Priests are supposed to be better than the rest of us, right? They’re supposed to have a special pipeline to god – that’s why they’re priests. It’s not just a job like any other; it’s not something you learn, like plumbing or pharmacy; it’s a magical goddy thing you’re inducted into. Priests are Set Apart; they are Intermediaries between us and the goddy fella.
Bishops are that but more so, and archbishops are that and more so again.
So why would an archbishop not know it’s wrong for adults to rape children? Knowing that is just average, surely; since archbishops are supposed to be way way way above average in the knowing right from wrong department (because of the special link to god), they would surely know it before they had even sent away for their name tapes for priest-school.
But the archbishop of St Louis says he doesn’t know if he knew. He’s just all at sea on the matter.
Carlson, the head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was deposed for a case regarding sex abuse allegations that took place when he was auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis from 1979 until 1994. He investigated those allegations during his time in Minnesota.
During the deposition, which was released Monday, attorney Jeff Anderson asked Carlson if he “knew it was a crime for an adult to engage in sex with a kid.”
“I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not,” Carlson said. “I understand today it’s a crime.”
So back then he may have thought it was ok? He’d have been happy to have told everyone he knew that he (just for example) was raping children every chance he got?
You know what? I don’t believe that. Not for a second. People knew it was a crime when I was a child, two hundred years ago. The archbishop told a whopper. That too is frowned on. The archbishop is not a moral exemplar.
Carlson said he doesn’t recall when he first discerned that it is a crime, but documents released Monday from the law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates in St. Paul tell a different story.
A 1984 document, reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed Carlson’s correspondence with the former archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis about one particular victim. Carlson wrote that the victim’s parents were thinking about notifying the police.
See? That’s what I’m saying. Of course he knew it was a crime. Wrong, and a crime.
The Catholic church seems to be bad for the moral fiber.