Shame: Bad Priests, Bad Policies, Bent Lobbyists

Priests committing child abuse. The Catholic Church covering it up. The abused kids and their families never able to reconcile the crime, the faith, the law, and themselves. Kids delivered unknowingly--in God's name and with good intentions--by their parents--to someone they trust. Then suffering this kind of ordeal. Sometimes over and over.

There was also recently a scandal involving a rabbi in Brooklyn, very similar, and a case of a rabbi in Israel who fled to Canada two years ago. It occurs in other faiths not mentioned here.

We've had heart-breaking priest scandals in Boston, New Mexico, New Orleans. We have one in Germany and a new one in Chicago. We have Ireland and Rhode Island. Another one in Switzerland.

I have no sympathy whatsoever that the Catholic Church only has a staff of ten to review these cases at the Vatican. Only Ten. That says something about priorities right there.

Insult to Injury: Conflated Agendas
In some circles, and in popular discourse/the press,
 this recurring situation is considered a slam against the Church's policy on priest celibacy/no marriage. In other words, if priests could marry, they wouldn't have sexual urges against children. That is Outrageous Bull Shit.

This is not about sexual relations in a marriage of partners. It's about sick bastards abusing their power over children who are physically, cognitively, psychologically, and spiritually unable to respond on an equal basis. It's rape. It's child molesting.

These so-called priests had an entire universe of illicit sexual contacts to choose from. They chose kids. Married priest advocates shouldn't use these victims again for their own purposes. Shame and shame again.

The Only Acceptable Agenda--Stopping This Crime
If  a priest or minister or rabbi abuses a child sexually, if he rapes anyone, he gets de-frocked, stripped of ministerial powers. No ifs, no ands, no buts. No cover-up. No special dispensation and no transfer to a new, unsuspecting parish. He gets to meet Justice in a court of law. He goes to prison. Then sometime after that, he answers to the hereafter.

If any church official of any church colludes to hide a rape or child abuse, he is dismissed, de-frocked, de-ordained, whatever that procedure is called. He answers to the accessory charge in a court of law. He meets that Justice.

And, if anyone uses these victims to advance some other agenda, no matter its solution to some other problem, they are out of the room. They speak no further. They carry no weight.

Anything else is Wrong.   Period, zero, the end.