WINONA (MN)
Winona Daily News
December 22, 2018
By David Girod
Good column Jerome! (“Can this debt ever be repaid? Perhaps,” Winona Daily News, Nov. 21). I suppose the Christian thing to do is show compassion. Maybe Christ will upon each individual’s demise. Priests, and bishops. Except when he warned those who “make a young child stumble,” you’d be “better off to have a weight around your neck and fall into the ocean.”
In a perfect world, every case that has occurred, if brought to the attention of civil authorities (not church officials, obviously), it would have been investigated. And, if credible, prosecuted, hopefully with prison time. No cover-ups or shuffling priests around. How ever high up you must go to catch all guilty priests.
As Jerome’s column said, they may be able to pay off any monetary damages. But they must address the “moral bankruptcy” and find the root cause of the priests’ behavior.
And, no, I don’t believe that those priests are pedophiles. In all this, I was surprised to read that Pope Francis is considering changing the rules to allow priests to marry due to the shortage of priests and also the years of abuse of children by priests. That, my friends, is a wise man. It’s what I’ve said all along. And I assume, he being the head of the church, with a pen, could make that happen. That rule of celibacy for priests is not a rule for any of the world’s other religions. What an archaic rule.
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