However, the two types which are evident even to those with poor sight or understanding are the priests in the confessional and the police who are receiving the confessions/allegations/evidence of victims. Much has been written and discussed about the historic custom of priests keeping quiet about what is said in the confessional. Of course, these priests can be discomforted when reminded that this "spiritual" silence has two quite dreadful effects.
The first is it comforts the perpetrator who is assured that the silence of the confessional will not be broken and the confession will be protected from police and anyone else. It does nothing to stop or hinder the perpetrator.
The second is it knocks security from under the feet of the victim. The victim knows that the priest to whom this dreadful knowledge has been imparted will do nothing to assist in the matter if that priest has knowledge given him under the seal of the confessional.
Then there are the police to whom this knowledge is reported. Many reports have gone to many police who, at least in the past, have chosen to ignore the reportee. Perhaps because child and adolescent witnesses are, in the eyes of the police, low on the credibility scale. Perhaps because the priests ensure there are no witnesses or such witnesses as may be are part of the pedophilia secret society.
The Roman Catholic Church has been facing the problem of paedophilia and paedophilia and the confessional for centuries. Well, to be precise, it has not been facing the problem. It has been dodging it and so it remains in the sewers deep in the foundations of the Roman Church. Not to say that the Roman tradition is alone in this situation. Many other denominations in the Christian tradition are as well, including traditions which don't practice the Sacrament of Confession.
The Roman Catholic Church is a powerful institution within many sectors of modern human society. None less so than at the United Nations. To read more about the relationship of Holy See and the UN please go here.
Even if it is a United Nations Women's Conference or Forum, the Holy See will have its representatives there. Women within the Roman Catholic Church can provide the Holy See with difficulties too.
UN human rights council in Geneva[edit]
In a statement, read out by Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi at a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva on 22 September 2009, the Holy See stated that the majority of Catholic clergy who had committed acts of sexual abuse against under 18 year olds should not be viewed as paedophiles but homosexuals who are attracted to sex with adolescent males.
The statement said that rather than pedophilia, it would "be more correct" to speak of ephebophilia; being a homosexual attraction to adolescent males ....... "Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."[25][26]
The move angered many gay rights organizations, who claimed it was an attempt by the Vatican to redefine the Church's past problems with pedophilia as problems with homosexuality.[27] (Wikipedia)
It seems to The Editor of this blog
that, eventually, what will be needed
is something akin to the Nuremberg Trials.
We need a place in the world where the victims can be recalled.
We need a place in the world where the perpetrators can be revisited, reviled.
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