I am so frustrated

[sandnsea]

Some of you know that I was raised Catholic, but also have alot of problems with the Church. But what I can't stand more than anything is manufactured excuses to slander. I have known for a long time that alot of the Church's teachings were being taken out of context and twisted for political purposes, by both the right and the left. It's as frustrating as the stupidity of not teaching about condoms and AIDS. But this one really gets to me. The Guardian takes about 3 paragraphs out of this entire document to make a case that the Vatican conspired to keep the sex scandals secret. It's complex reading, but I went thought the whole thing. The secrecy part seems to me to be to protect both parties, and against false accusations and I'm sure they exist. More importantly, the article entirely ignores "The Inquisition" and "Penalty" portions of the document. The Penalty portion has clear instructions including ex-communication.

Am I looking at this wrong? Clearly some, maybe many, Bishops used the document to protect priests. Or the desire to protect innocent priests led to the protection of the guilty. But doesn't the liberal rehabilitate instead of condemn apply to priests too? Didn't that 70's & 80's attitude contribute to the problem as well? Am I being too protective? And why is it so horrible to try to take an objective view and get to the truth? Just very frustrating the last few days.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Observer/documents/2003/08/16/Criminales.pdf

[Tinoire]

1. No you're looking at it right

What you're dealing with here is mob mentality using "manufactured excuses to slander". It's not the first time and not the last but it's very unfortunate. If you need, I can dig up some more for you tonight because the willful ignorance at a time when ecumenical dialog is so badly needed, to off-set the neocon wars of religion, will hurt us all.

[Princess Turandot]

2. The other day on DU-GD, people were discussing the..

concept of the registered sex offender laws, and while some people object to them because the person involved could be an 18 year old with a 16 year old, you also have people who think it's some sort of 'scarlet letter' and over-the-top because the offenders involved have 'served their time'. While I assume many of the priest accusations were true, virtually none were convicted because time prevented trials. Yet some people protest the sex offender registry even though the offender was a) actually convicted and b) of something usually beyond weenie-wagging. (The one time I checked my local registry it specified the crime, so you could ignore the statuatory rape cases if you chose, assuming the convict wasnt 50 years old.) And those views are occuring right now, when even more people agree that these type of offenders have very high recidivism rates.

So I agree with you that at least part of the coverage of this was that it involved the RC Church & made for better soundbytes.