Restorative justice is important but let’s not forget it can also lead to vigilantism. We need all th legal and restorative justice to work hand in hand. Since the media has reinterpreted canon law for the masses and dismisses the need for legislative and legal justice within the Church – I think you should actually explore this more. What are each individual’s right’s in these cases? or are we saying that criminals and the accused have no rights? Are we saying bishops have no rights, thereby, defacto giving the Pope and the Vatican more power than they actually have. There is such a double message in the reporting – the Vatican failed to use the power it has BUT then on the other hand, even though we don’t like the power the Pope has and how he uses it – let’s give him more.
To his credit the Pope has actually done more than apologize. He has asked the Bishops – been directive to them about their responsibilities to the victims first. He has also asked all of us to do so. He has changed canon law to be more responsive. But we don’t seem to hear enough about any of this. Why? There seems to be not only a lack of recognition but also because of a lack of any real effort to understand the Church. The Pope cannot as has been suggested with the swipe of a pen, eliminate the canon law rights of the bishops, priests and even laity. He is not the all powerful – he is the first among equals. And, as such really has told his brother bishops what to do on a number of public occasions.
Justice – all justice- is hard and needs to take into consideration all people’s interests and rights. Was the Church wrong in how it dealt with cases – I am not so quick to judge but individual bishops were. The Church, like the State, must balance everyone’s rights. We would not like a world in which our court system were to only look through the eyes of the victim and not balance everyone’s rights. We would not like a State that looked after the interest of the wronged without weighing the rights of the accused. Yet, we are publicly trying the Pope’s role as the Court administrator following canon law and villifying him for doing so. Judicial activism is also not justice.
Finally, the Pope has actually done something very important that gets lost because we don’t think religiously anymore. He has given the Church the weapons needed to heal. If you read the letter to the Irish, he tells us what to do. Nonbelievers will dismiss it but anyone who is a practicing Catholic should take it to heart and do it. Offer up your Friday penances for the victims and the Church, go to Eucharistic Adoration and pray for the victims and the Church, pray. The Lord, the final judge, will hear.

Mary,
Your words – to me they say work on a restorative justice solution sounds like a good idea to try but the right thing to do is to pray. That is insulting to victims, as well as having nothing to do with restorative justice.
I think what most of the victims are saying is that they have had the prayers and the apologies and that has not worked for them or for the church – that is why the uproar continues. By all means pray for what you want, however that must be accompanied by direct actions towards repairing the lives of the victims and would help to answer the prayers of the victims – it would also do a great deal of PR for the church.

Have the priests found guilty been excommunicated? That to me wuld mean the church takes these crimes seriously. If they excommunicate people whi have aided an abortion they should also excommunicate those who have abused children or aided those who have done so.

It is beyond my imagining how a victim could trust “the Church” as represented by the faces of the Pope, bishops, and priests after suffering as deeply and long as many clearly have, no matter what might be said now. The previous Pope, hundreds of bishops, and thousands of priests have carried out and reinforced the Church’s heinous traditions associated with sexual abuse for decades until publicly exposed.
The Pope is not only a brother bishop — he is the unique one with “the full power of shepherding, ruling, and governing the universal Church”, as John Paul II explained. (General Audience, Feb 24, 1993) We know what Benedict XVI stands for. As of today, he gives the highest honors to Law, Sodano, Castrillon Hoyos, Mahony, and many bishops whose roles in supporting and facilitating the abuse traditions are well known. Until he purges the hierarchy of the hundreds known to be directly associated with the “sin within the Church” that he noticed, Restorative Justice or other healing modes have little hope of effectiveness.

It’s very clear that you guys don’t get it.
Many of us went to the church – the very institution that harmed us – and we were revictimized (either by being called liars, having our abuse minimized, told to pray this away, etc.). We were not heard and we were not attended to. I tried to work with the church for years, then realized the only way to get their attention was to get them where it hurts: their wallet. Hence civil suits abounded.
Criminal suits? Well, they’re a little less available. SOLs and secret documents never shown to the legal authorities and “good catholic police” prevented any form of justice there.
Also, your pronouncement of pride in having the pope meet with victims is nothing to brag about. The victims were hand chosen. Oh, just like the bishops. Parallel here.
Rest assured, it’s business as usual in your church, no matter what anyone SAYS. This is why we want/need ACTION.
Take your head out of the sand. Listen to the victims. Please, just listen to us and hear us. Hear our pain.

You know, recovered is right. I am the survivor of a sexual molestation by a family member and it takes YEARS to recover. When you are abused by trusted adults it does something to you forever. It is very hard to trust people. I brought a ton of baggage from it to my marriage. Thankfully I have a great husband who helped me heal from it. However when someone in the family talks about this person like he was such a good man, etc. it still makes me want to barf. It will never go away.
I agree – LISTEN to the victims. What do they want? I will never understand what could be done to make any of it alright but when people want to blame the parents (why did they let their child go with the priest) or blame the victims themselves it is just absolutely disgusting. Put yourself in their position – first you are abused by a priest and then the very institution who should have done something denies it. Oh, and then passes the defective priest to another church to continue to do it again. Not a slap on the wrist.
“Restorative” justice to me is just putting a bandaid on the problem or making it look like the church is doing something about it. You can try to restore a relationship but when the damage is done it can never be the same. The victims are not just going to wake up one day and say “Wow, the church has finally made me whole again.”
Somehow I think it is a little too late.

This would begin to clear up if the pope and bishops demonstrated any true remorse and grasp of the problem. All we have so far is grudging, minimalists responses, and only when the press of events forces their hand. The have never once owned up to an abuse case before the media or law enforcement outed the matter. These are the actions of men who are not sorry for what happened. They are sorry they got caught.
Their ongoing statements on the matter show they don’t think there was anything deficient at all in their own leadership or the culture of secrecy that allowed this to fester for half a century. No, to them, the whole problem is gays, a liberal media out to get the church and greedy plaintiff’s attorneys. These are men who are determined not to learn from their mistakes and not to have a change of heart, and people are seeing them and the institution for what it is.

Reality Check: Restorative Justice is applicable after legal justice has been served. Everyone can sing Kumbaya after all the priestly pedophiles and their ringleaders are behind bars for life, the victims have been compensated, and the kids are finally SAFE. Anything short of this is criminal nonsense.

What can be done about restorative justice as far as what our bishops have done to mothers and their children for 100′s of years? So many of the men who were promoted to bishop have scandals in their own background. Many of our fellow still practicing catholics just say,”too little too late”. The priests say this is benigh enough and ALLOW them to keep practicing in peace. Those of us who would insist our beloved bishops can do much better than we have done thus far are really going through it right now. We insist that bishops known to have scandal in their background whether financial or sexual need to be removed from public ministry. The fact they are still in the public eye is an in your face b-slap. It nullifies all our good works and all of the popes good words.

The idea of restorative justice, which would include ongoing dialogue between the church and the victims makes sense. I do believe that once the hierarchy really listens their hearts will be softened and they will want to take action. But, I have always been known to be an eternal optimist.

Thank you for writing about this idea. Now if we could only get the pope to think about the idea. We really need to fill that we have been heard and not just pushed aside.

When ever possible, criminal cases should be brought forward right away.
However many of us victims will never have a chance for legal justice because the law doesn’t let us bring civil or criminal suits against the evil perps. My abuse happened in 1961 and Father Ryan died in 1965. I told on Father but in 1961 no one believed that child sexual abuse happened. I was told my story was unbelievable.
If Restorative Justice would ever happen it wouldn’t be run by the church they would be one party , and the victims would be the other. Restorative Justice Facilitators would be in charge of bringing the 2 party together.
MARY… at 11 years old Father Ryan told me that God wanted me to do this for him.
I stopped being a Catholic that day, because I knew MY GOD didn’t want me to be raped.
Mary the statement ,below, of the Pope seem so ________ up. What makes you think I want your prayers
“Offer up your Friday penances for the victims and the Church, go to Eucharistic Adoration and pray for the victims and the Church, pray. The Lord, the final judge, will hear.”

This is a good idea for Church and society. The simple pracical truth is we can only incarcerate a small fraction of the adult population that has sex with the underage. There are simply far too many of them. Only the worst of the worse need to be jailed.
And this could be extended to other issues besides sex abuse. I do not know how plantiff lawyers will react to this if it is not in their interest.

Muldoon, other write “Restorative Justice has been used all over the world to resolve injustice. In order for it to work the pope would have to admit that there was EVIL within his CHURCH.”
What kind of nieve person over 12 years old would think that any 500,000 men, 1,300,000 women and 5000 leaders would not have some Evil within its content?
The pope has admitted this, has he not?

Sounds like an escape to me. Is this guy J. Kennedy a catholic out to protect the RCC first? Sure looks like it.

Stuff belongs in the court of law, it’s that simple.

Muldoon writes “However many of us victims will never have a chance for legal justice because the law doesn’t let us bring civil or criminal suits against the evil perps. My abuse happened in 1961 and Father Ryan died in 1965.”
Most of the crop of priest perps of the 60′s are now dead. More of less the same for those of the 70′s or at least in the Alzheimer’s units. As for the bishops who were wrong, they are dead also. Very few if any remain in service and if so in a couple of years they will be gone also.

Amazing that we still go after those in Hitlers regime, yet ignore those who destroyed children’s lives. Most of those who abused are alive and well today, at diocese around small children.
Clearly those who orchestrated the cover ups are all most alive today. Sad fact is that those abused and their families suffer today, the good xtians don’t seem to care.
Then again the liars, the pedos and their protectors, will fabricate and manipulate as Goodguyex does.
Pedos are good at manipulations, folks should look up the character of pedos on the internet.
Thankfully, good folks understand the difficult lives the victims are dealt, many to never had a chance at living a life.

“…and good xtians don’t seem to care.”
They care, but are so drained from it all. And to think there are 716,000 registered sex offenders out there, not to mention the millions of unregistered sex offenders in every institution in the country!
Catholic Christians in particular are fed up , having given millions to victims and their lawyers. It’s not surprising that in poll after poll (most recent, the New York Times/CBS poll) most Catholics believe the news media have been harder on the Catholic Church than on other religions.
Maybe the Bishop Eddie affair will calm them down.

Wrong Jake
MOST victims received nothing, not even therapy. All we want is the truth.
And I’m glad you brought out the abuses from others because the RCC’s efforts in lobbying to stop laws deny those victims too.
The difference, as with me – I was shared among priests – a total of 5. And the vatican denied victims as myself help through demands of secrecy and threats. Yes, I was also threatened. As a small child violently sodomized, once gang sodomized by 4 priests, and one is a bishop today – the diocese came down to threaten me at age 9. I had to protect myself and my family from harm at age 9. They were only following the vatican rules of silencing victims, small elementary school children.
And as many of us started waking from our traumas, ratzinger was busy sending letters to ALL the bishops to deny us again. He told them to “extinguish” all cases of abuse until the victim reaches the age of adulthood plus 10 years. Why? Because statutes of limitations now protects the RCC, the pedo and denies the victims justice. What a wonderful caring man. This allowed bishops to lobby to deny us our civil rights.
Tell me, victims lives don’t matter? Many of us are mentally ill today and are asking for help, and we get deflections from those as you? We get empty “I’m sorry” which does nothing to cure the mental illness caused. All we want is the truth exposed. Is that so wrong? Many others committed suicide. How much pain do you think victims endured? It is a lifetime. Do you think you would be different? Likely not at all. Instead you would be as us and taking all the punishment from those as you. Thinking you would act differently, changes nothing – you’d likely been the same.
Do you know that there are varying levels of abuse? The more violent, the more damaging to the physical brain development in a small child. I suggest you educate yourself and google physical changes in the brain development of severely traumatized children. Losing brain function is by far different than losing a limb, it is hell.
Yet the RCC lobbies to deny us and all others who have been destroyed.
(BTW. The millions paid our were in california thanks to lawmakers who ignored the bishops lobbing and protected victims civil rights. And because of these good lawmakers, another 300 child molesting priests were identified.)

Jake writes “Catholic Christians in particular are fed up , having given millions to victims and their lawyers. It’s not surprising that in poll after poll (most recent, the New York Times/CBS poll) most Catholics believe the news media have been harder on the Catholic Church than on other religions.”
I have wonder why this whole priest abuse thing did not come into the news until about 1990, then died out, then became a hurricane in 2002. All this after the worst was over in 1982! This makes no sense to me. Then I was told that there are political and cultural connections that drove it. And this story comes from critics who “let their hair down when they are sober”.
Catholics traditionally were solidly democratic. And the time after WWII was a time of good feelings for the progressive wave of the country. The Church was in the civil rights movement, J.F. Kennedy, a Sunday Catholic was elected president. This was the time when this priest abuse thing really started big time. But nobody gave it any time or thought because of the political tone with Catholics being solidly democratic and were going the American mainstream and assimilating. This continued through the 1970′s, with Catholic still generally voting democratic and supporting general social causes. Abortion was an outpoint on this but this was submerged. And the priest abuse problem, hidden, reached its peak in the late 70′s. Then in the 1980′s Catholic started to swing Republican. Then in the late 80′s a few cases of the pedo priest started to make the news. But statistically the problem was growing smaller.
Then in the dramatic and contested election of 2000 Catholics, practticing Catholics swung Republican to Bush. There was anger in the political left on this. Then in 2002 a number of things came together to push the priest abuse thing to the front page. And the left wanted to punish Catholics and the Church for abandoning the democratic party and going republican. Since about 1995 the actual problem of pediphile priests has all but totally disappeared. But the news has become a hurricane.

Records of child abuse has been documented since 355AD, written in church councils. People have been traditionally afraid to attack the RCC since they bank on god nonsense, they foolishly think they are going to hell if they do. Rituals since childhood makes these parishioners brainwashed, the RCC is simply a cult and no more. People need to gain strength and realize that the most important thing is to do what is right, and what could be a greater exhibition of that? Holding the pope, bishops and cardinals criminally responsible. You know represent good.
Most the same priests are in diocese since 1970, not many new ones since then – look around. That means the same volumes of pedos are still there. Find out the 3rd world countries where they vacation if you want to see their damage continue.
At 80 years old, they are still pedos – understanding pedophiles will help folks see they don’t age out.
Finally, who cares if the pope defrocks or what ever – they all still get their pensions and the pope was key in the worst crimes – the cover ups. Actually, who cares about the pope? He is a mob head, the lowest form of human – protecting grown men over small children raped and sodomized.
We need our law makers to hold this organization accountable, I say we toss them out of our country. Let’s show them we mean business when it comes to crimes against our children.
US citizens, we need your help cutting this cancer out of our society.

Here is some good reading for folks here;
Pope served summons, crimes against humanity
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/pope-served-summons-crimes-against-humanity-child-abuse-trafficking

Petel2 writes “We need our law makers to hold this organization accountable, I say we toss them out of our country. Let’s show them we mean business when it comes to crimes against our children.”
This is the language of the bigoted 19th Century Know-Nothings. If you had declared what you wanted earlier, all these posts/discussion could have been made much shorter and simplier.

Here is who those as goodguyex want to harm http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/brain.html
After all, it’s OK they harmed children and hide from the crimes because others did it too.

petel2 – I think goodguyex is anything but a good guy. I wish you luck in your mission and in your recovery. It is amazing to me how many people would rather just push it all under the rug. Yeah, we acknowledged that it happened and victims & families – just get over it. It is really really pathetic.

Restorative Justice is a good thing. However, it necessitates a certain level or moral development in the perpetrator. He must be able to empathize with his victim. He must seek restoration because of empathy, not just because he got caught. It is not clear that today’s religious leaders have a developed enough moral fiber to participate in restorative justice. Lawrence Kohlberg defined the stages of moral development. In a parallel scale, John Fowler defined the stages of faith development. Ironically, Fowler assumed that bishops had the highest level of faith development. Frankly, I do not see any bishops of any ilk rushing to repair the survivors of clergy sex abuse. Neither do I see said bishops acting to embrace survivors as Christ.

Restorative justice may work well between victims & the Church & I agree, it ought to be tried. But between victims & perpetrators not so much. I wish that weren’t true but victims need to see those who violated them brought to justice. And discussions w/ someone who has ripped away your identity & innocence requires the rapist/abuser be repentant & the victim be fairly advanced in being healed.

I wasn’t raped or abused by Catholic clergy but it’s the same painful road for all victims who were raped & abused as children (I’ve come to use the word rape because that’s what it was. Abuse is PC & rape is anything but). Those who are victims might find Dawn Eden’s, “My Peace I give You: Healing Sexual Wounds with the Help of the Saints” very helpful. I’m working on the story of how I came to forgive those who raped & abused me & when it’s published, I’ll leave a note on this site.

Briefly, I learned that because few rapists/abusers repent, we must forgive w/o them. We can’t reconcile w/o them but we can forgive. Fortunately forgiveness needn’t be on our own. One simple “trick” is to ask God to work the desire for forgiveness in one’s heart. And if desire isn’t enough (it wasn’t for me), ask God to work the actual forgiveness in one’s heart. W/ God as the “buffer,” asking to forgive is easier, more possible. One is asking to do God’s will rather than asking to do something for the rapist. For me, it took a few fights & some temper tantrums & learning I wasn’t exempt from the evil & sin in this world as well as a few other lessons, but God did it. Or, He’s doing it every day.

The nightmare is never really over. Instead it becomes a burning desire for reconciliation if not on earth then in heaven. My anger is that those who raped me could go to hell & be trapped in an eternity of separation from God. I want to save those who devastated me. Now I pray & sacrifice on their behalf. The pain I feel is part of that sacrifice; I’ll offer it for victims of rape at the hands of the clergy.