Church Puts Legal Pressure on Abuse Victims’ Group - NYT

[edhopper]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/us/catholic-church-pressures-victims-network-with-subpoenas.html?hp

What a "Christian" thing to do.

Turning the tables on an advocacy group that has long supported victims of pedophile priests, lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and priests accused of sexual abuse in two Missouri cases have gone to court to compel the group to disclose more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists. ...

Lawyers for the church and priests say they cannot comment because of a judge’s order. But William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a church advocacy group in New York, said targeting the network was justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Mr. Donohue said leading bishops he knew had resolved to fight back more aggressively against the group: “The bishops have come together collectively. I can’t give you the names, but there’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.”

He said bishops were also rethinking their approach of paying large settlements to groups of victims. “The church has been too quick to write a check, and I think they’ve realized it would be a lot less expensive in the long run if we fought them one by one,” Mr. Donohue said.

When will people realize that the Catholic Church considers the Clergy the Church and not the congregation. Catholics are not part of the Church, they are the flock to be sheparded and sometimes sheared.

[ret5hd]

1. "We don’t need altar boys.”

Well, if you would have realized that sooner...

[dimbear]

11. I think they do need them. They're having enough trouble recruiting priests already. n/t

[qb]

2. They really know how to take the moral high road.

[rexcat]

3. It would appear that Mr. Donohue...

has very low ethical and moral values. I bet he got that from his religious teachings or slept through that part in parochial school. Harming childern does not seem to affect Mr. Donohue to do the right thing and I would say that goes for more than a few in the catholic church.

"When will people realize that the Catholic Church considers the Clergy the Church and not the congregation? Catholics are not part of the Church, they are the flock to be sheparded and sometimes sheared". My answer to that is the "flock" won't. Faith blinds people to reality and the indoctrination starts early regardless of what religion someone subscribes too.

[edhopper]

4. I don't mean Catholics need to question their faith in God

But they should realize that the Church as an institution is corrupt and does not have their interests at heart.
The Vatican protects the priests over the rank and file every time.

[Humanist_Activist]

5. They view the laity as nothing more than a pocketbook...

to financially support the Church above all else. They care nothing for the people who they hurt around the world.

[edhopper]

6. If you look at the Catholic Church.

And I don't mean the laity and people of Catholic faith, but the Vatican and the Priesthood. It very much resembles a cult.

[rexcat]

7. I would not expect Catholics to give up their faith...

There are some that do or they abandon the church but not their faith. For the majority of Catholics the real issue is they don't see the church as being wrong, or they think that they can make change within the church. The church is antithetical to change. I believe in most cases they just accept whatever the church leadership says and they move on.

My wife's family is devout Catholic and they have known of the pedophile issue well before all of the lawsuits. My father-in-law is of the opinion you don't question the church for any reason. I found out the hard way on that one! The church leadership does not want people to think for themselves when it comes to religion and they have succeeded with many of their flock. "Flock" is a interesting word the church leadership uses to describe the laity. The church has had nearly 2000 years to perfect the quilt they instill in their flock. As someone else said the laity is just a pocketbook. I would say they are more like chumps but that is my bias.

As an atheist I don't care much about someone's religious views but is someone pushes their religious view on me they can expect some pushback. For the most part when a religious person discovers my lack of faith they usually back away quickly. Atheism is something most religious people are very uncomfortable with and it does not matter what political strip they are.

[Igel]

8. There are many "Christian" things to do.

Which ones are worth doing depends on who you talk to.

Victims think that the Christian thing is to exact financial punishment and take people to court. In some cases they want to exact revenge. In others, to dictate the terms of the penance and penalty given to the guilty. To the extent they're "Christian" I believe this isn't Christian. Taking a brother to court is shameful. To the extent the plaintiffs are not Christian the question is irrelevant.

The clergy thought that forgiveness and repentance was the Christian thing to do. Problem is that there's a high rate of recidivism among the repentant. The appropriate thing in the church was to put the transgressors far away from temptation. In some cases they did this. In others the perverts managed to find a way back to indulging in their favorite sin.

One Christian thing to do would be to admit wrong and repent, and then seek to make amends by paying for counseling and being supportive. In a secular society that's basically confessing culpability and asking a jury to award the plaintiff in civil suits large dollops of cash.

Then there's the entire secular/criminal process. The secular system only considers the wronged and the person doing the wrong, leaving all other issues (such as opportunity costs and such) out of consideration because in the secular, individual calculus used these things can't matter. I don't find much Xian in that to begin with. Given a secular system that guarantees a right to legal representation and due process, innocent until proven guilty with caprice governing how to take into account repentance and such lawyering up is the wise thing to do.

[edhopper]

9. I do not buy this

The appropriate thing in the church was to put the transgressors far away from temptation. In some cases they did this. In others the perverts managed to find a way back to indulging in their favorite sin.

The Church engaged in a massive cover-up. The perverts did not "find a way back" the Church
just shuffled them around in order to hide them with no regard to who they might molest.
The Church is as responsible for what happened as the pedophile priests, they enabled this behavior for decades
and now that they have to pay for their crimes, they attack the victims and their advocates.
'Christian' or not, it is despicable.

[eridani]

10. "We don't need altar boys" also linked at Raw Story

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/13/catholic-leagues-donohue-vows-to-fight-rape-victims-one-by-one/


Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, believes that the Catholic church has gone too easy on the survivors of sex abuse by clergy, and has vowed to fight them “one by one,” says a post at the blog Right Wing Watch.

In an interview with Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, Donohue says that in the past the church “has been too quick to write a check” to individuals who report being victimized by pedophile priests. He believes that the church should fight each case “one by one,” ostensibly to save money “in the long run.”

He said that Catholic bishops should “toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough” in the fight against victims of sex abuse. “We don’t need altar boys.”

[rug]

12. This is from March. Has something new happened?