Hm - so you're telling me that taking thousands of men, forbidding them from having sex, having them share their lives with young boys in secluded locations, and creating a protective organization around them with its own legal system lead to widespread sexual abuse? Crazy...
It’s also worth pointing out that child abuse happens in a lot of non-religious settings too. The Catholic Church has a problem, but in no way should we understand child sexual abuse as a uniquely catholic issue.
Are we counting humiliation, gaslighting and brainwashing as child abuse? Asking because those are really common in religious families and often seen as normal ways of teaching a child.
My understanding is that forbidding priests to marry stems from a desire to maintain the wealth of the church (if you have no children, church property can’t be inherited) so this seems like greed begetting even more bad things.
If only there was a bible quote that pertains to this…
“For the love of money is the root of all of evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
> My understanding is that forbidding priests to marry stems from a desire to maintain the wealth of the church
As I understand it, the discipline in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church forbidding priests to marry was a response to a epidemic of scandal in the medieval church of priests neglecting or misadministering their clerical duties for courtship and family issues. Church property isn't personal property and can't be inherited even if you have children.
My extremely limited understanding matches what you say as to the history, but in support of the previous comment while a priest's family cannot inherit from the church, the church can inherit from the priest.
> My understanding is that forbidding priests to marry stems from a desire to maintain the wealth of the church (if you have no children, church property can’t be inherited) so this seems like greed begetting even more bad things.
From discussion with catholic priests, the argument they've advanced is that celibacy allows the priests to focus on their clerical duties without distractions from family duties.
This is a secondary cause, that while true came much later. The earliest cause is 1 Corinthians 7 where St. Paul indicates that the unmarried state is superior. That is why many of the Apostles, who started out married, embraced unmarried life after the passing of their wives. Matthew 19:12 is also relevant, as I do not want to imply this idea rests solely on the Apostle St. Paul.
I'm no longer convinced that "priests abuse children because they're celibate" is an adequate explanation. It seems plausible, but it lacks the ability to explain the rates of sexual abuse of children by non-celibate priests, teachers, family members, etc. It is also my understanding (but I am not expert, nor do I have any personal experience here) that sexual abuse is usually more about power dynamics than the sex itself; while a lack of a sexual outlet can be a driving factor, it often isn't the main one.
Okay, now everything below is completely unrelated to the child abuse problem, just for clarity.
I'm generally pretty negative on the wealth and power of the Catholic Church, I think it's kind of gross that an organization setup for spirituality is so damned rich in this world, but I actually do see some sort of argument for a celibate clergy in the context where that norm was first created. Remember that the Catholic Church is effectively a product of the late Roman Empire. As the Western half of the empire fell, the Catholic Church stepped in and took the form of imperial civic functioning; a basilica was originally a Roman public building, not a religious one[0].
In this context, it was considered normal for the son to inherit the wealth and job title. After all, wasn't Constantine followed by his sons? The issue here wouldn't be priests inheriting their local church as private property, most early churches were private property given that they were clandestine rooms in the back of personal homes, but the real issue is the possibility of bishops and similar inheriting their seat and peeling their entire bishopric away from the church that they were working on centralizing. The early days of the church were very concerned about unity, see the Council of Nicaea, and similar issues were happening to the crumbling empire with frightening regularity at that point. When this norm was set in ~304 CE, everyone had just lived through the "Crisis of the Third Century"[1] a scant 20 years earlier, which was largely characterized by uncertain rules of succession and breakaway states (among other things). The risk of a son inheriting a title and then trying to turn it into a personal fiefdom was not an abstract concern for these men, they had just lived through it.
This first rule of celibacy was unevenly applied, and was a mixture of a requirement or a social norm depending on the exact diocese[2]. When it became a universally enforced rule in the 11th century, I think the church had a lot less to fear from bishops going rogue, and the whole thing looks a lot more greedy than anything else. Needless to say I think the entire practice is indefensible now, and probably actively harmful as the church sends out celibate priests to advise people on matters of marriage, family, and sexuality: issues that priests have no personal experience with. This is really obvious when you consider official Catholic policy against birth control and the American Catholic lay population that has a mere 0.1 more children per parent compared to their Protestant peers (2.3 vs. 2.2)[3].
0 - Obviously the Catholic Church took a bunch of holidays from the official cults of Rome, Christmas most famously. But the functioning of the Church is quite different, down to the architecture and organization. A Roman citizen from the Late Republic would probably think that a modern Church is a public building and not a religious one; Roman temples were basically places where religious artifacts were stored, and ceremonies were performed outside in the view of the gods, unlike the Church where ceremonies were performed indoors. Constantine's involvement in the early Church certainly was a factor here too; when he started giving stuff to the Church, including access to imperial infrastructure (roads, messengers) and buildings, they all took the form of civic structures because he was the head of state, and not a religious figure (the title of Pontifex Maximus having lost most of its religious meaning at the time, and was effectively just a title the emperor held).
This imperial connection helped the early church greatly. Not only did it help it form an effective bureaucracy, but it also endeared it to various ruling dynasties in the former Empire. It's now believed that the conversion of England to Christianity that started under Æthelbert of Kent was partially because as a Christian king he would gain access to the administrative capabilities of the Catholic Church, including the last remaining bits of Roman imperial authority that had long left England by this point. Obviously his Christian wife probably didn't hurt either.
1 - 49 years of military conflict, with 26 various men having claim to imperial title and the empire being temporarily split into 3. Plenty of emperors in that time had a time in office of days or months, not years. The men running the Church in 304-306 CE, when the Council of Elvira first enjoined priests to celibacy, would have lived through the latter parts of the Crisis (it ended in 285 CE).
2 - Another Roman civic term, specifically for portions of the empire. The early church just copied these from the empire directly, not just the word itself; the first church dioceses were the same as the civic ones. This would be a bit like if a new religion called its areas "counties" or "states".
> but there is some evidence that child abuse is common among Protestant churches too
And scouting and similar organizations. The Catholic Church is a big focus for a number of reasons. Aside from anti-Catholic animus, the fact that its a uniquely large international heirarchical organization rather than a loose federation of organizationally independent national churches, dioceses, or independent local churches like the Protestant churches is a big reason.
EDIT: That is both a direct reason for the focus of attention, and also an indirect reason (because the greater number of lawsuits is a reason for the focus, but that is because the structure of the Church makes it a better lawsuit target—a bigger potential bag of money—even when the facts are similar than many other organizations.)
Like you said, this is not a uniquely Christian Church problem. Likely we are looking this from the wrong angle: it's not the institution that is the primary issue, it's the population of would be abusers that are seeking roles that give them access to children.
Given the level of motivated reasoning in this space and the quickly shifting definitions, it is unfortunately very difficult to have a conversation over specifics.
In other Western European nations it has become clear that one thing schools, but especially boarding schools, fostering situations and institutions (youth care and mental health) do is provide people with access to easy-to-abuse people. This applies to kids, and vulnerable adults. Even in blended families, which are of course a fact of life if we want to have easy divorces, it happens, though not nearly as much.
There are 2 groups of people who abuse this. First there's a number of people who take such jobs planning to abuse kids from the very beginning. These people exist across the spectrum: physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial abuse and psychological abuse cases. There are theoretical measures in place to prevent this (essentially demanding criminal history), that, to put it bluntly, don't work.
You should include people who have no choice and take a job in, say, child protection. Such people are incredibly destructive because of the number of kids they damage while filling in subsidy forms how they are helping them. The catch is that it doesn't provide them with much financial benefits, so people like to exclude this situation. But the reality is that the same people insisting on fairness when having a $20000 competition, tear others apart for a 20$ reward.
Likewise there's people taking a child protection job because of how much power it gives you over others, for example. There are incredibly bad examples of this. They may tell themselves they're in it to "help kids". Help them get something they lacked as a child, for example. So they throw kids into the foster care system because they have to go to school on foot in the rain, which, to put it very mildly, does not improve the lives of these children.
The second group is people who have no idea they are abusers. They suddenly discover a lack of self-control once they are put into a situation where abuse is very easy, and these people suddenly find they cannot resist when presented with the opportunity.
I think this is partly because people present an entirely evil view of abusers, when in fact abuse usually comes from 2 sides: sex for drugs arrangements for example, where both sides are guilty of inducing the other side to criminal acts. One is much worse than the other, and this should, of course, be reflected in punishments, but people don't expect "victims" in institutions to be looking for such arrangements. People don't expect to suddenly have both sympathy for abuse situations, see the "advantage" it provides both sides, for victims, and especially don't expect what they saw as pure innocent "victims" to not be nearly as pure. All this then happens in a VERY short timeframe, and of course this happens in jobs that are already very stressful, and often happens while the abuser is under pressure, which the victim may be trying to increase.
But then there's the problem with punishing such offenders. In reality the government is partly responsible for most/all child abuse. Why? They employ the offenders, and often the kid's choice was very limited, both when getting assigned to this offender (which was done by some government system and not the kid's choice) and, often, when the kid is trying to get away from the offender ("don't tell anyone or I'll refer you to closed youth care"), this was hindered or even made impossible by government-imposed systems. Even when it does come to light, institutions often choose to "protect their reputations".
> It’s also worth pointing out that child abuse happens in a lot of non-religious settings too. The Catholic Church has a problem, but in no way should we understand child sexual abuse as a uniquely catholic issue.
...that's of course fair - but the Catholic church is to my knowledge the only one that does it on such a systemic level and gathered so much experience over time in controlling information flows, silencing victims and protecting the abusers.
Unfortunately this is very charged territory. Too many people are trying to push some angle. Finding credible data is difficult. One thing is clear: the US Catholic Church has made significant reforms that are driving out the bulk of the abuse, specifically taking allegations of child abuse very seriously.
Here are a couple of links for further research. I am not an expert, I have not vouched them for credible data. Then again, the OP strategy of "cumulative over 70 years" is clearly a tactic to inflate the numbers for clicks. Make what you will of them. I will avoid entering a flamewar on which institution is the worst offender, given the shaky ground of the data and the shifting definitions of "sexual abuse". For example nonphysical sexual abuse (aka poor taste jokes) does not register at the same level as physical sexual abuse, and in the physical realm there is a difference between a tap on the bottom and physical intercourse. Etc.
> A major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education found that nearly 10 percent of U.S. public school students reported having been targeted with sexual attention by school employees. Indeed, one critic has claimed that sexual harassment and abuse by teachers is 100 times more frequent than abuse by priests.[12]
> One survey that was conducted with psychology students reports that 10% had sexual interactions with their educators; in turn, 13% of educators reported sexual interaction with their students
> According to the best available data (which is pretty good, coming from a comprehensive report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2004, as well as several other studies), 4 percent of Catholic priests in the U.S. sexually victimized minors during the past half century. No evidence has been published at this time which states this number is higher than clergy from other religious traditions. The 4 percent figure appears lower than school teachers during the same time frame, and certainly less than offenders in the general population of men.
First off, I'm not doubting that abuse occurred and it is terrible for the victims involved.
What sampling method did they use to arrive at this estimate? What is the error range and 95/99% confidence intervals? I haven't been able to find the original report online.
From some articles: The commission found evidence of 2,900 to 3,200 abusers – out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics – but said this was probably an underestimation.
We would really need to see what the method they used to arrive at the numbers - this smells like major hyperbole.
The number they gave is cases over 70 years, which is a weird way of reporting it. Annually, it is about 2900-3000 priests per year. The article also mention that the current rate in about 1/4 of the rate in the 1970's, showing that some of the church reforms have actually worked. If you compare the French stats to what is being reported here, the anti-church media bias is flagrantly clear.
I suspect it is one of those cases where accurate numbers are literally impossible to create. Many people will want to erase this from their memories and won't say a word. Some may have genuinely done that and have no recollection of being a victim. Then I'm sure you'll also find people making accusations up.
Also if the bar to clear is 'evidence' of abuse, then this is yet another distortion of the estimate. Most abuse will surely smoulder without a shred of evidence, other than possibly the victim's testimony years later.
My conclusion as a Catholic is that the Church's hierarchy is just desperately flawed, at best a mix of non-negligible proportion of monsters and of conformists unwilling to tackle the evil, despite full awareness of it. At worst, well... Arguing about numbers when it's clear the Church has been harbouring sexual predators in huge numbers for decades is inappropriate, as far as I'm concerned.
I'm not doubting major abuse occurred, and the church needs major reforms. But we should hold the numbers up to the same standard that we hold all other numbers to. There should be a detailed description of the sampling and data, a detailed description or the model used for the projection, and a detailed description and justification for any bias adjustments. Any results should have an error band. Otherwise, this is likely published with an agenda, not to find the truth.
I sort of agree, estimates ought to be specific. My point is that unless these numbers are off by many orders of magnitude, they already represent failure beyond even the most lenient assumptions of incompetence.
I used to think, well, someone accuses a priest, who knows maybe that's right or not, churches err on the side of innocence without proper evidence, and the rare monsters slip through the net. With more light being shed on this in Poland, I now believe this is not the case. There were now dozens of cases where each individual one ought to bring prosecutions on the ground of organised criminal organisation exploiting children (or at least organised cover-up), with the CC's top hierarchs held responsible. Each individual one, never mind the dozens that made it to the news.
So whether it's really 216,000 children abused, or even just 1% of that, I think this is catastrophic. Unless these numbers are inflated by a factor of 100,000, I'll stick to my opinion.
I don't disagree with you - the church has major problems some of which still need correction. But there is a clear media bias in the US - compare the American articles to a much more details one in French (Google Translate works well)
https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/les-cinq-chiffres-c...
Reforms? What about completely shutting the whole thing down. What other institution out there would be able to be responsible for such an unbelievable level of abuse and not get prosecuted/sued into oblivion?
Should we also shut down schools, scouting programs, day cares, adoption, camping, etc? All of these have had almost exactly the same size and scope of scandal.
5.6% is the estimated historical incidence rate for pedophile priests in the US. 7% of Australian priests have face accusation - so incidence would be a little lower. The pope was reported as saying 2% - but the interview in which this happened was walked back by the Vatican. 2-3% would be on the low end. I'm surprised that you would consider this hyperbole after the endless revelations over the last two decades.
Most articles I have read today on that topic (in the French media) were talking about an “historic moment” and praising the church for recognizing the problem, admitting failure and starting such a study. Far from anti-church speech…
> The report found an _estimated_ 216,000 children were victims of sexual violence by French Catholic priests, deacons and other clergy from 1950 to 2020. When lay members of the Church, such as teachers and catechism supervisors, were included, the figure rose to at least 330,000 children sexually abused over 70 years.
How did they do this estimation? The article does not say.
When I was 18/19 I was well on my way to entering the seminary. I use to spend a lot of time with priests, I can't recall who it was, maybe my parish priest but I was told "priests don't become pedophiles, pedophiles become priests." That has stuck with me for quite a few years.
Life happens, you meet a girl, get married and have a baby.
When I look at my 5 year old son, it really screws with my head how anyone could want to harm children. I think as a Catholic I'm just disappointed/disgusted that the Church has failed all these kids for as long as they have. I'd probably kill the person that leaves my child with lifelong trauma.
I just wish society had enough balls to take on the Church's leadership. There's no real justice and I doubt we'll ever see anything meaningful done.
The Catholic church can't change because they would have to give up the ghost. The Catholic church has always been about emotional and monetary control. You aren't allowed to ask for forgiveness of your sins but someone who went to a special college can ask for you? Umm, okay. I also think you also underestimate your power. Stand outside your local church protesting the molestation every Sunday. It won't be easy or comfortable but you can undermine the system you used to support. Good luck.
CC lacks meaningful tools for protest. You can put up or leave. As far as I can tell, UK and US at least have some non-trivial involvement of lay Catholics in daily running of the institution. But in Poland? You'd be kicked out for asking to see a church's books.
Incidentally, leaving is what's happening in Poland. The bastion of Catholicism with unshakable faith. When I was at high schools O(15) years ago, pretty much everyone attended religion classes at school (yes, Catholic religion classes, not some kind of broader religious education). Now most kids are signing out. Churches are emptying and were doing so well before Covid.
The institution of CC is very wealthy in Poland and well-connected to politicians (they command a lot of unquestioning votes), so that can perpetuate even after the last Catholic signs out.
"While the commission found evidence of as many as 3,200 abusers - out of a total of 115,000 priests and other clerics - it said this was probably an underestimation."
> 4 percent of Catholic priests in the U.S. sexually victimized minors during the past half century. No evidence has been published at this time which states this number is higher than clergy from other religious traditions. The 4 percent figure appears lower than school teachers during the same time frame, and certainly less than offenders in the general population of men. Research states that over 20 percent of American women and about 15 percent of American men were sexually violated by an adult when they were children.
216,000 sounds like a lot. Does that make French Catholic priests more or less likely historically to be abusers than the average adult male? Can't get outraged until I find out.
Or you could be outraged regardless of the ratio. Additionally, don't forget the Catholic church purposefully not reporting these incidents to the authorities and actively covering it up; instead moving the priest to a new town to abuse new kids. That seems like it should cause plenty of outrage in us all.
Just that an article saying "group did evil thing X times" doesn't say anything good or bad about the group to me if I don't know how many times you would expect from any other similarly sized sample of people.
Given the prolific pedophilia in the Catholic church, revealed in so many countries around the world, I am absolutely convinced that there is an active and thriving pedophilia club in the Catholic church / Vatican. There is no other explanation of why these priests are allowed to continue in service, while churches use coercion and or bribes of thousands to millions of dollars to buy silence from the victims!
And yes, I know about the whole concept of forgiveness / acceptance that is ingrained in the catholic belief system that is used to explain why pedophile priests are given a "second" chance.
I understand it. But the way it is practiced is flawed - why are pedophile priests allowed to continue in service? Condemn the sin, not the person, forgive them, accept them into the community - but why cover up the crimes and let them continue to be priests? Spirituality and theology apart, at some point the nature of the disease shouldn't be ignored. We don't encourage an alcoholic to become bartender, do we?
It is this insistence of the church to allow pedophiles continue as priests that absolutely convinces me that there is a very active lobby of pedophiles in the Catholic church / Vatican, who find comfort in the secretive community they have formed. We have seen how the internet nurtures echo chambers in its social media. It is easy to accept that an actual community or club of paedophiles within the Catholic church would find similar benefits and solidarity from other "understanding" members, and why they would attract such kind. It isn't at all surprising to learn that every fourth pedophilia suspect in Poland is a priest ( https://www.rt.com/news/530345-poland-priest-pedophilia-chur... ).
I can see why you're getting downvoted, but sadly (as a Catholic-sort of) I think you're right. It now seems to me that the Catholic Church's hierarchy is catastrophically flawed. I see this as quite separate from lay Catholics, who somehow aren't outraged by all this, but I guess more due to cognitive deficits than actual acceptance.
Catholic Church has an intransparent, rigid hierarchy built on secrecy and obedience, and apparently severely lacking in the morals department. It has a lot of trust and a high cross-section for interaction with the general public (in Catholic countries at least), in particular children. Celibacy (a social, not biblical concept), probably doesn't help. In Poland, which you quote, the majority of priests found to be sex offenders against children, were not found to have paedophilic tendencies in subsequent psychiatric evaluations, rather chose children as easy victims.
Controlling for all these features, I remain unconvinced that there is something particularly wrong about religion itself in this organisation. Abuse of children and other weaker members of the society has sadly been a hallmark of large organisations (e.g. abuse by Oxfam employees in Haiti), it's just that most organisations lack either the reach, or the rigid structure of CC.
As an aside, I wouldn't use Russia Today as a source for anything meaningful, certainly not when it's about Poland; if ever there was an axe to grind, surely it's there.
> I see this as quite separate from lay Catholics, who somehow aren't outraged by all this, but I guess more due to cognitive deficits than actual acceptance.
Survivorship bias. Most of the Catholics who are outraged about this probably stopped being Catholic. Those who are publicly outraged and still believe are probably in the minority.
Most of the Catholics who are still 'practicing' that I know are fully outraged as well, and work to improve the lay boards and civil integration in legal processes.
The outcomes today are vastly different than 15-20 years ago. Priests being shuffled around quietly while a bishop settles with the family was a frequent occurrence just a couple decades ago. Nowadays that is suicide.
Sadly, not all parts of the Church/world are there, but at least in most corners of the US/Europe, it is that way. Incidence of abuse has been extremely curtailed, and all these studies showing the opposite are reaching back into the 50s-80s, where abuse was rife.
Unfortunately the Catholic Church's attitude towards dealing with past mistakes is still one of hostility.
I used to write software and optimize advertising for personal injury & mass tort lawfirms. The one that I worked at was building a major class action case against the Catholic Church. The volume of inbound leads that we had from all across the United States was enormous. A good six-digit number of them were qualified. There were priests in my Catholic Schools that had been on the accused list. One was even from a classmate of mine.
The Catholic Church was ruthless about negotiating down the damage. Basically their position was that they would fight every case in the US or they would settle all cases in the Archdiocese of New York that took place in Manhattan (a pitifully small number but an area in the US where the Church has a lot of money). It was purely about the money. The law firm took the easy way out for the amount of resources that they wanted to commit.
I probably listened to hundreds of calls where grown men were crying talking about how absolutely shattered their lives were. Only for my employer to turn around and say "sorry, we can't help you.".
I no longer do work for PI/mass tort firms and as a direct result of this.
I didn't think anyone would interpret my text as an attack on catholics or christianity, but I can see how some may be perceiving it like that. Yes, ofcourse, this isn't a religious problem of Christianity or Catholicism but due to the current structure of the Vatican. It's not as if Protestant churches, or Hindu ashrams or Muslim Jamaaths don't have such incidents. But the absolute scale of it in the catholic church is a clear indicator that there is something very wrong with their organisation.
>but why cover up the crimes and let them continue to be priests?
Because very few men are willing to spend ~8 years in higher education to make ~$30,000 a year for a job where you're on duty 24/7 with a private personal life forbidden to you. Many of the people willing to do that job are going to be flawed somehow, and firing any one of them causes the Church lose out on the huge amount of money they spent on training.
There's a lot of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but their actions can be explained without a need for some child abuse ring running the whole organization.
> [...] very few men are willing to spend ~8 years in higher education to make ~$30,000 a year for a job where you're on duty 24/7 with a private personal life forbidden to you.
That's a rather ascetic view of what it's like to be a Catholic priest. They do have free time, and while yes, working on Sundays and holidays is part of the job, weekdays are relatively free.
> There's a lot of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but their actions can be explained without a need for some child abuse ring running the whole organization.
I used to think that, but the scale of cover-ups found in the Polish CC convinced me it cannot be the case. A number of bishops have now been found to ignore and bury accusations against sex offender priests, with written evidence available. All continued to have the full support (material in particular) of the Church. The scale of the tragedy is inexplicable. Protests by various groups to Vatican have also achieved literally nothing. You had paedophile priests pampered and protected by the CC like they were martyrs for the greater good (some were in fact called that).
As Napoelon said, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But what's happening there is beyond any humanly possible incompetence.
I think you have backwards. The priesthood became entirely too revered and thus a status symbol. Within that framework, there were people who could go into the priesthood as a means of papering over their glaring faults and achieving a respectable image. Along the way, enough of those people have promoted into positions of power from which they try to shelter the priesthood at the expense of the church.
The Jesuits are mostly this same phenomenon; the order's brand became too coveted, the value was mined out of it, and now it's used by too many as a shield. It's like private equity for holy orders.
I don’t think it’s because of the money that the church refuses to fire pedophile priests. I think a lot more of it is about saving face. The church wants to maintain a veneer of holiness, one that is poorly tarnished now, and sweeping problems under the rug is easier in the short term to maintain said veneer. Of course, this strategy does not work in the long run.
There’s also the darker possibility that yesterday’s pedophile priests became today’s pedophile bishops who do not see this abuse as a problem to be corrected.
So, your explanation is that the Catholic Church would rather help cover up the crimes of an unfathomable number of paedophiles because it's easier than hiring some new ones? I don't think that's the case, because there seems to be an endless supply of paedophiles signing up to be Catholic priests, presumably because they know it's the safest place to commit their crimes. The Catholic Church is basically the Mafia but for nonces.
You make it sound like priests are just bad at maximizing their income, so they must be damaged somehow. But putting it in economic terms like that is silly. Priests aren't in it for the money or an easy lifestyle. Similarly I don't think the church is so worried about optimizing their training costs that it could be a plausible root cause. Reducing everything to a dollar amount is some weird sigma shit.
Though I agree... there's probably no coordinated conspiracy of abusers covering for other abusers, just a pervasive culture of secrecy and willingness at all levels to do anything to protect the clergy. And seriously, who thought it would be a good idea to sexually stunt young people with religious indoctrination, get them to swear to a vow of chastity, and then go their whole lives without sex or porn, and think it'll just be fine to trust them absolutely in situations of incredibly significant power imbalance? Like organizational reform aside, this doesn't seem fixable for the church. It's too fundamental to their whole model. They'll keep going because they have so much momentum, but more victims are going to keep getting hurt.
>. Priests aren't in it for the money or an easy lifestyle
Right, which immediately rules out like 95% of Catholic men from even considering the occupation. There aren't a lot of applicants to the job.
>Similarly I don't think the church is so worried about optimizing their training costs that it could be a plausible root cause.
Each priest has received 4-5 years of training that the Church paid for. Basically every other industry would also bend over backwards to save their ~$100,000 investment when they already have the hiring problem I mentioned.
I don't disagree with the rest of your post, Catholicism has a lot of problems. Even without those problems, they act like a lot of other companies that make similar choices of overlooking abuse because it's profitable to do so.
I’m not sure if a pedophile ring is running the Catholic Church, but perhaps the power and authority attracted pedophiles, who rose in power and protected others and this attracted others to join the church.
It’s the same pattern to corrupt any organization.
Treating them as some kind of business organisation is a very cynical view of the Catholic Church. Worse still is beleiving that only flawed individuals would be interested in such profession. History is testament to how many men and women of strong character have sacrificed their whole life for their religion while contributing to their community.
>Worse still is beleiving that only flawed individuals would be interested in such profession
I said "many of the men interested in the profession would be flawed," I purposely made sure I didn't say all, but it's undeniable there are many scumbags too. For example, the topic being discussed.
And the Catholic Church does also have to act as a business. People are going to be mad at the Church if there wasn't a priest available for their grandparent's last rites, or if their local church has to schedule mass at an inconvenient time.
> It is this insistence of the church to allow pedophiles continue as priests that absolutely convinces me that there is a very active lobby of pedophiles in the Catholic church / Vatican
Except that in the USA, a single credible accusation against a Catholic priest is treated as proof of guilt since 2003 and the priest is removed (a much lower standard than in the criminal justice system that requires proof beyond reasonable doubt or even civil cases that require a preponderance of evidence).
This review is done by a board of laymen, not priests, and the process was approved by the Vatican which you accuse of having a cabal.
Regarding historical cases where priests were given a second chance, keep in mind this was not limited to the Catholic Church and other institutions had the same behavior. It’s not necessarily evidence of a cabal, just that people back then didn’t understand the danger as much, or didn’t care.
I suspect it may have something to do with US laws. For example, in India, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act 2012 legislates that religious organisations compulsorily have to inform the authorities if it becomes aware of any act of sexual misconduct / pervesity against children by their clergy or in the organisation. This means that no religious organisation can try to "settle" the issue between the abuser and the victim within their community as the law prioritises it as a criminal matter, giving no leeway to anyone on it. Even if the victim chooses to not file a complaint, the police can investigate and try and prosecute the accused.
Expanding that out. Epstein had lots of powerful friends, and I don't buy that Weinstein acted alone. Jerry Sandusky molested kids for decades, the administration of Penn State knew and did nothing.
The Taliban certainly has it faults but they don't allow boys to be raped under their watch. The US gave Afgan allies Viagra so that they may better do so.
It seems anywhere you have people with power, you also find child sexual abuse. I don't know why but it's consistent across time and cultures. Power corrupts is a fact as proven as gravity.
Nope the Taliban will only admit to raping girls, never boys. But of course it’s not “rape”, it’s “marriage” and everyone totally consented especially the parents of the kids who had guns to their heads as they signed the papers…
Of all the organizations that you could’ve used as comparison couldn’t you have found one with a better reputation?
I said they have their faults. I find it much worse that the western world enabled that behavior. We are supposed to be more enlightened. Soldiers are claiming to have PTSD from having to hear the screaming of little boys in the next room. That only happens if you know it's wrong. I don't blame the soliders however this was a foreign policy choice.
Any time conditions exist for someone who doesn't care about others to get what they want, that person will try to get what they want. That's not particularly insightful on its own. That's like the one-sentence synopsis of the entire field of critical theory. Go read Marx, or feminist theory, or critical race theory, or something. This fixation on child sexual abuse as an inevitable consequence of power seems like some weird right-wing conspiracy stuff, especially unironically using the words "The Taliban certainly has its faults but."
Taking my comment as right wing is interesting to me. Personally I have found that it transcends the left and right wing labels and applies generally to those in power, that is why I included things like sports and the Catholic Church was previously mentioned. Is it your observation that it occurs more in what you consider left wing organizations?
No, it's my observation that conspiracy theories about organized child sex abuse are largely a right-wing narrative. For example:
> QAnon (/ˌkjuː.əˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy movement centered on false claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals, known by the name "Q", that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles operate a global child sex trafficking ring
It plays into classic themes of degeneracy and a need to return to traditionalism, and is designed to shock and whip up passions among the family-values crowd.
But it's the comment about the Taliban that really showed your hand. The meme on the right is a grudging admiration for the Taliban because of their highly conservative social ideology; i.e. commitment to traditional gender roles, forbidding abortion, persecuting trans people, etc.
Hitler was a vegetarian atheist, ergo most vegans are Nazis? You should try to separate the idea from the mind who holds it. Calling me alt right because I've noticed that many powerful people where friendly with a convicted pedophile after his conviction does nothing to refute my argument.
You don't have to resort to QAnon thinking about cabal's and secret clubs when institutional protection is plenty motivation all by itself (which is what happened in my school with a pedophile priest).
