more than
A Doubt
as to what Francis is doing. What is he doing? Saving the homosexuals? Is he using them to save the Church? Is that even possible? He does deserve the benefit of the doubt. So far he is the one who has raised it.
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He does deserve the benefit of the doubt, I agree. It's not as if anybody who's not a scoundrel wants raping to continue, or wants rapists in any way associated with the Catholic Church. Everybody is on the same page in that regard, I have to believe. So in Western democracies, the criminal justice systems are fair enough that any criminal complaint brought against a priest (e.g.) can be confidently reported to the police, and the criminal justice system will sort out fact from fiction. This will help root out any and all remaining rapists, and serve as a deterrent to any other rapists from getting involved in the Church.
The Church just needs to, to my mind, get used to priests (e.g.) being involved in criminal investigations, and support them until their innocence is positively denied, and support their parishes with temporary priests (e.g.) as needed.
The culture of cover up is simply human, we see it in all spheres of life, in universities and schools, in government, in business, and in families, we tend to want to protect our own from law enforcement whenever possible, even up to harboring murderers and rapists. It's a terrible habit that must be broken in order for the Catholic Church to put this dark age in our rear view mirror, but the Church will do it, I am convinced, and has already begun to do it.
In our archdiocese the rule is that anybody who will participate in anything Church related, even lectors, must submit to a background check. It's not a bad first step, but imo the real solution to the problem is the openness and willingness to simply call the police whenever anybody brings a criminal complaint against anybody associated with the Church. We can confidently trust that the criminal justice system will sort out fact from fiction, and we just cannot afford to even potentially harbor rapists and shield them from justice.
I think that regarding countries where the criminal justice system is corrupted beyond hope, there has to be a more complicated solution to the problem, and my guess is that this is the main difficulty that the pope and bishops are grappling with. It might require something like creating the Church's own criminal justice system, which might involve non ordained faithful; something like the police department's 'internal affairs,' which investigates criminal complaints against law enforcement personnel.
