Thursday, July 30, 2015

THE CHURCH'S LEGAL HELL - OP ED PIECE



THE CHURCH’S LEGAL HELL
Terri L. DelCampo

The Catholic Church is so caught up in hiding from scandal that it doesn’t realize it’s digging its own grave.  If a priest molests a child, the church will settle rather than turning the priest over to the law.  I read in an article that a bishop was upset because of a large settlement gotten by a family of a victim of molestation.  He said that money would deplete funds the church would use for other programs in the parishes.   If the church had not tolerated the priest’s crimes and gone to the trouble of protecting him and preventing him from going to jail like any other US citizen, there would have been no negligence on the church’s part, and there wouldn’t have had to be a settlement because the church wouldn’t have been responsible. 
The church needs to do extensive background checks on men entering the seminary.  They need to keep an eye on the health, mental and physical, of all the priests and make sure they are not leaning toward pedophilic inclinations.  If they suspect that a priest has these inclinations it should be dealt with immediately.  Then the church if free of responsibility to victims, because there wouldn’t be any! 
That sound like a lot of trouble, or unfair to priests?  Well is it fairer to transfer a priest out of a parish to avoid and cover up crime and scandal, and subject a whole new parish full of young children to a child molester?  This is a common problem. According to Linkup about 10% of all parish clerics are pedophiles.  This is rampant among priests.  And the victims are children.  Let’s take the compassion we’re wasting on the criminal and place it where it belongs.  With the children.
I think the church’s problem is that it isn’t focusing on the philosophies of its own God.  Jesus Christ wouldn’t have tolerated this crap.  He threw a hissy fit because a temple was being used as a market place.  You think he’d put up with his priests raping the children that were trying to serve him?  Think again.

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