Pope has died

Call me old fashioned but I personally believe that child abuse and the innocent children suffering at the hands of the Catholic church comes a little bit higher on the priority list then someone feeling a little bit upset that an 88 year old man who protected paedophiles, and who they have never met, has died. But that's just me.


And yes he did protect paedophiles. He accused children of lying to protect the paedophile Julio Grassi.
He also gave a paedophile priest his job back after the previous pope had essentially sacked him. His excuse was that he was inexperienced as a pope so didnt know how serious a crime paedophilia is. He also referred to that same priest molesting more children as "a relapse".
Oh and he blamed Chilean victims of a paedophile bishop for what they endured and defended the molestation. Only changing his stance after public outcry and again had to come out and say he'd made errors of judgement in defending the paedo.

So frankly I don't give a **** about a few hurty words said about the man who facilitated and excused CHILDREN BEING RAPED and find the fact that you think now is not an acceptable time to discuss paedophiles within the upper echelons of the church absolutely disgusting. It is always the time to criticise paedophiles and the death of head of the organisation molesting and raping under his watch and being actively defended by him is absolutely a reason to raise the ugly truth again.

May he burn in hell for the pain and suffering he has caused to so many children via his actions and inaction

 

Bulls.hit.

The percentage of people in the general population who are child sexual abusers is absolutely nowhere near 1% or 2%. Nor is it anything like that high in school teachers. That is a ridiculous suggestion. Up to one in fifty teachers are child abusers?

If it is even as high as that within Catholic clergy there is an even bigger problem than had been discussed. The fact studies you quote suggest it is worries me greatly. There is a clear issue. It hasn’t been eradicated or the perpetrators properly dealt with.

But that doesn’t mean some of the things said here are right.

The things said about Pope Francis on this thread have bordered on disgusting, given how much further he has gone on the issue than all his predecessors - whilst I do agree he didn’t do enough and in some cases just got it plain wrong, some of the name calling against a man who has just died and who has to my or anyone else’s knowledge never committed any such heinous crime himself, is quite frankly childish and pathetic.

The pope he may have been; but he was just one man. The tone of a lot of this thread is hugely distasteful and I’d wager very few, if any, of the poor victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church would agree or approve of a lot of what has been said. I’d go as far as to say I reckon many would be disgusted by it.

 

What absolute rubbish

 

Its a good point Barnsley reds won't answer this though, it's just his usual gas lighting.

 

He didn't commit the crimes himself, he just covered up for and protected those who did.

Maxine Carr didn't kill a kid, she defended and covered up for someone who did. I doubt there'll be many people sticking up for her though and saying that comments about her are out of order.

 

Interesting analogy.

Maxine Carr could quite feasibly be argued to be a further victim of Ian Huntley. Was she frightened to death of him and scared to not do exactly what he told her to do? Was she being coercively controlled and psychologically bullied by him?

I believe her sentence and subsequent release with a new identification reflects this.

I don’t blame her for Ian Huntley being a vile murdering nonce, and I don’t blame the pope, or the Catholic Church, for the minority priests in their number who are similar vile nonces.

I hold them to account for cover ups and turning a blind eye - but suggesting someone should burn in hell is way too far in my view.

 

I respect your opinion but completely disagree. There are children who have been molested directly because the pope excused and refrocked (is that the word?) a known paedophile allowing him the opportunity to "relapse" and molest more children. there is absolutely no defending that.

 

It appears there is.

 

The first quote is from the Pope admitting that up to 2% of the clergy could be paedophiles, a quote attributed in many articles to him.
The second was an article showing the general % of the population believed to be interested in paedophilia, highlighting that 2% is hugely out of proportion to the general population.

There has also been mention of the fact that many groups who have higher than average contact with young people will therefore have a higher than average number of offenders.
Given most of their leadership acknowledge there's an issue, seems strange they actively encourage involvement with the Scouting organisation, a multifaith organisation.
Yet the International Catholic Conference of Scouting, a UK organisation, feels the need to blur those boundaries. I wonder why.

 

He definitely got that wrong. No doubt about it. Did he not later sack that dodgy priest though and apologise? Did he also not do any good? I've read an obituary about him today and it looks like when he was a younger priest/prelate/whatever he did try to help people when Argentina was being run by a junta. He also made pronouncements on climate change, gay rights and poverty in an attempt to effect change. So although youre right about his response to abuse I think he did try to accommodate progressive views. He may not have been successful since the Catholic Church is a big, cumbersome diverse thing but in some ways his heart was in the right place. If there is a god he'll be judged by Him won't he? I don't believe in God myself but you know what I mean...

 

Organised religion, in particular, is responsible for a great deal of hatred and mistreatment of individuals and groups.
In contrast, I believe personal spirituality can have a profoundly positive impact on people.

Death does not exempt anyone from public accountability for their actions during life—
especially those who led a religion that claims people will face eternal punishment for failing to follow its teachings.

Anti-religion? Yes, I’ll accept that label. I’d gladly weigh the positives of religion against its negatives—
and then go further, by examining the harm done in the name of something that has no basis in objective truth.

 

Oh yeah, when the paedophile inevitably reoffended using the position of power given to him by the pope it is true that he sacked sacked him which I guess he had no choice but to do considering he was in prison for molesting children.

An apology for not protecting kids means absolutely nothing in my opinion.

And of course he did some good but I'm pretty sure Jimmy savile ran a few marathons for charity too.

 

Jummy Saville was a constant perpetrator though. This guy wasn't. I see where youre coming from with the abuse. Its been running for decades, probably hundreds of years and its appalling but, in the big scheme, from what I've read, I dont think this Pope was, on balance a nasty person. If you think he is because of the sexual abuse I completely understand but we'll have to disagree (per my comments before). So, basically I agree with you to a point but I think the complete assassination of the guy is over the top. I'll leave it there - youre not going to change your views and Im not changing mine. Cheers.

 

According to the NSPCC Sadly about 5% of 11-17 year old report sexual abuse that would pass the threshold as criminal acts. 1/3 of all sexually reported crime is against children. Whilst mostly is relatives or close family friends, I think you’d be surprised how prevalent it is in schools. Anecdotally I can name 2 teachers at my secondary school who sexually abused pupils. And others who trod a might fine line.

page 9:

https://pure.hud.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/67011906/FINAL_THESIS.pdf#page12

12% of reported abuse happened in school, 48% family 6% clergy ( not just Catholic)

 

Except that if you actually read the first article you see that the Pope is said to have been misquoted. Even if taken at face value, "could be" is hardly probative of anything. I'd want a bit better evidence than that before making sweeping generalizations that may or may not feed my preconceptions.

 

I'd agree, a couple at mine, but there were a lot of teachers there, more than the 3 Catholic priests and 4 Scout leaders I was aware of. ( 1 of each was a convicted abuser)

 

Hmmmm, why do you assume preconceptions, I hope you're Catholic and just defending your faith blindly. You won't change my opinions and I won't change yours, probably best if we leave it there. Religious threads never go well, I should have known better.

 

About 5% of 11-16 year old report sexual abuse, so that’s not including younger then 11 nor includes those who can’t or won’t say anything, who’s abusing all these kids? It’s not catholic priests.

 

Ok so I'm amongst that 5% will be a lot of false allegations. Both because of bad intentions but also guilt of own actions etc. It involves a lot of perpetrators and alleged perpetrators of the same age group. COCSA is a significant proportion of all SA in under 16s.
And more than we like to admit is committed by women and girls too.

 

are you just being argumentative for the sake of it or are you a practicing catholic?