An abysmal reaction
The Associated Press today reported (click on this post's title) that the judge has accepted the settlement.
The news story ends with this irrationality:
"Vivian Viscarra, 50, who attends Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, said the victims deserve the payout even though it could hurt the [C]hurch's ability to deliver important services.
"'It's making me reevaluate my views of whether people in the ministry should be married. People do have needs,' she said."
Inasmuch as the overwhelming number of molesters were after sodomy with young men and boys, how could anyone think that the molesters would want marriage, or that marriage could deter them from their disordered lusts?
The news story ends with this irrationality:
"Vivian Viscarra, 50, who attends Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, said the victims deserve the payout even though it could hurt the [C]hurch's ability to deliver important services.
"'It's making me reevaluate my views of whether people in the ministry should be married. People do have needs,' she said."
Inasmuch as the overwhelming number of molesters were after sodomy with young men and boys, how could anyone think that the molesters would want marriage, or that marriage could deter them from their disordered lusts?
posted by Quintero at 12:24 PM
17 Comments:
Just conducted an interview with the cardinal. He doesn't seem to think the problem is the seminaries, and no, he doesn't think much of the blame rests with himself. Read the text here:
http://www.insidesocal.com/friendlyfire/2007/07/the_cardinal_speaks.html
I'm convinced the only way to put pressure on the cardinal to resign is for parishioners in L.A. to stop contributing to their weekly envelopes throughout the archdiocese, and to tell their pastors that they won't re-start until the cardinal is gone -- with copies of the letters sent to the Papal Nuncio in Washington.
Can't make out the web site above --- try using tinyurl.com to shrink it down
I disagree with Chris Weinkopf...the cardinal is accepting responsibility and apologizing on behalf of the whole Church for what happened to alleged victims.
Two groups of people get off scot-free in the "blame -game" now going on. The first is the psychologigal community. They have never come forward to say that they gave bishops and religious superiors bum information when they said priests who abused were suitable for ministry again. The bishops listened to these professionals and are now taking all the heat.
The second group is the alleged victims' parents--nobody ever accuses them of "cover-up" yet it is they who could have and should have gone to the police when they discovered the abuse but they didn't. The bishops and religious superiors were not mandated reporters back then and the police needed a victim to turn the case over to the D.A. for prosecution (remember how the first Michael Jackson case crumbled when he paid off the accuser and the accuser then refused to participate?).
For better or for worse, the Church behaved just as families did in these cases. When parents discovered that weird Uncle Louie was abusing their kids, they rarely handed Uncle Louie over to the police...they handled the matter internally, as a family.
If anything good has come out of this scandal, it is that all of us now know better how to react if and when these horrible crimes become known to us as family members or as Church members.
Deliver important "services." Therein lies the problem. This poor woman sees the Church as the deliverer of social services, much like a welfare department. Her comments about the need for a married clergy are indicative of a widespread misunderstanding of a priest's role. There is now no sense of the priest acting in persona Christi to preach the Gospel and offer the Holy Sacrifice.
Anonymous #3: Beautifully said.
I read that quote and was appropriately sickened. "People do have needs." Is this woman calling sodomy with a minor a "need." And does she REALLY think that having a wife would cure a pedophile?
Unbelievable.
As Quintero points out in his post, this scandal had very little to do with pedophilia, even though the media would have us think it did. The media will never describe the scandal for what it was: it was mostly about priests who are homosexuals who would not or could not contain their desire for teenaged boys. "Calling a spade a spade" is too much for our politically correct media...far better to spread inaccuracies about the Catholic Church than to anger the gay community.
Dear Chris,
Thank you for the link to your interview!
Has psychology cured anyone? No Does money cure all wounds? Unfortanely the checkbook speaks volumes to people and the church gotten fleeced. These children were not not victims of pedolphila but some were of their own free will and they could have went to their parents and the police. The church got screwed so that the gay community is not offended.
Dear Karen,
Yes, and to say it another way, how could anybody seriously think that a man who wished he had married a woman would think of boys or youths as somehow a substitute! That is preposterous.
Dear Anonymous 3:21 p.m.,
There was a "No doctrine, no dollars" campaign in Southern California a few years ago! People put slips of paper with that message, instead of money, into the collection.
Dear Anonymous 4:49 p.m.,
As we know, in some dioceses parents did go to the bishop and they got the runaround, or were told the problem would be taken care of, got bullied and threatened with lawsuits or were even actually sued.
So it turns out that going to the police should have been their first option.
Dear Anonymous 4:49 p.m.
Dr. Judith Reisman does fight to publicize the phoniness of the "sexperts."
Dear Anonymous 5:42 p.m.,
Thank you for your beautiful comment!
Dear Q,
I am personally aware of cases in which the Church authorities advised parents that they could file a police report and the Church authorities would assist in the process. The parents said, in essence, "No. We don't want our child to be 'victimized' again by having to tell what happened to police investigators, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and during trials. We just want money for therapy and we want you to take care of the priest so he won't do this again."
In keeping with the pyschological thinking of the time, Church authorities would send the priest for treatment, would be assured that Father was OK after treatment and could be reassigned. As we know now, the treatments didn't work and other kids were victimized.
Church authorities were showing sensitivity towards the victims and their parents by not reporting (they had no legal obligation to do so then), not "victimizing" the child again, as parents put it. Plus, no legal proceedings would have gone forward without the cooperation of the victim anyway.
Yet, the parents who should have gone to the police get no rebuke for "covering up"...the psychologists who said priests were fit for reassignment take no responsibility...bishops and religious superiors get all of the blame.
It is not just or fair.
Dear Anonymous 12:19 a.m.,
One big reason that parents in recent decades have not wanted to press charges is, as you say, that they want to spare their child from having to testify publicly.
But no one seems to know that things were not always this way. The law did not use to force child victims, or rape victims, to be subjected to harsh cross-examination in public and to have their histories made known.
That began to change in 1955, when liberals latched on to the American Law Institute's new Model Penal Code. They persuaded many state legislators to weaken and even abolish laws against many sex crimes, and to give victims less solicitude and protection.
The ALI-MPC, as it became known, was a product of those who wrongly placed credence in the monster Alfred Kinsey's 1948 and 1953 books that fraudulently claimed most normal people had committed sex crimes and deviant acts.
The so-called sex experts who invented sex "therapy" and sex "education" were and are all disciples of Kinsey. The U.S. bishops were crazy to believe them, if they really did.
Look up Dr. Judith Reisman and her Institute for Media Education. She has written columns for WorldNetDaily.com about these things. (Naturally, the sex lobby hates her and maligns her.)
Post a Comment
<< Home