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Given the prolific pedophilia in the Catholic church, revealed in so many countries around the world, I am absolutely convinced that there is an active and thri

Given the prolific pedophilia in the Catholic church, revealed in so many countries around the world, I am absolutely convinced that there is an active and thriving pedophilia club in the Catholic church / Vatican. There is no other explanation of why these priests are allowed to continue in service, while churches use coercion and or bribes of thousands to millions of dollars to buy silence from the victims! And yes, I know about the whole concept of forgiveness / acceptance that is ingrained in the catholic belief system that is used to explain why pedophile priests are given a "second" chance. I understand it. But the way it is practiced is flawed - why are pedophile priests allowed to continue in service? Condemn the sin, not the person, forgive them, accept them into the community - but why cover up the crimes and let them continue to be priests? Spirituality and theology apart, at some point the nature of the disease shouldn't be ignored. We don't encourage an alcoholic to become bartender, do we? It is this insistence of the church to allow pedophiles continue as priests that absolutely convinces me that there is a very active lobby of pedophiles in the Catholic church / Vatican, who find comfort in the secretive community they have formed. We have seen how the internet nurtures echo chambers in its social media. It is easy to accept that an actual community or club of paedophiles within the Catholic church would find similar benefits and solidarity from other "understanding" members, and why they would attract such kind. It isn't at all surprising to learn that every fourth pedophilia suspect in Poland is a priest ( https://www.rt.com/news/530345-poland-priest-pedophilia-church/ https://www.rt.com/news/530345-poland-priest-pedophilia-chur... ).

rich_sasha 5y ago
I can see why you're getting downvoted, but sadly (as a Catholic-sort of) I think you're right. It now seems to me that the Catholic Church's hierarchy is catastrophically flawed. I see this as quite separate from lay Catholics, who somehow aren't outraged by all this, but I guess more due to cognitive deficits than actual acceptance. Catholic Church has an intransparent, rigid hierarchy built on secrecy and obedience, and apparently severely lacking in the morals department. It has a lot of trust and a high cross-section for interaction with the general public (in Catholic countries at least), in particular children. Celibacy (a social, not biblical concept), probably doesn't help. In Poland, which you quote, the majority of priests found to be sex offenders against children, were not found to have paedophilic tendencies in subsequent psychiatric evaluations, rather chose children as easy victims. Controlling for all these features, I remain unconvinced that there is something particularly wrong about religion itself in this organisation. Abuse of children and other weaker members of the society has sadly been a hallmark of large organisations (e.g. abuse by Oxfam employees in Haiti), it's just that most organisations lack either the reach, or the rigid structure of CC. As an aside, I wouldn't use Russia Today as a source for anything meaningful, certainly not when it's about Poland; if ever there was an axe to grind, surely it's there.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  I didn't think anyone would interpret my text as an attack on catholics or christianity, but I can see how some may be perceiving it like that. Yes, ofcourse, this isn't a religious problem of Christianity or Catholicism but due to the current structure of the Vatican. It's not as if Protestant churches, or Hindu ashrams or Muslim Jamaaths don't have such incidents. But the absolute scale of it in the catholic church is a clear indicator that there is something very wrong with their organisation.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  > I see this as quite separate from lay Catholics, who somehow aren't outraged by all this, but I guess more due to cognitive deficits than actual acceptance. Survivorship bias. Most of the Catholics who are outraged about this probably stopped being Catholic. Those who are publicly outraged and still believe are probably in the minority.
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    Most of the Catholics who are still 'practicing' that I know are fully outraged as well, and work to improve the lay boards and civil integration in legal processes. The outcomes today are vastly different than 15-20 years ago. Priests being shuffled around quietly while a bishop settles with the family was a frequent occurrence just a couple decades ago. Nowadays that is suicide. Sadly, not all parts of the Church/world are there, but at least in most corners of the US/Europe, it is that way. Incidence of abuse has been extremely curtailed, and all these studies showing the opposite are reaching back into the 50s-80s, where abuse was rife.
    - busterarm 5y ago
      Unfortunately the Catholic Church's attitude towards dealing with past mistakes is still one of hostility. I used to write software and optimize advertising for personal injury & mass tort lawfirms. The one that I worked at was building a major class action case against the Catholic Church. The volume of inbound leads that we had from all across the United States was enormous. A good six-digit number of them were qualified. There were priests in my Catholic Schools that had been on the accused list. One was even from a classmate of mine. The Catholic Church was ruthless about negotiating down the damage. Basically their position was that they would fight every case in the US or they would settle all cases in the Archdiocese of New York that took place in Manhattan (a pitifully small number but an area in the US where the Church has a lot of money). It was purely about the money. The law firm took the easy way out for the amount of resources that they wanted to commit. I probably listened to hundreds of calls where grown men were crying talking about how absolutely shattered their lives were. Only for my employer to turn around and say "sorry, we can't help you.". I no longer do work for PI/mass tort firms and as a direct result of this.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>but why cover up the crimes and let them continue to be priests? Because very few men are willing to spend ~8 years in higher education to make ~$30,000 a year for a job where you're on duty 24/7 with a private personal life forbidden to you. Many of the people willing to do that job are going to be flawed somehow, and firing any one of them causes the Church lose out on the huge amount of money they spent on training. There's a lot of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but their actions can be explained without a need for some child abuse ring running the whole organization.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s because of the money that the church refuses to fire pedophile priests. I think a lot more of it is about saving face. The church wants to maintain a veneer of holiness, one that is poorly tarnished now, and sweeping problems under the rug is easier in the short term to maintain said veneer. Of course, this strategy does not work in the long run. There’s also the darker possibility that yesterday’s pedophile priests became today’s pedophile bishops who do not see this abuse as a problem to be corrected.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  > [...] very few men are willing to spend ~8 years in higher education to make ~$30,000 a year for a job where you're on duty 24/7 with a private personal life forbidden to you. That's a rather ascetic view of what it's like to be a Catholic priest. They do have free time, and while yes, working on Sundays and holidays is part of the job, weekdays are relatively free. > There's a lot of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but their actions can be explained without a need for some child abuse ring running the whole organization. I used to think that, but the scale of cover-ups found in the Polish CC convinced me it cannot be the case. A number of bishops have now been found to ignore and bury accusations against sex offender priests, with written evidence available. All continued to have the full support (material in particular) of the Church. The scale of the tragedy is inexplicable. Protests by various groups to Vatican have also achieved literally nothing. You had paedophile priests pampered and protected by the CC like they were martyrs for the greater good (some were in fact called that). As Napoelon said, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But what's happening there is beyond any humanly possible incompetence.
hnmullany 5y ago
You don't have to resort to QAnon thinking about cabal's and secret clubs when institutional protection is plenty motivation all by itself (which is what happened in my school with a pedophile priest).
willcipriano 5y ago
Expanding that out. Epstein had lots of powerful friends, and I don't buy that Weinstein acted alone. Jerry Sandusky molested kids for decades, the administration of Penn State knew and did nothing. The Taliban certainly has it faults but they don't allow boys to be raped under their watch. The US gave Afgan allies Viagra so that they may better do so. It seems anywhere you have people with power, you also find child sexual abuse. I don't know why but it's consistent across time and cultures. Power corrupts is a fact as proven as gravity.
- francisofascii 5y ago
  Joe Paterno did not molest kids. You are referring to Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    You are correct, my bad. I misremembered.
- lordlic 5y ago
  Any time conditions exist for someone who doesn't care about others to get what they want, that person will try to get what they want. That's not particularly insightful on its own. That's like the one-sentence synopsis of the entire field of critical theory. Go read Marx, or feminist theory, or critical race theory, or something. This fixation on child sexual abuse as an inevitable consequence of power seems like some weird right-wing conspiracy stuff, especially unironically using the words "The Taliban certainly has its faults but."
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Taking my comment as right wing is interesting to me. Personally I have found that it transcends the left and right wing labels and applies generally to those in power, that is why I included things like sports and the Catholic Church was previously mentioned. Is it your observation that it occurs more in what you consider left wing organizations?
javagram 5y ago
> It is this insistence of the church to allow pedophiles continue as priests that absolutely convinces me that there is a very active lobby of pedophiles in the Catholic church / Vatican Except that in the USA, a single credible accusation against a Catholic priest is treated as proof of guilt since 2003 and the priest is removed (a much lower standard than in the criminal justice system that requires proof beyond reasonable doubt or even civil cases that require a preponderance of evidence). This review is done by a board of laymen, not priests, and the process was approved by the Vatican which you accuse of having a cabal. Regarding historical cases where priests were given a second chance, keep in mind this was not limited to the Catholic Church and other institutions had the same behavior. It’s not necessarily evidence of a cabal, just that people back then didn’t understand the danger as much, or didn’t care.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  I suspect it may have something to do with US laws. For example, in India, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act 2012 legislates that religious organisations compulsorily have to inform the authorities if it becomes aware of any act of sexual misconduct / pervesity against children by their clergy or in the organisation. This means that no religious organisation can try to "settle" the issue between the abuser and the victim within their community as the law prioritises it as a criminal matter, giving no leeway to anyone on it. Even if the victim chooses to not file a complaint, the police can investigate and try and prosecute the accused.

rich_sasha 5y ago

I can see why you're getting downvoted, but sadly (as a Catholic-sort of) I think you're right. It now seems to me that the Catholic Church's hierarchy is catastrophically flawed. I see this as quite separate from lay Catholics, who somehow aren't outraged by all this, but I guess more due to cognitive deficits than actual acceptance. Catholic Church has an intransparent, rigid hierarchy built on secrecy and obedience, and apparently severely lacking in the morals department. It has a lot of trust and a high cross-section for interaction with the general public (in Catholic countries at least), in particular children. Celibacy (a social, not biblical concept), probably doesn't help. In Poland, which you quote, the majority of priests found to be sex offenders against children, were not found to have paedophilic tendencies in subsequent psychiatric evaluations, rather chose children as easy victims. Controlling for all these features, I remain unconvinced that there is something particularly wrong about religion itself in this organisation. Abuse of children and other weaker members of the society has sadly been a hallmark of large organisations (e.g. abuse by Oxfam employees in Haiti), it's just that most organisations lack either the reach, or the rigid structure of CC. As an aside, I wouldn't use Russia Today as a source for anything meaningful, certainly not when it's about Poland; if ever there was an axe to grind, surely it's there.

webmobdev 5y ago
I didn't think anyone would interpret my text as an attack on catholics or christianity, but I can see how some may be perceiving it like that. Yes, ofcourse, this isn't a religious problem of Christianity or Catholicism but due to the current structure of the Vatican. It's not as if Protestant churches, or Hindu ashrams or Muslim Jamaaths don't have such incidents. But the absolute scale of it in the catholic church is a clear indicator that there is something very wrong with their organisation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ashtonkem 5y ago
> I see this as quite separate from lay Catholics, who somehow aren't outraged by all this, but I guess more due to cognitive deficits than actual acceptance. Survivorship bias. Most of the Catholics who are outraged about this probably stopped being Catholic. Those who are publicly outraged and still believe are probably in the minority.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  Most of the Catholics who are still 'practicing' that I know are fully outraged as well, and work to improve the lay boards and civil integration in legal processes. The outcomes today are vastly different than 15-20 years ago. Priests being shuffled around quietly while a bishop settles with the family was a frequent occurrence just a couple decades ago. Nowadays that is suicide. Sadly, not all parts of the Church/world are there, but at least in most corners of the US/Europe, it is that way. Incidence of abuse has been extremely curtailed, and all these studies showing the opposite are reaching back into the 50s-80s, where abuse was rife.
  - busterarm 5y ago
    Unfortunately the Catholic Church's attitude towards dealing with past mistakes is still one of hostility. I used to write software and optimize advertising for personal injury & mass tort lawfirms. The one that I worked at was building a major class action case against the Catholic Church. The volume of inbound leads that we had from all across the United States was enormous. A good six-digit number of them were qualified. There were priests in my Catholic Schools that had been on the accused list. One was even from a classmate of mine. The Catholic Church was ruthless about negotiating down the damage. Basically their position was that they would fight every case in the US or they would settle all cases in the Archdiocese of New York that took place in Manhattan (a pitifully small number but an area in the US where the Church has a lot of money). It was purely about the money. The law firm took the easy way out for the amount of resources that they wanted to commit. I probably listened to hundreds of calls where grown men were crying talking about how absolutely shattered their lives were. Only for my employer to turn around and say "sorry, we can't help you.". I no longer do work for PI/mass tort firms and as a direct result of this.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

>but why cover up the crimes and let them continue to be priests? Because very few men are willing to spend ~8 years in higher education to make ~$30,000 a year for a job where you're on duty 24/7 with a private personal life forbidden to you. Many of the people willing to do that job are going to be flawed somehow, and firing any one of them causes the Church lose out on the huge amount of money they spent on training. There's a lot of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but their actions can be explained without a need for some child abuse ring running the whole organization.

ashtonkem 5y ago
I don’t think it’s because of the money that the church refuses to fire pedophile priests. I think a lot more of it is about saving face. The church wants to maintain a veneer of holiness, one that is poorly tarnished now, and sweeping problems under the rug is easier in the short term to maintain said veneer. Of course, this strategy does not work in the long run. There’s also the darker possibility that yesterday’s pedophile priests became today’s pedophile bishops who do not see this abuse as a problem to be corrected.
rich_sasha 5y ago
> [...] very few men are willing to spend ~8 years in higher education to make ~$30,000 a year for a job where you're on duty 24/7 with a private personal life forbidden to you. That's a rather ascetic view of what it's like to be a Catholic priest. They do have free time, and while yes, working on Sundays and holidays is part of the job, weekdays are relatively free. > There's a lot of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but their actions can be explained without a need for some child abuse ring running the whole organization. I used to think that, but the scale of cover-ups found in the Polish CC convinced me it cannot be the case. A number of bishops have now been found to ignore and bury accusations against sex offender priests, with written evidence available. All continued to have the full support (material in particular) of the Church. The scale of the tragedy is inexplicable. Protests by various groups to Vatican have also achieved literally nothing. You had paedophile priests pampered and protected by the CC like they were martyrs for the greater good (some were in fact called that). As Napoelon said, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. But what's happening there is beyond any humanly possible incompetence.

hnmullany 5y ago

You don't have to resort to QAnon thinking about cabal's and secret clubs when institutional protection is plenty motivation all by itself (which is what happened in my school with a pedophile priest).

willcipriano 5y ago

Expanding that out. Epstein had lots of powerful friends, and I don't buy that Weinstein acted alone. Jerry Sandusky molested kids for decades, the administration of Penn State knew and did nothing. The Taliban certainly has it faults but they don't allow boys to be raped under their watch. The US gave Afgan allies Viagra so that they may better do so. It seems anywhere you have people with power, you also find child sexual abuse. I don't know why but it's consistent across time and cultures. Power corrupts is a fact as proven as gravity.

francisofascii 5y ago
Joe Paterno did not molest kids. You are referring to Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  You are correct, my bad. I misremembered.
lordlic 5y ago
Any time conditions exist for someone who doesn't care about others to get what they want, that person will try to get what they want. That's not particularly insightful on its own. That's like the one-sentence synopsis of the entire field of critical theory. Go read Marx, or feminist theory, or critical race theory, or something. This fixation on child sexual abuse as an inevitable consequence of power seems like some weird right-wing conspiracy stuff, especially unironically using the words "The Taliban certainly has its faults but."
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Taking my comment as right wing is interesting to me. Personally I have found that it transcends the left and right wing labels and applies generally to those in power, that is why I included things like sports and the Catholic Church was previously mentioned. Is it your observation that it occurs more in what you consider left wing organizations?

javagram 5y ago

> It is this insistence of the church to allow pedophiles continue as priests that absolutely convinces me that there is a very active lobby of pedophiles in the Catholic church / Vatican Except that in the USA, a single credible accusation against a Catholic priest is treated as proof of guilt since 2003 and the priest is removed (a much lower standard than in the criminal justice system that requires proof beyond reasonable doubt or even civil cases that require a preponderance of evidence). This review is done by a board of laymen, not priests, and the process was approved by the Vatican which you accuse of having a cabal. Regarding historical cases where priests were given a second chance, keep in mind this was not limited to the Catholic Church and other institutions had the same behavior. It’s not necessarily evidence of a cabal, just that people back then didn’t understand the danger as much, or didn’t care.

webmobdev 5y ago
I suspect it may have something to do with US laws. For example, in India, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses Act 2012 legislates that religious organisations compulsorily have to inform the authorities if it becomes aware of any act of sexual misconduct / pervesity against children by their clergy or in the organisation. This means that no religious organisation can try to "settle" the issue between the abuser and the victim within their community as the law prioritises it as a criminal matter, giving no leeway to anyone on it. Even if the victim chooses to not file a complaint, the police can investigate and try and prosecute the accused.