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This piece of news just boggles the mind:
A tiny Louisville church’s newest minister is a gifted music leader and popular among its three dozen members.
Mark Hourigan is also a sex offender.
Almost a decade ago, long before he joined the flock at the City of Refuge Worship Center, he was convicted of sexually abusing an 11-year-old boy in central Kentucky. Hourigan served a five-year sentence and the 41-year-old was placed on Kentucky’s sex offender registry for the rest of his life.
A former leader at the church along with an abuse victims advocacy group say Hourigan is a risk to hurt another child and he should not have been placed in a position of authority.
“He’s still a threat” to children, said Cal Pfeiffer, who was abused by a Catholic priest as a young student in Louisville in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Pfeiffer and experts on religion and sexual abuse believe it could be the first time a convicted sex offender has been knowingly ordained as a minister in a Christian church.
“It sets a precedent,” said Pfeiffer, a member of a group that has protested Hourigan’s ordination. “It elevates him to an ordained minister which almost automatically conveys a level of trust and responsibility.”
The church’s pastor, the Rev. Randy Meadows, ordained Hourigan during a service on Sept. 13. The self-described Pentecostal church, started by Meadows and a handful of other members six years ago, welcomes anyone “regardless of race, religion, culture (or) sexual orientation,” according to its Web site. It also has a Sunday school for children.
Meadows declined several requests from The Associated Press for an interview, but said in a brief phone conversation that the church has not experienced any backlash based on the decision to ordain a convicted pedophile.
“We’re just finished with the whole ordeal with everything, so we’re moving on,” Meadows said.
There’s more at the link.
posted October 1, 2009 at 4:58 pm
i am convinced that jesus ,while preaching to sinners and prostitutes,knew very well what was inside every human being’s heart in the past ,present and future,consequently what happens to our brothers phedophiles whose fate is really hard to stand,makes me remember the famous scarlet letter that esther prynne had to bring wherever on her chest ”A” adulteress ,no matter how much she had paid for it and what she had to undergo.luckily to god’s eyes in the very same moment we convert and change radically our life everything shined under a new light.the light of love,not the gloomy records of a police office.needless to list the tens or hundreds of monks friars nuns bishops archibishops and so on who have been saved through money from a stream of similar accuses and transferred to another parish or diocese.so instead of judging someone for his past let’s remember that ”the sinners and the prostutitues will preceed you in the kingdom of heaven”” and that ”the last ones will be the first and the opposite”,who can take dare to stop god’s healing spirit to produce further miracles?and why this one shouldn’t be one?