Sex Crimes and the Vatican

Ever wondered how many catholic priests are really abusing young girls and boys?

The Catholic Church has 50 million children in its worldwide congregation and no universal child protection policy whatsoever.

There is actually a document, written by the Vatican, which PROTECTS the priest/child abusers!

It is a policy of cover up!

BBC Panorama

A secret document which sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is examined by Panorama.

Crimen Sollicitationis was enforced for 20 years by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became the Pope. It instructs bishops on how to deal with allegations of child abuse against priests and has been seen by few outsiders.

Crimen Sollicitationis was written in 1962 in Latin and given to Catholic bishops worldwide who are ordered to keep it locked away in the church safe. It instructs them how to deal with priests who solicit sex from the confessional. It also deals with "any obscene external act ... with youths of either sex." It imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witnesses.

For example in U.S. only report tells us that almost four and a half thousand US priests have been accused of raping or sexually abusing children. How many of those have been prosecuted and proclaimed guilty? How many of them were jailed and are doing time which they should?

Looks like that the Vatican and the Catholic church protects abusers of children - scum like Oliver O'Grady - a former Irish Roman Catholic priest who molested a number of children in California from 1976 onwards, who has molested and raped boys and girls from 3 to 13 years of age.

Crimen solicitationis is indicative of a worldwide policy of absolute secrecy and control of all cases of sexual abuse by the clergy. But what you really have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.

Rule of the Church is ABOVE Rule of the Law?

[edit on 10/6/07 by Souljah]

Wow, nice find, Souljah. Don't have time to read it all right now, but will and will get back to this thread with my commentary. But I think the first sentence in the document says it all in that it says this document should be hidden from the public's eyes.

Just one look at Ireland tells us that this is indeed how they treat sex offenders within the Church. There are thousands of victims of abuse in Ireland, only a few priests have been taken to court. We must not forget that it is not just sexual abuse that has been committed but physical and emotional abuse by clergy and religious orders (male and female). The following links are just drop in the ocean.

www.bishop-accountability.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

www.independent.ie...

findarticles.com...

If you don't read any of the other links, read this one and note the last sentence - the Roman Catholic Church, the Garda and the governance may have ignored the complaints but it is the taxpayers that will end up footing the compensation bill. That seems fair.
news.bbc.co.uk...

Thank You KilgoreTrout for your imput here!

I see that there are many, Many more cases around the world like this, and there are several priests/sexual abusers, who should have been taken to court of law, but are instead protected by the Vatican and in some cases even hidden away from the local authorities and taken to Rome.

BUT - my question is, why are there so many cases of pedophilia and sex abusers in Roman Catholic church? CELIBACY might be the correct answer. I personally think that a married priest, would not have done such horrible things to little children from age 3 to 13. And since celibacy in Roman Catholic church continues to stand firm in its longstanding celibacy rule, this is likely not to happen. For example, in the Orthodox Church ordinary parish priests are expected to be married men with families before ordination, and they need their family's approval to become a priest! Which I think is the correct way, because if you take away a man his Right to have a lifetime partner, then he shall have to compensate somewhere else; and instead of really being the good and holy figure for certain young boys and girls, he turns out to be quite the opposite and satanic looking pedophile.

Originally posted by Souljah
why are there so many cases of pedophilia and sex abusers in Roman Catholic church? CELIBACY might be the correct answer.

DEAD WRONG. Celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia. Go read some credible psychology books.
10 myths about Catholic Priests and Pedophilia

As for your ‘question’ about why there are so many sex abusers in the Roman Catholic Church .. the fact is that 0.3% of Catholic priests have been found to be pedophiles.

0.3%. That’s hardly ‘so many’. Especially when you consider the number of sex-criminals in general society.

Don’t’ forget. This isn’t a ‘Catholic problem’. Protestants have sexual abuse problems. Their numbers are even higher. www.ffrf.org...

There was a thread here about all this. I’m not going to go digging for it. The numbers are MUCH higher about sexual abuse in protestant churches (and public schools). But people just looooooove to go after the Catholics… and they leave the protestants alone.

Originally posted by Souljah
The Catholic Church has 50 million children in its worldwide congregation and no universal child protection policy whatsoever.

WRONG again.

From the Church's Code of Canon Law (revised 1983) "The cleric who commits any other offense against the sixth precept of the Decalogue, if the offense was committed with violence or threats, or publicly or with a minor who is under 16 years [now extended to 18 years], must be punished with just punishments, not excluding expulsion from the clerical state" (CIC 1395:2).

The 1975 Document written by Ratzinger (now pope) - www.ewtn.com...

In 1994, the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse (USCCB) issued guidelines to the nation's 191 dioceses to help them develop policies to deal with the problem of sexual abuse of minors.

The reason that those few pedophiles are there are because pedophiles are hunters. They saw a good hunting ground and took advantage of it. They were pedophiles BEFORE they became priests. Being a priest was a cover. It was a tactical advantage in their hunting.

You need to check your stats – pedophile stats because if you did, you’d find that children are in much greater danger of being a victim of sexual abuse and/or pedophilia if they are in a public school than if they go to a Catholic church.

The viable questions here are - Why are there so many pedophiles IN THE WORLD. And why did the few that got into the Catholic Church get shuffled around and hidden like they did. THOSE are the viable questions.

Read up - www.catholiceducation.org...


[edit on 6/11/2007 by FlyersFan]

Flyers Fan, though I agree with you, for me it is not the statistical likelihood of paedophillia but in how it is dealt with when discovered which brings into question the morality of the RC Church.

Although I believe that most Priests take their vows of celibacy seriously and are honourable people, I also believe that sexual predators or abnormal personalities may be attracted to the priesthood because it would offer access to children. Though there are measures in place to screen all people who have access to children (in the UK at least) this has not always been the case.

In the US it has been estimated that 4% (4392 clergy members) had accusations of sexual abuse against them. (source: en.wikipedia.org...). The statistics of offenders within the education system is comparative. The expected grey figure of unreported crimes I would expect to be greater given the climate for reporting in the RC Church.

The greater problem in my eyes is how the RC Church dealt with the allegations and complaints made about the Priests. The Priests were not restricted from access to children. They were moved around with each new set of complaints and the receiving parishes were not informed of any allegations. Victims and their families were actively and financially discouraged from taking any complaints further.

In the cases in Ireland, especially if you look at the wider survivors movements, there is at least some evidence to suggest that there were organised rings of priests and clergy participating in abuse. The abuse is too widespread to be random.

It should be stressed that the Ferns enquiry found that the Church was actively concealing abuse and failing to protect children from known sex offenders. Exactly the same accusations that were levelled against the Boston diocese.

One can only wonder at what goes on in less legally open countries where the Catholic Church have greater control and the victims have even less access to representation outside of the Church.

Flyers Fan, I agree that celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia, it's much more complicated than that. I think that pedophiles are drawn to a church where they can become well-respected priests, yet not have to marry and still have access to children. It's a perfect setup for pedophiles. The solution would be to change the rule about priests not being able to marry.

As for your stats, I read all thru the report you linked to and didn't find one thing about Catholic/Protestant statistics. I have difficulty with the credibility of the Catholic Church keeping stats on its own offenders, when the Catholic Church has managed to ignore the problem for the most part up until now.
I find your quoted stats on that difficult to believe. BTW, I'm neither Catholic nor Protestant, so I don't have a bias there. But you have to admit that there's a greater chance for pedophiles in the Catholic church, given that the Church ignores their pedophilia and usually just reassigns them to a different parish and also given the celibacy rule.

But the main question to me is this: Why would any Church have a secret doctrine such as the one that the OP posted? What's going on that a Church values its reputation before its children?? It is not only physical and emotional abuse, but spiritual abuse as well.

[edit on 11/6/07 by forestlady]

It's not celibacy, they can till jerk off if they can't control their urges. It's IMMUNITY from persecution which encourages perverted animals to do what they please.

They know nobody will do much against them, usually they just relocate them. After few months they find new victims, innocent children who are too traumatized to even speak of this disgusting satanic perversions. Children are scarred for life and many times develop Multiple Personality Disorder which means they will never talk about it.

Being silent and looking down or saying other do it in greater numbers, is same as supporting them. By doing that, you support Satan (if you are a catholic) but in any case you support savage pedophiles, if you don't do anything and remain silent.

Never forget: All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing!

Before we go throwing too many rocks here, there's another coverup that isn't documented, and that's the number of Protestant clergy involved in sex scandals.

Because these are smaller churches than the Catholic, there's less to say about Lutherans as a group or any other similar subset of the Christian Protestant faith. In addition to children, women are often victims of these clergy.

Many of them are branches of the Christian faith that have just one church or two small churches (in other words, the pastor is inventing his own version of Christianity.) Many times, the pastors move from one town to another after suddenly quitting the pulpit... and then start anew.

Abuse of the powerless (women, children) by powerful men (spiritual leaders) has ALWAYS been an ethical problem in all societies. There are no overt documents for "all Protestants" like the ones that the Catholics have. But the problem isn't only Catholic. It's far more widespread than that.

As much as I hate to say it I think it is wrong to say that all Catholic priests harm young children. The % of the whole that get caught doing these things plus the amount that don't surely can't be a significant number to say there is a problem.

But with that said the tiniest amount of occurrences are still too many and it's inconceivable to think that a member of the church would do that.

I do think that the church and Vatican are over their heads in secrets and this is just one piece of the whole puzzle.

Cory

Originally posted by KilgoreTrout
how it is dealt with when discovered which brings into question the morality of the RC Church.

I fully agree. Shuffling the FEW pedophiles that came into the church as priests was a major crime. A MAJOR CRIME. Morally and legally.

sexual predators ... may be attracted to the priesthood because it would offer access to children.

I fully agree with this as well. Predators are hunters. They see a hunting ground. They go for it. Pedophiles can NOT stop themselves. Ever.

Originally posted by forestlady
I agree that celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia,

Good!

The solution would be to change the rule about priests not being able to marry.

Why? You just said that celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia. So why change the rule if it doesn't cause pedophilia? ( which is the subject of this thread.)

Originally posted by Byrd
But the problem isn't only Catholic. It's far more widespread than that.

THANK YOU! There was a thread here that discussed the sex crimes in protestant churches. It was horrific. Everyone points at the Catholic church - but the protestant churches have it as well - AND THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE IT WORSE - as I showed with my stats.

Any time you have someone in a position of power over others ... you have to be careful. ANY TIME.

Originally posted by forestlady
I agree that celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia,

Good!

The solution would be to change the rule about priests not being able to marry.

Why? You just said that celibacy doesn't cause pedophilia. So why change the rule if it doesn't cause pedophilia? ( which is the subject of this thread.)

Good point, FF, I wasn't very clear on that. What I mean is that if they allow married priests into the ministry, that they would attract perhaps more family-oriented men into the priesthood. If they allow only celibate people, what mentally healthy individual would voluntarily embrace such a life? If they changed this rule, then many priests who were married would be able to be priests. I hope this clarifies it a bit. I grew up Catholic and never thought that celibacy in the priesthood is a good idea, priests should be allowed to be married.

big news where I live In Cornwall Ontario.
Its called Project Truth
www.projecttruth2.com...

you can weed your way through the mire if you so choose.


all I can say is that priests, judges, parole officers, lawyers...all running a child molestation ring in the 60 and 70's

An Ontario Superior Court judge has stayed charges against the sole remaining defendant in the case of an alleged pedophile ring in the southeastern city of Cornwall.

Citing unreasonable delays, Ontario Superior Court Judge Terrence Platana stayed eight charges against lawyer Jacques Leduc on Monday.

For Leduc, this is the second time charges against him have been stayed. In 2001, another judge ruled that a prosecutor had failed to disclose all the evidence.

That ruling was later overturned by the Ontario Court of Appeal, which ordered a new trial.

Leduc, who was once the lawyer for Cornwall's Roman Catholic archdiocese, was the last of more than 15 prominent citizens charged with sexually assaulting local teenagers.

www.ctv.ca...

[edit on 11-6-2007 by junglelord]

@FlyersFan,

So you would let your kids go alone on a camping trip with a Catholic priest ?. Catholic priest

Dear FlyersFan,

Interesting post I must admit, but it still says nothing about Crimen Sollicitationis - a document designed to protect priest child abusers. Sadly you have got some wrong numbers - as The John Jay Report found that 4% of U.S. Catholic priests were child abusers, and let us not forget those are only the REPORTED cases (and we all know that there are many more un-reported ones, which never ever surface). You of course, used the same argument as the official Cathlic church did; The Catholic League has argued that the abuse figures in the Catholic Church are similar to abuse in other institutions: in U.S. public schools, up to 5% of all teachers are responsible for sexually abusing 15% of all students. Now I know that pedophilia is present probably everywhere - but of all places, where children are abused, I find it highly sickening, that some people abuse the status of the Church, and their name as a Man of God, and use that power to get their hands on some young skin. And I also have a problem with the following document:

Crimen sollicitationis

Crimen sollicitationis (translated from Latin as The crime of solicitation or The crime of harassment) is a secret document issued by the Holy Office of the Vatican (now named the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) in 1962, instructing bishops about how to deal with cases in which priests were accused of abusing the sacrament of penance to sexually proposition penitents, thus its title. The same legal procedure, but with some adjustment, is also extended to clerics accused of homosexuality, pedophilia and zoophilia. The document calls for all cases to be handled in secret and extends that secrecy to the document itself. Perhaps as a result, some bishops claim not to have known of its existence.

Crimen Sollicitationis: An interpretation

Father Tom Doyle is a canon lawyer. He had a diplomatic career with the Vatican but was sacked after he criticised the church's handling of child abuse:

"Crimen solicitationis is indicative of a worldwide policy of absolute secrecy and control of all cases of sexual abuse by the clergy.

But what you really have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.

You've got a written policy that says that the Vatican will control these situations and you also have I think clear written evidence of the fact that all they are concerned about is containing and controlling the problem.

Nowhere in any of these documents does it say anything about helping the victims. The only thing it does is say that they can impose fear on the victims and punish the victims for discussing or disclosing what happened to them.

It's all controlled by the Vatican and at the top of the Vatican is the Pope so Joseph Ratzinger was in the middle of this for most of the years that Crimens was enforced he created the successor to Crimen and now he is the Pope this all says that the policy and systematic approach has not changed.

Cardinal Ratzinger, now as Pope, could tomorrow get up and say: 'Here's the policy: full disclosure to the civil authorities, absolute isolation and dismissal of any accused and proven and convicted clerics, complete openness and transparency, complete openness of all financial situations, stop all barriers to the legal process and completely co-operate with the civil authorities everywhere.'

He could do that."

EXACTLY!

Why was this document written then?

Why are child abusers among priests protected then?

Why aren't the Children protected by any document?

And as you can see, the Pope could easily have solved this matter, by signing a new document, which would not have protected child abusers and placed them very far outside the reach of the hand of Law or the Police and the Civil authorities, which are supposed to deal with this kind of situations. But the document IS designed to keep a lid on things, to maintain a perfect image of the Catholic church, to silence the victims and to keep things like that in secrecy and above all - IN CONTROL.



[edit on 12/6/07 by Souljah]

Originally posted by forestlady
If they allow only celibate people, what mentally healthy individual would voluntarily embrace such a life?

Most priests ARE mentally healthy people. They are called to the priesthood by God and God gives them the supernatural grace to live the lifestyle He calls them to. Oh sure .. they are humans and have some of the same baggage just like the rest of society does ... but not being able to boink doesn't drive someone crazy.

(I'm not laughing at YOU .. I'm laughing at the thought of someone going crazy because they can't have sex. It really isn't all that important - no matter what Maslow said.)

BTW .... cloistered nuns aren't a bunch of sex-crazed loons from a lack of sex either.

Theologically - Priests are not supposed to be 'family orientated', they are supposed to be GOD orientated. Following St. Pauls suggestion in scripture - not to be married and so not to have mixed priorities .. to live only for God and God's service.

If I'm in the hospital and about to die (which, actually, I thought was going to happen this past week, but that's another story) - I wouldn't want my priest out at his kid's soccer game and unable to come to give me Last Rites - also called Extreme Unction. A priest can't listen to confessions and then have his wife gossip at the dinner table about parisionhers .. all the while him knowing what that person confessed. There are more examples .. but all in all it would be an impossible situation. Priests are not protestant ministers. There is more to the priesthood then the minister-hood. (is that a word? Ministerhood?)

Originally posted by helium3
would let your kids go alone on a camping trip with a Catholic priest.

My daughter doesn't like to camp. However, if she wished to go to an overnight function and there was a priest there, depending on the priest - I would definately give my permission.

You have lumped all the priests into one big pile of pedophiles .. when the facts remain that less than 0.3% have been involved in this. MUCH LOWER THAN PUBLIC SCHOOL INCIDENTS!! Ya'll keep brushing that off.

Would YOU send your kids to public school - knowing the incidents of sexual abuse and pedophilia that happen there (I already gave the link to the stats)?? back atchya.

Originally posted by Souljah
Crimen Sollicitationis -

THAT makes everyone

you have got some wrong numbers -

No. My numbers are fine.

the Pope could easily have solved this matter,

A couple of things with this -

1 - Pope John Paul II could have done more. However, he was an old man and his handlers didn't tell him what was going on. Also - PJPII was a product of the Nazi years in Poland. When people did things that the Nazis didn't like, the Nazis would claim that people were homosexuals and take them away. It was a scam. PJPII was human, and he had seen this false accusation of people being homosexuals used. He was inclined not to believe the accusations. (which was frustrating for us all ... to say the least)

2 - Ratzinger very well could do more. But what exactly? Most of what happened with the shuffling around of pedophiles happened under PJPII and not under Ratzinger. Did you see my previous post about what has been done already?

AS I SAID -

From the Church's Code of Canon Law (revised 1983) "The cleric who commits any other offense against the sixth precept of the Decalogue, if the offense was committed with violence or threats, or publicly or with a minor who is under 16 years [now extended to 18 years], must be punished with just punishments, not excluding expulsion from the clerical state" (CIC 1395:2).

The 1975 Document written by Ratzinger (now pope) - www.ewtn.com...

In 1994, the Ad Hoc Committee on Sexual Abuse (USCCB) issued guidelines to the nation's 191 dioceses to help them develop policies to deal with the problem of sexual abuse of minors.

READ UP

Fear FlyersFan,

I understand that you, as a Roman Catholic, must defend the institution you belong to. But there is a problem - you say, that the Church's Code of Canon Law punishes those who commit child abuses; yet how many of them have been charged with anything so far? Out of 4000+ priests in U.S., who were accused of child abuse, how many have been prosecuted BY THE CHURCH? Because they do belong to the clergy and the Church should have given them to authorities the moment they find out, that something wicked and sick is going on there. Yet, the document which I have presented, is designed to protect them.

Furthermore, if certain priests can not evade local authorities, they can always run to Vatican city, where they shall receive protection of the Holy Town and basicly no law can touch you there. It means that Catholic church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain. It is certainly an indication of the pathological obsession with secrecy in the Catholic church and a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment.

The catholic church has done a terrible misjustice to the young people and the society at large by passing these priests forward to the next parish.
Our local Project Truth is just one case of Priests running a pedifile ring

It appears that the church was more interested in hiding their misdoings than going on a PR tour to say they are sorry and will make sure it doesn't happen again.

They definitely hid the truth for years which is a shame.

Originally posted by FlyersFan
Most priests ARE mentally healthy people.

That's absurd. You havn't even met most catholic priests. Or have you?

They are called to the priesthood by God and God gives them the supernatural grace to live the lifestyle He calls them to.

So then, according to what you just said, God called the pedophiles into the priesthood.

Also, not only did God, according to you, call these pedophiles into the priesthood, but he even blessed them with the supernatural grace to molest and rape children.

Flyersfan thank you for educating me on Catholicism =]

Oh sure .. they are humans and have some of the same baggage just like the rest of society does ... but not being able to boink doesn't drive someone crazy.

Haha speak for yourself

[edit on 12-6-2007 by Cloak and Dagger]