Pope's Solution to Raping Priests: Prayer, Fasting and Penance
Pope Offers No Concrete Plan to Battle Rapist Priests
Calling the Cops Will Have Better Results Than Praying and Fasting
In what can only be characterized as more insanity from the Catholic Church, Pope Francis today offered this solution to the centuries old problem of priests raping and sexually abusing kids: pray, fast and do penance.
In a lengthy letter to all Catholics, the Pope condemned rape by priests and said it has to be eliminated. But his solution to the problem is bizarre. While he called on all Catholics to join together to condemn and prevent abuse, he offered no concrete steps that the church will take to prevent abuse to to rid the church of abusers. He even made the startling admission that the church has delayed any church-wide efforts to end the abuse.
Here's an excerpt from his letter:
“I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future (Emphasis mine).”
Here's the prayer and fasting part:
“To see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help. I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command.[1] This can awaken our conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that says “never again” to every form of abuse.
“Without the active participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world” (Evangelii Gaudium, 11).”
You would think that the head of what is in effect the world's largest corporation would use the occasion of the sickening 900-page Pennsylvania Grand Jury report, which said 300 priests in Pennsylvania raped and sexually abused more than a thousand children over 70 years, to immediately set down some strong rules to deal with these atrocities against children. But he didn't.
So here are some recommendations to get the Pope started.
1. Immediately send every report of clergy or lay person sexual abuse to the cops.
2. Tell Catholics each and every week in parish bulletins that if they or their children have been abused by clergy to go directly to to the cops, not to church officials.
3. Immediately suspend any member of the clergy who has been accused of sexual from having any contact with the public.
4. Any member of the clergy who has been convicted of molesting a kid, or an adult, will be immediately kicked out of the organization – no pension, no health benefits, no nothing. Same thing for any clergy member who has been found liable of abuse in a civil proceeding.
5. Any member of the church – bishops,cardinals, pastors, you name it – who fails to report abuse cases to the cops and who attempts to cover up the abuse and protect a rapist, will immediately be fired.
6. Every parish and archdiocese will post on the internet a list of priests and other clergy who have been credibly accused/convicted of child sexual abuse.
7. The real solution is to get rid of the entire church hierarchy and start from scratch.