This article on Yahoo reports on the recent sex abuse reports in the U.S. and how the Catholic church is trying to deal with it.
What does it say about a supposed organization of God that they would have ever tolerated this behaviour in the past or in the future "leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children".
Any allegations should be passed on to the police because the church has no place deciding if a crime should be reported or not. Who do they think they are that they can decide which crimes get reported and which crimes go unreported?
Any allegations of sexual abuse should be investigated by the police not a local bishop. The police and then the courts will decide if the allegations are true and determine an appropriate punishment. Not the church.
They are wasting their time trying to come up with new policies -- zero tolerance should be their policy. Period.
I don't even understand why the Catholic church is even discussing this. Any accusation of sexual abuse should be reported to law enforcement because it is a CRIME. The Catholic church has consistenly shown a complete disregard for the children in their congregations in every country the operate. They have also shown that they are incapable of dealing with it themselves. What I don't understand is why the police are not also charging the spinless bishops that knew about the abuses and just shipped the offender off to another church to do the same thing.After an extraordinary meeting sparked by a sex abuse scandal, American Roman Catholic leaders agreed Wednesday to make it easier to remove priests guilty of sexually abusing minors — but they stopped short of a zero-tolerance policy to dismiss all abusive priests.
The American church leaders said they would recommend a special process to defrock any priest who has become "notorious and is guilty of the serial, predatory sexual abuse of minors." In cases that are "not notorious" they would leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children and should be defrocked.
What does it say about a supposed organization of God that they would have ever tolerated this behaviour in the past or in the future "leave it up to the local bishop to decide if such a priest is a threat to children".
Any allegations should be passed on to the police because the church has no place deciding if a crime should be reported or not. Who do they think they are that they can decide which crimes get reported and which crimes go unreported?
Any allegations of sexual abuse should be investigated by the police not a local bishop. The police and then the courts will decide if the allegations are true and determine an appropriate punishment. Not the church.
They are wasting their time trying to come up with new policies -- zero tolerance should be their policy. Period.