9 ms·

Documentary About Pedophile Priests Shakes Up Poland

86 points by blanche_ 7y ago

david927 7y ago
Here's another great documentary that reflects the efforts of the Catholic Church historically to not only hide the offense and move the alleged perpetrator, but would often move them back to positions where the abuse could take place again: The Keepers https://www.netflix.com/title/80122179 https://www.netflix.com/title/80122179
devoply 7y ago
Tell sexual humans not to be sexual due to some made up non-sense myths and put them in positions of power and authority, what could possibly go wrong? They want to stop child abuse, and sure who is not for that, but how about stopping myth abuse?
- kleiba 7y ago
  I'm personally not convinced by the often exerted narrative that celibacy leads to pedophilia. It seems to me that a more likely explanation is that someone with a certain inclination would seek out a job (perhaps even subconsciously) that may offer him a chance to get closer to living out that inclination.
  - dmurray 7y ago
    It's probably a bit of both. Homosexuality is, at least stereotypically, more common in environments where there are no other options, like sailing ships and prisons, even in cultures where it is strongly taboo. It's a small leap to say the same could apply to paedophilia.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      I wonder if there's value in seperating homosexuality, the sexual preference/identity, from the act - I feel like in many of those "no other options" scenarios there probably wouldn't be a lot of identifying as homosexual, nor a preference for homosexual acts, but instead as acts of sexual pragmatism.
    - ajuc 7y ago
      There are other options. It's a public secret that "kitchen helpers" of priests in Poland are often also their lovers. As long as they are adult and agreed voluntarily to such relationship I don't mind, even if it's highly hypocritical.
  - cybersnowflake 7y ago
    On the priest side the celibacy requirement probably attracts a certain type. Then there is the power over others angle which isn't limited to churches. The combination of factors stack on each other. On the institutional side its the well known and agreed upon siege mentality where the church tries to protect itself out of arrogance and a probably accurate assessment that its enemies want to use and manipulate this for political gain. Also much less talked about is the church's former policies were partially due to a misguided sense of mercy. If the church really did come down as hard and preemptively as people now want it to from the very beginning the world would probably be whining about how intolerant and cruel they were to potential and defrocked priests.
- ASalazarMX 7y ago
  Religion has no bearing in this, it's the church who has been the facilitator, and the church is made of regular people. Priests have sexual needs, that's understandable, but they could satisfy them without victimizing others. The line is harming someone, specially if they are defenseless. The beliefs of the perpetrators don't enter the equation.
  - outside1234 7y ago
    You can't say religion has no bearing in this, as it quite literally says that Priests can't have a wife. It seems entirely predictable to me that this drives selecting folks for these positions that don't want wives, but want something else.
  - comboy 7y ago
    You could apply the same reasoning to scientology. I'm not saying it's relligion's fault. It's just that things rarely have a single clearly defined reason. Some correlations exist.
spsrich2 7y ago
I can see how that would be a horrendous shock to them
phoe-krk 7y ago
The documentary is very good and based on facts, and the Polish church never had and still does not have any means of getting rid of people such as the collaborators who have been implanted there by the old communist governments or child molesters who proliferate in this environment, having unrestricted access to children in schools and churches. They are simply moved from one chapel to another or, eventually, to houses for the elderly priests. This needs to change, and, as a Polish person, I wholeheartedly welcome this documentary. I am glad that it has been made - it would never be possible if it was not for independent filmmaking. It's time for the Catholic church to stop being associated with child molestation - and in order for that to happen, the child molestation must be purged from that church with all appropriate means. Otherwise, that stigma will just keep on going on.
- jbob2000 7y ago
  But what if there’s nothing to purge? What if the church itself is the catalyst for creating predators? The fact that this problem has spanned generations tells me that this isn’t something you can purge, it’s fundamental to the way the church operates. Ask a man to be celibate and then give him unquestioned, divine power over individuals? Of course you’re going to have a predator problem!
  - javagram 7y ago
    Institutions such as public schools and the Boy Scouts that do not require celibacy have had very similar problems. So have some Protestant churches that allow their ministers to marry. The John Jay report done on clerical sex abuse in the USA didn’t find the percentage of abusers in the priesthood to be significantly different from those in other professions. The impulse to cover up is not limited to the institution of celibacy by any means. Unfortunately as a catholic I fear this is a ticking time bomb for many non first world churches. The church here in the US only put into place decent zero-tolerance policies in the late 90s and early 2000s and many churches in other regions have failed to take matching action.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
maxxxxx 7y ago
Any other organization with that behavior that is not a church would already have been shut down worldwide and leadership would be in jail. I hope that believers will put pressure on the church to clean up its act.
- ajuc 7y ago
  So far believers (and the government which is in bed with Catholic Church here) cry it's "an attack on the church". EDIT: someone even flagged this.
mzs 7y ago
This is an AP story: https://www.apnews.com/14f374e7c6a340e6bbf543223f968006 https://www.apnews.com/14f374e7c6a340e6bbf543223f968006
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, we'll switch to that from https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/13/world/europe/ap-eu-poland-church-sex-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/13/world/europe/ap-....
ajuc 7y ago
The movie is available legally for free on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrUvQ3W3nV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrUvQ3W3nV4 There are English subtitles.
avgDev 7y ago
Poland is insanely religious. I grew up in Poland and moved to US with my parents at age of 14. I became an atheist. Recently, I visited Poland, and was amazed that people my age are still mostly religious. Recently, I read a story about people who took down a statue of a priest who molested children. There was an outcry and some politician had the statue put back in its place. That is just so twisted. Many people I talked to in Poland don't want to even discuss church and systematic protection of pedophiles. It makes them very uneasy but they want to ignore it i guess?
- ajuc 7y ago
  The problem with that particular statue was procedural - they illegally took down that statue before the city council decided what to do with it as the accusations appeared. I can understand why these people did it - they can be frustrated after decades of being ignored. The late president of Gdańsk said they will take it down, but it takes time for the procedure, and the activists took it down themselves before that. So they will probably put it back and then take it down legally. As funny as this sounds Gdańsk is very liberal for Poland. But, generally I agree - Poland is crazy religious, and the problem with that particular priest was that he knew all the highest officials in Poland, including even presidents. He was the Solidarity priest, that participated in the protests against communism. At first it was almost a national betrayal to say anything bad about him (because he was a figure of anti-communism opposition), then after communism failed he knew presidents and prime ministers and who would act on these accusations. So he died without being officially accused, and now it's hard to even get people to remove the statues...
the_pwner224 7y ago
Not very related, but I found this excellent yet sad news story via HN search half a year back: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage-death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph... It's a long read but IMO was worth it. It seems to be a long-running trend for Churches and similar religious organizations to do this sort of stuff.
cirno9 7y ago
This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already. edit: uh oh, looks like I triggered the pedophiles.
cirno9 7y ago
I made the following comment: "This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already." It was downvoted and deleted. Why does HN downvote and delete comments calling out pedophiles? Is HN a pedophile community?
cirno9_2 7y ago
I made the following comment: "This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already." It was downvoted and deleted and my account was shadowbanned. Why does HN downvote and delete comments and shadowban accounts for calling out pedophiles? Is HN a pedophile community?
cirno9_3 7y ago
I made the following comment: "This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already." It was downvoted and deleted and my account was shadowbanned. Why does HN downvote and delete comments and shadowban accounts for calling out pedophiles? Is HN a pedophile community?
- dang 7y ago
  We banned you for posting flamebait and for using HN for religious flamewar. Those things aren't allowed here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

86 points by blanche_ 7y ago

Here's another great documentary that reflects the efforts of the Catholic Church historically to not only hide the offense and move the alleged perpetrator, but would often move them back to positions where the abuse could take place again: The Keepers https://www.netflix.com/title/80122179 https://www.netflix.com/title/80122179

devoply 7y ago

Tell sexual humans not to be sexual due to some made up non-sense myths and put them in positions of power and authority, what could possibly go wrong? They want to stop child abuse, and sure who is not for that, but how about stopping myth abuse?

kleiba 7y ago
I'm personally not convinced by the often exerted narrative that celibacy leads to pedophilia. It seems to me that a more likely explanation is that someone with a certain inclination would seek out a job (perhaps even subconsciously) that may offer him a chance to get closer to living out that inclination.
- dmurray 7y ago
  It's probably a bit of both. Homosexuality is, at least stereotypically, more common in environments where there are no other options, like sailing ships and prisons, even in cultures where it is strongly taboo. It's a small leap to say the same could apply to paedophilia.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    I wonder if there's value in seperating homosexuality, the sexual preference/identity, from the act - I feel like in many of those "no other options" scenarios there probably wouldn't be a lot of identifying as homosexual, nor a preference for homosexual acts, but instead as acts of sexual pragmatism.
  - ajuc 7y ago
    There are other options. It's a public secret that "kitchen helpers" of priests in Poland are often also their lovers. As long as they are adult and agreed voluntarily to such relationship I don't mind, even if it's highly hypocritical.
- cybersnowflake 7y ago
  On the priest side the celibacy requirement probably attracts a certain type. Then there is the power over others angle which isn't limited to churches. The combination of factors stack on each other. On the institutional side its the well known and agreed upon siege mentality where the church tries to protect itself out of arrogance and a probably accurate assessment that its enemies want to use and manipulate this for political gain. Also much less talked about is the church's former policies were partially due to a misguided sense of mercy. If the church really did come down as hard and preemptively as people now want it to from the very beginning the world would probably be whining about how intolerant and cruel they were to potential and defrocked priests.
ASalazarMX 7y ago
Religion has no bearing in this, it's the church who has been the facilitator, and the church is made of regular people. Priests have sexual needs, that's understandable, but they could satisfy them without victimizing others. The line is harming someone, specially if they are defenseless. The beliefs of the perpetrators don't enter the equation.
- outside1234 7y ago
  You can't say religion has no bearing in this, as it quite literally says that Priests can't have a wife. It seems entirely predictable to me that this drives selecting folks for these positions that don't want wives, but want something else.
- comboy 7y ago
  You could apply the same reasoning to scientology. I'm not saying it's relligion's fault. It's just that things rarely have a single clearly defined reason. Some correlations exist.

spsrich2 7y ago

I can see how that would be a horrendous shock to them

phoe-krk 7y ago

The documentary is very good and based on facts, and the Polish church never had and still does not have any means of getting rid of people such as the collaborators who have been implanted there by the old communist governments or child molesters who proliferate in this environment, having unrestricted access to children in schools and churches. They are simply moved from one chapel to another or, eventually, to houses for the elderly priests. This needs to change, and, as a Polish person, I wholeheartedly welcome this documentary. I am glad that it has been made - it would never be possible if it was not for independent filmmaking. It's time for the Catholic church to stop being associated with child molestation - and in order for that to happen, the child molestation must be purged from that church with all appropriate means. Otherwise, that stigma will just keep on going on.

jbob2000 7y ago
But what if there’s nothing to purge? What if the church itself is the catalyst for creating predators? The fact that this problem has spanned generations tells me that this isn’t something you can purge, it’s fundamental to the way the church operates. Ask a man to be celibate and then give him unquestioned, divine power over individuals? Of course you’re going to have a predator problem!
- javagram 7y ago
  Institutions such as public schools and the Boy Scouts that do not require celibacy have had very similar problems. So have some Protestant churches that allow their ministers to marry. The John Jay report done on clerical sex abuse in the USA didn’t find the percentage of abusers in the priesthood to be significantly different from those in other professions. The impulse to cover up is not limited to the institution of celibacy by any means. Unfortunately as a catholic I fear this is a ticking time bomb for many non first world churches. The church here in the US only put into place decent zero-tolerance policies in the late 90s and early 2000s and many churches in other regions have failed to take matching action.
  - jacquesm 7y ago

maxxxxx 7y ago

Any other organization with that behavior that is not a church would already have been shut down worldwide and leadership would be in jail. I hope that believers will put pressure on the church to clean up its act.

ajuc 7y ago
So far believers (and the government which is in bed with Catholic Church here) cry it's "an attack on the church". EDIT: someone even flagged this.

mzs 7y ago

This is an AP story: https://www.apnews.com/14f374e7c6a340e6bbf543223f968006 https://www.apnews.com/14f374e7c6a340e6bbf543223f968006

dang 7y ago
Ok, we'll switch to that from https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/13/world/europe/ap-eu-poland-church-sex-abuse.html https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/13/world/europe/ap-....

ajuc 7y ago

The movie is available legally for free on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrUvQ3W3nV4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrUvQ3W3nV4 There are English subtitles.

avgDev 7y ago

Poland is insanely religious. I grew up in Poland and moved to US with my parents at age of 14. I became an atheist. Recently, I visited Poland, and was amazed that people my age are still mostly religious. Recently, I read a story about people who took down a statue of a priest who molested children. There was an outcry and some politician had the statue put back in its place. That is just so twisted. Many people I talked to in Poland don't want to even discuss church and systematic protection of pedophiles. It makes them very uneasy but they want to ignore it i guess?

ajuc 7y ago
The problem with that particular statue was procedural - they illegally took down that statue before the city council decided what to do with it as the accusations appeared. I can understand why these people did it - they can be frustrated after decades of being ignored. The late president of Gdańsk said they will take it down, but it takes time for the procedure, and the activists took it down themselves before that. So they will probably put it back and then take it down legally. As funny as this sounds Gdańsk is very liberal for Poland. But, generally I agree - Poland is crazy religious, and the problem with that particular priest was that he knew all the highest officials in Poland, including even presidents. He was the Solidarity priest, that participated in the protests against communism. At first it was almost a national betrayal to say anything bad about him (because he was a figure of anti-communism opposition), then after communism failed he knew presidents and prime ministers and who would act on these accusations. So he died without being officially accused, and now it's hard to even get people to remove the statues...

the_pwner224 7y ago

Not very related, but I found this excellent yet sad news story via HN search half a year back: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orphanage-death-catholic-abuse-nuns-st-josephs https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph... It's a long read but IMO was worth it. It seems to be a long-running trend for Churches and similar religious organizations to do this sort of stuff.

cirno9 7y ago

This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already. edit: uh oh, looks like I triggered the pedophiles.

cirno9 7y ago

I made the following comment: "This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already." It was downvoted and deleted. Why does HN downvote and delete comments calling out pedophiles? Is HN a pedophile community?

cirno9_2 7y ago

I made the following comment: "This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already." It was downvoted and deleted and my account was shadowbanned. Why does HN downvote and delete comments and shadowban accounts for calling out pedophiles? Is HN a pedophile community?

cirno9_3 7y ago

I made the following comment: "This didn't shake up anything. It's been common knowledge for a long time that catholic priests are pedophiles. If people seriously had a problem with it, the catholic church would have been banned already." It was downvoted and deleted and my account was shadowbanned. Why does HN downvote and delete comments and shadowban accounts for calling out pedophiles? Is HN a pedophile community?

dang 7y ago
We banned you for posting flamebait and for using HN for religious flamewar. Those things aren't allowed here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html