firing all of the Bishops in the US - every one. It's not like they are so irreplacable Frank Keating is right on the mark - they operate like they are La Cosa Nostra. And this clown from Arizona should have been defrocked already. Where oh where have the Hannans and the Schexnaydres gone? Replaced by the Freys of the world.
Getting fired should be the least of their worries. A lot of the Pedophile Priests and Butthole Bishops should be in prison learning what is is like to be on the receiving end of sexual abuse.
Oh yea, no doubt. But if you fire them, the stonewalling will end and the authorities can then access the information to determine which priests and prison belong in the penitentary. ONe of the problems is that to be a bishop, you have to spend the first 10 years of your career working in rome, kissing rome's ass. It certainly deprives a lot of superb administrators, as well as Holy people who stayed in the US, from becoming executives in the church.
My only hope for those BIshops and Priests who abuse is that all of my beliefs are fact. Keating was RIGHT and his leaving only means there will be no solution to the woes of the church.
Are you sure that would work? They'd be easy to replace, but you'd just be replacing them with auxiliary bishops and canon lawyers who are part of the same culture. Unless they can bring in enough foreign bishops to fill the slots in the US...
Would it "work"? I think it would help; it would substantially increase the pool of candidates from which Bishops can be selected. Allowing women into the priesthood and priests to marry would do the same for the pool of candidates to the priesthood, both of which I support, particularly the former. To me this isn't rocket science - if the state has sufficient evidence to believe a priest has committed a crime, the diocese should cooperate with the investigation; if the priest is indicted, he should be suspended from all duties; if convicted, expelled from the priesthood. My only question is who finances the priests attorney - probably the Church will have to do that. This would also seriously diminish the Church's civil liability for the conduct of the priests. As it is now, if the state really wanted to, they could probably hit the Church with a RICO indictment and do to it what they did to ARthur Andersen (now, no one wants to do that but legally they probaby could).
The facts are severly being twisted or ignored here. Less than .1 percent of priests, and an even smaller percentage of Bishops are involved in this mess. The Church has been through many trying times from the anti-popes of the middle ages to the so called Reformation of Martin Luther. The Church will always be hated, and it will always have sinful men in it. The answer to the sex abuse scandal is not to opress the clergy by taking DNA samples or fire bishops. The insanely large majority of priests and bishops are Godly men who do whats right for their flocks. I don't know the answer, but I know it will come because the Chuch is Guided by the Holy Spirit, and Jesus promised He would always be with us.
This thread is not about all priests or hatred of the Catholic Church. Anybody, whether they are a priest, a reverend, a rabbi or just an ordinary pervert who sexually abuses children should be either put in prison for a long long time or castrated. Or both. Catholic priests are not the only denomination harboring these kinds of predators. It is especially heinous for someone posing as a man of God who is supposed to offer spiritual guidance to their parishoners to take advantage of the trust placed in them by the faithful. There is a special place in Hell for them.
What fact has been twisted? NONE. No one claims that some great percentage of priests are molesters. The real problem is that the Church, as an institution, has NOT protected the victims and has NOT cooperated in the investigations (both civil and criminal) and has done its best to stonewall investigations - FACT. There is no reason for a person, whom the church knows is a sexual criminal, to remain a priest. The Church is the victim here? Please.
