That odd police raid in Belgium

[Argus]

There was an intersting raid on the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Belgium the other day, which included drilling holes into tombs in search of documents, and not allowing visiting Bishops to leave (or eat or drink or use the phone) for 9 hours. All of this, of course, in pursuit of child sexual abuse evidence. The Vatican has, for the first time I'm aware of, angrily denounced police action being taken against them.

Apparently the target of the raid was - a commision set up to investigate child sexual abuse allegations. Which sounds suspiciously like the cops were fishing for files as opposed to trying to get the goods on a particular individual.

If they actually found serious evidence, well, perhaps okay. If not the people who authorized this raid should be looking for another job.

Vaitcan denounces Belgium

Edited June 27, 2010 by Argus

[SF/PF]

There was an intersting raid on the headquarters of the Catholic Church in Belgium the other day, which included drilling holes into tombs in search of documents, and not allowing visiting Bishops to leave (or eat or drink or use the phone) for 9 hours. All of this, of course, in pursuit of child sexual abuse evidence.

They should have been permitted to eat or drink at some point over a period of 9 hours.

Apparently the target of the raid was - a commision set up to investigate child sexual abuse allegations. Which sounds suspiciously like the cops were fishing for files as opposed to trying to get the goods on a particular individual.

Its not a big secret that the Vatican has conistently protected those accused of child sexual abuse, even to the point of moving priests to jurisdictions where they couldn't be tried for past transgressions. Frankly, the catholic church has enjoyed far too much protection from states in this matter.

If they actually found serious evidence, well, perhaps okay. If not the people who authorized this raid should be looking for another job.

The discovery (or not) of serious evidence is irrelevent to the legality or appropriatness of the raid. Either the raid was legally justified, or it wasn't. The results of the raid have no bearing on that.

The Vatican has, for the first time I'm aware of, angrily denounced police action being taken against them.

My heart bleeds for the poor Church.. it really does. Maybe they'll see the tide turning against them and finally decide that they shouldn't be protecting the molesters of children.

[SF/PF]

Vatican says Belgium raids 'worse than Communist era'

I especially liked this part:

The Vatican said the raids had led to the "violation of confidentiality of precisely those victims for whom the raids were carried out".

Yeah.. those evil Belgians. Violating the "confidentiality" of those victims instead of doing the "right" thing and sweeping the whole sordid affair under the carpet. :angry:

That commission had a moral obligation to make any evidence of child sexual abuse it possessed immediatly available to authorities. If it didn't, the whole works of them should be thrown into the clink with the general prison population. Then the Belgians could put together a special commission to investigate whether those priests were on the receiving end of any physical or sexual violence while in prison. The information attained in that investigation would, of course, be withheld from authorities....

[Argus]

Its not a big secret that the Vatican has conistently protected those accused of child sexual abuse, even to the point of moving priests to jurisdictions where they couldn't be tried for past transgressions.

I would both agree and disagree with this. The Church, like any major institution, has always been keenly aware of its reputation, and done its best to protect it. However, one must remember that the Church's belief in punishment is not quite the same as that of society at large. In society, when you do something wrong, we put you in prison. The Church has a pretty ancient belief in the value of confession and true repentance. You can literally be forgiven for ANYTHING as long as you confess and repent. I would imagine that what the Church did upon finding a priest who had violated his priestly vows was to recall and confront him, then engage in a series of counseling sessions interspersed with a lot of prayer.

Tearful confessions and admissions that they've been weak, and then the reinforcement of prayer and such would be seen at one point as sufficient to get the priest to realize the errors of his ways and change them. I'm quite sure it even worked at times. But equally clearly it didn't always.

We must also remember that child sexual abuse was not much understood and not really taken that seriously by society. Children who reported such things to adults tended to be punished, whether it involved the church, a doctor, a teacher, or "uncle larry". In fact, most large extended families had at least one uncle larry who everyone knew not to leave alone with the small kiddies. He wasn't reported, wasn't even shunned. He was considered eccentric and weird, but not really dangerous. The empathy and understanding just wasn't there in the past. I remember well into the `70s Saturday Night Life had a regular, recurring character, Uncle Roy, who was a child molester. Two of the cast would act like children, and Uncle Roy would try to get them to stick their hands into his pockets or sit on his lap, while making all sorts of leering double entendres. People thought child molesters were just strange and bizarre, and didn't really take it seriously.

It doesn't surprise me the Church handled the whole issue badly. As an organization they've been terrified of anything even remotely related to sex for centuries. Small wonder no one wanted to deal with priests abusing children, or had any idea what to do about it once they could no longer avoid it.

The discovery (or not) of serious evidence is irrelevent to the legality or appropriatness of the raid. Either the raid was legally justified, or it wasn't. The results of the raid have no bearing on that.

I dunno. Drilling into tombs in search of documents? There are also reports the media showed up a half hour before the police, having been tipped. If nothing is achieved by this raid other than abusing bishops and giving the media a good story then I'd say the justification of it didn't exist.

[WIP]

I would both agree and disagree with this. The Church, like any major institution, has always been keenly aware of its reputation, and done its best to protect it. However, one must remember that the Church's belief in punishment is not quite the same as that of society at large.

The Catholic Church has become too accustomed to making up their own rules and getting away with violating laws that would put ordinary people in jail. Why should a priest be allowed to be escape justice by being moved to a new diocese, while the higher ups got away with playing this shell game for decades.

In society, when you do something wrong, we put you in prison. The Church has a pretty ancient belief in the value of confession and true repentance. You can literally be forgiven for ANYTHING as long as you confess and repent. I would imagine that what the Church did upon finding a priest who had violated his priestly vows was to recall and confront him, then engage in a series of counseling sessions interspersed with a lot of prayer.

Tearful confessions and admissions that they've been weak, and then the reinforcement of prayer and such would be seen at one point as sufficient to get the priest to realize the errors of his ways and change them. I'm quite sure it even worked at times. But equally clearly it didn't always.

Out here in the real world, we believe that forgiveness, if it comes from anywhere, should be from the person who was offended or violated....not from imaginary friends who forgive the offenses of clerics and politicians, and give them the false belief that they have a brand new fresh start, without even having to address the victim!

It's also worth noting that those counseling sessions, such as the ones given to Irish paedophile priests, were in direct violation of Church canon law, which demands defrocking for such offenses: Therapy led to soaring abuse rate in Irish Church

I dunno. Drilling into tombs in search of documents? There are also reports the media showed up a half hour before the police, having been tipped. If nothing is achieved by this raid other than abusing bishops and giving the media a good story then I'd say the justification of it didn't exist.

Belgium, like many other nations, has a Catholic Church hierarchy that has spent years ignoring the reports of offending priests, and even has a bishop who is also a child-molester himself. So why shouldn't the authorities ignore the Church's sense of entitlement to withhold information, that other institutions are not privy to? http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/belgium-anti-pedophile-priest-rips-silence-and-omissions-bishops

[SF/PF]

The Church has a pretty ancient belief in the value of confession and true repentance. You can literally be forgiven for ANYTHING as long as you confess and repent. I would imagine that what the Church did upon finding a priest who had violated his priestly vows was to recall and confront him, then engage in a series of counseling sessions interspersed with a lot of prayer.

I don't have any more tolerance for Catholic repentance than I do for Sharia Law or any other ridiculous religious legal or ethical systems. The time for the Church to realize that they are subject to the same laws as everyone else is long overdue.

I dunno. Drilling into tombs in search of documents? There are also reports the media showed up a half hour before the police, having been tipped. If nothing is achieved by this raid other than abusing bishops and giving the media a good story then I'd say the justification of it didn't exist.

My point was that the actual results of the raid are irrelevant to the raid itself. The legalality and appropriatness of a raid can be determined prior to the raid. If there was legitimate evidence or suspicion that items of interest could be found in the tombs, then the search would be warranted, regardless of whether anything was actually found in the tombs. Similarly, if there was no legitimate reason for drilling into the tombs, the discovery of incriminating evidence would warrant the action.

[Oleg Bach]

The fact that the government does not pay taxes and the church does not pay taxes makes them the same deal - they raided themselves.

[eyeball]

I would both agree and disagree with this. The Church, like any major institution, has always been keenly aware of its reputation, and done its best to protect it. However, one must remember that the Church's belief in punishment is not quite the same as that of society at large. In society, when you do something wrong, we put you in prison. The Church has a pretty ancient belief in the value of confession and true repentance. You can literally be forgiven for ANYTHING as long as you confess and repent. I would imagine that what the Church did upon finding a priest who had violated his priestly vows was to recall and confront him, then engage in a series of counseling sessions interspersed with a lot of prayer.

Tearful confessions and admissions that they've been weak, and then the reinforcement of prayer and such would be seen at one point as sufficient to get the priest to realize the errors of his ways and change them. I'm quite sure it even worked at times. But equally clearly it didn't always.

Are you suggesting we just give these thugs a hug?

We must also remember that child sexual abuse was not much understood and not really taken that seriously by society. Children who reported such things to adults tended to be punished, whether it involved the church, a doctor, a teacher, or "uncle larry". In fact, most large extended families had at least one uncle larry who everyone knew not to leave alone with the small kiddies. He wasn't reported, wasn't even shunned. He was considered eccentric and weird, but not really dangerous. The empathy and understanding just wasn't there in the past. I remember well into the `70s Saturday Night Life had a regular, recurring character, Uncle Roy, who was a child molester. Two of the cast would act like children, and Uncle Roy would try to get them to stick their hands into his pockets or sit on his lap, while making all sorts of leering double entendres. People thought child molesters were just strange and bizarre, and didn't really take it seriously.

This is a very lame pile of crap.

[Argus]

The Catholic Church has become too accustomed to making up their own rules and getting away with violating laws that would put ordinary people in jail. Why should a priest be allowed to be escape justice by being moved to a new diocese, while the higher ups got away with playing this shell game for decades.

I'm not suggesting there wasn't some of this, that some of the actions of the Church weren't done in large measure to protect its reputation as opposed to dealing with the issue. But I think they honestly had the view that their counseling would work on these guys. And it's unlikely that out in "the real world" the police would have laid charges in most of these cases anyway back then. People forget how long it took police before they began to handle even the most egregious cases of outright rape with any sensitivity. Fondling and groping, seduction and even pressuring teenagers into sex would be most unlikely to be handled very well by the cops of the day. From what I've seen, most of this type of case reported to police back then, especially if it involved "reputable" men, were ignored.

It's also worth noting that those counseling sessions, such as the ones given to Irish paedophile priests, were in direct violation of Church canon law, which demands defrocking for such offenses: Therapy led to soaring abuse rate in Irish Church

Apparently the penal aspects of Canon law were largely abandoned some time ago because they were thought to be cruel and lacked compassion (from your cite)

Also from your cite;

What we do know is that while children have been abused in Catholic-run institutions, they have also been abused in institutions run by other Churches, in State-run institutions, in institutions run by other bodies, and of course, in their own homes as well.

A great deal of the coverage attaching to the issue of child abuse by Catholic clergy is undoubtedly motivated by animus towards the Catholic Church itself because abuse by other organizations rarely receives such coverage.

[WIP]

I'm not suggesting there wasn't some of this, that some of the actions of the Church weren't done in large measure to protect its reputation as opposed to dealing with the issue. But I think they honestly had the view that their counseling would work on these guys. And it's unlikely that out in "the real world" the police would have laid charges in most of these cases anyway back then. People forget how long it took police before they began to handle even the most egregious cases of outright rape with any sensitivity. Fondling and groping, seduction and even pressuring teenagers into sex would be most unlikely to be handled very well by the cops of the day. From what I've seen, most of this type of case reported to police back then, especially if it involved "reputable" men, were ignored.

I don't believe that the road to this hell was paved with good intentions. Some offending priests were moved from parish to parish for years, and nothing was done about it! Many years ago, when I was living in Welland, Ontario, there was a priest who was under warrant for arrest and moved out of province to the Yukon...or somewhere off in the middle of nowhere...by the time the authorities were ready to serve him with a federal warrant and bring him back to face charges of sexual abuse of minors, the Church informed them that he had already been moved to El Salvador....long story short, nothing was done and no justice was received by anyone. All over the world the Catholic Church hierarchy got accustomed to playing this shell game of moving offending priests and even more senior clerics around whenever charges were made against them. And recently we have learned that Pope Benny himself had been involved in the damage control operation to keep priest scandals quiet.

Apparently the penal aspects of Canon law were largely abandoned some time ago because they were thought to be cruel and lacked compassion (from your cite)

Also from your cite;

What we do know is that while children have been abused in Catholic-run institutions, they have also been abused in institutions run by other Churches, in State-run institutions, in institutions run by other bodies, and of course, in their own homes as well.

A great deal of the coverage attaching to the issue of child abuse by Catholic clergy is undoubtedly motivated by animus towards the Catholic Church itself because abuse by other organizations rarely receives such coverage.

I don't think a safety-in-numbers strategy will work in this issue! Just because there are other churches and organizations involved in covering sexual abuse scandals does not provide cover for the Catholic Church. They have more opportunity for mischief than a stand-alone church that may or may not be affiliated with a larger umbrella organization.

It's certainly worth asking whether rigid Church policies on celibacy and against women priests are a big part of the problem here.

[Bonam]

It's certainly worth asking whether rigid Church policies on celibacy and against women priests are a big part of the problem here.

That would certainly do it. A bunch of sex starved priests and a bunch of unsuspecting children... bad combination.

[ToadBrother]

A great deal of the coverage attaching to the issue of child abuse by Catholic clergy is undoubtedly motivated by animus towards the Catholic Church itself because abuse by other organizations rarely receives such coverage. [/i]

Other organizations don't claim to be God's hand in the world. The Church has long claimed moral supremacy and retains to itself some sort of idea that it is the ultimate arbiter on these things (despite the fact that it has a rather long and sordid history, the Papacy spending a good chunk of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance in utter disrepute). It has been hung by its own petard.

The Church deserves what it gets. It's arrogance, unwillingness to reform and very literal holier-than-thouism have been brought rightfully low. I would no more seek the Pope's guidance on moral matters than I would my pizza delivery boy.

[Argus]

The Church deserves what it gets. It's arrogance, unwillingness to reform and very literal holier-than-thouism have been brought rightfully low. I would no more seek the Pope's guidance on moral matters than I would my pizza delivery boy.

Who says they haven't reformed? All these claims seem to date back decades, and as the cite above said:

The Catholic Church in Ireland now operates arguably the most robust child protection system in the country, something that is rarely acknowledged. The public still appears to believe that the Church has learned nothing, and done nothing. This is simply not true.

[ToadBrother]

Who says they haven't reformed? All these claims seem to date back decades, and as the cite above said:

The Catholic Church in Ireland now operates arguably the most robust child protection system in the country, something that is rarely acknowledged. The public still appears to believe that the Church has learned nothing, and done nothing. This is simply not true.

And who says they have? Why should I take pro-Catholic crapola at face value. The Irish authorities clearly don't think the Church has been on the up-and-up, and its pretty clear now that the Belgian church was being equally secretive. Society has an absolute right to know what the Church knows about child abusers its been protecting, and if the Church won't act like a proper law-abiding citizen, then they're going to find themselves more and more on the wrong side of the law. That's fine. The Church may hold a special place with apologists like you, but for me, it has a considerable amount to answer for.

This idea that the public has somehow been deluded is more of an example of how the Church and its supporters continue to blame victims of its evils for its own damned problems. If the Pope wants forgiveness, he can simply command every goddamned diocese in the world to open the files and let authorities see what its been hiding. But this has nothing to do with contrition or reform. The modern Church is run by a bunch of pathetic cowards, who seem to view society's righteous anger as an inconvenience.

[WIP]

Who says they haven't reformed? All these claims seem to date back decades, and as the cite above said:

The Catholic Church in Ireland now operates arguably the most robust child protection system in the country, something that is rarely acknowledged. The public still appears to believe that the Church has learned nothing, and done nothing. This is simply not true.

Can we be assured that the Vatican will continue this policy after the hubub of the latest sex abuse scandals has died down? My suspicions are that the reforms are damage control that didn't begin until they realized that it couldn't be swept under the rug any more. What's especially troubling is that the reform announcements put the blame on homosexuals entering the seminaries, and claimed that they could identify homosexuals and keep them out in the future!

This is despicable blame-shifting, because the most common violations of proper priestly conduct are with women, not preteen and adolescent boys! Women who go to a priest for counseling are often coerced into sexual relationships, but since women (such as the recently widowed) are of age and a priest is not professionally licensed as a therapist, there are no charges to be filed for taking advantage of women in vulnerable situations, even when the priest gets the woman pregnant. The Church usually quietly makes a child support arrangement, and only in rare cases, such as one here in Hamilton two years ago, where a woman was suing the Church for continued support because her son was disabled -- does the sex scandal even make the news.

The Silent Majority: Adult Victims of Sexual Exploitation by Clergy

Considering that this organization is always looking for opportunities to re-establish the power they enjoyed centuries ago, all of their records should be available for public scrutiny!

http://www.concordatwatch.eu/

Pope launches team to 're-evangelise' the West