We do have a part to play in the Pope’s protection

As a Catholic you are brought up to believe that priests are above reproach and should be respected as God's representative on Earth. The sheer number of Catholics has nothing to do with the number of reported abuses. It is the devil in priest's clothing that is the problem. The parents of the abused and the children themselves trusted their carers as men of God. Wake up and smell the coffee. The Catholic Church has ignored the problem for decades and can no longer hide behind the cloth. They probably explained the problem away as the fault of the abused tempting the poor priests!!!

Wow!!! The venom against the Catholic Church is mind boggling. But, hey, it should not surprise any honest and faithful Catholic. Christ Himself said. "The world will hate you even more than it hated Me". "When they rise agaist you with all kinds of calumny do not be perturbed because they did that to Me and they will do even worse to you". It is high season to try and destroy the Catholic Church. But, guys, I have a surprise for you!!!! Its Founder and Head said: "Upon this Rock I shall build My Church and the powers of hell shall never prevail against it"...... "Behold, I shall be with you until the end of the world". The Catholic Church is going nowhere. It will survive the onslaught from within and without and march on. The Holy Spirit is the Captain of Peter's Boat!!!! It won't capsize no matter how much to try to torpedo it.

Now good people, if you are all screaming that homosexuality, lesbianism, same sex marriages,etc. are Human Rights and you are fighting tooth and nail to spread these bestialities all over the world, where do you expect the Catholic Church to recruit new Priests?. Mankind has cast aside the very basic natural law on morality - not to mention the Divine Law God decreed for mankind. The Sanctity of life, the fidelity in Marriage and the parentental responsibility of bringing up their children and instilling in them the moral law of God and Nature, respect of parents, peers and elders and respect of honest work. By hoisting on the pedestal the false gods of self, pride, wealth and sexual-gratification at all costs, child abuse and all kinds immorality are flourising everywhere; in families, schools, other Churc denominations and even in schools. So why do you good people expect to find Angels in the Catholic Church? Christ died for sinners and it is sinners who need to rise up and embrace conversion and denounce these corrosive evils in mankind. You can't approve the same obscene behaviour of homosexuality, lesbianism, same sex marriages and declare they are Human Rights and set in place Organizations - like International Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes Clincs, etc. for abortionon demand - to spread them all over the world and then turn round and demand the Death of the Catholic Church because a fraction of their priests are sinners - yet they are from this same society are in need of repentance and conversion because they have an identity problem. What they need is not condemnation but our prayers. That is Christ's Way - Compassion; condemnation.

It's not unreasonable for the world to expect that the Catholic clergy live up to the standards they demand from everybody else. And that includes not buggering choirboys, or covering up such activities when there is a danger of publicity and damage to the reputation of the church.

"Do as I say, not as I do" was never a very persuasive slogan, and those who by their actions show that it is how they live do not deserve to be accorded any respect or moral authority.

The reputation of the church has been damaged to an immeasurably greater extent by the discovery of the extensive cover-up of the abuse than it would have been had individual incidents been reported immediately so that further abuse could be prevented.

The problem is that too many people in the church are putting the blame on those who are uncovering the abuse, not on those who committed it and those who by covering it up permitted it to continue. It is those who are working to uncover the abuse who are doing most to bring it to an end, and in the eyes of the world they are the ones who will deserve and gain moral authority in this matter.

I hear you loud and clear Jonathan. I was not, and I DO NOT condone
sin. Especially sins of the Consecrated ones of Christ. I hate sin
and those who aid and abet its continuation, BUT I LOVE AND PRAY FOR
SINNERS. That is why Christ was a friend of sinners and was scorned
by the Pharisees who prided themselves of their holiness. No one has
ever condoned sinning Priests or the Bishops who try to protect them.
But the trouble is that no one wants to acknowledge that the Catholic
Church has been dealing with this sin and many, many Priests - and
Bishops who covered for them - have been dealt with appropriated.

Cardinal Ratzinger did a spending job when this job was placed under
his Department. The whole Catholic faithfull need to support him, now
that he is the Head of the Church and in an even better position to
help the Holy Spirit prune the Bride of Christ and rejuvenate Her.
This seems like it is his Apostolate. We all agree the Church
urgently needs a renewal. This has always happened throughout its
history. When prunning became necessary, God in His Wisdom raised up
holy men and women to carry out that work. Please re-read the lives
of the Saints whom God used for times just like these to raise the
Church to even grater heights of Holiness.

In that case, could I ask you to direct your prayers and whatever other efforts you can bring to bear on the matter towards inspiring the Abbot of Ealing to make a clean breast of things?

If the Catholic Church is to lose its reputation as a refuge and protector of priests who happen to be paedophiles, then the disgrace of events such as have occurred at Ealing Abbey must be dealt with openly, fully and immediately.

We all understand that the past cannot be changed. Many children have been raped and sexually assaulted while under the care of the Catholic Church, and nobody can undo that evil and make it not have ever happened. But I still get the impression that far too many Catholics, particularly among the clergy, but amongst some of the laity as well, are far too concerned with the worldly reputation of the church and too little concerned with the substance of the work involved in offering justice, apology and reparation to the victims, and ensuring that the situation cannot recur.

William Oddie in this article is engaged in precisely this kind of thing, when he goes on about how priests don't have a higher proportion of abusers among them. This is irrelevant, the point is that abusers once discovered must be kept away from positions of trust and authority over children, otherwise relatively small numbers of abusers can do untold harm to very large numbers of victims. This is what has happened in the church; even when priests were known to have abused children, they were not removed from positions of trust and authority, and potential victims were not warned to be on their guard.

An all-knowing God will know about the sins of those who have abused and the sins of those who have covered up the abuse. But too many people in the Church are acting as if such a God does not exist, and that if these sins are hidden from the world, they can also be hidden from God himself.

Jonathan, I replied to you as a committed cradle Catholic who observe
and follow Christ's teaching with fidelity on how to treat sinners in
His Church, and especially the Consecrated servants of His Church.
Jesus never condoned the sin of the adulterous woman - and yet, He,
and He alone - had the power and authority to condemn and stone her
because He was sinless. Instead, He did not condemn her but told her
not to sin anymore. All I can assure you is that the Catholic Church
does not - and cannot - condone sin, no matter who has committed it
and it will do the right thing and deal with the sinners amongst its
clergy - the same way it deals with us - the laity. You can rest
assured that, to us, this is the period of cleansing of the Church and
rejuvenating it anew.

The Holy Spirit directs these corrective and prunning activities in
the Church using His Own Methods as He has always done these 2010
years. If we were to doubt this, then we would have no reason to
believe in the teachings of Christ, and work of the Holy Spirit to
purify the Church of Christ and the Honour, Adoration, Worship and
Thanksgiving we all offer to Our Father. It is our total, absolute
and unshakable belief and trust we hold that the Holy Trinity which
dwells in the Church, will make it Holy and protect it until the end
of time. Do not lose hope that the sinners within the Church will not
be dealt with. But this will be accompanied by the Prayers of the
whole Universal Church and fidelity to our Faith and obedience and
prayers for our Holy Father whose duty it is as he occupys the Seat of
Peter to bring about God's Plan to prune His Church. Thank you,
Jonathan and rest assured God's Will will be done.

At the moment it seems that God's will (as you understand it) in this area is mainly being done by atheists and heathens, and is being passively or actively obstructed by many clergy of the Catholic Church.

That being the case, I would hope that you now think it inappropriate to complain about "the venom against the Catholic Church", since it is precisely that venom which is actually causing something to be done about the child abuse scandal.

You know what Jonathan, God has proved again and again that He can -
and does - bring good out of evil. The first time He did this was
when He decided to create human beings with the sole purpose of
awarding them the privilege of taking up the place in Heaven which
Lucifer and his rebelious Angels had forfeited by their pride of
defying God's Omnipotence.

When Lucifer deceived our first parents, he expected God to curse and
reject us. But what did our Good God do? To the chagrin of Lucifer,
in the fullness of time, He sent his Only Son Jesus - the Second
Person of the Holy Trinity - to save mankind by becoming God-man and
dying on the Cross to re-open Heaven for us.

I have no doubt one day, Jonathan, you will see the wisdom of God and
why He can never forsake His Church which He set up to ensure manking
would still attain Heaven even if they sinned after Baptism. This
Christ did this on the very first day after His Resurrection when He
appeared to the Apostles and instituted the very essential Sacrament
of Reconciliation. Without that Sacrament, His crucifixion and death
would have been in vain since man is sinful by the reason of the
forfeiture of the pre-natural nature God had bestowed on Adam and Eve
and which they lost after sinning. This is what makes mankind prone
to sin and Satan's duty is to use that weakness to try and defeat
God's plan for us by ensnaring us in sin and waiting for each one of
us at the moment of death to snatch us from God and haul us to Hell.
But even then, God fights for us at that crucial moment and all He
requires is that we stop listening to Satan trying to convince us our
sins can never be forgiven and we are damned and turn to Him and
accept His Divine Mercy. " I do not desire the loss of any soul I
created". God says so in the Scriptures and His Word is faithful.

You can see Jonathan, Satan or any other evil can never disorganize
God's Will. God does and gets what God wants despite Satan and our
own human weaknesses. Like the Father of the Prodigal Son, He waits
for our return with a contrite heart to embrace us and forgive all our
sins.

So, Jonathan, you need to be gracious like Christ - hate all sin,
whether committed by the Clergy in the Catholic Chuch or by fathers
who daily molest their own children and pray for them to get God's
grace and experience conversion and repent their sins. Our God is a
forgiving God. Christ proved that when He stated He came for sinners
and died for us on the Cross.

Bear in mind, Jonathan, we are all sinners and in need of God's mercy
and forgiveness as long as we live in this world. So don't be so
bitter about sinners in the Catholic Church because, believe me,
there are more horrendous sins which are committed every day
everywhere by sin-prone mankind - and stop seeing only those
committed by the Clergy of the Church. But God is always ready to
forgive the repentant sinner. What did Jesus say? He told Peter.
"You do not forgive seven times a day but seven times seventy!!!!!!"

So learn to forgive other sinners so that your own sins will also be
forgiven by our Gracious God. That bitterness and anger, Jonathan, is
unhealthly for you, emotionally, psychologically, mentally and
corrosive spiritually.

Please try and learn to practice some of Christ's compassion towards
those who annoy you the way He taught us. To pray for those who injure
us or wrong us. I say so because you sure sound like the sinners in
the Catholic Church have hurt you terribly. But Jesus advised us:
"Blessed are the merciful for mercy will be shown to them". Be
merciful, Jonathan, not vindictive. God bless you.

The issue is not at all whether Catholic clergy are more prone to paedophilia than the general population. The issue is entirely about an organisation which is prepared to tolerate those who *are* paedophiles for some "greater good". The Catholic church's response has, and continues to be, grudging and minimal. While many Catholics may not realise it, the general population perceives, very strongly in my opinion, that any changes that have been made have been the minimum required. The Catholic church today is more aware of the sexual assault of children (and let's stop with the euphemistic "child abuse" while we're at it) by clergy, but still appears to regard it as a nuisance to the church's reputation, rather than a vicious attack on an innocent.

By the way, Lord Patten isn't in much of a position to talk. St. Benedict's School is his alma mater, and he is on the board of School Advisers (http://www.stbenedicts.org.uk/?page_id=1347), but there is no evidence I'm aware of that he has attempted to ensure that the school's child protection policy is made fit for purpose.

It seems that there are three possibilities about the situation with regard to Lord Patten

1. He doesn't know of the problem, in which case he's not much use as a School Adviser.

2. He knows about it and as done nothing, in which case my comment would be deleted if I were to say what I think of him.

3. He knows about it, has tried to do something, and has failed. If this is the case, then the honourable thing to do would be to resign from the Board of Advisers, and make a public statement as to his reason for resigning.

I've no means of knowing which of these three possibilities is true. Would the Catholic Herald care to interview Lord Patten and ask?

The problem is not that there are vastly more paedophiles amongst the Catholic clergy than in other occupations. There might be a few more, there might not - reliable data on the subject is hard to come by.

The real scandal of the Catholic Church has been the institutional response on discovering cases of child sex abuse. That response could hardly have been better at maximising the number of victims and the harm done to them had it been specifically designed with that end in mind. Of course it wasn't, but that is no consolation to the victims.

And this problem is not safely tucked away in the past. Just last year, Father David Pearce of Ealing Abbey was convicted and imprisoned for 8 years (reduced to 5 on appeal) for a string of paedophile offences against pupils at St Benedict's School spanning 36 years.

Pearce had been required to stand down as Junior School Headmaster in 1993 because of complaints of his activities, but instead of being kept away from children, he was made Bursar of the school. The school lost a civil suit brought by one of his victims in 2006, and only then was Pearce placed on a restricted ministry. Even then, Pearce managed to have access to children, his last victim being assaulted in 2007. He was not sent away from the Abbey until his arrest in early 2008.

On the day Pearce was sentenced, Abbot Martin Shipperlee wrote to all parents saying that "I am instructing an independent review into this matter to examine what there is to be learned in order to ensure that there can never be a recurrence of this situation."

When this review was finally published some months later, it managed not to address the school at all, but only the monastery, and dealt only with the period starting from when Pearce was placed on restricted ministry. The previous 35 years or so in which he was able to abuse children unhindered were not reviewed.

Pearce is not the first teacher at the school to be convicted of sex abuse against its pupils. Former lay teacher John Maestri has been convicted on three separate occasions of such offences. He left the school suddenly in the 1980s as he was about to become Middle School Headmaster, following complaints about his activities, but the school presumably provided a reference for him, since he was able to get a teaching job elsewhere.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols has taken no action, apparently on the grounds that it is none of his business - Ealing Abbey is not part of the Diocese of Westminster.

In his recent interview with Jonathan Wynne-Jones of the Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7920188/Archbishop-Vincent-Nichols-interview-A-chance-to-see-faith-as-a-resource-to-be-rediscovered.html), the Archbishop said of the worldwide child sex abuse scandal “I think there are difficult issues in certain countries, but I don’t get any sense of it here.” That would suggest he thinks that that Ealing Abbey is an isolated problem - a stain on an otherwise good record. If that were the case, then I would expect that he would be energetic in seeing to it that a proper review was carried out, and that lessons were learned to ensure that this kind of thing can't happen there again, so that he can demonstrate that Ealing Abbey is an isolated case, and that measures are being taken to prevent the problem from spreading. When child protection is at issue, the independent status of Benedictine monasteries is going to be of not the slightest interest to the general public or even the Catholic laity who are sending their children to the school, and should not be of any interest to the Archbishop.

But that hasn't happened. There has been no general review of Father David Pearce's paedophile career at Ealing Abbey, no review to see how complaints were handled, no review to see whether there have been complaints against any other monk or teacher there. The school's child protection procedures remain a travesty. They are shot through with qualifications and evasions which provide the school with an excuse not to report allegations of abuse to the civil authorities. Even the definition of sexual abuse makes no mention of any kinds of sexual acts that might be considered abusive.

It's not good enough to claim that the child abuse scandal isn't all that bad while situations such as that at Ealing Abbey don't receive energetic efforts from all levels in the church to put them right. The impression given is that everyone is saying they cannot see any problem because they are most carefully not looking.

The Independent Schools Inspectorate has taken the extremely unusual step of withdrawing its November 2009 inspection report on St Benedict's School. According to the Department for Education "ISI has removed the report from its website whilst enquiries are made to ensure that the report is accurate in relation to the various safeguarding reviews that have taken place and the school's subsequent actions. Departmental officials are actively considering with ISI the best approach to take in ensuring that full and accurate information is provided in its published inspection report." In other words, both DfE and ISI think that "full and accurate information" has not been provided by the school up to now.

Nothing would make me happier than to be confident that Ealing Abbey and the Catholic Church in general have learned from its past mistakes in dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse. But the evidence points the other way.

http://scepticalthoughts.blogspot.com/

Just another rant of denile. While Catholics protest outside Abortion Clinics, priest are dithering their children. Your church has taken the low road on the whole issue. It's funny, The new testament says nothing about priests, popes or Catholics. Way to take a fantasy and make it your own. I just wish governments would start to tax the vatican.

Just another illiterate and ignorant antiCatholic rant: if you can't even spell the word "denial", it might be wiser not to use it. And if you can't even read the evidence when it's in front of your nose, don't just make up your own to bolster up your prejudices: and for heavens sake, don't pretend to a knowledge of the New Testament. That's the biggest joke of all.

On the numbers of Catholics and on the numbers of those abused - http://www.molestedcatholics.com/Estimating-the-numbers.php
" ... a random survey of over 7,000 active Catholics in the U.S. and Canada found a closer ratio, that 1.7 percent of the females and 3.3 percent of the males had been sexually abused in childhood by a priest ..." (Katherine van Wormer, MSSW, Ph.D.) Psychology Today - Priest abuse male compared female victimization impact published May 20, 2010.

Using these numbers as a base whilst recognising that a substantial number of victims would have already left the church the following formula is used to calculate a low estimate of the number of sexual abuse victims in a given population of Catholics.

1.2 billion catholics
1.7% females abused = 10,404,000 [1.7% of 51.98% of the Catholic population]
3.3% males abused = 19,404,000 [3.3% of 48.02% of the Catholic population]

29,808,000 [combined males and females] Catholics identify themselves as having been sexually abused in childhood by a Catholic priest.

How the hell did you come to that number, it's completely false! I think there are 400 thousand Priests worldwide, so can 29,808,000 have been abused?????


In a statement read out by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi in September 2009, the Holy See stated "We know now that in the last 50 years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the Catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases", adding that this figure was comparable with that of other groups and denominations.

http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ondemand/conferences/unhrc/twelfth/hrc090922pm2-eng.rm?start=01:28:49&end=01:31:56

A Perspective on Clergy Sexual Abuse by Dr. Thomas Plante of Stanford University and Santa Clara University states that "available research suggests that approximately 2 to 5% of priests have had a sexual experience with a minor" which "is lower than the general adult male population that is best estimated to be closer to 8%".

Well Dr Thomas Plante is not necessarily an entirely impartial contributior to this subject given that he is attached to the Ignatian Centre for Jesuit Education at the Santa Clara University.