That’s it. Stop the planet. I wanna get off.
“Suppose you have a man having a nervous breakdown, and a youngster comes after him,” Father Groeschel, now 79, said in the interview. “A lot of the cases, the youngster — 14, 16, 18 — is the seducer.”
He added that he was “inclined to think” that priests who were first-time abusers should not be jailed because “their intention was not committing a crime.”
At least other Catholic commentators seem to be explicitly refuting this.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I signed the petition to remove that guy from his post.
I realy, really, REALLY HOPE that karma bites him hard.
Red(Quote) (Reply)
I read about this last week, and I’m in total agreement with what some other people had to say: the RCC needs to do an in-depth investigation into this man’s past to check for any sexual misconduct that may have taken place. That won’t happen, of course–the RCC won’t even acknowledge proven sexual misconduct except to ship the offender off to another church and/or pretend it’s all some great big conspiracy to discredit the RCC.
Cheryl(Quote) (Reply)
Sounds very TVTroperish…this whole “THE UNDERAGE KID IS THE REAL PREDATOR! THINK ABOUT TEH POOR CHILD RAPISTS!” bullshit spiel, I mean.
Casey(Quote) (Reply)
I saw that. I don’t think I have anything intelligible to say about it.
I did hear some press about the cardinal whose interview was released posthumously and who apparently commented that the Catholic church needs to get with the times a bit in order to keep from fading into obscurity – I haven’t read it so I don’t know what all he listed as things they need to change, but in the news coverage they kept quoting him as being concerned with the church’s position on divorce…which seemed to me to be the least of the problems.
Deborah Bell(Quote) (Reply)
Ugh. Though sadly, I’m not surprised.
Gabriella(Quote) (Reply)
What’s worse is that a Catholic publication publishes this guy’s comments.
What EVEN worse is that this man counseled priests for 38 years, including those credibly accused of molesting kids: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/nyregion/in-interview-the-rev-benedict-groeschel-says-abuse-victims-can-be-seducers.html
What he describes sounds very much like how some molesters portray their activities. Whether their actual perceptions are so distorted or they’re just trying to rationalize what they did, it should be really obvious to even a semi-objective person is that the kids in these situations don’t have the upper hand. Even if a kid really skillfully tried to seduce an adult, the adult would still be fully empowered to say no, and must be held responsible for doing so.
That said, I really REALLY doubt that kid confusion comes into these situations often. It can happen with kids who have been molested before and maybe don’t even know another way to interact with caregivers, but it’s rare enough that most people – even those who work with kids a lot – never run into this sort of thing ever. I can’t believe there just happen to be confused kids around every time a Catholic clergy is feeling a bit vulnerable.
Jennifer Kesler(Quote) (Reply)
To think my family actually wonders why I am no longer a practicing Roman Catholic. It’s a severely jacked mindset that thinks the kids in these scenarios are culpable, and not the adults in leadership roles. I mean, come on now.
sbg(Quote) (Reply)