Damned Pervert Priests - and other assorted Holy Scumbags

[Istvan]

An organization - ANY organization - that is knowingly complicit in sexual abuse and kidnapping IS a 'bad' organization, by definition.

Boru

Absolutely. The most distressing thing about the revelations that came to light during the investigations of the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal was that at no point in the decades-long process of shuttling abuser priests from parish to parish and covering up their crimes did anyone in the organization question whether the safety of children should be a consideration in the high command's decision making. As another poster remarked above, it must have long been an open secret in predator circles that being a Catholic priest carries a lot less risk than being a grade-school janitor or Cub Scout troop leader.

Full disclosure, the parish I attended had three, count-em-three, priests on the abuser database. I remember two of them very well and even served as an altar boy with these creeps in the early 80s. At the time I had no idea any such thing was going on, but I was one of the older kids in the bunch and hence probably not the easiest target. And I'll say right now that my uncle who was a well-respected priest for many years was never accused of any wrongdoing.

So along with capitulating to the Nazis and causing an AIDS catastrophe in Africa, the Catholic Church's history of child abuse makes it so that if I never have to set foot in a Catholic Church again, I'll die a happy man.