Eleven years ago, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted “zero tolerance” guidelines for dealing with sexually abusive clergy members. The guidelines were issued to help restore faith in the Church’s tattered image.

Many priests and their protectors and enablers seem not to have gotten the memo. The Chicago Tribune examines a few local cases of priests who, despite a record of inappropriate touching and worse, never came close to being disciplined, much less terminated, much less turned over to the police. Here is the opening section of the article:

When Will County sheriff’s deputies found the Rev. William Virtue sneaking into a private quarry in 1986, police records state that the Roman Catholic priest had blankets, two six packs of beer and a 10-year-old boy with him. He fled on foot when officers arrived, leaving the child behind.

Dammit, why couldn’t the Rev. Virtue’s first name have been Richard? Dick Virtue would have been perfect.

Authorities took Virtue into custody after he returned to his car but later released him without charges because the boy’s mother said she had given her son permission to go swimming with the priest. Still, a deputy forwarded the report to Joliet Diocese officials who put it into Virtue’s personnel file — which already contained several accusations involving inappropriate behavior with underage boys.

The arrest report would remain tucked away for 20 years as Virtue continued to have contact with youths, and even after a seemingly repentant Joliet Diocese pledged in 2002 to improve its handling of sex abuse cases and held up guidelines approved by American bishops as proof of its commitment to transparency and victims’ needs.

Virtue’s personnel file, which contains 500 pages of letters, memos and reports, reflects the struggles the church faced since its public vow to better protect children after a bruising, national sex abuse scandal. Records obtained by the Tribune reveal several instances in which the diocese’s handling of abuse allegations contradicted those promises, adding to concerns about the overall efficacy of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People that U.S. bishops signed amid fanfare.

There can be little doubt that this story has repeated itself, and is repeating itself today, all over the Catholic world. See also here, and here, and here.

The wonderful part for the abusers is not only that they keep their jobs and keep getting paid (essentially by the very parishioners whose children they assault with their saintly cocks). It is not even that they keep getting access to molestable boys and girls, though I’m sure the padres appreciate that very much. No: the sweetest advantage of being a Christian abuser is that you get to enjoy the fruits of your redemptive faith, which holds that you will sit at the feet of the Heavenly Father for eternity if only you mutter a few apologetic prayers about your child-fucking ways.

Say “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned”… and before too long, your slate is wiped clean.

The Catholic doctrine of forgiveness, as warm and fuzzy as that word sounds, is the very article of faith that makes unending child abuse possible. If there’s no misdeed that can’t be erased by prayerfully showing penitence to Jesus, who already blotted away your sins by dying for them, then no heavenly consequences will likely ensue. Real contrition and self-improvement are, evidently, for suckers.

[cartoon via Wisdom Quarterly]

Clergy crime roundup. All stories from April 5 (today) only.

• A former dean of a Roman Catholic cathedral in the UK has been charged by the police with three counts of indecent assault against an individual. [link]

• A retired Church of England priest and a former organist and choirmaster have been found guilty of a string of child sex abuse offenses dating back more than 25 years. Prosecutors said the priest used the respectability of the cassock to groom and abuse two boys over an 18-month period from when they were aged around 13. [link]

• A former Roman Catholic priest convicted of raping two altar boys in the 1980s has been denied a new trial by the Massachusetts Appeals Court. The priest was convicted in February 2011 of rape of a child by force and indecent assault and battery on a child under age 14, and sentenced to up to 25 years in prison. He claims he didn’t get a fair trial. [link]

• A suspended California priest charged with seven felony counts of child molestation was brought into court today, in preparation for the trial against him that will start on Tuesday. He is accused of seven counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a teenage girl during a two-year span, starting when she was 14. [link]

•  A New York priest who’d already been charged with five counts of child rape was arraigned Friday in Salem, Mass., Superior Court, on an additional count. The new indictment alleges that, in the early eighties, he raped a seven-year-old child. [link]

• A new Michigan lawsuit against a priest and the Catholic church says they failed to protect a 14-year-old girl from sexual abuse by a 19-year-old man. The suit says the priest and church were negligent and failed to act after getting reports of the sexual misconduct. [link]

• Australia’s long-awaited clergy-child-abuse investigation kicked off this week. The Winnipeg Free Press says the years-long probe looks set to dwarf even the Irish investigation by the Ryan Commission, which revealed that police had colluded with the Catholic Church in covering up clerical child abuse in Dublin and beyond. At least 5,000 people are expected to give evidence during the Australian inquiry, compared with just 1,500 in the Irish one. [link]

 [cartoon via Transmission Media]

How could you not trust a religious order that is run by men of the cloth and named “the Congregation for the Children of the Immaculate Conception”? Any suspicions would be especially foolish when the padres in question are in the business of healing — that is, running a hospital.

Well, funny story, courtesy of the Guardian:

Italian police on Thursday arrested a priest accused of pocketing €4m ($5.2 million) from a Catholic hospital he ran, and helping run up €600m ($776 million) in debts that forced it into bankruptcy.

The Rev. Franco Decaminada [photo], who until 2011 was the chief executive of the IDI dermatological hospital in Rome, was placed under house arrest by Italy’s financial police. They also detained two other people while seizing a Tuscan villa that police say Decaminada built with stolen money.

PM News cites police sources as saying that investigators

…had found daily operations in which the priest took money from the hospital as “reimbursement of costs” without justification. The hospital has not paid its 1,500 employees, including 300 doctors, for several months.

You might have expected the combination of the Vatican’s fabulous wealth and its professed insistence on helping the poor and downtrodden to result in a bailout of some sort — a Godly rescue mission if you will. No dice.

The plight of 1,500 IDI workers who haven’t received paychecks for months had prompted Benedict XVI in one of his last acts as pope to name a delegate in February to take over the religious order that owns the hospital to try to bring it back to financial health. But in the end the Vatican refused to provide any financial assistance [emphasis added] and last week a Rome court certified the hospital as insolvent.

[image via PM News]

A church on Easter Sunday — what better place and time to start beating and headbutting your fellow man?

During church services on a day that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, two men in a Kendall Park (NJ) church clearly missed the message about forgiveness. According to South Brunswick Police, a physical altercation occurred towards the end of mass on Easter Sunday at St. Augustine’s of Canterbury Church.

Police said the incident involved two men, both in their 40’s, who knew each other prior to attending the church services.

Shortly before 1 p.m.,

…one of the individuals was standing in line for Communion when the other man came up behind him, according to police. A quick physical altercation then occurred, with one man headbutting the other.

One of the brawlers suffered a cut lip, the other got off with a bruise.

[image via worldsbestever]