It was encouraging that Pope Benedict XVI, writing on the eve of his U.S. visit, said that he was “deeply ashamed” of the church’s clergy sexual abuse scandal, which since 2002 has revealed 5,000 victims and cost the church $2 billion. He vowed to “do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future.” The church, he said, is doing screening to ensure that pedophiles do not become priests.
A large part of the scandal, too, was that some church leaders tried to hide problem priests, moving them from parish to parish instead of removing them from positions of authority.
The pope’s statement is a welcome sign that the church understands the need to openly and directly address the problem.
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It will take quite a bit more than screening applicants to solve the problem; there will have to be major changes in the church’s attitudes toward sexuality, which both promoted the development of a culture of abuse within the preisthood and made it much more difficult for victims to report the abuse.
Isnt this pope one of the church leaders involved in covering up abuse.
I, for one, applaud this “about time” statement from the pope. That has been a serious black eye on the church for too long. I know many Catholics who were and are throughly disgusted with the lack of responsibility shown by the church leaders, especially the ex-bishop of the Archbishop of New York.
That would mean ridding the priesthood of sodomites, Yer Eminence.
So how did it all begun in the first place?
Is it by poor judgment of the church from the very beginning or is the church losing control of its standards of self-preservations.
In my own opinion, I think Nature is very much alive and speaking out (God’s design) and the church sins by trying to go against.
On the other hand, the bible teaches that “if the eye offends thee then pluck it out”.
Maybe the church should rekindle the old arts of eunuchism.
This is a tough issue.
In defense of the Catholic Church, NOBODY really understood this issue, at all, 10 or 20 years ago, when Church officials first tried to deal with it.
Here is a very good link for those who want to really understand what we are talking about:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0534.html
The truth is, Catholic Priests are no more likely to engage in illegal sexual activity than are the clergy of any other religion.
The truth is, Catholic Priests are no more likely to engage in illegal sexual activity than are members of the general population.
The truth is, the “Pedophile Priest” label is not accurate at all. Beyond the fact that only a very, very small percentage of Catholic Priests have heen convicted of any crimes, “Pedophilia” is not an accurate term in the vast majority of the actual, criminal cases.
A “pedophile” is a person attracted to those who have not reached PUBERTY!
In most of the Priest sexual abuse cases, we are dealing with male, HOMOSEXUAL Priests who took advantage of 15, 16 or 17 year old teenage boys.
Very, very few cases involved females of any age.
Yes, this has been a huge disaster, and it was poorly handled by the Church.
Society, at large, has done a poor job trying to understand the problem and society has done a poor job dealing with the problem, in other faiths and in other institutions.
I will note that you hear of very few cases of sexual abuse in the Boys Scouts or in the Girl Scouts!
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