That a millstone were hanged about his neck
Behold the deep compassion of the Irish Catholic church.
[T]he Catholic Church in Dublin operated a jurisdiction within a jurisdiction based on one consistent rule: protect the institution at all costs. Those costs included the exposure, and indeed sacrifice, of vulnerable children, again and again, to predatory abusers…The Dublin inquiry has involved a sample of 46 priests and 19 bishops, including four archbishops. From what is known, its findings are damning. Bishops in Dublin moved priest abusers around from parish to parish, again and again, in most instances informing no one in the parishes, even its priests, of the newcomer’s proclivities. In most such instances, too, they moved the abuser priests into poorer, working-class areas, where people were more trusting and less likely to ask questions and where, as elsewhere, it was the children of the most devout who were taken advantage of.
Clever – but not noticeably compassionate. ‘Let’s see: how do we protect ourselves? I know – we do the dirty work in places where people are the least likely to challenge us and the most likely to let us do whatever we like on the grounds that we are god’s ambassadors on earth. In short we take advantage of poverty and inadequate education to allow those of us who like to sexually molest children stay out of prison, avoid exposure, and…not that we are happy about this, but it can’t be helped…still have the ability to molest children. God will surely smile in approval as we protect His church from exposure and shame at the expense of credulous human beings and their unfortunate children.’
Has any member of the Catholic hierarchy ever offered a reason for their policy of transferring priests instead of isolating and/or defrocking priests or better yet turning them over to the police? I would like to hear how they rationalized putting thousands of children in harm’s way
It would make us look bad? We’ve got away with it so far? We move in mysterious ways?
@Michael
The only excuse I have heard them make is that it wasn’t illegal to rape children when the scandals occur, it was just immoral. As such it was an intra-church issue. I’m not joking.
Thus we see that without god there is no morality.
As an Irish person who was raised in a catholic family I have always assumed that there was one specific reason why the catholic church treated abusive priests in this way. That reason was a doctrinal one – namely the fact that any sins confessed in the confines of the confessional box were deemed to be private and were to be kept between the priest hearing the confession, the priest confessing and presumably in their mind, God.
In other words an abusive priest could make himself immune to police involvement if he confessed his role in acts of child abuse to another member of the clergy in the confession box. In order to keep the confession secret the clergy would be forced to deal with his crimes as with other ‘sins’ – in other words the abuser would be asked to complete some act of penance and then be ‘forgiven’ by God and by the church.
While forgiveness is a useful tool in many situations it isn’t the case with serial molesters.
Presumably an abusive priest couldn’t make himself immune to police involvement as such, by confessing, but rather could bind all his colleagues to not collaborating with the police – and even, apparently, to actively evading them. Right? The police could still act independently, it’s just that the church felt entitled to declare itself exempt from any duty to turn the priest in – or even, apparently, do anything to stop him abusing more children, and more. (No doubt they prayed that he would stop, or lit candles to that effect, or something.)
@OB
My understanding is that that confidentiality in a confessional would only be between the one confessing and the one hearing the confession. And I was under the impression that confession was once per action, you would not pull each member of the clergy to listen to your confession of sins in turn.
This shielding has nothing to do with any privilege regarding what is spoken in confession (which I do not believe is recognized legally, but I know little of Ireland). It is giving far too much leeway to batty beliefs to even consider such an argument, as it is widespread and involved the upper echelon of the church instead of only individual priests. Regardless, now that it is clear what happened every person involved should be facing criminal charges.
While I suspect that confessional policy was instrumental in the shielding of abusers I think other factors were also at play here. This probably included a reluctance by the police to interfere in ‘church business’ and a misguided belief by the hierarchy that sexual abuse of children was akin to a priest having an affair with a woman parishioner and thus amenable to solving by simply moving him away from the current ‘temptation’.
“God will surely smile in approval as we protect His church from exposure and shame”
With the help of all the cra-thumpers, the pillars of society, who will draw a ring around them so as to keep them fiercely secure from the evil grip of the poor and inadequate.
The Church must be protected at all costs from the snares of the devil and his evildoer witch-hunters and it will be the fervent church-goers and its underground conservative organisations who got/get good education, good jobs and good innings from it – who will continue to heavily invest in it and keep the church safe.
One has only to look at the people behind the Christian Brothers trust fund to see that they are all from the higher echelons of Irish society.
at the expense of credulous human beings and their unfortunate children.’
Surely having a sexual relation with a minor (even a heterosexual one) has been illegal for many years in western jurisdictions? And do priests not have a legal obligation to report serious crimes that come to their attention? If that conflicts with the confidentiality of the confession, that’s a problem they’ve created for themselves by choosing to believe Catholicism (and they have passed its consequences onto the victims).
IIRC the Pope obtained some kind of US legal immunity from GW Bush.
There is a good side to it all though:- their image has suffered very badly.
Prosecute the lot of them.