Essay: Catholic Church and the Sex Scandals

Sample Essay – Catholic Church and the Sex Scandals

Words 1,430

This essay talks about the sex scandals in the Catholic Church. Civil lawsuits against Geoghan and the Archdiocese of Boston stemming from Geoghan’s three decades of alleged rape and abuse of over 130 Boston-area children have yet to come to trial. In the beginning, the Boston Catholic hierarchy asked the families of victims to keep their accusations quiet and in so doing, the Boston hierarchy assured the families that all would be taken care of.

Civil lawsuits against Geoghan and the Archdiocese of Boston stemming from Geoghan’s three decades of alleged rape and abuse of over 130 Boston-area children, have yet to come to trial.

In the beginning, the Boston Catholic hierarchy asked the families of victims to keep their accusations quiet and in so doing, the Boston hierarchy, assured the families that all would be taken care of. Instead of the Boston Hierarchy making good on their promises, they reassigned and shuffled Geoghan to other parishes.

To make a bad situation worse, instead of removing him from direct contact with children he was placed in the same situation as he was before, making it easy for him to continue committing crimes against children for almost two decades.

Catholic Church and the Sex Scandals

Anger has been greatly heightened by influential evidence, publicly presented in The Boston Globe, that Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, his predecessor Cardinal Humberto S. Medeiros and dozens of other church officials had for decades overlooked and minimized compelling evidence against Geoghan.

Instead of facing the problem head on and correcting it, church officials discouraged parents of molested boys from taking action. In addition, the church officials pursued secret out -of- court settlements and allowed Geoghan to retain his position of authority and thus, hid Geoghan’s true nature from parishioners

Once the truth came out, Catholics and non-Catholics were outraged, but even more devastated when accusations of hundreds of other instances of child molestation by priests became known.

A debate rages and the alleged incidences worry members of the Roman Catholic Church and others who believe that if such things can happen in the Catholic Church, these things can happen anywhere. Compounding the problems of the church was the way the ecclesiastical hierarchy responded to alleged pedophilia before the world knew about it.

People of all faiths now wonder how the hierarchy of the Catholic Church permitted accused priests to continue serving as in the church and in places where children were present, when the right thing to do would be to turn the accused over to the civil authorities.

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