Catholic Church Destroyed Files to Hide Sex Abuse

[Frodo]

Cardinal admits to Vatican summit that Catholic Church destroyed abuse files

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

1. Stomach-churning but not, at this point, surprising.
2. Shouldn't this be in IG or R&P since it's something a German cardinal said about cases in Germany?

[JA]

The Catholic Church has a very serious problem with these series of abuse scandals. The faith itself isn’t, necessarily, in danger; but, the institution itself is going to continue hemorrhaging legitimacy until there’s a dramatic reform of the entire institution of the Church itself.

[Skunk]

The Catholic Church is awful, we been knew.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Also, I can't help but wonder how the fact that it's Marx--possibly the single most politically progressive and theologically outré cardinal under the age of eighty--who's made this admission will interact with the "conservative prelates wise and chaste, liberal prelates slimebag abuse apologists" mentality that a lot of very conservative Catholics with very loud media voices have adopted.

[pbrower2a]

Also, I can't help but wonder how the fact that it's Marx--possibly the single most politically progressive and theologically outré cardinal under the age of eighty--who's made this admission will interact with the "conservative prelates wise and chaste, liberal prelates slimebag abuse apologists" mentality that a lot of very conservative Catholics with very loud media voices have adopted.

Abuse of power can happen anywhere on the political spectrum and has nothing to do with personal style. Myopia is commonplace in bureaucracies, and  the Catholic hierarchy is itself a self-selecting elite. It's not as if a retailer might not look to a tech giant's frustrated talent to save itself.

The Catholic Church offers so little and demands so much for a prospective priest -- and the entire Catholic hierarchy is former priests -- that it must hope for the best out of a limited selection of priests. It used to do better at getting priests when large Catholic were proud to have a son as a priest and a daughter as a nun -- but that is over. The eight-child family is a rarity among urban populations, even if Catholic.

A Protestant pastor will endure poverty or near-poverty almost as a rule, but at least he can have a wife and kids -- or at lest she can have a husband and kids. His church will need to pay him enough to buy even the modest needs of a consumer society... maybe the Catholic Church needs to take that route. 

[afleitch]

Also, I can't help but wonder how the fact that it's Marx--possibly the single most politically progressive and theologically outré cardinal under the age of eighty--who's made this admission will interact with the "conservative prelates wise and chaste, liberal prelates slimebag abuse apologists" mentality that a lot of very conservative Catholics with very loud media voices have adopted.

Abuse of power can happen anywhere on the political spectrum and has nothing to do with personal style. Myopia is commonplace in bureaucracies, and  the Catholic hierarchy is itself a self-selecting elite. It's not as if a retailer might not look to a tech giant's frustrated talent to save itself.

The Catholic Church offers so little and demands so much for a prospective priest -- and the entire Catholic hierarchy is former priests -- that it must hope for the best out of a limited selection of priests. It used to do better at getting priests when large Catholic were proud to have a son as a priest and a daughter as a nun -- but that is over. The eight-child family is a rarity among urban populations, even if Catholic.

A Protestant pastor will endure poverty or near-poverty almost as a rule, but at least he can have a wife and kids -- or at lest she can have a husband and kids. His church will need to pay him enough to buy even the modest needs of a consumer society... maybe the Catholic Church needs to take that route.  

Abuse happens within the Church, alongside victim blaming/cover-ups, scapegoating for the same reason it happens in any closed institutional system. Unlike closed institutional systems it has no desire, nor can it be forced to be subject to external scrutiny and with it, enforced change. So it is effectively inert.

Even today in the Sunday Herald newspaper in Scotland, there's stories concerning the forgotten children fathered by Catholic priests, coercing mothers to send them out of the country out of sight. I know of them. I know of priests affairs with women. I know of their affairs with men. I know what priests I used to see in clubs and gay bars. It's all very coy, but it's known. But the laity are powerless, occasionally complicit and at all times we are told THAT NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE CELIBACY REQUIREMENT due to a coalition of powerful voices in the Church and in parts of the laity who prefer the current 'aesthetic.' And it is very much about the aesthetic. So the Church is at an impasse.

[PSOL]

The Catholic Church will never change its behavior. Best thing to do is spread these stories far and wide to force schisms and decreased enrollment into less hierarchal and abusive institutions.

[pbrower2a]

(deleted for brevity)

Abuse happens within the Church, alongside victim blaming/cover-ups, scapegoating for the same reason it happens in any closed institutional system. Unlike closed institutional systems it has no desire, nor can it be forced to be subject to external scrutiny and with it, enforced change. So it is effectively inert.

Even today in the Sunday Herald newspaper in Scotland, there's stories concerning the forgotten children fathered by Catholic priests, coercing mothers to send them out of the country out of sight. I know of them. I know of priests affairs with women. I know of their affairs with men. I know what priests I used to see in clubs and gay bars. It's all very coy, but it's known. But the laity are powerless, occasionally complicit and at all times we are told THAT NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE CELIBACY REQUIREMENT due to a coalition of powerful voices in the Church and in parts of the laity who prefer the current 'aesthetic.' And it is very much about the aesthetic. So the Church is an an impasse.

Not a Catholic, I cannot have a stake in this issue except that what goes on in so large and pervasive an organization ultimately shapes my world. If I were asked, I would give this advice. Like all institutions, the  Catholic Church must accept the realities of human nature, and institutions that fail at such (political or commercial) find themselves in a death spiral.

The celibacy requirement was intended to prevent the Catholic Church from becoming a hereditary aristocracy of priests, certainly a problem in the middle ages. The Church wanted its priests to be dependent so that they would be reliable.

Protestant churches do not demand celibacy and mostly accept female clergy. I see nothing in the performance of a Mass that a woman could not do. So Jesus' disciples were all men? So what? But note well -- Protestant churches can effectively demand celibacy outside of a marital relationship. So long as one can limit sexuality to husband and wife for clergy one does have room for a vow of celibacy, if more limited. Protestant clergy get fired for fornication and adultery.

Without question, messing around with boys is a clear violation of the vow of celibacy, and it would be a violation of the vow of celibacy that I would suggest for clergy.

OK, so would this cause a loss of distinction of the Catholic Church from other churches? Not likely.  The Catholic Church still has a heritage that no Protestant church could ever have. The Catholic Church still has its saints and a philosophical heritage that Protestant churches treat as irrelevant, and a great lode of cultural excellence as expressions of faith. Many Catholics would never feel comfortable in any other church.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It's depressing that this situation getting increasingly worse is so expected.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

One thing that often goes unremarked-on in discussions of why the custom of mandatory celibacy is so entrenched is that, in addition to many people being knee-jerk conservatives about it, the idea of getting rid of it also sets some Catholics off (mostly younger Catholic women, in my experience) because of the implicit reasoning in how that idea is sometimes presented. Too often arguments against mandatory celibacy seem to assume a deterministic model of male sexuality, where the thin red line keeping married men from raping children is the sexual availability of their spouses. It goes without saying that this too is a reactionary understanding of sexual relationships, all the more so since it's able to disguise itself even to its proponents as "sex-positive".

Also, and conversely, muh wise and chaste conservative prelates are to a large extent an invented tradition. While I can't speak for Germany, or afleitch's Scotland for that matter, most American Catholics seventy or eighty years ago would have found the idea of their grandchildren being actively emotionally attached to the aesthetics of Catholic sexual theology, as opposed to the aesthetics of other aspects of Catholicism, patently ridiculous. The types of people who think that there is an immemorial tradition of conservative Catholic sexual integrity and non-hypocrisy, and that the abuse scandals are on a continuum of modern aberrations from this tradition along with divorce and contraception and The Gays and whatever else, are also often chomping at the bit for scapegoats, hence the obsessive focus on predatory gay men in the priesthood over against clinical-definition pedophiles or opportunistic abusers—or, for that matter, priests who abuse women and girls.

[Santander]

Stomach-churning but not, at this point, surprising.