Yuk.
I agree with OB.
‘Their duty is the care of every person under their authority including the victims and the other millions they are accountable for.”‘
I would submit, as previously mentioned, that who submits willingly to such a dubious ‘authority’ is no different than anyone taken by charlatans and purveyors of superstition anywhere.
I doubt Jesus would find much to be pleased about with the RCC.
“I doubt Jesus would find much to be pleased about with the RCC”
Maybe, and by their lights he will sort them out himself :-)
The thing about the contract and the obligation not to speak out is as ChrisPer says: a contract. That type of thing is often used. However, it doesn’t preclude our criticising these damnable people for wanting such a clause. That’s the crime – actually making use of the legislation that allows them to draw up such a contract instead of waiving their right to call for silence in such a contract.
ChrisPer
“”Extorting silence’ implies that force or threats are used. At this stage I assume that traditional procedures along this line were not followed; rather they paid for agreement to silence. Would the victim benefit from less silence? “”
Yes they would. Everybody would.
On a different tack, remember below the threat of ‘gay rights martyrs’? What we need is ‘priest abuse martyrs’, people to speak out in defiance of a paid agreement to keep quiet, an ‘extorted silence’. The church would then have to bring an action to recover the money. I’d like to seem them get that past a Human Rights Court.
Please note that I am clearly labelling this as hearsay in advance, but it is illuminating as to what Catholics believe about their church: my own personal hotline to things Catholic (who formally left the church a few years ago), when I mentioned this issue to her, said (paraphrase) “Everyone knows that almost everyone in the Vatican is homosexual.”
(Almost by the way, can anyone confirm what she told me a while ago about Catholic priests and monks with illegitimate children: that the church’s policy is to provide financial support for the first three?)
For some reason it appears acceptable to note (first post in this list) to call O’Conor a vile hypocrite, but not the L-word: – erm – why?
But I must admit, I am completely unsuprised by the “moral” stance of the church on this. It is merely part of their normal blackmail poicy, as is their gross hypocrisy (first post again) over fertilised, but non-implanted embryos that do not succeeed – called abortions by most people, which outnumber live births, but which they carefully never speak of.
Incidentally, I don’t know if it this will work, or alternatively go to “listen again” for the Today programme on Radio4 on the BBC web-site, and click on “thought for the day” for Saturday…
Link here, perhaps:
0745 Thought for the Day with Catherine Pepinster, Editor of The Tablet. – which doesn’t look like it has taken…..
However, it should reduce most rational people to incoherent spitting fury.
It was a truly disgusting collection of mealy-mouthed half-truths, evasions and erm – well, you know ……
Oh, Tingey, you know it has nothing to do with whether an L-word is applicable or not. The only point to consider is that if a summons is sent, it won’t be sent to you, it’ll be delivered to JS. So, out of common courtesy, no what matter else is at stake, you make sure it can’t happen. If you insisted on displaying a banner saying so and so was an [L-word], would you hang it from your own balcony or do it from someone else’s (without prior permission)? Or, to put it another way, if you permitted someone to hang a banner from your balcony, on condition certain words were avoided, how would you feel and what would you do if they used precisely those words? You’re not a stupid person, why don’t you get that?
Thank you Stewart.
Mr Tingey – I really don’t see what’s so difficult to understand here.
Calling people “liars” is actionable in the UK (not least it is an argument about motivation which is very hard to demonstrate).
The mere *threat* of legal action would cause me huge difficulties because of contractual things (TPM is legally a partnership; I have personal liability). I own and pay for the B&W server and domain name, consequently, I’m responsible for the content.
So whilst you’re on here I’m kind of like God. OB is a minor deity, as well, obviously.
More to the point, someone said:
“anyone would think the only thing Catholics ever do is burn homosexuals and rape children”
Actually they have burnt HERETICS, and murdered protestant heads of state, and still withold painkillers and medicines from suffering people, and interfere with the insides of women’s bodies.
You’re welcome, JS. On James Randi’s website, I notice he will sometimes make a point of labelling a statement “a deliberate, knowing lie.” This, presumably, is to goad the source into suing so the truth can be established in court (the people Randi wants to fight usually avoid coming to him, so he adopts an attitude of “outreach” – which I understand has just become considerably more aggressive). When I have been faced with such situations, I have usually let it go at saying a statement or claim is false or untrue. This doesn’t weaken my case; it merely leaves open the possibility that the person in question believes what he/she says, whether due to misinformation or delusion.
We have had a lot of this in Australia too – historic child abuse and witch-hunts against the hapless senior staff who were in the job when some paedophile was found out. Also when someone made false accusations, as happened in the case of Australia’s Governor General who was hounded from office a couple of years ago.
It became very clear that the apoplectic hatred incited by the media was a great injustice, perhaps worse than the original crimes – if the original crimes actually occurred. I am guessing you have read Richard Webster’s articles on this too. His submission on similar fact evidence was a marvel of clarity.
We also just had a double murder here – a man and a woman killed two people for being ‘rock spiders’, paedophiles. Don’t know whether they were right – but their crime is justified in the same kind of anger you license for yourselves. I once heard a woman ex-prisoner talking about turning her life around and it was clear that despite her changed life, one kind of person was excluded from grace or mercy in her eyes – paedophiles could even be killed without compunction.
Did you read that article, on B&W or at A&L Daily about four years ago saying that an anti-paedophile riot in the UK was by people who themselves raised their children in sufficient deprivation that it could be called child abuse. People need to know that however bad you are yourself someone else is a worse person. The modern way to do that is to incite hatred of paedophiles.
I don’t trust your anger, your manipulative framing of the argument, or your far from primary media sources who incite hatred and violence with their self-righteousness.
ChrisPer – it’s about materiality and scale isn’t it ? If the proven systemic covering up of child abuse by the RCC over several decades doesn’t warrant the organisation being held up for accountability, compensation what does ? And furthermore why should anyone listening to their moralising when they are on occasion a demonstrably less than moral institution, not raise their significant failures ?
You aren’t the church, you are an individual affiliated to a church after all.
ChrisPer,
But why did this come up? Because a Catholic archbishop is demanding an exemption from equal rights regulations in order to go on excluding gay couples from consideration for adoptions, citing ‘principle’ and ‘conscience.’ I don’t trust his ‘anger’ and ‘manipulative framing of the argument’ and I also don’t trust his putative conscience or principle. That’s why the paedophilia issue came up.
Can you quote anything from my ‘far from primary media sources’ that ‘incite hatred and violence with their self-righteousness’? The only media source I cited was a BBC article which seems to me to be quite calm and quite unlikely to stir up lynch mobs.
I realize paedophilia is a great source of moral panics, but apart from anything else the issue here is not the paedophilia itself but the archbishop’s little mistake in restoring the priest to his former job, and the church’s silencing of victims.
Your tone is pretty dang self-righteous and manipulative, you know, with all that drivel about care and under authority and duty.
I don’t trust your Christian rage or your far from careful use of language.
CICA Artane 2006 Phase III
Q. Can I just ask you
just two things I want to deal with very quickly. Just in terms of the number of detected instances of abuse that are referred to in your statement relative to number of Brothers in Artane, did you think that the numbers were extremely high? I mean, do you have a view on the proportion of Brothers who were in Artane who you had discovered were guilty of sexual abuse? Do you know what the numbers are, first of all?
A. I should but I don’t. But I think it was something in the region of 200 and something, but I can’t put a figure on it. That’s in the 30-year period I am talking about.
So abuse in Ireland is/has just been in the imagination of ex detainees?
Has it also just developed from inadequate counselling, say like FMS?
ChrisPer,
Seeing as how I’m the one who dredged all this anti-Cardinal O’Conman stuff up, let me clarify. My disgust at the successful career of, and ridiculous claims to moral authority by this steaming hypocrite of a supernaturalist is based on some simple facts. Facts which are uncontested by old CMOC:
In 1985, when he was bishop of Arundel & Brighton, he shifted one Father Michael Hill to the chaplaincy of Gatwick airport after he finally decided to act with regards to Hill’s paedophile activities. In 1997, Hill was finally jailed for 5 years after admitting a string of further offences. He was later convicted (in 2002) of 6 more offences committed during the 1969-87 period. O’Conman thought that apologising, and saying he’d made a “grave mistake” was sufficient.
But of course. How could he EVER have expected that there would be kids, and opportunities to abuse them, available to a known long-term paedophile at an airport, when perhaps turning the guy over to the police in the first place (rather than sending him for “counselling”) might have done more good in the long run, eh? Damn shame the police couldn’t find enough direct evidence at the time to charge CMOC with perverting the course of justice.
There are, of course, other cases in which it is alleged that CMOC was directly involved in turning a blind eye, but I think the rather definite one of Father Hill makes the point sufficiently on its own.
Turning this into some kind of “everyone-hates-the-catholics” or “you’re-all-just-out-to-get-the-christians” issue on your part is a particularly poor way of failing to deal with the central issue, now isn’t it?
ChrisPer
“The person who did a poor job of preventing repeats, in a position where that is the institutional failing, gets condemnation not offered the actual criminal.”
So people in an organisation that has been handing down dictates to everybody as to what is right or wrong behaviour for the past 2000 years cannot be blamed for making a simple mistake over something like this. How were the poor naive things to know that working to hide the crimes was wrong?
I expect that if senior people in my local education authority are dicovered to have kept quiet over serially abusing teachers and shipped them off to the scottish highlands unbeknown to the police, they will be forgiven. After all, they are not even in the business of claiming moral authority over humankind, let alone have 2000 years experience behind them.
BTW, we do not throw people in the slammer until their dicks drop off here in the UK(maybe they do where you are), neither would such a thing be done to church officials, though I admit, the thought is tempting.
Furthermore, ChrisPer, that is a very tendentious (to put it euphemistically) version of what I said. So tendentious that it frankly pisses me off. I said:
“It may have been just a case of compassion, of believing that the priest had changed and ought to have another chance, but even then, the Archbish could have erred on the side of caution out of concern for children and given the priest another chance in a different kind of job.”
I realize it could have been compassion, and I said that – I said it because I realize it, and I think it matters. And as for the benefit of hindsight point, did you also miss the part where the BBC said there was evidence that he ignored advice at the time? Not hindsight, you see; contemposight.
“I think its bloody fascinating that some get so hot under the moral collar about this ‘hypocrisy’ and use such loaded language. The person who did a poor job of preventing repeats, in a position where that is the institutional failing, gets condemnation not offered the actual criminal.”
Because (how many times do you need this explained, exactly? could you just print it out and then refer to it, and save me the trouble of typing it over and over?) that same person is now seizing the moral high ground and talking about principle and conscience and care for children. That is the same person. Do you see? It’s the same guy. Not a different one. The same. The point is that there is at least a good possibility that he was more anxious to protect a fellow priest than he was to protect the priest’s potential victims; that makes his claims of principle and conscience in aid of discriminating against gay couples at least suspect.
I will put that in my pipe and smoke it a while.
Exactly Ophelia.
The church was, and is, only concerned with protecting its’ own power.
That is one of the reasons religion is so vile.
G. I could as easily (and more truthfully) say that about the Democrat senatorial class, or politicians in general, or NASA management; unsupported post-modernist irony, is it?
ChrisPer, stop talking more codswallop than you can cram into one sentence.
… “the Democrat senatorial class, or politicians in general, or NASA management” …
Are short-term organisations.
Short-term, in that they are very unlikely to last, in coherent form, more than, say 5 or 6 human lifetimes.
The RC church has been following its’ consistent policy of moral and physical blackmail since at least the adoption of christianity by Constantine.
And, it wouldn’t be more truthfully, either.
Just this once, I’m going to be charitable, and assume that you were not thinking straight when you typed that – we all do it from time to time.
But religions (the RC in this case) not only protects its own power, as organisations tend to do, but are doing it “for you own good/to save your soul/because “god” tells us to/etc” – in other words all the usual lies and deceptions that religions play on their gullible followers, and to overawe the rest of us.
No, it wasn’t any sort of post-modern irony, and you know it.
I believe Ophelia noted that you seemed especially concerned about the RC church – well it won’t wash.
And I suggest you re-read all Ms O’Loughlin’s posts on the vileness that is “Rome”.
ChrisPer, that was not the best of comparisons to make; none of those you mentioned have explicitly set themselves up in the business of caring for the souls of mankind. There are things we do not expect from politicians (or scientists) that we have a right to expect from an organisation that claims to be ultimately concerned with non-temporal values. The wealth that the church has sat on for many centuries without redistributing it is at odds with that claim (just as it is with cults whose members give all their possessions to the “leaders”).
Comparison would only be fair if it is with those making similar claims and demanding similar treatment.
Metaphors do make rhetoric more than they make logic, don’t they?
Here is something that challenges ny assumption that gay male adopters were qualified:
Liam Lucas was just one of the children abused by predatory paedophiles who took advantage of far-Left Islington Council’s childcare policies in the Eighties and Nineties, when it pro-actively recruited gay social workers.
Paedophiles exploited its well-intentioned commitment to equal opportunities and soon most of Islington’s 12 children’s homes had child molesters on the staff who cynically pretended to be ordinary homosexuals. Numerous children and other staff made allegations of abuse, but were branded homophobes and ignored.
Liam – now 29, in a permanent relationship and the proud father of year-old Isabella – was even falsely classified as gay by Islington social services, which decided he should be fostered only by single men.
…
Liam Lucas was just one of the children abused by predatory paedophiles who took advantage of far-Left Islington Council’s childcare policies in the Eighties and Nineties, when it pro-actively recruited gay social workers.
Paedophiles exploited its well-intentioned commitment to equal opportunities and soon most of Islington’s 12 children’s homes had child molesters on the staff who cynically pretended to be ordinary homosexuals. Numerous children and other staff made allegations of abuse, but were branded homophobes and ignored.
A lengthy investigation by The Mail on Sunday’s sister paper, the London Evening Standard, resulted in government-ordered inquiries, but at least 26 members of Islington social services staff, despite being accused of grave offences, were simply allowed to resign, often with glowing references.
Mr and Mrs Cairns and their foster son Liam were so concerned by the ‘rigidity’ of the current debate about adoption and equal opportunities for gays, and the invisibility of children’s needs, that they have decided to go public.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23383308-details/A+foster+mother+pays+tribute+to+the+Archbishop+of+Canterbury%2527s+compassion/article.do
ChrisPer,
Excellent. Finally a coherent and objective reason why the RCC should oppose gay adoption. Because gay adoptees are more likely to sexually abuse children than are straight adoptees or the staff of institutions. Because gay = paedo. Now all we need is the evidence.
Except that is not an argument being made by the church. Indeed they avoid it meticulously, preferring to waffle about respect, acceptance and conscience. In the 80’s Islington council was lax in keeping paedophiles out of social work. Therefore gays make bad parents.
Almost all sex offenders are male. Many victims, not only of abuse but also of commercial sexual exploitation by those charged with their care, are female. Many exploiters are actually indifferent to the gender of their victims.
Fred and Rosemary West would presumably have passed muster as adoptive parents. Stephen Fry and partner wouldn’t. If I were ever faced with the hideous necessity of giving up a child, I know which I would prefer.
As you say, they assiduously skate around saying gay=paedophile, possibly because they don’t think it. Maybe they know that a dangerous subset of gay is paedophile and you can’t tell which by looking.
And of course, an eight-year-old (when adopted) is thirteen rather quickly, at least to a parent. I have been told that it isn’t paedophilia then.