Ireland attacks confessional secrecy after Catholic sex abuse scandal
Ireland’s prime minister has said Catholic clerics would be prosecuted if they failed to tell the authorities about crimes disclosed during confession, the latest blow to the prestige of the once-dominant Church. A report this week found that the Church concealed from the authorities the sexual abuse of children by priests as recently as 2009, and that clerics appeared to follow Church law rather than Irish guidelines to protect minors.
“The law of the land should not be stopped by a crozier or a collar,” Prime Minister Enda Kenny told journalists on Thursday, referring to the hooked staff held by Catholic bishops during religious services. Kenny said his government would submit legislation to parliament that could jail clerics for up to five years if they failed to report to authorities information about the abuse of children.
The law will override the confessional privilege in Church law that prevents clerics from sharing information, he said. A series of revelations of rape and beatings by members of religious orders and the priesthood in the past have shattered the dominant role of the Catholic Church in Ireland.
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7 comments:
Brilliant. Kudos, Ireland.
There is no question that the Catholic church has been raping children for decades, covering it up, lying about it, and ignoring the victims.
They can't be trusted to protect society from their own pedophiles, and for a long time, the laws of the land allowed the church to get away with that. The church shamelessly, recklessly, sinfully abused that power - not as individuals, but as a coordinated, organized whole.
That makes them an organized crime empire as much as a religious institution.
They should start losing benefits, like "the loophole of confession" and tax exempt status, since they have long lost respect and trust.
Pedophile priests proved that confession gave them the capability to rape children as long as they ran to confession afterwards. Some in the US in Philadelphia had sex with children in confessional. That's convenient. If you close that loophole, and the priest knows that he has to confess or go to hell after he rapes a child, he has a big dilemma.
Brilliant solution, Ireland.
Pedophiles - want forgiveness from God? Go to prison on earth. You don't get the benefit of God's forgiveness for free. Priests - want to hide your pedophile priest friend? You go to jail.
Enact the law. Let's hope the US follows suit. The Catholic church concealed child rape for at least 60 years. Let's let the government shut down the pedophile protection practices. Next up - taxing the church.
Republics have been raping and abusing children for more than two centuries, but no one talks about THAT.
This is quite clearly part of a massive campaign to discredit and destroy the Church by professionals who know what they're doing. If a few amateurs join in to give it an air of credibility and spontaneity, so much the better.
Dear PatO:
When next you have the opportunity to sit down in a comfortable chair and read some books of Church history - accurate books, of course - you will probably find that you have a very tenuous grasp of the truth. This is not stated to be sarcastic to you, or patronizing. I mean precisely what I am saying: do some simple historical research. If more people would do that we would have more serious discussions and less foaming at the mouth.
Is the Church now suffering from an infestation of homosexuals in its priesthood unprecedented in its entire 2,000 year history? Yes, it is. Is it a high percentage of priests who commit these unnamable perversions? No, it isn't (though one would be too many). Are these sodomite priests committing pedophilia - meaning sex with small children? No. The vast majority of these moral wretches are sodomizing adolescent boys, and the proper word for that is ephebephilia (This is important because the anti-Catholic media - which never mentions queers as perpetrators - wants you to think that kindergarten children are being molested, which is not to say that molesting adolescent boys isn't as repugnant. It is.) So use the correct word when discussing these matters. Have the Church officials been negligent in dealing these horrors? Yes, for the most part; they are just as negligent at that as they are negligent in teaching the truths of the Catholic Church. Which, precisely, is why we are in the mess we are in.
Will the future leaders of God's true Church eventually correct these monstrous aberrations? Yes, they will - because we have Christ's promise that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His Church. Will this be in our lifetimes? I don't know. We will need an extremely strong and courageous Pope to begin sorting this awful mess out. Please God we will not have to wait long for that.
Have a rather number of priests been falsely accused of these horrible crimes? Yes, unfortunately. Are you, PatO, in a position to state infallibly which are true accusations and which are not? Are you aware, PatO, that there are more cases of homosexual predation of adolescent boys in the Jewish religion than in the Catholic? Since the media conveniently forgets this little tidbit I wouldn't be surprised if you don't know it. Google will help you learn. Should the Jews fall under the maledictions that you want to see applied to Catholics?
The Irish situation stinks. No arguments from me. But the government's "solution" is draconian and Communist and should be vigorously fought by all Catholics. Sadly, if the Church were not living in this Vatican II Fairy Land it would long ago have stamped out this problem and kept it far away from it's priesthood LIKE IT ALWAYS DID FOR TWENTY CENTURIES. But the Council "opened the windows" to liberalism and the deadly mosquitoes entered. These homo priests - they are the "fruits of Vatican II".
So, contain your anger, PatO, do some reading and get some historical perspective. Then we can work together to find a just and moral solution.
What kind of Church History books?
Sorry Dan, I thought that was PatO addressing me.
Backing off.
I must say that I am not surprised any more to see the Irish Republic attacking the seal of the confessional any more than I am of the first time I found out that the Soviet Social Republic did it.
These are hard and vicious men.
As an Irishman, I think I'm entitled to ask a question I've not seen elsewhere. Did Irish Catholicism whole-heartedly embrace liberalism more than anyone else? I see a lot of names of Irish origin popping up every so often with regards to evil liberals in the Church, particularly in the US of Irish decent like some guy called Cardinal Mahoney I think. That just might be because there were so many Irish in the priesthood though, with there being many good priests, not a reflection on us in general. This latest homo-rape scandal is so appalling though, how mad must these bishops be? Gutless wonders! It must be so demoralising for those who are trying to hold things together. A Mhuire Mháthair, guí ar ár shon!
Not to diminish the high crimes of the RCC but please examine the Jehovah's Witnesses who go door to door and come on our property.
Jehovah's Witnesses pedophiles.
Many court documents and news events prove that Jehovah's Witnesses require two witnesses when a child comes forward with allegations of molestation within the congregation. Such allegations have customarily been treated as sins instead of crimes and are only reported to authorities when it is required to do so by law, (which varies by state). It has also been shown that child molesters within the organization usually have not been identified to the congregation members or the public at large.
These people engage in a door to door ministry, possibly exposing children to pedophiles.
Although the Watchtower Bible Tract Society claims that known pedophiles are accompanied by a non-pedophile in such work, there is no law stating that such a practice must be followed.
The Watchtower corporation has paid out millions in settlement money already.
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Danny Haszard abuse victim
dannyhaszard(dot)com
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