As I said, if you're not going to read the thread.....
Which part of this thread did I not read?
Was it this part:
That's the point at which the bishops stopped shuffling people and started looking for another path. I'm just disappointed that they went the route of defrocking abusive priests rather than ordering them to monasteries where they'd never again even see a minor.
Or this part, responding to how the church's solution to child sex abuse was described as "mystical":
It wouldn't have if they'd sent them all off to monasteries.
Maybe I should have read this a little closer:
In prison? Hardly!
In a prison, people get to make a lot of their own decisions -- in a monastery, hardly any.
In a prison, people get opportunities for social contact -- in a monastery, hardly any.
In a prison, people can get drugs and other entertaining things -- in a monastery, not likely.
What exactly did I miss about this:
Or just hire monasteries to take them, since in prison they get special protection, which costs the taxpayers more? It's a LOT cheaper to put them in a monastery!
Or this:
Freedom????
Far less than in a prison. If you want, send them to penitential monasteries where they get no underwear, just a robe, and sandals only in winter, and take bread and water for meals in their cells except on Sunday, where they get a bit of meat and fruit in a common meal.
Or if you want really stiff (don't know if they do this any more), send them to one of the places where the penitent gets barred in, the cell door hinges and latch welded, and never sees another human face but his confessor once a week.
And here, are you not saying that imprisonment by the church in a monastery isn't unlawful:
No, it's not prohibited by law -- it comes under church discipline, with which the state does not interfere because it is part of a legitimate contractual relationship. So there's no "false imprisonment" here, there's just obedience as signed on to by the priest.
Were it merely a parishioner, you'd have a point -- but not with a priest.
Can I ask what you meant by this message? Are we to not punish priests under the law, but instead let the church handle it since they were the ones responsible in the first place?
The church is the entity that is responsible for the behavior of these priests. Why should we punish the taxpayers instead of letting the church bear the financial burden?
And when I asked about IMPRISONMENT by a private organization being a sentence issued by a state/federal court, you claimed:
Um, it's done all the time, especially in the US southwest. The courts send people there all the time.
But then when I challenged that claim, you backpeddled and said:
Secular courts allow religious institutions administer programs and punishments all the time. People get sent to Salvation Army, Teen Challenge, and other centers for both treatment which also counts as incarceration.
But is isn't actually incarceration, is it? Nor do any of these organizations have the authority to imprison, do they?
And then, when someone sees a crime committed by a priest, your advice to the witness is to not go to the police, but to...what, exactly?
He should have gone over the Cardinal's head to the Pope. If the Pope ignored it, he should have gone to the cops -- and the FBI should have issued a warrant for the Pope's arrest for conspiracy support of child sexual abuse.
But my response to that advice stating that even that action was wrong brought you back to the point of accusing me of not reading the thread.
It may be a nice fantasy to think about how much worse life would be for pedophile priests if they were all sent to a monastery with the authority to detain them and prevent them from leaving despite their demands to be released, all under the endorsement of the government, but that is not the world we live in, and fantasizing about it does nothing to address the actual problem of the harboring of criminals.
