Janet Reitman Quotes
Contrary to most state laws, the Catholic Church considered the age of consent to be as young as 12.
Janet Reitman, Investigative Journalist, Religious Organization Scholar, “Suffer the Little Children”, New York Times Book Review, June 9, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This sad quotation illustrates how some of the leaders of the Church were so out of touch with law and morality. The Archbishop justified the archdiocesan cover-up of the crimes of sexually predatory priests and actually tried to lay much of the responsibility on children who might have been streetwise. It is almost like the Priests were seduced. The typical action of the church authorities was to transfer the sexually predatory priest to another assignment where in most cases he continued the predation with other children. Even if the children were very sexually active, the law is that they are under the age of consent and may not consent to sexual activity. Any adult having sex with a teen ager is guilty of statutory rape. However, the Church authorities decided in many cases that the age of consent was 12 contrary to state law in most states. Therefore in their minds there was no crime because the child was old enough to consent so they felt justified in not referring the crime to the police. See {633188} . Of course, few of the child victims of the priests were sexually sophisticated. Most were innocent and totally intimidated by the high spiritual and community role of the priest. Weakland was removed from his position of authority as part of the Church program to eliminate the problem of predatory priests and irresponsible bishops.
She had urged that the age of consent be raised from 13 to 18 when one of the Lords responded that it should be LOWERED to 10.
The problem priests who sexually prey on young boys is not a modern problem only. This quotation demonstrates that the problem has existed for over 1000 years and probably existed in the earliest days of Christianity. This has been a problem of many clergies of different religions. However, the Roman Catholic authorities of the day seemed to be more proactive in dealing with it than in the scandals of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio
This detestable accusation completely ignores the fact that when the American Catholic Church had a raft of homosexual priests in the early 21st century, the Pope condemned this in the most uncertain terms. Child homosexual molestation is vehemently condemned by both Catholicism and Islam alike—also by straights and homosexual groups.
The official position of the church was against the child molestation and rape by pedophile priests as it was against artificial contraception. Harris based his conclusion on the effort the church leaders and priests were making for each of the two issues. While the Pope condemned in no uncertain terms the pedophilia of the priests, the sermons and the literature of the church dealt with contraception much more frequently. At the time, the church was still covering up the sex scandal and some church officials were still in denial as to the extent. When the Pope was a cardinal, he also contributed to the cover-up, claiming to be hamstrung by the limitations of cannon law with regard to defrocking perverted priests.
Even though a strong feminist, note the Victorian concept of sex—namely that it is the man who does the seduction and the woman who is the passive victim. Also that the act of sex has somehow damaged a woman so that she needs “maintenance”. Modern feminists and non feminists, and our laws and culture, no longer look at sex as damage to a woman so the seduction, regardless of whether the male or the female is the seducer, is not a problem that needs compensation. It is only if children result, that there is male responsibility—not for the seduction but for taking his share of the responsibility for creating another human being that needs support. Also, most modern cultures do not see all sex as a seduction of one party be another—sex can be and often is the joint decision of consenting adults. In some cases females seduce males.
The United States was governing the Philippines after the Spanish American war. Most Filipinos were Roman Catholic and before the Americans even took over there were a large number of Catholic priests who were sexually active in different ways. Many had housekeepers/concubines, others had relations with women who they learned were vulnerable in the confessional. Still others were homosexuals and preferred young boys. Americans were much more prudish than many other countries where lecherous men of the cloth had a long history. The American authorities simply removed these priests not realizing that there was still with many countries laws and traditions that left the disciplining of clergy, even for criminal matters, to the religious authorities. The Catholic Church was then very defensive about sexually predatory priests. The Vatican made many protestations that the U. S. Government were interfering with the prerogative of the church to run its own religious affairs. American Catholics and Catholic leaders also complained about the religious “interference”. Roosevelt knew full well that the Church had done little or nothing about the Filipino lecherous priests before the Americans took over, and he had no confidence that they would do so in the future. And he was adamant that religious officials should be subject to the civil law and civil authorities for behavior of all citizens with no exemptions for clergy. When the Catholic church realized the poor PR that they were getting from the worst priestly offenders, it tended to back off overt confrontation, and came to a diplomatic agreement with America over the issue. Most countries resolved this issue the way Roosevelt and the Americans did. Clergy were subject to civil law in all things.
The Mormon Church did not in condone the practice, but as there were a number of Mormons who led offshoot sects and cults where they claimed that the sexual relations with multiple young girls was divinely inspired, she and other Mormons believed that the Church should be more explicit about prohibiting the practice. There are a number of Mormon offshoot sects where civil authorities charged clerics with statutory rape and other sex crimes. One delicate area of history is that the Prophet and founder of the Morman Religion was a polygamist whose wives included a 14 year old girl and Money and other Mormons wanted the Chruch to declare the the Prophet had erred in this respect.
At that time the Republican Party was beholden to the religious right and advocated using the power of the government to control individual personal lifestyles and sexual behavior. They were particularly harsh against homosexuality and underage premarital sex. One of the Republican Congressmen, Mark Foley, had a sexual yen for some of the male Congressional pages and sent them very provocative e-mails and made other advances. Complaints had been made to the Republican leadership of the House but they chose to cover it up rather than risk a national scandal. Although they delayed the public exposure till after the 2006 elections, when the story broke, the Republicans were castigated not only for their errant Congressman but their failure to protect the Congressional pages from their sexually aggressive party colleague.
The only reason that this is an important and noteworthy quotation is the irony and hypocrisy illustrated by the fact that the congressman had to resign in disgrace and face criminal charges when he had been sending salacious e-mail to young boys who were pages in the Congress.
The age of consent for statutory rape was in some states only 10 years at the time. Blackwell was one of the many who lobbied to elevate it.
The 15 year old Italian immigrant who spoke no English killed the man who raped or seduced her. The case became a New York cause celebre regarding age of consent laws, women on juries, and general female suffrage.
strict and intrusive law enforcement (See {595406})
