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MineralMan

(149,507 posts)
5. Here's the thing: The percentage of priests who are pedophiles is small.
Sun Dec 23, 2018, 11:32 AM
Dec 2018

There are pedophiles everywhere. The problem really is that the Roman Catholic Church officially and regularly covered up such crimes and failed to punish offending priests internally. Worse, they universally failed to report such incidents to the civil authorities.

Instead, priests who committed such grave offenses against children confessed their "sins" to other priests, who could not tell anyone else about it. Instead, the offenders were given some sort of penance to perform and were given absolution (forgiveness) for their actions.

What that means is that pedophile priests were able to continue to groom and abuse children again and again, seeking out new victims from those children they supervised, taught, or had in catechism classes or who served as altar boys.

That long, long history of child sexual abuse is the fault of the Church itself. Its practices and secrecy allowed countless thousands of children around the world to suffer at the hands of the Church's official representatives.

For me, that is the primary issue, and is a fault for which I cannot forgive the Roman Catholic Church. Not ever.

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