Bill Donohue wants people to know that criticizing the Catholic Church for all the child rape that went on is unfair:
The rash of stories about priestly sexual abuse in Europe, especially in Ireland and Germany, has put many Catholics on the defensive. They should not be.
Yeah, there’s no reason to be defensive when they learn so many of the leaders of their faith were raping children and/or protecting men they knew to be rapists. No reason at all…
Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.
If it were found out that many leaders of corporations were raping children, that would be on the news too and it would be worth criticizing.
And even if it was found out that this extent of corruption and immorality was happening in secular organizations, it would not excuse that it happened in a religious organization that claims to be the “one holy and apostolic church.”
You’d think they’d have better standards being “holy” and all.
Thus it hardly comes as a surprise that Cardinal Sean Brady in Ireland did not summon the authorities about a case involving a priest in the 1970s. What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.
And thus he’s let off the hook for remaining silent about Brendan Smyth’s abuse of children, which let Smyth abuse dozens more. That must be God logic, because it doesn’t make sense to me.
Selective indignation at the Catholic Church is not confined to Brady. Why, for example, are the psychologists and psychiatrists who pledged to “fix” abusers treated so lightly? After all, employers from the corporate world to the Catholic Church were told over and over again that therapy works and to give the offender a second chance.
Not in a job where they work with children! Is this really so hard to understand? You don’t give the child molester a second chance at a daycare. Jesus Christ!
Had the Catholic Church simply tossed the offenders out, it would have been branded as heartless.
I doubt it. If a priest raped my son or anyone in my community, I’d want him more than tossed out — I’d want him arrested and put in psychiatric treatment.
And who cares even if they would have been seen as heartless (which I doubt)? Does anyone really think that a “holy man” who rapes children should continue to be a priest? How can that possibly be the right thing to do? Does the Catholic church only do the right thing if it is perceived in a good light, like a politician?
There is also much noise about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now the pope — approving the transfer of a priest out of his archdiocese in Germany for therapy. That happened 30 years ago. Again, he did exactly what virtually every other leader, clerical or secular, did.
Which, according to Donohue, seems makes it right. If everyone else is doing it, then who are we to say it’s wrong? It’s not like there are objective moral standards written in a holy book or church tradition, right?
Organisations have long handled cases of alleged sexual discrimination or harassment internally, but what the Catholic Church has done is to cover up child rape. Does Donahue really see these things as all pretty much the same?
Or to put it another way, people who know of children being raped who don’t contact the authorities the very second they find out are morally bankrupt. The end.
I think my opinion of Bill Donohue has hit a new low. What a putrid, repulsive hypocrite that man is.
I believe there’s a saying that goes something like: “You can’t wash yourself clean in other people’s filth.” Old Bill is trying mighty hard to do just that.
“What is surprising is why some are now indicting him, acting as if his response was the exception to the rule.”
_______________
It’s an exception to the LAW.
Exactly. Why is it so hard for the church to understand that these were criminal acts? They never should have been handled internally. The church is not its own police force.
I just loved all the comments when I found that. I saw maybe a handful defending him out of a few hundred. I know people tend to be more liberal on CNN (though not as much as MSNBC can be), but it gave me some hope reading the responses. Flat out, he is delusional. I really hope this gets a lot more press then I have heard. In fact I have heard none outside the fact that he penned this for CNN.
…? What you say now?
Since when does the Catholic Church care about the zeitgeist of the day, or or or… what the general public might have branded them? I have an idea, here, is if you are going to play that there’s a god and hold your dear religious beliefs tightly, then they should actually matter. You can’t decide you are exemplifying virtue, exceptional people with an extreme view of sex, except when it’s not cool. That’s just not how it works, unless I’m very much mistaken. One more question, if women were allowed to be priests, do you think they would have been protected and rehabilitated, handled internally, if they had incidents of sexual abuse against children? Once again, if you are concerned with zeitgeist, why can’t women be priests? And if you are concerned with being labeled such a thing as ‘heartless,’ why are you not concerned with the label of ‘perverts’? It’s fitting. If you would stop being perverts, people would stop calling you perverts. Wasn’t it heartless to fail those children, though? If something like booting priests was heartless, so keeping them on in a conspiracy was the opposite of heartless? Why are you blaming people for calling you accurate names?
Sorry, but no, Bill. If the church preaches an ethic of sexual restraint, one wonders why the church tolerates abuse at all. See my paragraph re: zeitgeist. Why are you the church and the rest of us are not as good as you? He draws examples of other situations so we do the same as them. “If” sexual abuse is wrong? You aren’t even sure yet?
That sound you hear is Bill Donohue’s cognitive dissonance taking a good long fart.
How appropriate a metaphor, given we’re all carrying matches to illuminate to his gaseous falsehood, and ready to flame him alive with him own fumes ;)
Reading Donohue’s vitriol just makes me want to punch something. Anything.
I’m waiting for Pat Robertson to explain how the victims were deserving of Rape, and the priests were just doing the Lords Will and sending a message to all the sinners.
They were simply applying the rod of god as a teaching…uhm……tool.
“Employers from every walk of life, in both the U.S. and Europe, have long handled cases of alleged sex abuse by employees as an internal matter. Rarely have employers called the cops, and none was required to do so.”
I rather think they are required to report any case of suspected abuse and if it was found that a CEO was aware of wide spread abuse and didn’t report it, let alone tried to actively cover it up, his ass would be in jail in 2 minutes.
If the head of any secular multi-national company were to have evidence of the cover up of the rape of children he’d be arrested. The Pope should be treated no differently. If he sets foot outside Vatican City he should be thrown in jail. Shame on the governments that don’t do that.
RI gov candidate confronted sex-abuse priest
I want to know where he is getting this crap about companies keeping abuse in-house. Yeah they do try to keep cases of sexual harassment in-house but doubt many would ever try to keep sexual abuse under wraps.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/franken-gets-first-amendm_n_312399.html
You forgot about Franken’s anti-rape bill and the 30 Republican senators who voted against it.
I still don’t think it’s any excuse for the Catholic Church to say, well, they do it, so it’s ok if we do it. No, CC, you should approach this matter as if god were watching you, and in fact, it’s not ok with the US Gov to rape women at work and make it so it could only be resolved internally. Bam. How we get it done. I don’t understand who they think they are hiding this scandal from, who they have charged themselves with protecting and guiding, morally, or don’t Catholics actually believe there’s a god.
I challenge Bill Donahue or anybody else to provide me one example where wholesale cover-ups of sexual assault on children is standard practice the way it is in the Catholic church. Just one.
The Anglican Church covered up similar abuses of Native children in North America for decades. I don’t think that quote counts, though.
I should have specified secular :-)
And I should have checked my spelling. I meant “quite” not “quote” in that last sentence. Silly me.
Check out the public school system if you really care about children who are being abused.
When, exactly, did “But everyone else was doing it!” become a legitimate defense that made an action both legal and moral? I must have missed it.
Nuremberg, 1946… oh wait.
See this article on the morality of god – “might makes right”…this is the kind of twisted ethics that results in this kind of thing. And it’s not just the catholic church, and it’s not just Ireland either. Thousands upon thousands of First Nations (Aboriginals) were treated exactly the same way in Canada for 125 years in residential schools by the Catholic AND Protestant Churches. Almost all children were kidnapped from their communities and forced into these hellholes so that their souls could be saved.
Anyway, I thought this article on morality was helpful:
http://atheism.about.com/od/aboutethics/a/DivineCommand.htm?nl=1
And this stuff was still happening in the 1960s, with the knowledge of the Canadian government, who I believe only apologised last year.
You’re right. It was with the full knowledge of the Canadian government. As they might say on Law & Order, the Government was the shooter and the churches were the gun. The christians wanted to convert the children using fear & torture; the government wanted to assimilate and destroy the “Indians” so they wouldn’t have to pay the money they were owed through the land treaties. You have greed and religion, hand in hand, doing the lord’s work. Does this sound familiar, anyone? And the last residential school closed in the 1980′s, if you can believe that.
None of this surprises me. You can see this in the history of many countries where religion was allowed to make many of the rules. I know that many laws regarding children and the abuse of them are less then 100 years old here in the USA. It was in the 1920′s or so before kids even started to get more rights then the family pet. Religions have alway seen natives as less then themselves.
Yes, I’ve noticed that too. The more religious a society, the worse it tends to treat their children. I’ve further noticed that evangelical christians are especially fond of beating their kids, and legitimizing it with James Dobson or the bible. Fortunately, we now have secular influences to bring some accountability. It’s enough to make you sick.