With the number of child sex abuse cases exploding all over the world it angers (but doesn’t surprise) me that the Church tries to blame it all on the gays. After all, they need a scapegoat right?
Let’s leave alone for a minute the fact that homosexuality and pedophilia are not linked at all as the Church would want us to believe.
The bottom line is that this institution’s “employees” (the priests) committed crimes against powerless children that scarred them for life and all their superiors did was hide the crimes, silence the victims with fear and shame, and move the perpetrators around to avoid them being caught.
Any CEO of any company that found itself in the same position would have already resigned in shame. Furthermore, any CEO who did as a manager anything similar to what the Pope did when he was a Cardinal, would face criminal charges and would have been immediately ousted by the directors’ board (the College of Cardinals).
Am I the only one who thinks the Pope should admit that the Church covered up its priests’ misdeeds to save face, offer up compensation for the victims, request that all those responsible be defrocked, arrested and punished, and finally resign his post?
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.
The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.
The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle, who pleaded no contest to misdemeanors involving child molestation in 1978.
[…]
The diocese recommended removing Kiesle (KEEZ'-lee) from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.
The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church.
In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle were of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.
[…]
The future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.
Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.
[…]
As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.
In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.
"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.
[…]
More than a half-dozen victims reached a settlement in 2005 with the Oakland diocese alleging Kiesle had molested them as young children.
"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," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims who interviewed the former priest in prison. "When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"
[…]
"When he (Ratzinger) took over I think he was following what was the practice of the time, that Pope John Paul was slowing these things down. You didn't just walk out of the priesthood then," Cummins said.
"These things were slow and their idea of thoroughness was a little more than ours. We were in a situation that was hands-on, with personal reaction."
Documents obtained by the AP last week revealed similar instances of Vatican stalling in cases involving two Arizona clergy.
Yes, you read that right. The same guy they’re now trying to make a saint, Pope John Paul, was just as involved in the conspiracy as everyone else. He was no saint after all.
Sickening.
No comments:
Post a Comment