re: #45 webevintage

I disagree.
The problem was allowing men into the Priesthood who had sexual issues who joined with the hope that by becoming a Priest and being celibate they would be able to control their behavior.
(not referring to being gay here)
Celibacy is hard, but it is a choice that well rounded, sexually mature adults can make. They may struggle with it, but they are quite capable of keeping that vow…and if they can’t they “fall off the wagon” with an adult man or woman…not a child or a teenager.

Thank you.
Exactly.
And this was right on target, too:

re: #16 webevintage

ugh and ugh and ugh.
Screaming Bill just sucks and I wish he would go away.
He and Archbishop Dolan really did not help the Catholic Church at all in the last week.

I thought Matthews was great last night regarding this:
[Link: newsweek.washingtonpost.com…]
This is more than a secular discipline. It is empowered by the authority of God. Priests stand before these young boys as representatives of God, with all the august authority that comes with it. In this case, to a young child being brought up with the fullest belief in God, and what he come to firmly believe is his church.

This is not a place for three strikes and you`re out. It is not a place where Christian sympathy should go to the adult abuser of this trust between child and churchman. It`s the place where the first, indeed overwhelming claimant to our sympathy and to justice must be the child, the vulnerable young boy who finds himself under the power of a priest of Jesus Christ, an heir to the disciples, a servant in the tradition of the Apostles.

If there was ever an easy moral question, it should have been what to do with priests who molest children. You fight for the victim. Then you remove the perpetrator. You end the occasion of sin, so the priest, in this case the moral felon, never has the opportunity to act again.

I would add what I said last night.
I want to hear repentance.
I want 2011 to be the year The Church goes though a deep and meaningful penance.
I want the Pope and the Cardinals and the Bishops to throw off their vestments and wear some form of sack cloth and ashes for that year.
I don’t want the Pope to resign, I want him to take responsibility.
I’d like to see the church bring any victim to Rome who is willing and have the Pope personally apologize to them.
I want them all to say over and over again (and I don’t care that it is no longer happening or that most of them were never involved or that a good amount of the perps are dead):
“We have sinned grievously”