We expect God's representatives on earth—men who claim for themselves the power to absolve other people of their sins and who believe they have a divine right to place limits on other people's sexual and reproductive freedoms (including people who do not ascribe to their faith)—to hold themselves to a slightly higher standard when it comes to CHILD RAPE than, say, school teachers who make no such claims. And if the church hadn't worked so hard to cover up the crimes committed by child rapists in the priesthood—and worked so hard to enable ordained child rapists to continue raping children—we wouldn't be finding out about all the cases of children who've been raped by Catholic priests all at once. And if the church had taken action against ordained child rapists when they were exposed—by going to the police, assisting in the prosecution of these criminals, and defrocking them (intimidating the victims, silencing witnesses, and subjecting the rapists to "counseling" before shuffling them off to new parishes where they could rape again does not count as "taking action")—maybe there wouldn't be quite so many cases of child rape to talk about. You see, the Catholic Church's cover ups made it possible for many ordained/career child rapists to prey on hundreds of children over many decades. Which is why the cover up of these crimes—which is ongoing (claims that media reports about these crimes are a part of an orchestrated anti-Catholic campaign are the next stage of the cover up)—matters.
Posted via web from Firesaw
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