Vatican to Hold Secret Trials of Priests in Paedophilia Cases
From Boston, to Brooklyn, to Scranton and beyond and faster than Moriel can report on, cases of paedophilia Roman Catholic priests are being exposed and lawsuits are being filed. We are seeing with more and more frequency, Roman Catholic priests are being brought up on charges of paedophilia in the daily newspapers and cover-ups by the Roman Catholic Church around the world with the result being that Jesus’ name is being dragged though the mud. And, in an effort to stem the tide of lawsuits, outgoing funds and despicable behavior by priests within the Roman Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II has issued new rules stating that the Roman Catholic Church will use secret ecclesiastical courts to try priests accused of sexually abusing children and will oversee the cases directly from Rome.
These rules were quietly issued on January 8, 2002 from the Vatican. These rules are intended to govern church proceedings determining the priest’s future in the church and whether he will be relieved of his ministry. These rules seem to add to the impression that the church is all ready in a cover-up mode according to critics within the church. It also seems to give the weight of addressing need not to the victim but to the offending priests. Several critics within the Catholic church, none who wanted to be named said the new rules were unfortunate because they seemed to focus on protecting potential perpetrators rather that their victims who have long complained that the church’s steps to address the problems were inadequate. The newness of the rules has further added to the confusion as to actual practice as it does not spell out the bishop’s policy on informing civil authorities. It should be remember that as of last September, a French court gave a three-month suspended jail term to a bishop who neglected to tell the police that a priest in his diocese had been sexually abusing children. Further evidence that even the bishop can’t be trusted to expose such a horrible crime and that their first loyalty is to the Roman church and not to the law and to what is right. But the cover-ups don’t even stop at that level as Cardinal Law from Boston Massachusetts, (where 50 victims have been paid $10 million dollars to settle law suits) states that “He is not a policeman, he is a Shepard.” The problem of pedophile priests has been a huge and expensive problem and embarrassment to the church. One of the largest awards even given in a sex abuse case was made two years ago in Dallas Texas USA, where the diocese had concealed the abuse of boys who where later awarded $120 million in damages by a civil court. One unnamed high-ranking official said that “U. S. bishops have been complaining about the finical burden” of defending priest in sex abuse cases.
In times past, priests accused of paedophilia were sometimes allowed to go to confession, get counseling and be transferred to other parishes, where they often found new victims. Even with the new steps one church official stated, “They still don’t get it.”
As the Roman Catholic church is currently embroiled in the case of former priest John J. Geoghan, who is accused of abusing 130 children, a priest who was shifted around for years, the State Senate of Massachusetts is now taking matters into their own hands by voting on a bill to require that clergy members report past evidence of sexual abuse to state authorities and not just evidence of current sexual abuse. This new bill will go beyond the new Boston archdiocese rule that does not require reporting past abuse. In a letter from American Cardinal Ratzinger to U. S. Bishops that at “even a hint” of a case of paedophilia an investigation must be open and reported to Rome. While these secret tribunals have no direct effect on civil cases, they do settle the question about who pays the defense lawyers in criminal cases, since a priest found not guilty by these church trials would be presumably entitled to the support of the diocese.
These rules were spelled out in the document “Sacrementorum Sanctitati Tutel” (Tutelage of the Holiness of the Sacraments) and done “motu proprio” (at his own initiative). The Pope decided that the Tribunal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would judge offenses by priests involving the Eucharist and pederasty. This same document dealing with paedophilia deals with what the church considers desecration of the Eucharistic as “grave offenses.” This document deals first with the Eucharistic and then the paedophilia problem. It states that a priest “taking, keeping or throwing away the Holy Species for sacrilegious ends; committing an outrage against the liturgy of the Eucharistic sacrifice or parodying it, concelebrating with priests of ecclesial communities that do not follow the apostolic succession or do not recognize the sacramental dignity of priestly ordination; consecrating one of the material {bread and wine} and not the other for sacrilegious reasons, or consecrating both outside the Eucharistic celebration.”
As of January 8th this document had not been posted to the Vatican website and is currently published only in Latin in the January issue of the “Acta Apostolicae Sedis” (Acts of the Apostolic See).
Moriel would stand on the Word of God and call the forbidding of marriage a doctrine of demons (1 Timothy 4:1-3). When the Catholic church forbids marriage it takes something that God calls good and natural and makes it into something that is wrong for those who consider serving the church a higher calling and are willing to try and abide by it’s man-made traditions. When man tries to suppress what is natural by the flesh, adhering to doctrines of demons (1 Timothy 4:1-3) the result is what is unnatural, and costly to both victim and perpetrator. The many cases of paedophilia within the Catholic church could be seen then as resulting directly from the suppression of marriage unnaturally within it confines and under its authority. These new rules are intended to only handle the results of a wrong and ungodly doctrine not to prevent it. Until the Catholic Church realizes the error and makes the changes to allow the marriage of priests, something allowed under the Eastern Rite of Catholicism, children will continue being at risk within the Catholic Church. Also, with a ten-year statue of limitation after the 18th birthday on procedures against such clergy so that a child is molested in early childhood and, as is frequently the case, keeps it a secret, out of fear and confusion until adult life, the priest will be immune from action taken against him by the church. Adding that the AIDS rate among Roman Catholic priests is more than 4 time higher than the national average in the USA the ten year limitation by the Catholic Church might not be greatest concern to the children, but a premature death and or mental torture because of this horrible wrong done to them.
With the jails in Ireland having no shortage of pedophile priests, unlike ages past, under the De Valera Government, where such travesties were quashed by the government, ignored by the press and hidden from public view these atrocities will continue. In the developing world, particularly Africa, the phenomena of Roman Catholic clergy sexually exploiting women and children, has reached explosive proportions, and last year a Belgian court sacrificed two Dominican nuns to prison for their central role in the genocidal extermination of 7000 innocent civilians in the inter-rivalries between Hutu and Tootsi tribes. A question of concern might be raise here as the Roman Catholic Church is having a shortage of priests in Europe and is importing priests from Africa to Europe, will it just be increasing and spreading these type of problems to another continent?
When is enough going to be enough for the world to see what the Catholic Church is really like and it’s members going to open their eyes to the whitewash of atrocities and leave this abomination?
Moriel finds it amazing that one would link the Eucharistic celebration and not performing it correctly and paedophilia on the same page and document, calling both “grave offenses.” Moriel does not believe that the Eucharistic turns into Jesus’ body and blood, yet the Catholic Church does and as such they participate in another forbidden act. God’s Word in Acts 15:20 forbids the drinking of blood and things offered to idols. Yet the Catholic Church adds abomination to abomination by adding to Christ’s “once and for all” sacrifice on the cross and demeaning it’s value by calling the continuing sacrifice of the mass one and the same.
Moriel takes no delight in the exposing of these horrible sins being perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church on it’s followers, but is compelled by God’s Word to warn people of these wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing. As the Gnostic teachings of the Catholic Church continue the damage will be worse on it’s adherents, increasing till that last day when Christ will come to throw the Mother of Harlots and Spiritual Babylon and their followers into the Lake of fire.
