The Atheist Sex Scandal Part 3

So now we’ve looked at both the sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church and within the atheist movement. So now lets look at how the Catholic Church has responded to the allegations, both positively and negatively.
I’ll begin with the higher-up’s within the Church. What have the last three Popes done in response to the allegations? Well, “John Paul met with 12 U.S. cardinals and bishops’ conference officers at the Vatican. He told them he was “deeply grieved” by news of clerical sexual abuse and said there was no place in the priesthood or religious life for those who would harm children” back in 2012 http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/vatican-john-paul-ii-took-immediate-action-sexual-abuse. I’d say that this is a positive response: it shows an acknowledgement of something that is wrong and a willingness to put an end to the problem. John Paul was also responsible for a letter to Irish priests stating “’these sinful and criminal acts.’ He asked ‘priests and religious who have abused children’ to ‘submit yourselves to the demands of justice’” http://www.channel4.com/news/pope-benedict-and-sex-abuse-suffer-the-children. This again shows an interest in ending the abuse. However, the same article states that “The report also claimed the Vatican had treated mandatory child protection guidelines as ‘study guidelines.’ A motion was subsequently passed by the Irish parliament, the Dail, accusing the Holy See of ‘undermining child protection frameworks.’” This is worrisome. It suggests that the Pope was merely putting on a show. He was making it look like he was doing something, but then he acted as if his rules to protect children were mere “if it suits your interest” suggestions. The next Pope, Benedict, was a bit more problematic that John Paul. After being made Pope, it came out that “Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as Benedict was then known, failed to dismiss several known abusers” http://www.thenation.com/article/160242/shame-john-paul-ii-how-sex-abuse-scandal-stained-his-papacy#. The last article asked a great question about Pope Benedict as a result of his failure to protect children: “How can any pope be a voice for peace, proclaim the sanctity of life and speak for human rights while giving de facto Vatican immunity to bishops and cardinals who concealed child molesters?” Personally, I was never a fan of Benedict. Ignore the fact that he looked like a sith lord and he was still a fairly scary guy given the things he said about the LGBTQ community. However, Benedict did do something to help end the abuse: “Maciel was not publicly punished until 2006, after John Paul II’s death, when Pope Benedict XVI ordered the priest to a life of penance” http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/vatican-john-paul-ii-took-immediate-action-sexual-abuse. Marciel was a Mexican priest who was under investigation for child abuse. He had been under investigation since the 90’s. As you can see, the two previous Pope’s weren’t in denial about the sex scandal, and they didn’t do nothing. However, the actions that they did take were hindered by their own inaction.
Pope Francis seems to be doing a better job than his predecessors, so let’s take a look at his response to the issue. Well he did have the willingness to actually apologize for the scandal: “Pope Francis said he felt compelled to “personally ask for forgiveness for the damage [some priests] have done for sexually [abusing] children,” the Vatican radio website reports” http://www.christiantoday.com/article/pope.francis.personally.asks.for.forgiveness.for.catholic.churchs.child.sex.abuse.history/36735.htm. I’d say hat that is a point in his favour. He may not have been the one abusing children, but it was and is the job of the higher-up’s within the church to protect the people within it and ensure that any issues get dealt with swiftly and effectively. However, Francis lost that point by then saying “’No-one else has done more [to tackle child sexual abuse]. Yet the Church is the only one to have been attacked.'” No Francis, you don’t get a cookie for doing what your supposed to do. Whether or not the Catholic Church has done more than any other group to stem the abuse within it’s ranks has yet to be seen, but it is obvious that the Church’s efforts have not been as effective as they could be. That’s the real issue: why isn’t the Catholic Church doing everything it possibly can to get rid of the abuse of children? Isn’t it in the Church’s best interest to get rid of it? And getting rid of it publicly can only help it’s cause. Pope Francis has made his actions more public that the other Popes, which is a good thing: “Pope Francis gave another impromptu press conference. Responding to a question on the clergy abuse crisis, he said, ‘At the moment there are three bishops under investigation: one has already been found guilty and we are now considering the penalty to be imposed. There are no privileges’” http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/will-vatican-step-and-hold-bishops-accountable. The same article stated that “The CDF has laicized 848 priests between 2004 and 2013, according to testimony by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the papal diplomat at the U.N. panel examining the Vatican handling of abuse cases last month in Geneva.” So clearly some advances have been made.
Sadly, Pope Francis isn’t the only one who tried to play the “well we’ve done better than everybody else” game. One article stated “Archbishop Tomasi also stated that while it would be ‘very difficult…to find other institutions or even other states that have done so much specifically for the protection of children’ as the Vatican has in recent years, ‘we have to continue to refine, to enact provisions that protect children…so that they may grow and become productive adults in society and their dignity be constantly respected’” http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/2910/un_blasts_vatican_response_to_sex_abuse_updated.aspx. Again, doing better than other institutions is not saying much in your own favour when you are not doing very well yourself. And I don’t really think that the Catholic Church can compete with industrialized nations when it comes to protection of children. Politicians are quickly thrown out of office for so much as getting caught cheating on their wives (while heads of state are harder to get rid of than that, they are still screwed politicly as a result of such scandals). Imagine the reaction to a politician who’d been caught molesting children? Not to mention all the legal protection states offer children. One one website I found this:
“There is no need to reiterate the obvious points that sexual abuse is always a grave moral evil, that it is particularly deplorable in organizations claiming to offer moral leadership, and that it is most deplorable of all in the Catholic Church, which makes unique and unparalleled claims about truth and grace. But I also observe the following:
The prolonged and unremitting secular attack on the Catholic Church for a sexual abuse problem overwhelmingly in the past
The confiscation of the ecclesiastical wealth of the Catholic people (who, in general, have no guilt in this matter)
The changing of statutes of limitations to permit vast financial settlements in cases where the perpetrators are long dead
And the effort to implicate the pope despite the complete absence of evidence
I’ve been fighting an ecclesiastical culture that has permitted consistent abuse of the rights of the faithful, including sexual abuse, for over 40 years. Though hardly alone (Catholic Answers comes to mind), I take a back seat to no one in this. So, if your view of the results of the sex abuse scandal is that the Church is getting exactly what it deserves, I would be sympathetic:
if you could demonstrate any similar effort against other institutions, including public schools, where the rates of abuse are higher than in the Church,
or if guilty priests, religious, and bishops were being held personally responsible rather than the Church as a whole,
or if the same people who are attacking the Church were also calling for a return to sexual self-control and sexual restraint in order to address the problem at its root,
or if those of us who point out the large role homosexuality has played in this abuse were not excoriated for daring to suggest there is anything disordered about homosexuality” http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/three-great-lessons-of-the-abuse-scandal.
“A sexual abuse problem overwhelmingly in the past”? The reason that these cases are in the light today is because the children who were abused are now adults who know what happened to them is wrong and want to fight to end a serious issue. There are current cases, but I bet a lot of the current abuse that’s happening what be found out until the current generation of children are in their adulthood. And even if the abuse is all in the past, does that make the Catholic church less deserving of criticism? They did nothing for 20 years. This wouldn’t be a scandal if they had done something in the very beginning. The Catholic people aren’t losing their wealth. Nobody’s going to Joe Catholic’s home and demanding payment for the court cases. On a side note, the Catholic Church can and does, in some countries, demand payment for church repairs from non-Catholics. They can do this because, in some countries, the Catholic Church owns a certain portion of the land. Most people don’t even know they live on church land until they get a perfectly legal letter demanding funds. So lay-Catholics aren’t being demanded to pay for the churches legal fees (except possibly by the Catholic Church), but non-Catholics are forced to give money to the Catholic Church. There shouldn’t be a statute of limitation on rape and child abuse. The fact that it exists is more problematic than it being extended in certain cases. There is a lot of evidence as to the Pope’s guilt. Not in the form of him abusing children, but in the form of him doing nothing to protect the children in his care. Why should the Catholic Church only be punished if it’s not doing as much as other institutions? Aren’t the priests being held responsible? The Church isn’t being held responsible for the priest’s crime, it’s being held responsible for it’s own crime: failure to act when the sex abuse came to light. Right, because stricter control on sexual behaviour is the healthiest and most reasonable response. How about the Church let’s priests get married? How about they acknowledge the fact that sexuality is healthy and normal? That sounds much better to me. Homosexuality is not a disorder. To say otherwise is to deny the facts. Rather than play blame games, I’d like to see the Church simply acknowledge it’s neglect and then do what it can to eliminate the sex abuse scandal. But for every step they take forward, they seem to take two steps back.
This post has gone on far longer than I intended, so rather than keep going, I’ll just give you some links. Most of these are Catholics defending the church with a mix of more blame game thrown in:
http://www.themediareport.com/fast-facts/

Some Key Misunderstandings Regarding the Child Sexual Abuse Scandal and the Catholic Church

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-05/scathing-un-report-demands-vatican-act-against-child-sex-abuse/5241300
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/false-accusations-of-sexual-abuse-can-leave-lasting-scars/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25757218
http://ncronline.org/news/catholics-america/catholic-reactions-sex-abuse-scandal
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0131.htm
http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/2910/un_blasts_vatican_response_to_sex_abuse_updated.aspx
http://victorvillasenor.com/upcoming/catholic/sexual-abuse/
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse_in_the_Roman_Catholic_Church
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/church-lawyers-bid-to-block-sex-abuse-action-against-priest.24526391
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/pope-francis-begs-forgiveness-of-sex-abuse-victims-1.1901955
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/03/faith-truth-and-sex-abuse
http://www.voanews.com/content/scathing-un-report-demands-vatican-act-against-sex-abuse/1844754.html
http://www.vatican.va/resources/index_en.htm