Interesting piece from my local weekly paper:
http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/hotflash/blogs/post?oid=1390337
Child abuse and cover-ups: What they all have in common
I’ve been fuming all weekend about Pope Benedict XVI’s letter to the Catholics of Ireland, mostly because it’s more of the same. The European nations are just now having the sort of wake-up call that the U.S. had over the last decade.
Instead of acknowledging the role that the Church—and he himself, as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or Holy Office—had in covering up child abuse, moving abusive priests from one parish to another, and swearing abused children to silence rather than turning their abusers over to the cops, ol’ Papa Ratzijust told people not to lose faith.
Well, he also said it was wr-wr-wrong. But it was all on the priests, and no admission of guilt from the church that harbored and enabled them.
Of course, the Catholics would like to (and have been trying to) blame all this on the gays. So sorry, can’t do that. Pedophiles are not gay. There’s plenty of evidence that a desire to rape children is not the same thing at all as a sexual identity that orients one toward consenting adults of the same sex. Read the testimony in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. There’s absolutely no evidence to back up that lovely little prejudice, guys.
You can play the homophobia card all you want, Mr. Pope, but it’s just not gonna fly any more.
Instead, I’ve just got to ask: What makes the situation in the Catholic church different from instances of abuse in other religious groups? Why has the Church insisted on covering up, obfuscating, blaming anyone other than themselves for not reporting pedophiles to the police and protecting children?
Unfortunately, child abuse happens. But rarely does it happen in an atmostphere where it is covered up, silenced, and allowed to go on like it has in the Catholic Church.
In fact, the only similar circumstance that comes to mind is the sexual abuse scandal among Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s not been as widely reported, but there are only about 6 million Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world, and unlike the Catholic Church, they don’t spend a lot of
time trying to influence public policy. (Best thing about Jehovah’s Witnesses? In most countries, they don’t vote.)
But they have had a very unhealthy practice of handling complaints of child molestation internally, keeping the results quiet, and allowing molesters to move from congregation to congregation without warning families of the threat. They’ve also got a history of convincing abused children and their parents not to make a police report, “lest it bring shame on Jehovah’s name.”
And, since the Jehovah’s Witnesses internal justice system requires two witnesses to an act of wrongdoing in order for someone to be “convicted” by one of those church courts, and usually there’s only one witness—the victim, a child—in instances of child abuse, all too many cases have been completely hushed up.
Oh, and let’s not forget the Boy Scouts of America. That homophobic, atheist-phobic organization (in which a large number of troops are sponsored by the Catholic Church and an even larger number by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is currently defending itself against a lawsuit that says it allowed a pedophile to continue working with boys after it became known that he had molested children. The LDS, which was also named in the lawsuit, has already settled.
Gee, what does that remind you of?
So let’s see. What else to the Catholic Church, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Boy Scouts, as well as the Mormons, have in common? I mean, aside from hating gay people?
There’s the whole patriarchal thing, right? Priesthood (or in the case of Jehovah’s Witnesses, eldership or oversight of the congregation) are limited to men only. Women don’t get to take any leadership role that would put them in a position of supervising men.
And then there’s the hierarchical organization. The Catholic hierarchy leads to Rome; among Jehovah’s Witnesses, it goes to Brooklyn (though I hear they’ll soon be moving to the country); and for Mormons, it leads to Salt Lake City.
Then there’s the infallibility of the leadership. If you’re Catholic, when you talk to a priest, he stands in for God—and the Pope is infallible, with a direct line to the Lord. If you’re a member of the LDS, why, the priesthood (all male) is your only route to the Celestial Kingdom, and ticking ‘em off means you don’t get there. For Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Governing Body is Jehovah’s leadership on earth (their baptism vows have, since the 1980s, had them baptized in the name of Jehovah God, Christ Jesus, and Jehovah’s “spirit-filled organization." No, I’m not kidding).
As for the Boy Scouts? Well, once they weeded out all the atheists, who have they got left that will stand up to authority?
This morning, I took a phone call from a woman about my post on Bishop Jaime Soto last week. She wouldn’t give me her name or phone number, but she told me that when she was a child, a priest raped her. She tried to tell on him, but her parents wouldn’t (or couldn’t) believe it. She finally stopped going to church because she threw up every time she went in. I gave her information about SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), and I hope she gets help.
"It’s like he took away God,” she said.
As long as Benedict XVI—or for that matter, Bishop Jaime Soto—continue to avoid offering a mea culpa for their part in covering up the abuse of children, I’d never suggest she go back to church.
Bottom line, folks: Your kids are much, much safer from molestation at Gay Pride than they are in church, the Kingdom Hall, or a Scout meeting. That’s because when gay people see a kid being hurt, they call the cops.
That’s apparently a whole helluva lot more than priests, bishops, elders and Scout masters do.
::posted by Kel Munger @ 2010-03-22 2:12 PM permalink 