Maybe they got off easy with a few Hail Marys or Our Fathers.
I’m just saying it’s not supposed to be just words, but as mentioned above, this is to God not to man, to save their soul. I don’t know that do the right thing is any sort of requirement but you can’t really be that remorseful and repent if you keep… doing it.
Yeah of course, these are clearly corrupt men anyways. That’s been my point, that the Church leadership really aren’t holy men at all. Just corrupt humans with power that don’t really believe in the religion they’re pushing, kind of like most TV evangelists.
Oh yeah. There’s rot in that church. They knew about it for decades, and refused to cut it out while at the same time tried to tell the rest of the world how to moral. It’s not good.
Yes, that’s implied by the act of confession. As you say, it’s not about merely saying you did bad things… it’s about confessing your faults to God, feeling remorse for them, and receiving forgiveness from God.
Pope Francis dedicated virtually his entire life to serving impoverished people.
Yes, but how much of his life did he cover up the rape and abuse of children? I still don’t understand how the former excuses or somehow washes away the latter, which is STILL happening. It’s not like this is decades ago. Still covering up. Still lying.
I dunno, but he’s only been pope for 5 years. He’s been an ordained priest for nearly 50.
You said this:
Pope Francis does not appear to be a corrupt man. From what he’s done over the past 50 years, he certainly seems to a believer in the word of Christ, and has dedicated his life to improving the lives of humanity as a whole.
I mean, he didn’t do it for riches… and frankly, given the fact that he was a Jesuit, he probably didn’t do it for power either, as their order, as part of their oath to the order, swear to avoid ambition. It’s always been a pretty key element of the order, and a reason why we never had a Jesuit pope until now.
Jesuits just aren’t about power and wealth… and it seems like if he were really driven by such things, being a Jesuit for 50 years would have been an exceptionally poor pathway towards such ends.
So anything confessed in the sacrament of Penance cannot be revealed by the priest who hears it, including to the authorities. However, if you want to actually be forgiven, you have to perform some kind of penance. Sure, often that’s X Hail Marys and X Our Fathers. Because that’s your penance for the run-of-the-mill sins most people commit. If you confess to killing someone, your penance will probably be (among other things) to turn yourself in and receive justice. And if you don’t do that, you aren’t absolved. More generally, no confession is valid if you don’t intend to stop sinning.
I do think that there is potentially a culture that comes from being part of an institution with its own internal set of laws and process of dealing with sin that probably has encouraged the cover-ups in the abuse crisis. It’s not right, but if a priest or bishop can confess to sexual abuse or to covering abuse up, they might justify to themselves that if they’re right with God, that’s enough. (It’s not enough for the same reason that Hail Marys aren’t enough penance for murder.) And those in authority who don’t want to rock the boat, or expose the church to secular authorities or to costly lawsuits might rationalize to themselves that the abuser has confessed and sworn to sin no more, so let’s trust that this is all just over and done with. It’s all self-delusional to do so, but I think the sacrament gives both conniving and misguided church authorities some psychological cover to make the wrong choice.
Weeeeeeell… I’ve been around a lot of Jesuits. I was taught by them in high school and college. There’s nothing magical or special about Jesuits, generally speaking. Many Jesuits lead about the cushiest lives of any priests in the world. Lots of them teach in private schools with large endowments; they live in very nice community houses, drive fancy cars, and drink expensive alcohol. Many of them are quite powerful, at least in certain fields. There was a Jesuit who was a congressman, even.
They do take vows of poverty and obedience. But what that means is that they don’t own anything personally. Those nice cars belong to the order. And obedience means that if their general superior or the Pope tells them that they’ve been reassigned to wherever, they have to go.
Jesuits have and do accomplish a lot of great things in the world. They’re very respected (mostly because they’re all required to be very well educated). But they aren’t substantially different from Dominicans or Franciscans or your average parish priest in terms of virtue.
And I would even caution you from presuming that Francis’ background is particularly holy. He has made a lot of admirable gestures showing solidarity with the poor, which is great. That’s a big part of his mission, partly because he comes from South America and he knows what poverty looks like better than some of these other cardinals. But he’s still just a man. If you pay attention to his behavior, you’ll notice plenty of foibles. And right now he’s also completely dodging the matter of who knew what regarding Archbishop McCarrick.
On the contrary, all future conditions render absolution invalid. Trying to force the penitent to behave a certain way publicly would violate the seal of confession. Forgoing the penance might constitute a new sin, but it doesn’t affect the grace received through the sacrament.
That’s true, but although you say “generally”, this really bears no connection to your first point. If the penitent is manifestly unrepentant, the confessor must not absolve in the first place.
Thanks for pointing this out. Do you have a good official source on that? I see a lot of folks online talking about this question and most give the argument that you do. I don’t understand how the breaking of the seal is in play here. Looking at the catechism, it does appear that absolution isn’t invalidated by not performing the penance, which is not what I always assumed (which is that performing the penance is evidence of contrition), but makes sense, and that means how I portrayed things in that last post is definitely wrong.
Sure, but the “manifestly” in your statement is only one kind of case. The other is where only God knows that the confessing person does not intend to stop sinning. And I think this is where things get relevant to the abuse cover up. If the cover up itself is a sin, then doesn’t ending the cover up become a requirement of absolution–not as something the priest enforces, but God does? I guess now I don’t know the answer to that question.
The most authoritative I can find is the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Do bishops really confess their administrative errors as sins? Somehow I doubt this happens much in practice.
Well, I said “if the cover up itself is a sin.” I think there’s degrees there, and as always, intent matters. But if I knew of an abuser and felt that the whole problem would just go away if I moved him to a different diocese, and that resulted in more abuse… I’d say it’s a sin that needs confessing. These guys’ vocation is to provide for the spiritual health and general well-being of their flock.
Pure evil.
Seriously, an organization is not a person and thus is not good or evil.
Personally i suspect that the reason there are so many instances of sexual abuse with priests is the church’s stance on sex, but I think the more in your face question is how the church deals with it when it happens.
When i saw another “bombshell” news story on sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church, i thought i was watching a rerun. We all knew this shit was going on. We all knew high level members of the church were covering it up and protecting these sexual predators. It was also heavily suspected the previous pope was either involved directly or by incompetence in the cover up. The big surprise is talk of the current pope potentially having been involved. Obviously that remains to be proven, but if it is true, then obviously he needs to go if the church wants any hope of cleaning their image.
For me, as a non believer, i find it extremely offensive that the Catholic Church seems to believe that their members only answer to a higher power. I’ve seen a lot of talk about the church investigating and the church getting rid of people who abused children, but that is not their place. If someone rapes a young child, it is not a matter for the church, it is a matter for the police. Hell, if someone knowingly covers up for and enables a child predator, they ideally belong in jail too.
There is a lot of talk about the net good the Catholic Church does, but at the end of the day, if the person sexually assaulted as a result of decisions by the Catholic Church is you or a loved one, i doubt that means a lot to you.
Personally, the sooner organized religion dies, the better.
Also, this discussion kind of comes back to mainstream media. We would probably not be talking about this now if not for heroic efforts by journalists investigating this. Instead these scum bags would still be abusing children and other scum bags would still be protecting them (if they aren’t already that is).
Isn’t that a decision for the victim and his guardians? They have always been free to press criminal charges.
No.
Generally, failing to report a crime is not a crime in an of its self, but a very large exception is carved out for child abuse. All US states have mandatory reporting laws for teachers, health care workers, and - significantly - clergy. Eighteen states make it a crime for anyone with knowledge of child abuse to not report it, regardless of their profession or relationship with the child.
Yeah, to be clear, the reason why there’s not a ton of criminal cases (though there are plenty) that come up in the sex abuse scandal is that most cases are past the statute of limitations. Remember, cases are predominantly from the 1970s and 80s.
I was raised Roman Catholic, but have lapsed.
The analyst in me had a lot of problems with the concepts of deities, and I didn’t like the general non-tolerance of different lifestyles. I remember well the “heavy metal and D&D is the work of Satan” in the 80s.
I live in Boston and what sealed my departure from anything to do with the Church was their handling of the sex abuse crisis. That did it for me.
To be fair, that was more the work of evangelicals like Pat Robertson than Catholic dogma.
Indeed. I never heard that spouted over here by a priest. But I’m a Roman Catholic in Europe.