Frank, you would be wise to come back with something that has real teeth and real reach. This isn’t the 1920s where you could “tidy” things up.
When it comes to exposing the criminality, immorality, treachery and human atrocities brought to us by the Catholic church, no one does it better than dearly departed Christopher Hitchens. Some day, people will simply stop supporting the horrible Catholic monsters and start incarcerating its many child rapists, pedophiles and money-grubbing con men.
Hey Pope Frank! Please explain to me in simple terms why it has been so difficult to remove the pedophile priests, and the bishops and cardinals who have protected them. Seems like a mortal sin to me, but then I haven’t had years of training in Catholic theology. Well actually, I had 12 years of it and they never seemed to have any problem telling me when I screwed up. I thought the Roman Catholic Church held itself to high standards of morality and spirituality.
No, I guess not.
The nudge nudge, wink wink say-what-you-willy-nilly reasoning.
If the congregation for the doctrine of the faith is where he tried to establish the new tribunal, it might well make sense for him to pull the plug rather than let the old guard run the process. They might have ended up giving pedophiles and their enablers special medals for merit.
I will begin to believe that Pope Francis and the rest of the church hierarchy are serious about attempting to seriously address this long-standing problem when we begin to see significant numbers of priests and bishops, as well as other culpable parties relieved of their duties and subjected to available internal sanctions as well as criminal prosecutions.
it’s been only a token trickle thus far.
Transferring known abusive priests to help them hide their crimes is willful cover up, not negligence or bungling.
Thank you for this post. In today’s time it is so good to see and hear someone of such eloquence speak truth to power. Christopher Hitchens is sorely missed.
Here’s Tim Minchin’s response to the Australian Cardinal who found himself experiencing “health problems” which kept him from returning from the Vatican to answer questions from the official government inquiry into institutional sexual abuse.
Well, Francis is better than Ratzinger, who noted that the priesthood contained the normal number of pedophiles, statistically speaking—implying that the RCC was being unfairly targeted.
Pope Francis on Saturday scrapped his proposed tribunal to prosecute bishops who covered up for pedophile priests after it ran into opposition … from bishops (and there enablers) who covered up for pedophile priests.