Sexual abuse and the Roman Catholic Church

By Matthew Hynds
Daily News Service
September 14, 2015

http://www.dailynewsservice.co.uk/sexual-abuse-roman-catholic-church/

Joseph Maurizio Jr., from Pennsylvania, is accused of molesting three boys and possessing child pornography. He denies the charges.

Meanwhile, a Catholic archbishop Josef Wesolowski has been found dead in Vatican City before he could stand trial, also for the abuse of boys and the possession of child pornography. Had he lived, and been found guilty, he could have spent 35 years in prison.

In Aurora, Colorado, the Reverend John C. Holdren is facing historic sex abuse allegations relating to one child, and other potential victims are being urged to come forward.

This is just a selection of three cases, ongoing at the time of writing, on a typical day.

In the United States alone, according to the 2004 John Jay report, there have been more than 10,000 reported child victims of paedophile and hebephile Roman Catholic priests between 1950 and 2002. Of those, half of the allegations relate to child victims between the ages of eleven and fourteen.

Conviction rates are notoriously low for crimes of this nature, and it is well-known that the problem is grossly under-reported. Therefore, accurate figures for the true scale of the abuse will never be known, but it is certain to be higher than the figures quoted in the report. What is known, during the fifty-year period addressed by the report, is that 4.4% of all Roman Catholic priests, deacons and religious clergy in the United States stand accused of child abuse.

Nearly one in twenty.

If I was a parent, dropping my child off at a prayer group at the local church, those odds might give me pause for thought.

Following years of denials and institutional cover-ups imposed by the Vatican, the current pope has introduced measures to increase transparency, and to make it easier to report, and prosecute, abusive members of his church.

This is a welcome development, however, a lingering problem remains…

If the Pope is infallible – in the sense that he is God’s representative on Earth – what is he doing hiring all these child abusers?

The Roman Catholic church is a hierarchy. The pope appoints his cardinals, the cardinals appoint the bishops, and the bishops appoint the priests. And as we know, the pope is appointed by God.

So where is the weak link in this chain?

Surely God is not a child abuser? I mean that would be unthinkable, right? That God himself – this majestic spirit to whom millions prostrate themselves to on a daily basis – is actually a grubby-minded pervert who wants to appoint more people like him (“it”? “her”?) to his cause?

If we can agree that possibility is beyond the pale, then what are the remaining options? It can’t be the pope that got it wrong, because he’s infallible, as we all know. But then… how about the appointments of his cardinals, and bishops? Because they appointed the paedophile priests. And more to the point, what about the bishops and cardinals themselves? How about the controversy that has swirled around cardinal George Pell, once the archbishop of Sidney, and the third most powerful man in the church? For years he has faced allegations of cover-ups and abuses of power relating to the protection of paedophile priests. The truth is, the scale of abuse could never have become so immense, if it wasn’t for the protection offered by those at the very top.

To the uninitiated, such as myself, I’m afraid to say the Roman Catholic church looks like any other imperfect human institution, in which figures are held in high esteem, and placed in high positions of trust, where trust is abused, systematically. A bit like governments, police forces, and the military.

The difference is, there is no pretence that the head of the Metropolitan police is appointed by God.

So here’s a question to Roman Catholics: why stick with it? Either your God is a paedophile, or the pope is a fraud. Feel free to leave your comments below, thanks.