Oh Bite My Rosy Red Ass, Mahony

For serious: 

Mahony, who has been criticized for moving predator priests from posting to posting, told Corriere della Sera that "after 20 years, people are talking about abuse as if we had not done anything. However, since 2002, we have had our program Protecting the Children, in which we illustrate procedures and the guidelines of our zero-tolerance policy that allows no possibility, for example, of anyone found guilty of abuse of minors working for the diocese."

Well, since 2002! That's like 11 whole years of not protecting molesters, hiding them from cops, and inflicting them on unsuspecting and vulnerable children and families while blaming those families for the abuse they suffered! AMAZING.You're just like a saintly, wonderful person, just like ... wait, hold on, it'll come to me ... JUST LIKE JESUS.

And what would Jesus have done? Convened a panel, certainly. All these guys do is blither around about how they handled abuse the way they thought they were supposed to handle it, and blah blah blah the psychological literature: 

"Anyone who looks at the psychiatric and psychological literature then will see that I applied the professional approach suggested for all institutions. We tried to follow the best practices of the period."

Well, as long as you did what it said to do in the BOOK. I mean, how can anyone blame you for that? 

Mahony said he subsequently set about building a network of safeguards against abuse, including the hiring in 1994 of a retired judge to head a Sexual Abuse Advisory Board for the Los Angelees archdiocese.

"My rather painful mistake was to not apply the work of that committee to previous cases. I was more focused on new cases. However, that was an error I completely rectified in 2002," Mahony said.

THE POINT IS YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TELL THE FUCKING COPS. God. 

Your internal policies and procedures and whatnot have NOTHING TO DO with anything, that is the point that is so hard to get across to these guys. Canon law is not civil law and never will be, and quite frankly shouldn't be. You hear of somebody raping a kid, you tell the goddamn police. You don't conduct your own investigation first, you don't hire your own Church Cops and Church Judges and hold a Church Trial and throw the guy in Church Jail.

These people weren't breaking church law. It's not like they're banging consenting chicks and you need to fire them for it. They're breaking AMERICAN law, and they needed to face American legal consequences. 

A. 

Comments

[montag]

Hmm. Methinks Mahony is, even now, mincing words: "However, since 2002, we have had our program Protecting the Children, in which we illustrate procedures and the guidelines of our zero-tolerance policy that allows no possibility, for example, of anyone found guilty of abuse of minors working for the diocese."

Parse that sentence. Go ahead. "... our program" doesn't prevent. It "illustrate[s] procedures and guidelines" of a policy. It "allows no possibility of... anyone found guilty of abuse of minors working for the diocese."

How, in fact, does one end up "found guilty?" It starts with someone reporting the freakin' crime to the authorities. So, just looking at his choice of language, his diocese could still well be overflowing with pedophiles and he'd technically still be telling the truth.

And, if the authorities themselves weren't so goddamned in bed with the Church, every single one of these morally handicapped church administrators would be in jail, too, for, at the very least, misprision of a felony.

It's mind-boggling enough that there are still Catholics left in this country after the endless horror stories, but equally so that they haven't run screaming out of the churches after hearing weaselly shit like this.

[Jude]

"Oh Bite My Rosy Red Ass, Mahony" should be the title of an Irish drinking song.

[Eric]

Throughout its sordid history the Catholic Church has fought tooth and nail NOT to allow its clergy to be tried but anyone other than the courts of the church. Seriously, does anyone think that has changed any in the last 2000 years?

[PurpleGirl]

If the Church administration wants to look at the psychological dimension of the problem it can. If the Church administration wants to extend to the predators the promise and hope of redemption it can.

However, neither of these two intentions preclude the civil obligation to report suspected illegal behavior to the civil authorities and to release the suspects for civil prosecution and punishment. You'll note I keep saying "civil"; I believe that this problem can be discussed without resort to "morality". There are laws that say that certain behavior is illegal. That's it. A priest having inappropriate relations with an adult is a different problem and can be handled differently. But inappropriate relations with a minor is illegal and must be handled the way the civil authorities have decided to handle such things.

As Eric so cogently wrote the Church has worked to not obey civil authority. The story of Becket is pretty but we keep returning time and time again to the contradictory stance of clergy obeying civil authority in their respective countries. It's time that stopped.

[Swoosh]

If priests were "banging consenting chicks," the Holy Catholic Church would have excommunicated their butts in a minute. But pedophilia? That requires careful thought and deliberation, mostly about how to make sure it never makes the evening news.

[Fraud Guy]

Banging consenting chicks...still doing that behind rectory doors, I believe. The only point I disagree with is that if the church was actually punishing these predatory priests by removing them from service and putting them in church jail for the rest of their lives, that would at least have been a) consistent with protecting church privilege and b) taking the predators our of circulation.