re: Pope cut penalties for pedophile priests including letting two off with a prayer

I wish we had a strong Church again. I once as a 50+ year old considered converting to Catholicism. I just could not bring myself to lie and say I agreed with all the teachings of the Church. Cradle Catholic never have to as adults make such promises. There are things in the dogma of the Church that are absolutely for the power of the church bureaucracy and have little to do with Christianity IMHO.

It is sad to me to see the Catholics contort themselves in defense of what is obviously a corrupt organization. Until the laymen in the pews call BS on the hierarchal management of the Church that repeatedly covers up scandals I am afraid the Church will not change.

No better recent example of the institutional sin is what is going on in Argentina.


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The institutional cover up and protection is obvious in that case.

quote:

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The children told prosecutors the two Roman Catholic priests repeatedly raped them by an image of the Virgin Mary inside the small school chapel in remote northwestern Argentina. Only their tormenters would have heard their cries because the other children at the school were deaf.

The clerical sex abuse scandal unfolding at the Antonio Provolo Institute for hearing impaired children in Mendoza province would be shocking enough on its own. Except that dozens of students in the Provolo Institute's school in Italy were similarly abused for decades, some of whom allegedly by the same priest who now stands formally charged of raping and molesting young deaf Argentines.

And the Vatican knew about the Rev. Nicola Corradi since at least 2009, when the Italian Provolo students went public with tales of shocking abuse against the most vulnerable of children and named names. While the Vatican ordered an investigation and sanctioned four accused priests, Corradi apparently never was sanctioned for his alleged crimes in Italy.

The Verona diocese apologized to the Italian students in 2012. After the students again named Corradi as an abuser living in Francis' native Argentina in a 2014 letter to the pope and the Verona bishop, the Vatican still took no action. Though this year a Vatican official said Pope Francis wanted to assure the victims that the church was taking measures to protect children and prevent sexual abuse.

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It is pathetic to read the attempts by people to write things like this off or to somehow justify them because they think this happens as often in protestant churches.

It is desperate to say such things and I feel sorry for those Catholics that resort to such defenses.