What's the most face-palm-worthy statement you have ever heard from a priest/preacher

[Thumpalumpacus]

Interesting. I wonder why professional psychologists use these different terms then.

Why are you appealing to psychology to excuse a moral failing? It is irrelevant whether the victim was 8 or 14. The facts are 1) Priests are supposed to be moral guides, and in molesting their flock, they fail on the job, and 2) those same priests have taken a vow of celibacy, before your god, and that the church you call your own, rather than turning them over to law-enforcement officials for appropriate displacement, shuffle them off to Buffalo -- or some other archdiocese where they may continue their depredations.

And you don't seem to have a problem with that, as shown below.

Still, have to ask...would you make any distinction between a college senior having sex with a 18-year-old co-ed v. an eight-year-old girl?

Why are you talking about college seniors, rather than padres? You realize that college seniors don't have the same moral leadership as priests, right?

Right?

This is simply you trying to muddy the waters in order to minimize the rightful criticism of the church you follow.

Aside from that, the majority of molestation victims who have sued, and got settlements from, your church, were not 18 when they got raped. You're dodging the point. If a priest has sworn celibacy, and has assumed moral leadership of a congregation, then he is not only bound to his vow of celibacy, he has a moral duty to not use his position of power in order to satiate his own lusts.

Did you really need to have that explained to you? Really?

As you know (but fail to acknowledge), I have said repeatedly in multiple threads that the priests who committed the crimes should be prosecuted and sent to jail. The bishops who failed to act appropriately in their handling of these cases should be retired.

"Retired"?

I say they should be prosecuted for aiding and abetting. If you know a priest is a molester, and you cover his tracks for him, don't you think you own some culpability in his offenses?

The ONLY reason I have invoked a tu quoque defense at all is to point out the hypocrisy of those (well, you actually) who absolutely lose all sense of reason when it concerns the Catholic Church, but you're silent as the grave when it comes to secular leaders who commit the same crime in greater numbers.

Nonsense. You deploy tu quoque in order to exculpate the behavior of the Catholic leadership. They, too, did the wrong thing, and you and I both know that.  The recently retired pope headed a commission that actively sheltered molesters.  The leader of your church! And I'm sure he broke tradition with his retirement for unconnected reasons ... sure.

I just did a quick search...the Jared/Subway scandal got a whopping 14 posts.

If a Catholic priest had done what he did, y'all would be going hundred for hundreds of pages....

Probably because this isn't a sandwich forum. I'm sure you'll figure it out one day.