Meanwhile, even as the Roman Catholic Church is losing members, the hierarchy's cover up of the sexual abuse of minors continues to remain in the media, albeit not as much as deserved. The latest expose involves testimony that Cardinal Roger Mahony (pictured at left) covered up sexual abuse and ordered subordinates to not report it to authorities. It is beyond ironic that the Church is spending millions of dollars to defeat CIVIL marriage rights for NORMAL same sex couples in states across the country even as it continues to try to cover up for pedophiles and their enablers in the hierarchy in lawsuits brought by victims of sexual abuse by priests. Hypocrisy doesn't begin to describe the situation. Here are some highlights from the Los Angeles Times:*
The former vicar of clergy testifies under oath that Cardinal Roger Mahony ordered him in 2000 not to contact police about allegations of sexual abuse by a priest. In deposition papers filed Friday as part of a civil case, Msgr. Richard Loomis also testified that Mahony ordered him not to inform parishes of allegations against the now defrocked Rev. Michael Baker.In 2007, Baker was sent to state prison for 10 years after his conviction on molestation charges. He has been called before a federal grand jury investigating how the archdiocese handled priest abuse cases.Loomis is on leave from the archdiocese after also being accused of sexual abuse.
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Manly said in an interview Friday that, "because of Cardinal Mahony, they never called the police until 2002."In a 2002 interview, Baker told The Times that he had informed Mahony in the 1980s that he had sexually abused children. "I told Mahony I had a problem," Baker said.Mahony allowed Baker to remain active in the archdiocese and sent him to a New Mexico treatment center. Later, Baker was assigned to other parishes and, according to court records and interviews, abused other boys.
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John Aravosis at America Blog correctly sums up what in my mind is the only way the Catholic Church will ever be forced to impose accountability on the enablers and those who covered up for pedophiles:
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At what point does this stop being a church and start being a criminal conspiracy? We are talking pedophilia here. And it's clear that this "church" never quite got the message that raping children is a bad thing. The fact that these perverts who protected these other perverts remain in power in the church speaks volumes about the level of moral corruption in the Catholic leadership.
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Just how many children have to be raped before the Catholic leadership in America and Rome take pedophilia seriously? Maybe it's time we added prison sentences for the enablers as well.
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The thought of some of the pompous blowhards who make up the Church hierarchy sitting in prison cells is a wondrous vision to contemplate - especially when there are many in prisons right now who have done less heinous things than these bishops and cardinals - and dare I say Pope.
1 comment:
All of this is awful and lamentable, and crimes are crimes are crimes and should be reported. There is no question about that. The Catholic Church is broken, and does not realize how broken it is.
That having been said, one must keep perspective, and must try to analyze exactly what happened in order to make sure that it doesn't happen again. The continued use of the word "pedophile" obfuscates more than it illuminates. Of all the sexual abuse by priests - and there have been thousands - very few are pedophiles. That is to say, very few involved pre-pubescent children. Most of these cases were iphebophilic - the sexual abuse of youths who were past puberty but were legally underage. That doesn't make it right, but it does identify the problem: randy and frustrated priests preyed on teens, mostly kids in their mid to late teens. And that, while awful, is not pedophilia.
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