(England and Wales) Paedophile priests still play active church role

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

More than half of the Catholic clergy jailed for paedophile activity in England and Wales remain in the priesthood – with several receiving financial support from church authorities, raising serious questions about depth of church commitment to child protection and overshadowing the start of the papal visit.

There are also claims the church has breached guidelines it agreed to in 2001 by not punishing offenders appropriately and that it has even relaxed some of the rules on how to treat them.

The allegations, shown on Channel 4 News, will fuel hostility towards a trip that is proving controversial on many levels and in many quarters.

The investigation examines one of the key recommendations in the Nolan report, which was published in the wake of damaging disclosures of clerical sexual abuse and cover-ups at the start of the decade and was designed to root out sex offenders and prevent paedophiles from entering the priesthood.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/paedophile-priests-active-church-role

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Ouch. The Catholic Church retains a revolving door for child molesters who happen to have a degree in divinity and know the right people. Unlike other jobs, which disown workers convicted of felonies.

This situation has happened back in America...for example, Lawrence C. Murphy and Stephen Kiesle (Kiesle is from my home state) got pats on the back from Joseph Ratzinger (the current Pope was a cardinal when those priests were accused of molesting children). So when's the big protest in London denouncing the Church for harbouring sex offenders fi there was a big protest in NYC denouncing Muslims as terrorists (in opposition to Park51, a proposed Islamic cultural centre).

Some good news though: the Rev. Alex Castillo of San Bernardino County, California got suspended from ministry after family members accused Rev. Castillo of molesting their kids.

[Iowa]

1. K&R (yet total recs are still at zero).

[Xithras]

2. The moral underpinning of Christianity is forgiveness.

One of the fundamental beliefs of the Catholic church is that sins cannot be held against the sinner after they have confessed them and asked for forgiveness. While those priests are still "on the books", it sounds like the Catholic church has removed them from ministry duties. I don't really have a problem with a pedo priest living out his life in a monastery or hermitage, or even on an earned church retirement (after they are punished by the secular authorities, of course), so long as that priest is barred from dealing with the public or children ever again.

My position when dealing with these people has always been that: 1) They need to be convicted and punished by the secular authorities as is appropriate for ANY pedo. And 2) that they be forever barred from dealing with parishoners of any age, ever again.

If those two requirements are met, I really don't care what happens to them later. If the church wants to stick them in some remote hermitage where they can pray every day until they stroke out, so be it.