(02-20-2019 12:53 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(02-19-2019 10:31 PM)GoodOwl Wrote:  

(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.

Do you have any evidence of them moving or is that wishful thinking? Boy Scouts and other denominations have had these protections for decades. There are required courses before you can work with children. If this stuff hasn’t been in place with the Catholics for decades also, they are behind the curve

Chicago's Catholic Church in transition: What parishioners are saying

Here's at least one more recent article from one of the areas I suggested.
One might argue they are just mimicking the general trend of people fleeing these states for the Sun Belt and West and younger populations there declining.

I will say that in my travels in recent years, most churches in the Sun Belt and West seem to be full up during Mass, at least when I have gone when visiting other cities. That is anecdotal, of course.

Here's a bit more info on the subject:
Catholic Parishes of the 21st Century

Quote:The book’s chapter on changing clergy demographics notes that while about 500 new priests are being ordained in the United States each year and this country has a more favorable ratio of clergy to priests than many other parts of the world, that does not replace the number of priests who die or who are inactive due to illness or retirement.

Now the Catholic Church in the United States has about 16,500 active diocesan priests, and the average age of U.S. priests is in the mid-60s. In 2014, the U.S. had 26,000 priests, including retired clergy, compared to 34,000 in 1990. About one-fourth of U.S. diocesan priests come from foreign countries.

There are an estimated 40,000 lay ecclesial ministers on parish ministry staffs, and the United States has about 18,000 permanent deacons serving in a variety of roles. The book highlights the need for adequate training for lay parish workers and volunteers, especially in financial and operational matters, to assist the declining number of priests.

Another dramatic development in the U.S. Catholic Church in recent decades has been the shift in Catholic population and how Catholics are now distributed across the country.

While the earlier Notre Dame Study of Catholic Parish Life done in the 1980s found that almost two-thirds of the nation’s Catholics lived in the Northeast or Midwest, now Catholics are almost evenly distributed across the four major regions of the country, with 28 percent in the Northeast, 23 percent in the Midwest, 25 percent in the West and 24 percent in the South.

The book notes how significant numbers of Catholics have moved from cities and farms to suburban areas and to parts of the country where there are more jobs. Some dioceses in the Northeast and Rust Belt have lost tens of thousands of Catholics in recent decades and had to close or merge parishes, while dioceses in the Sun Belt are rapidly growing and have to build expansive churches.

“People move, infrastructure doesn’t,” said Gaunt, noting the change is also fueled by the mobility of younger generations and the nation’s growing immigrant population. An added challenge is maintaining older churches that are expensive to maintain and have small numbers of parishioners.

The declining number of priests and the shifting Catholic population has also led to new models of parish leadership, the book notes, pointing out how some priests now lead more than one parish, or clusters of parishes are led by a team of priests, and some parishes are now administered by permanent deacons, women religious or lay people who serve as parish life coordinators.

The book characterizes the contrast between parts of the country where the Catholic population is declining and churches are closing, to other regions where there’s rapid growth, as a “tale of two Churches,” and notes how the neighborhood parishes of the past are being transformed into larger regional communities, with churches that now seat more than 1,000 parishioners.