I apologize if this is an old outrage that has already been hashed and outraged upon. It is hard to keep track.
In a yet another revelation in the clergy sex abuse scandal, a French Catholic news service has published a 2001 letter from a top Vatican official praising a French bishop who covered up for a priest he knew had molested numerous boys.
In October 2000, Father René Bissey was sentenced to 18 years in jail for sexually abusing 11 boys between 1989 and 1996. Bissey’s bishop, Pierre Pican of the Diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux, had known of the abuse but refused to report Bissey to French authorities and instead sent him for psychiatric treatment.
Pican’s actions resulted in his own conviction in 2001 for “failure to report a sex crime against a minor younger than 15 years old.” The bishop was sentenced to three months in prison.
That sentence led Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, then head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy – the department overseeing Catholic clergy policies around the world – to write Bishop Pican a letter effusively praising his actions in shielding the abusive priest. At the time, Castrillon Hoyos was a colleague of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI.
… In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, indicated with prophetic force in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos the essential and permanent foundations of moral action. Today, attention must be focussed anew on this text as a path in the formation of conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind. …
He’s just blaming the moral relativism/decay of good old values in the late 60ies and 70ies here.
I also have no idea what things in the UK were like back then but while the age of consent has been 14/16 for ages in Germany, possession and distribution of child porn was not outlawed until 1993.
There is a world of difference between dutch preteen porn being available at sex shops and people openly advocating sexual self determination of minors in the seventies and today’s constant hysteria of having a baby rapist behind every tree.
Polanski is a good example of how attitudes changed over time.
I don’t want to defend the pope here but I remember reading old 70’s porno mags which featured models called “Lisa, 14” and “Suzanne, 16” for example. While I have no idea what age the models really were even the fact that they were labelled as minors says a lot. Laws, and attitudes, have shifted since then.
Contrary to its depiction in Justified (which WAS rather effective - I hated the guy, anyway), the interest that a pedophile has in a potential victim decreases dramatically as the victim ages. In crass terms, if a kid has tits or pubes, that’s a turn-off. I have no idea what the distribution was in the Catholic offenders between pedophiles, ephebophiles (pedophiles for teenagers - I don’t get how they tell the difference at the visceral, let’s-pop-wood level, but it’s apparently a thing), and just scuzzy guys who wanted to get their dicks wet by any means available, but for the pedophile segment for which they are most famous, that is expected behavior.
As for film depicting sixteen year old participants…that’s specifically not legal in the United States, which is why you get a lot of idiotic stories in pornography about 18 year old girls. I want to say that it’s entirely legal in some overseas locations, and you don’t have to look very hard to find Hot 16 Year Old Action from Amsterdam or something, but it’s been a while since I bothered to search on that, so maybe there’s been a crackdown.
Thousands of priests ‘in illicit relationships with men and women’
Thousands of Catholic priests are in illicit relationships with both men and women in contravention of the Vatican’s teachings on celibacy and homosexuality, a new book by an investigative journalist has claimed.
Not surprised the Torygraph would be the first to report this. But I also wouldn’t be shocked if this turned out to be true.
The latest developments in the priests abusing children in Ireland situation.
A few weeks ago a report came out on a dioseces near me and their handling of child sexual abuse in the past 15 or so years. It found that not only were the priests and Bishop their failing to co-operate with the state, but with the very bodies they had set up (independent bodies set up with their co-operation to report on them.) That new allegations of sexual abuse were not being reported. And most damning (from a political perspective) that the new rules on how the Irish catholic church would conduct itself in regards to sexual abuse, were written off on Vatican instructions as the Vatican felt these rules were merely a “discussion” document.
To say there was outrage would understate the reaction of the Irish public. Not only was this evidence that the church failed to act on and co-operate with investigations into “historical” cases when the scandals came to light (i.e. cases dating from the mid-nineties back) but they were refusing to act and co-operate on new cases coming to light that are currently happening.
The Taoiseach (our PM) announced in a parliamentary debate that “Minister Shatter is bringing forward two pieces of legislation - firstly, to make it an offence to withhold information relating to crimes against children and vulnerable adults” Prompting a lot of speculation that this legislation is going to remove the right to withhold information found out in the confessional. And in regards to the cover up in Cloyne on seeming Vatican instruction “in doing so[the cover up], the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism…the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”
After the leader of our countries “attack” on the Vatican and after calls from some (fringe) TDs (members of parliament) to expel the Papal Nuncio (the Vatican’s ambassador to Ireland) the Holy See recalled him themselves to discuss what’s going to happen next, saying ‘“The recall of the nuncio, being a measure verily adopted by the Holy See, denotes the seriousness of the situation and the Holy See’s desire to face it objectively and determinately,” he said. “Nor does it exclude some degree of surprise and disappointment at certain excessive reactions.”’ With the “certain excessive reactions” part being a fairly clear bit of arrogance at feeling a little miffed that our leader called these fuckers up on not only their abuse of children, but their continued systematic cover up of that abuse.
Wow, and all of that didn’t even mention what I thought this threadbump was about: the Catholic church’s attempt to make itself un-sue-able by declaring that priests are not employees.
