(02-18-2019 02:20 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(02-18-2019 12:18 PM)BadgerMJ Wrote:  I fail to understand what their "problem" is. They should be treated like ANY other child molester would be.

If a priest is molesting children, they should be arrested, criminally charged, not to mention, defrocked.

Pretty simple.

It's when they attempt to deny and cover-up that the problems begin.

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive”

I completely agree.

But that IS what happens now. The new revelations over the past year are almost exclusively from far in the past. In fact I haven't seen a single incident yet of a new allegation being discovered and NOT reported to police since the American church instituted reforms in 2006.

I'm frankly struggling to see what the actual current-day relevance is of the controversy. Could someone tell me what the current controversy is? I.e., what does the Church needs to do differently in 2020 from what it did in 2018?

The Catholic Church in the USA today has the most stringent child protection practices of any organization in the world. You can't even have an 11th grade basketball practice on Church property without 2 adults present.

This was a problem, and we fixed it. The fact that new people are coming forward with new allegations from 40 years ago doesn't change that fact.

The new crew of Priests becoming ordained is saavy to the recent past scandals and abuses and they want zero part of it--they are on fire for reform in this aspect and getting back to the conservative values that many in the church left behind since the 60's in favor of liberalism. Similar to society, we are seeing that relativism in values does not work...it only provides an illusion. Getting back to rock-solid values is helping the new generation of both Priests and laypeople make a positive difference. In most cases, the old Priests and Bishops that were brought in during the "enlightened" late 60s, 70s and 80s are the big remaining problem. And not all of them...but in general that is where the lion's share of problems lie.
Disordered individuals are turning away from the Priesthood in favor of organizations like the Boy Scouts, non-denominational and some of the more liberal, less-organized Protestant churches where they can hide and act out their agendas with far less scrutiny and/or even acceptance and promotion.

A majority of Catholic lay-people are also hyper-aware of theses issues and are pushing for even more conservative values to return to their churches. In fact, the areas that are most conservative in the country seem to be growing in Catholic conversions/returns and the areas more liberal (Chicago, New York, Philly, San Fran, LA, etc...) are the ones that seem to be losing the faithful. It is the liberal do-whatever-you-want-and-it's-still-okay attitudes that cause most problems and create opportunities for disordered people to infiltrate and hurt/abuse vulnerable people in the first place.