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Father Groeschel being seduced? (photo: patsw / flickr)
When I write blog posts, I usually try to stay away from certain hot button issues. I try to write about things that have a somewhat global impact such as the (execrable) state of the economy. But every now and again, I see an article or series of articles where the claims made are so egregious and the conduct so reprehensible, that I have to respond, even if it means burning a bridge. An example of this is this diary I wrote over at MyFDL 2 1/2 years ago after the Archdiocese of Denver banned a child from enrolling in one of their schools because his parents were lesbians.
Today, I have had another one of those moments when I saw this article from Huffington Post. The headline alone was enough to cause my blood pressure to spike:
Father Benedict Groeschel, American Friar, Claims Teens Seduce Priests In Some Sex Abuse Cases
WHAT THE FCK?!?!? How do we even respond to shite of this nature? This goes way beyond “blame the victim.” The HuffPo article quotes from the original article at National Catholic Register but it appears the original has been taken down. The link in the HuffPo article now goes to a dead comments page and though a search on the NCR site looks to bring up the original interview, clicking the links also goes to the same dead comments page.
Even without the original, just the pieces that HuffPo has, has me shaking I am so angry:
Pressed for clarification, the New York State-based religious leader explained that kids looking for father figures might be drawn to priests to fill an emotional hole in their lives.Furthermore, Groeschel expressed a belief that most of these “relationships” are heterosexual in nature, and that historically sexual relationships between men and boys have not been thought of as crimes.
“If you go back 10 or 15 years ago with different sexual difficulties — except for rape or violence — it was very rarely brought as a civil crime. Nobody thought of it that way… And I’m inclined to think, on [a priest's] first offense, they should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime.”
What fucking universe does this man inhabit? “Their intention was not committing a crime?” So what? Children were sexually abused and the Catholic Church hierarchy across the world condoned and covered it up by shipping offending priests to a new parish. Treating these acts as a “civil crime” is part of the damn problem.
If this rant comes across as a bit incoherent then forgive me but in my world, there are certain crimes that I find unforgivable and sexual abuse of a child is right at the top of the list. I studied Sociology my first time through college but recognized that I did not have the temperament to be a good social worker. One of my earliest posts here was on how I consider Child Welfare workers to have one of the most thankless jobs going. I spent a good part of the time in the late ’90s and early ’00s testing child welfare systems and became quite conversant with the federal reporting. This link will take you to the HHS/Administration for Children and Families page where you can access a PDF for the 2010 report National Child Abuse and Neglect Data Systems report if you care to delve into the statistics on child abuse and neglect.
I usually end a post with some music but not today.
Cross posted from Just A Small Town Country Boy by Richard Taylor
50 Comments
This is an important column. Thank you.
Just in time for bishop whoever to give the “blessing” at today’s session of the RNC.
No words.
I’m still shaking in anger over this. Just un-fecking-believeable
Thank you so much, Dakine. You do not sound incoherent at all.
You sound Emotional.
You sound tenatious.
You sound like a person who really Gives A Shit. Sorry for the swearing, but, that’s the term we use in this house when someone here follows through on what they want to happen.
Hard to do, sometimes, but, you shared some really important information with a really good attitude.
Recommended, with Stars!
And, yes, put them all away. Somewhere else. I’m happy to pay for their incarceration.
Your reaction to this is perfect, Dakine. Thank you. Adults who enable pedophiles deserve to occupy the cell next door to them. That we are still having this “debate” after the Catholic church and after Sandusky and and and . . . it makes me incoherent, too. The language in those quotes from the religious leader is beyond infuriating. “sexual difficulties”? “their intention was not committing a crime”? Holy fuck!
Raw Story has a post confirming that NCR scrubbed the story
Worked, for over a decade, on a pediatric psychiatric unit.
Anyone, who has gotten to see, up close and personally, the effects of pedophiles and their enablers, upon those they abused will join you in your outrage.
JMO, but no pedophile acts without enablers around them.
Yours is a good and righteous rant. Particularly in light of the original article being taken down.
To my ears, this statement:
has about it, the same flavor as Aiken’s statement last week about “legitimate rape” – both carry a tone that indicates the point of view that “its not a problem, until and unless WE define it as a problem”. Evidence and science and symptoms be damned. The WE in both cases, are white, males in positions of traditionally white male power. One religious. The other political. And it is only a few hundred years since positions of political power and religious power were often one and the same.
rec’d indeed!
From your lips to God’s ears, dakine, or to the ears of the juries.
Or, of course, both.
No pedophile “intends to commit a crime”. They “love” their victims. They think their victims love them back. They think their victims “want” this. Yep. That’s why their victims spend the rest of their lives in therapy. Because they love it so much.
I personally think they should all be castrated as well and not just chemically. These men are not able to be “cured”, they are mentally unable to understand what they are doing is wrong. Unfortunately, they are born this way, and cannot be fixed.
Yes, put them away. Permanently.
Sorry, but they absolutely do know that what they are doing is wrong. They might delude themselves into believing that. And they are some sick mofos, for sure. But they are not so mentally disabled as to not know they are doing something wrong and that what they are doing is a crime. Otherwise they wouldn’t be so accomplished at intimidating their victims and making sure they aren’t discovered.
It’s time to Occupy the Vatican
Thanks, Dakine. This needs to get huge amounts of publicity. The parents of the victims need to talk to anyone they can – especially the media. These depraved men
need to be stopped and then sent to jail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57441730-504083/priest-defrocked-for-child-sex-abuse-now-works-for-tsa-report-says/
Nor so accomplished at enrolling enablers in helping to hide what they have done.
totally sick.
one can only hope that now that it’s publicized that he’s a pedophile, he’ll be fired from his job as a tsa agent.
Considering what we now know, it is a fact that every “good Catholic” is an enabler, who with their support and contributions keep the abuse going.
This is a corrupt, evil organization, from the top down. To belong is to accept the slavery and rape that have been epidemic for centuries. The current Pope could not be more directly involved in the coverup, so there is no excuse or validity to any claim of “isolated incidences.”
If you are a practicing Catholic, you are complicit.
BTW, I was a “cradle catholic” and an alter boy. I still remember the Latin responses in the mass. Other religions are bad for other reasons, but no other religion has such a record of enabling and covering up these horrible abuses.
I wish the “prison privatization industry” would focus on this portion of their growth industry.
From the HuffPo piece:
I’m guessing that Columbia University wants its PhD back.
Either that or he should be asking Columbia for a refund on the education he failed to receive…
Catholics are distancing themselves from Father G and his statement, including his own religious order and the archdiocese of New York where he lives.
IOW, he seems to be getting the Akin treatment.
When someone says something so unbelievable and monstrous it’s not because they’re defending “other” pedophiles. They’re defending themselves. Someone needs to check his history for how many children he “comforted” or “acted as father figure to”.
Agreed with most.
But please do not ever make the mistake that other religions are by any means “not as bad”.
They’re all this bad. They all do this. Research it and make sure you have some liquor with you when you do. They’re all dirty and corrupt to the core.
They’re not doing God’s work. Nope. They work for the other guy.
Too little too late.
The church has too much of an established track record of condoning the abusers and blaming the victims to get away with trying to duck the original interview
Reread what I said. I absolved no one and did NOT say any other religion was “not as bad.”
dakine, your moral compass is well in place, as is your righteous anger. Children seeking a father or father figure are NOT seeking sex with said father or figure. Fathers and father figures do not seek to have sex with children.
This dude, Akin, Ryan and “fellow” travelers are peddling power and subjagation over those perceived to be (or actually) weaker, and how to preserve said power.
Same as it ever was.
And PS: The Catholics do seem to be unique in that the entire organization is geared to enable and cover up this kind of abuse. Not that such abuse is unknown or even unusual in other organizations, but the Catholics refined the commission of the crimes, the protection of the abusers, the coverups and so forth, into a matter of routine unavailable to smaller organizations.
How many other groups could spirit away a criminal like Bernard Law and give him Diplomatic immunity, for example?
I did not say you are absolving anyone.
All I’m saying is they’re all dirty.
Religion, Wall Street and Politics: Where predatory criminals go to make sure all their victims are punished to the full extent the Main Stream Media will allow. Sick on them!!!
Those trampy teens!
Of course, it is from watching all those decadent TV shows and you know the priests all lived such sheltered lives, right?
Ya gonna putem in jail when they are in the WH.
Lotsa luck.
Anyone making excuses like this for pedophiles is one.
You’re over thinking this in my opinion. The ROMAN Catholic church has spent the past almost two thousand years living two thousand years in the past. In those days, women were property and essentially reproduction machines. Men of the upper castes had sex with women for breeding purposes, they had sex with boys for pleasure. The Catholics are doing what they do with almost every other “tradition” that has been abandoned by civilized human beings: stubbornly clinging to the ancient practices because it defines them.
It’s Cardinal Dolan and he’ll be doing the Democratic invocation at the DNC convention next week.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse than Rick Warren.
Now you know we couldn’t have a political convention without a big moral show.
And nothing says moral like a bunch of pedophile enabling busybodies who spend their time looking for splinters in everyone else’s eyes.
“Father Benedict Groeschel, American Friar, Claims Teens Seduce Priests In Some Sex Abuse Cases”
Blame the victim. Blame those you are oppressing for their oppression. Invent sin and then damn those around you for something you made up. Just like their god: All of the power, none of the responsibility. It’s the sure sign of a parasitic con.
Thanks for covering this, Dakine.
As noted in a previous comment, there’s nothing wrong with your moral compass, and you don’t sound incoherent.
The current “retraction and explanation/clarification” at the Nat’l Catlick Register
Reaction from a Catlick Priest at Renew America, linked from “A momentary flash of Reason” at Pharyngula (PZ Myers is one o’ them militant athiests. People of faith will probably want to skip the comments thread!)
UnEasyOne @ #27: The RCC might be the largest and most expert/wealthy/powerful organization protecting its pedophiles, but certain ultra-orthodox “communities” in, iirc, Brooklyn did pretty well keeping their abuses “in house” with the help of certain NYC prosecutors. At least for awhile.
Which doesn’t make the RCC’s ongoing BS any less heinous. Just slightly less unique.
“Pressed for clarification, the New York State-based religious leader explained that kids looking for father figures might be drawn to priests to fill an emotional hole in their lives.”
Really?! This is how this “religious leader” chose to phrase the issue?
The great mystery of faith is that after all this, people continue to attend these churches, believe the words of these leaders, give these institutions money, and refuse to tax religion as the vice that it is.
Question: If raping a child isn’t a serious enough offense to mobilize the faithful to action, is there anything that would cause the members of this religion to put these churches out of business? Or is this what Christians mean when they say God is testing their faith? Can you be faced with a religion that controls sex to such an extent that it fosters child-raping priests who then get institutional protection and still believe in “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church”? Seriously, Catholics, where is the bar here, The Inquisition? Is there anything that is beyond the pale?
These are not rhetorical questions. What would it take to for members of these priests’ faith to say enough? As long as they continue to tithe, Catholic parishioners are as responsible for this as the ranking clergy who protect these rapists, especially considering membership and dues are voluntary.
Glad you could spell out the pain and the hurt that we adults who haven’t been abused by priests feel when confronted with the “religious” institutions denial and continual enabling.
Well done. I shudder to think of the pain of the actual victims.
So National Catholic Register condones the words of one of its religious leaders in blaming children for their being raped?
From the “clarification”: “Our publication of that comment was an editorial mistake, for which we sincerely apologize. Given Father Benedict’s stellar history over many years, we released his interview without our usual screening and oversight.”
So the editors would like readers to believe that they didn’t bother to read the article before they published it? Wouldn’t reading the thing be the bare minimum of what should constitute “screening and oversight”?
Can you name another religion where bishops and cardinals transferred priests they knew beyond doubt to be pedophiles from parish to parish without warning the unsuspecting parents and clergy in the new parish. And got victim after victim to sign confidentiality agreements.
This priest is only saying what Catholic parishioners have been saying to me about this subject at least since the trial of Father Porter.
No, you did not simply say they were all dirty.
You said that all religions were as bad as the Catholic Church when it comes to the subject matter of this thread, namely, what this priest said (rationalizing about and excusing pedophiles).
That is simply not consistent with anything I know. If you have any proof of that comment, please post it.
Upper caste males two thousand years ago has sex with women only to have offspring? When they had sex for pleasure, it was with other males?
Really
Rudy Ghooliani put the pedophile priest who married him more than once on his payroll after the Church relieved him of his duties.
Of course, the Church had not, at that point, taken away his priesthood, only his duties and his paycheck. I doubt that that technicality swayed Rudy, though.
Given their usual screening and oversight of the sexual activities of their priests, I can believe they did not bother to read this priest’s article.
The best translation I’ve seen of that “clarification”:
“We editors missed an opportunity to whitewash the interview.”
Yup.
Either you can’t read, or you don’t understand what you do read. Quote me saying what you claim I said. I’ll defend what I said, not your strawman.