Some Friendly Advice
If you like or are neutral about the Catholic Church, you might remind them “It’s not the crime – It’s the cover-up!”
The Church really needs to get DonoWho off of people’s TV screens. His “blame the victim” schtick is really annoying and not helping anyone.
I covered the Pedophile versus Ephebophile conflict of definitions during the Mark Foley debacle, but it is irrelevant because those are definitions from the Social Sciences. To quote myself:
It might surprise people, but the penal [criminal] law generally breaks the population down to two groups, adult or child, and the age of differentiation is 18. The age of consent is almost always limited to the definition of a specific crime, statutory rape, and not a determining factor in other crimes where the 18 year-old standard is used.
Puberty doesn’t occur at any particular age, it occurs at different times for different people, although most endure it during middle school/junior high. It is not a factor in throwing your tail in jail if you have sex with someone younger than the age of consent, usually 16.
The Church is not doing itself any favors by attempting to stonewall these problems, or by attacking those reporting on them. They are only digging themselves into a deeper hole, having retreated from the moral high ground.
April 1, 2010 4 Comments
