Question re clerical sex abuse?

Question

Could many lawyers be exploiting this for money?
Only less than 1% of the priest have been involved.
Public schools are supported by taxes. Many states will not allow you to sue them. Some have caps on the award you can get from them. But abuse happens there.

The Church has to pay money in the cases. Is money that important to parents? If someone had abused any of my father's children, he would settle it outside of court with his fist whether they were clergy or not. Some say that is vigilantism and many places there are laws against it. Daddy wouldn't care. He had never been in jail but he would willingly risk jail in that type of situation. Daddy was a very gentle man. Never laid a cruel hand on my mother, never used profanity, never went around talking tough. His children preferred him to spank or whip them than their mother.
As a woman if I had children without a father, I could land my foot in a very sensitive location.
I asked this earlier. Just curious.

I know of two bishops and many priests that said that those who abuse children should be hit.

Answer 1

you refer to your father as past tense im sorry if that is the case but i would have to agree with him one way or the other the priests needs to be taught a real lesson and by all means keep children away from them

Answer 2

It is a widespread myth that the Church has a lot of wealth but the Church is only the custodian of antiquities and art and has little monetary wealth. But , yes the lawyers are exploiting the situation. The fact is that it is the Catholic faithful that are suffering by, in some cases losing their churches and their donations are going to pay for the awards from the court. Catholic education and urban ministries are suffering as well.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

Edit:

For the one who said to keep children away from priests, statistics show that children are safer around Catholic priests than any other clergy, or even school teachers.

For the person who said that the Church did nothing to stop the priests and just moved them aroud, the facts are that most of these abuse cases happened many years ago and at that time the psychiatric community was saying that the pedophiles could be cured with treatment. The Church, out of charity and bad advice treated the offending priests and reassigned them after they were declared cured by the psychiatrists. Only recently has it been known that one cannot be cured of pedophilia and this is a case of hindsight being 20/20 but the Church got bad medical advice in their desire for charity to those afflicted with pedophilia. The Church made many mistakes on his issue but they did not try to harm anyone as some want to believe but the Churches intentions were the exact opposite to be charitable serve the flock. It was a mistake.

Those of you who are so critical of the Catholic church in this regard should be aware that many churchs have not learned from what has happened to the Catholic church in this scandle and are still covering up the sexual sins of their clergy. Only the Southern Baptist, to my knowledge, are acknowledging their problem and creating policies and guidelines to follow. My prayer is that all churches follow the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptists and have a zero tolerance policy for sexual abuse among clergy.

Answer 3

Remember all the thousands of cases that don't make the news due to payoffs.

ROME PAYS $110 MILLION TO SETTLE CHILD SEX ABUSE CASES IN IRELAND.

The Roman Catholic Church in Ireland has agreed to pay
$110 million to avoid further sex scandal litigation. More than 20 priests and members of religious orders have already been convicted of molesting children, and some estimate there could be as many as 3,000 sex abuse
victims. Those who take money from the Catholic sex abuse fund must agree to drop legal action against both the Catholic Church and the state.

Answer 4

I'm sure part of it is the lawyers financial gain...but it is more than that. It is like some horrible act when a person who is supposed to be a religious leader so people seem to take it more seriously. If it was the guy next door, he would probably get beat up and that would be the end of it. I find it very hard to understand why people look at the clergy and somehow think they are not human enough to sin. They are just people like you and I are. I am not making excuses for them anymore than I would make excuses for anyone who would sexually or otherwise abuse a child but why is it worse if it is one of them instead of "joe camel" or whoever?

Answer 5

Less than 1%? That is still a helluva lot.

And your "daddy" would not hit a priest. Such a thought would not even occur to a devout person no matter what the sin. It just wasn't done back in the day. It was the church leadership who failed countless families by thinking they could just transfer a known pedophile to another district and he'd suddenly be cured. A pedophile is a pedophile, they don't change.

Answer 6

First I'm not Catholic and have no opinion on the Catholic Religion and its teachings per se. But I think that some aspects of human nature come together in a very negative way when it comes to Catholic Church rituals and precepts.

First priests cannot marry nor can they masturbate to relieve sexual tension. Men have a constant need to relieve themselves of their seed. For men who are married and in a sexual relationship with their wives this can happen on a regular basis. For men who do not have the access to a woman, they often resort to masturbation combined with certain fantasy images that have sexual meaning to them.

The other issue is the use of altar boys. Altar boys are usually prepubescent or perhaps just starting puberty. At that age testosterone has not kicked in yet in a way that will ultimately give them strong male characteristics. These boys are in a stage where they may look somewhat feminine and act somewhat feminine. Now in the course of their duties to assist a priest, they may often be alone with the priest.

So what you have is a man with unfulfilled sexual needs alone with a pretty looking boy. The pretiness of the boy might remind him of a woman and so starts to react to the boy as a man might to a woman. Meanwhile his seminal fluid is overflowing and sucumbs to the temptation to use the boy sexually as he would a woman.

The answer would be to allow priests to marry or at least masturbate. That would reduce the sexual tension that they feel and reduce the attraction to a young male.