I was sexually abused by a priest. I'm not celebrating Pope Leo.
When I was 6, I was abused by a Catholic priest. He was a "good-time Charlie" pastor, coaching the school’s baseball team by day, and drinking beer, smoking cigars and talking sports with my father and uncles at night. Despite it being known that he was abusing other children, he was not reported to the police and was transferred to a largely African-American parish in another state, where records show that additional accusations of sexual abuse were made against him until his death.
Even though the lives of young and innocent children were at stake, the first priority of Catholic bishops and priests has been self-preservation, professionally and financially.
When the new pope was leader of the Augustinian order in 2000, he allowed Father James Ray, a notoriously habitual sex offender, to live and say Mass at St. John Stone Friary in Chicago, just half a block from St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School.
And in 2022 in Peru, three women who told police of being sexually assaulted by a priest said the new pope, who was bishop of Chiclayo at the time, neglected to file a report or even start an investigation, while permitting the accused to continue his ecclesiastical duties, leading to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests filing a formal complaint against Cardinal Prevost in 2023.
To champions of the new pope, that may not sound like much: negligence, maybe, but not malicious conduct. But if a single one of the bishops or priests had come forward in my case, crimes committed against me and others might have ended sooner, or might not have ever been perpetrated. They couldn’t have not known that their “negligence” would destroy children’s lives.
Today, the church’s negligence continues to be a problem which, it was hoped, a new pope might address. The Associated Press reported as recently as 2019 that there were at least 1,700 credibly accused priests still on the loose as teachers, coaches and counselors, and living near children.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/v...583222007/
When I was 6, I was abused by a Catholic priest. He was a "good-time Charlie" pastor, coaching the school’s baseball team by day, and drinking beer, smoking cigars and talking sports with my father and uncles at night. Despite it being known that he was abusing other children, he was not reported to the police and was transferred to a largely African-American parish in another state, where records show that additional accusations of sexual abuse were made against him until his death.
Even though the lives of young and innocent children were at stake, the first priority of Catholic bishops and priests has been self-preservation, professionally and financially.
When the new pope was leader of the Augustinian order in 2000, he allowed Father James Ray, a notoriously habitual sex offender, to live and say Mass at St. John Stone Friary in Chicago, just half a block from St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School.
And in 2022 in Peru, three women who told police of being sexually assaulted by a priest said the new pope, who was bishop of Chiclayo at the time, neglected to file a report or even start an investigation, while permitting the accused to continue his ecclesiastical duties, leading to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests filing a formal complaint against Cardinal Prevost in 2023.
To champions of the new pope, that may not sound like much: negligence, maybe, but not malicious conduct. But if a single one of the bishops or priests had come forward in my case, crimes committed against me and others might have ended sooner, or might not have ever been perpetrated. They couldn’t have not known that their “negligence” would destroy children’s lives.
Today, the church’s negligence continues to be a problem which, it was hoped, a new pope might address. The Associated Press reported as recently as 2019 that there were at least 1,700 credibly accused priests still on the loose as teachers, coaches and counselors, and living near children.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/v...583222007/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
