Apologies for the paedophile priests.

[flobadob]

Do you ever get the feeling that the pope/catholic church hierarchy are more sorry for the fact that these so called holy men were found out for their raping of children, rather than being sorry for the fact that these crimes occured in the first place?

[Sqad]

flobadob

The protection of the integrity of the church is paramount, even though it may jeopardise the safety of the community of which it purports to advice.

Nothing else to say really.

[theonlyone]

Nothing they say or do will undo the harm they inflicted on
innocent children .

[craft1948]

I agree with theonlyone.....I have cried just reading some of the stories concerning some of these children....the people responsible should have been flogged (as they did to the children) and imprisoned.

[brionon]

Sorry to be boring but WHY has no Bishop been charged with Perverting the course of Justice ? After NOT reporting a crime ?

[flobadob]

That's not boring, it's a good point.

[flobadob]

How sad for all life on this planet. And I don't mean that sarcastically, that is actually the leader of a vast people's view, put their personal interests above that of the followers. The thing that really riles me is that it's all buzzwords now. Paedophile/Abused/Touched etc. But when you really think about it these grown 40(ish) old grown men snuck into 6 year old children's rooms and put their penises into their vaginas or anuses or made the children suck the semen from them, and stole their lives away. But no one really cares enough to administer proper justice to the sickos. Will this get printed?

[tamborine]

happens still in all faiths, globally by unscrupulous power hungry men of ALL races.

[society]

ANYONE who hurt children should be jailed for life, and with hard labour, and flogged every day.

[ludwig]

// So, if they were "sorry", would that make it any better? //

Actually yes. It would mean that they might actually do something to ensure the guilty were punished and other children protected rather than telling them to say a few prayers before quietly shuffling them off to some other location to begin all over again.

[andy-hughes]

Any Catholics here will know - and none-Cathokics should be aware, of just how revered priests have been in the past, and in Ireland, still are.

These men live an unatural life of celibacy surrounded by people who revere them totally, and in whose eyes they can do know wrong. My mother-in-law is Irish, and if her priest came round and shat on the carpet, she'd say it was good for the pile!

The church protects its own, aided and abetted by a section of society who thinks that priests should behave as they wish, regardless of the consequenses.

This produces a licence for abhorrent behaviour with little if any fear of sanction or punishment. I am happy to say that the Catholic church is desending into a forgotten and archaic anachronism with little place in the modern world, and has only itself to blame for that. Some, in fact many priests, do a wonderful job, but as long as the church continues to defend and ignore the vile practises of the minority, it's rapidly advancing extinction will not be mourned by this aetheist.

[flobadob]

The sad thing is, I know a few priests and they are good men, from any dealings that I've ever had with them. However, this is not seen, and when the leadership shows such cowardice and seemingly indifference towards the terrible issue of priest paedophilia, then I feel that all the normal good work of everyday priests is in vain, as the church is surely doomed in the coming decades.