I wouldn't be surprised if it was pretty high. The indoctrination is strong, and that's before considering how much power the Catholic church still has to retaliate against dissenters. They might not be able to brazenly murder people anymore, but they're nothing if not good at pulling strings and acting through cat's paws.
Given the scale of the problem and the relatively small size of the clergy, there is simply no way these horrors were not common knowledge within the hierarchy and the clergy in general. Until these cases began going public the church chose, in all cases, to protect the priests and blame their victims. That said, I doubt very much the Protestant sects are a whole lot better. Pedophiles go where the kids are, and a lot of parents remain convinced they need to drag their children to church because it's so good for them.
Someone once asked Willie Sutton, notorious bank robber, "Willie, why do you rob banks?" Willie provided the obvious answer: "Because that's where the money is!"
Today's question: "Father, why did you go into the priesthood?"
I hope that reports like this open their eyes. It's a problem not just for the RCC but it's occurring in many conservative Christian denominations as well.
Millennia. Since the 3rd of 4th Century, when Holy Mother Church was sexually abusing both adults AND children. Back when they were powerful and not being held accountable by ANYONE.
Who says they stopped molesting adults? We’re just not focused on that because our sensibilities are maxed out with the children. Nuns are still being raped, women on their deathbeds are being molested in the name of anointing, and priests still are using their position of power to influence laity of all genders sexually.
I have a feeling that this has been generational. I seem to recall when I was a kid in the 70s that it was a joke that the local Catholic priest liked little boys. My suspicion is that many Catholic fathers told their sons to 'get over it' like they had to. I would not be surprised to find out that this has been going on for several hundred years, not just decades.
It is difficult to imagine anywhere else could be worse. 10% pedophiles is probably higher than what you find in a *prison*. A quick googling tells me the per capita incidence in the US is 1%. Setting aside how horrible that is, given the fact that the RCC in Illinois achieved 10x that result, they may have done an inadvertently good job in collecting most of the state's pedophiles under their organization.
"Until these cases began going public the church chose, in all cases, to protect the priests and blame their victims".
This appears to be their international M.O. and it was ordered by the former pope Ratzinger in a letter to catholic bishop in the 80's telling them that their most important duty was to preserve the 'good name' of holy mother church.
Why shouldn't they look the other way? That is the example set by their god. It looked away every time a child was being abused by one of its representitives.
"I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the Church to finally do the right thing."
At this point, the RCC has proven that it is incapable of ever "reforming." Like a psychopath, there is no cure. The antisocial disorder is too deep, too built-in. Does anyone really think that decades from now the Roman Catholic Church will not still be the subject of outrageous reports just like this one?
So I can't see "the right thing" being anything less than the entire worldwide Empire of Rape completely disbanding and dismantling itself, firing all of its clergy at all levels, giving away for free all of its hospitals to secular medical organizations, all of its schools to secular educational institutions, physically demolishing all of its cathedrals, churches, and buildings that cannot be converted to secular charitable use, and finally giving the uncountable billions of dollars in its treasuries to organizations that benefit the public in secular ways. In other words, erasing everywhere every trace of its own existence.
So, you're right, don't hold your breath waiting for "the right thing" to be done. Even centuries from now, when artifacts in museums are the only remnants, and kids wonder what the pretty gold things were for, "the right thing" will still remain unfinished.
I would like to see that rumored Vatican "Treasure Room" emptied by a platoon of art historians and everything placed in museums where they belong. With a sign reading "This is where your money went, Christians."
Additionally, art treasures should be seen and appreciated by the people, not hidden away in vaults of a child-raping empire.
Because drag queens have never been a real problem. It's a made up problem so the conservatives can have but again another boogeyman to fear monger about. They don't care about guns killing kids. The feign they love fetus rights, but shun grown women their rights. They hate transgenders which is clearly evident but welcome mass murders and the best they will do to curtail that is "offer prayers" while allowing easy access to assault rifles.. Heck half of the conservative congress are sexual predators themselves, along with Donald Trump.
Well, they are problem when you're trying to sleep, it's midnight, and the club across the street is on it's third open-door speaker-blasting repeat of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" of the night. :)
In all seriousness, the fearmongering/boogeyman problem is a very common human failing, drag queens are just the latest victim. We blame "thems" because to blame "us" is psychologically unthinkable. The classic example is how we teach our kids to fear strangers despite 95% of childhood abductions being performed by a known friend or family member. People have to deal with the fear/stress somehow, and it's really almost impossible to go through life paranoid about your closest friends and family. It undermines trust. So, we displace. The kid learns to be careful. The community is not damaged. The parents' fear is assuaged. And hey if a stranger suffers a bit of unwarranted social distrust? Tough luck for them. It sucks. It's wrong. But people regularly use it as a coping strategy. We will have to solve a much deeper human psychological issue than just conservative's problem with transgenderism before this goes away. Just trying to solve the latter is just playing whackamole. Squeezing a balloon and watching the next "othered group" pop out instead.
I think that if we can actually manage to address certain societal ills, inflation, the wage gap, the healthcare crisis, homelessness, and general welfare improvements, we will see a decline in much of our other problems, crime, drug abuse, mental health emergencies, DV, even mass shootings, and at the same time it will help folks be more stable and capable of recognizing the reality of this fearmongering propaganda. The reason the GOP is so good at keeping the right in panic mode is because they don’t address the concerns the people actually have, and the GOP keeps them in panic mode to hide the fact that they refuse to address the real problems. It’s a vicious cycle that the GOP makes money off of and so perpetuates. It also feeds into their cruelty mindset.
Do we know there’s not a chicken and egg situation going on there? Are they conservative because their amygdala is enlarged or does their amygdala grow because they’re conservative?
Very true, goes back to what Dawkins elucidated with (in group/out group) kind of thinking of the selfish gene. We tend to favor our kin and everybody else we distrust.
[The] Archbishop of Chicago released a statement saying, “The Catholic Church in Illinois has been at the forefront of [DEALING WITH] sexual abuse of minors for many years.”
Looks like a couple of extraneous words somehow crept in there.
How has he not had a rage induced heart attack yet? I know I know, he has no heart, but seriously. He doesn't look like he's in great shape and even Alex Jones would probably tell him to chill out.
Same with Trump. All that beet red anger 24/7. Add nonstop litigation against him and a junk food diet and it's astounding he hasn't popped his clogs by now.
These reports are great and all, more data is always good, but I'm sick of hearing about what dead/retired priests *did*. What about what the current priests are doing *right fucking now*? The cops or feds or someone needs to start flipping priests and getting current info, children are being irreparably harmed while we talk about the dead. Now, that being said, I know this is an amazing thing, potentially, for these victims and I thoroughly support it and hope to see much, much more. It just seems like all we hear about is history when there's definitely harm being done right now.
This is a very important point: that the abuse is STILL GOING ON. Worse, very little is being done about it, and it's dubious to the point of absurdity that the RCC will take any kind of serious action to abate the problem.
The RCC will *not* police itself, this has been shown over and over. If the authorities don't get involved then more children will be going through these horrors. Ugh, I'm out of words, too angry. Gonna go hit my heavy bag.
They wear different pompous outfits, although the Nazi's are much more tasteful. Rule of thumb, can you hide a child from it's parents in the hat? That's a Christian.
Shameful. And these people continue to believe in a god that allows this to happen.
Dear Catholic/Christian church,
Please close your doors and never open back up again. You've had over 2000 years and have only made things worse. It's time to let the rational, non fairy tale believing people handle it from here.
This raises the question, still again, of why there has been no federal investigation. How many states have to report on the rape of how many tens of thousands of children before DOJ decides the matter just might possibly be worth looking into? Yes, the Catholic church is wealthy and well-connected, but so is the Mafia, and the FBI never seemed to ease up on them. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is a criminal cartel on at least that same scale (If not even larger), and only coordinated national action will ever put a serious dent in it. This piecemeal, state-by-state way of dealing with them benefits no one but the goddamned church itself.
Look, the DA can make recommendations all day long, the church will only make these changes when they are forced to. As evidenced by its reporting history. Let’s stop pussyfooting around and fucking nail them to the wall. Force them to report, force them to be transparent to their congregations, throw the perps in prison no matter how old they are ( can’t do anything about the dead ones) and hold the rest accountable for aiding and abetting, then make them pay every penny they have to the victims. If they file for bankruptcy, make victim payment the same as student loans, exempt from bankruptcy protection. No more turning the other way. No more special pleading. No more religious exemptions. NO MORE.
If we do this to the individual dioceses enough, we will start to get at the Vatican.
Yeah, having members walk away is good, but as we have seen for years and with lots of issues (mass shootings) it will be difficult to overcome the apathetic and sadistic. We need to take control legally to enforce the laws and morality they can’t manage with their god.
Catholics, we gotta talk. I know you've heard quite a few people now say "the only good child abuser is a dead child abuser..." but I think you guys 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 have misinterpreted something, somewhere. You see, when people say that, what they 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 is "we should make child abusers 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 dead," and not "we should wait until the child abusers 𝘢𝘳𝘦 dead to 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮."
“Tradition is no excuse to prop up a criminal institution.”
I think it is more than just tradition, some folks sincerely believe the church will get them to heaven and only through the church can they get there. A few molested children can’t stand in the way of their eternal salvation, not as heartless dismissal (though it really is a heartless dismissal) but eternity cannot compare to the struggle the victims experience. They just can’t recognize the deep and enduring pain the victims face and they conceive that their eternity is much bigger than anything on Earth. Delusions of grandeur it may be, but if they’re true believers it will be impossible to convince them otherwise. And they can find ways to excuse or justify their indifference to the pain. “It’s not my priest. Well, it was my priest, but he didn’t do it recently. It was recent but it wasn’t anyone I knew. It was my friend’s kid but it was only once…”
Never do they think that maybe the church really doesn’t have a line on heavenly access, since they are so mired in so many corruptions they can’t possibly be trustworthy. Or even if the church does get you into heaven is that heaven worthy of your devotion with all the baggage that’s tied to it, or where you really want to go for eternity.
But then, I already reject the idea of god, the idea that this god is the embodiment of good, or that heaven is desirable.
"1,997 victims since 1950. But almost certainly more who have not yet come forward."
Don't forget those who won't because they are dead.
Or inexplicably still Catholic and too scared/confused/guilty to come forward. I doubt that's a very high number but it's definitely non-zero.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was pretty high. The indoctrination is strong, and that's before considering how much power the Catholic church still has to retaliate against dissenters. They might not be able to brazenly murder people anymore, but they're nothing if not good at pulling strings and acting through cat's paws.
And those who won't be punished because they are dead.
Given the scale of the problem and the relatively small size of the clergy, there is simply no way these horrors were not common knowledge within the hierarchy and the clergy in general. Until these cases began going public the church chose, in all cases, to protect the priests and blame their victims. That said, I doubt very much the Protestant sects are a whole lot better. Pedophiles go where the kids are, and a lot of parents remain convinced they need to drag their children to church because it's so good for them.
And a lot of parents are convinced that the clergy, by virtue of being clergy, are safe to be unaccompanied with their children.
Someone once asked Willie Sutton, notorious bank robber, "Willie, why do you rob banks?" Willie provided the obvious answer: "Because that's where the money is!"
Today's question: "Father, why did you go into the priesthood?"
That is the mentality that has allowed pedophiles to get away with their crimes for who knows how long.
Probably since the first primate, but certainly before our ancestors left the trees and for some reason decided to stand upright.
Just as God ordained it to be.
I hope that reports like this open their eyes. It's a problem not just for the RCC but it's occurring in many conservative Christian denominations as well.
It's been an open secret in the Catholic church for centuries.
Millennia. Since the 3rd of 4th Century, when Holy Mother Church was sexually abusing both adults AND children. Back when they were powerful and not being held accountable by ANYONE.
Who says they stopped molesting adults? We’re just not focused on that because our sensibilities are maxed out with the children. Nuns are still being raped, women on their deathbeds are being molested in the name of anointing, and priests still are using their position of power to influence laity of all genders sexually.
Oh, I made no mention of adult abuse being stopped. Just the dates when that abuse first appeared.
I have a feeling that this has been generational. I seem to recall when I was a kid in the 70s that it was a joke that the local Catholic priest liked little boys. My suspicion is that many Catholic fathers told their sons to 'get over it' like they had to. I would not be surprised to find out that this has been going on for several hundred years, not just decades.
This is the origin of the term 'seminary.'
It is difficult to imagine anywhere else could be worse. 10% pedophiles is probably higher than what you find in a *prison*. A quick googling tells me the per capita incidence in the US is 1%. Setting aside how horrible that is, given the fact that the RCC in Illinois achieved 10x that result, they may have done an inadvertently good job in collecting most of the state's pedophiles under their organization.
"Until these cases began going public the church chose, in all cases, to protect the priests and blame their victims".
This appears to be their international M.O. and it was ordered by the former pope Ratzinger in a letter to catholic bishop in the 80's telling them that their most important duty was to preserve the 'good name' of holy mother church.
Who said size doesn't matter?
More importantly, it's what God wants.
I tell people this all the time.
"It's all part of god's plan."
Unfortunately, some people agree with me.
Those numbers are bad but don't forget the folks that looked the other way or covered up the abuse.
Why shouldn't they look the other way? That is the example set by their god. It looked away every time a child was being abused by one of its representitives.
Ooo, that's cold. I'm totally stealing it and waving it around the face of certain relatives of mine. Thanks!
God didn't see them look the other way, so all is forgiven.
"I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for the Church to finally do the right thing."
At this point, the RCC has proven that it is incapable of ever "reforming." Like a psychopath, there is no cure. The antisocial disorder is too deep, too built-in. Does anyone really think that decades from now the Roman Catholic Church will not still be the subject of outrageous reports just like this one?
So I can't see "the right thing" being anything less than the entire worldwide Empire of Rape completely disbanding and dismantling itself, firing all of its clergy at all levels, giving away for free all of its hospitals to secular medical organizations, all of its schools to secular educational institutions, physically demolishing all of its cathedrals, churches, and buildings that cannot be converted to secular charitable use, and finally giving the uncountable billions of dollars in its treasuries to organizations that benefit the public in secular ways. In other words, erasing everywhere every trace of its own existence.
So, you're right, don't hold your breath waiting for "the right thing" to be done. Even centuries from now, when artifacts in museums are the only remnants, and kids wonder what the pretty gold things were for, "the right thing" will still remain unfinished.
I would like to see that rumored Vatican "Treasure Room" emptied by a platoon of art historians and everything placed in museums where they belong. With a sign reading "This is where your money went, Christians."
Additionally, art treasures should be seen and appreciated by the people, not hidden away in vaults of a child-raping empire.
0 drag queens mentioned in the report.
Because drag queens have never been a real problem. It's a made up problem so the conservatives can have but again another boogeyman to fear monger about. They don't care about guns killing kids. The feign they love fetus rights, but shun grown women their rights. They hate transgenders which is clearly evident but welcome mass murders and the best they will do to curtail that is "offer prayers" while allowing easy access to assault rifles.. Heck half of the conservative congress are sexual predators themselves, along with Donald Trump.
Well, they are problem when you're trying to sleep, it's midnight, and the club across the street is on it's third open-door speaker-blasting repeat of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" of the night. :)
In all seriousness, the fearmongering/boogeyman problem is a very common human failing, drag queens are just the latest victim. We blame "thems" because to blame "us" is psychologically unthinkable. The classic example is how we teach our kids to fear strangers despite 95% of childhood abductions being performed by a known friend or family member. People have to deal with the fear/stress somehow, and it's really almost impossible to go through life paranoid about your closest friends and family. It undermines trust. So, we displace. The kid learns to be careful. The community is not damaged. The parents' fear is assuaged. And hey if a stranger suffers a bit of unwarranted social distrust? Tough luck for them. It sucks. It's wrong. But people regularly use it as a coping strategy. We will have to solve a much deeper human psychological issue than just conservative's problem with transgenderism before this goes away. Just trying to solve the latter is just playing whackamole. Squeezing a balloon and watching the next "othered group" pop out instead.
I think that if we can actually manage to address certain societal ills, inflation, the wage gap, the healthcare crisis, homelessness, and general welfare improvements, we will see a decline in much of our other problems, crime, drug abuse, mental health emergencies, DV, even mass shootings, and at the same time it will help folks be more stable and capable of recognizing the reality of this fearmongering propaganda. The reason the GOP is so good at keeping the right in panic mode is because they don’t address the concerns the people actually have, and the GOP keeps them in panic mode to hide the fact that they refuse to address the real problems. It’s a vicious cycle that the GOP makes money off of and so perpetuates. It also feeds into their cruelty mindset.
It is easy to do because one of the things that make people conservative is an enlarged amygdala.
Do we know there’s not a chicken and egg situation going on there? Are they conservative because their amygdala is enlarged or does their amygdala grow because they’re conservative?
Very true, goes back to what Dawkins elucidated with (in group/out group) kind of thinking of the selfish gene. We tend to favor our kin and everybody else we distrust.
[The] Archbishop of Chicago released a statement saying, “The Catholic Church in Illinois has been at the forefront of [DEALING WITH] sexual abuse of minors for many years.”
Looks like a couple of extraneous words somehow crept in there.
Typo.
So where's the one-man Catholic League's Bill "It Wasn't Rape and They Weren't Children!" Donohue and why hasn't he chimed in on this?
How has he not had a rage induced heart attack yet? I know I know, he has no heart, but seriously. He doesn't look like he's in great shape and even Alex Jones would probably tell him to chill out.
Same with Trump. All that beet red anger 24/7. Add nonstop litigation against him and a junk food diet and it's astounding he hasn't popped his clogs by now.
Only the good die young. Evil people live forever.
"Evil people live forever."
I'm looking at YOU, Pat Robertson (he's currently 93)
Tina Turner is gone and Donald Trump and Pat Robertson still owe several trees an apology.
I think of how Tina's gone for eternity while Ted Nugent is still sucking oxygen and it makes me want to kick something in the nuts.
Preferably Nugent's.
He died years ago. What you're seeing now is the spawn of the Crypt Keeper and The Thing
"The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones."
Julius Caesar, III,2
Is now the time to open a millstone shop in Illinois?
If only he chugged alcohol like he does with overcooked steaks.
Trump doesn't drink. Wish he'd start...
(Biden abstains from alcohol as well)
He's busy being pissed at some gay nuns.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2023/05/23/bill-donohue-is-mad-again/
Bill Donohue is mad PERIOD. Nuttier than a can of macadamias.
Dammit, he's STILL alive? There's your proof that there is no god, right there.
These reports are great and all, more data is always good, but I'm sick of hearing about what dead/retired priests *did*. What about what the current priests are doing *right fucking now*? The cops or feds or someone needs to start flipping priests and getting current info, children are being irreparably harmed while we talk about the dead. Now, that being said, I know this is an amazing thing, potentially, for these victims and I thoroughly support it and hope to see much, much more. It just seems like all we hear about is history when there's definitely harm being done right now.
This is a very important point: that the abuse is STILL GOING ON. Worse, very little is being done about it, and it's dubious to the point of absurdity that the RCC will take any kind of serious action to abate the problem.
The RCC will *not* police itself, this has been shown over and over. If the authorities don't get involved then more children will be going through these horrors. Ugh, I'm out of words, too angry. Gonna go hit my heavy bag.
I hate Illinois Nazis...uh...christians...uh...who can tell them apart?
Got mitt uns
I'm not sure if that is some clever pun. If it is, cudos to you. If it isn't... the second "t" in "mitt" should go to the "Got".
"Gott mit uns" - "God with us"
(Which, BTW, isn't a Nazi original, or even related to Nazi ideology. Except if you want all subsum all self-righeous piousness under this label.)
I did just screw it up; thanks for the correction.
They wear different pompous outfits, although the Nazi's are much more tasteful. Rule of thumb, can you hide a child from it's parents in the hat? That's a Christian.
Shameful. And these people continue to believe in a god that allows this to happen.
Dear Catholic/Christian church,
Please close your doors and never open back up again. You've had over 2000 years and have only made things worse. It's time to let the rational, non fairy tale believing people handle it from here.
This raises the question, still again, of why there has been no federal investigation. How many states have to report on the rape of how many tens of thousands of children before DOJ decides the matter just might possibly be worth looking into? Yes, the Catholic church is wealthy and well-connected, but so is the Mafia, and the FBI never seemed to ease up on them. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is a criminal cartel on at least that same scale (If not even larger), and only coordinated national action will ever put a serious dent in it. This piecemeal, state-by-state way of dealing with them benefits no one but the goddamned church itself.
Don't you know why? It's because Christians in this country are soooo persecuted. :S
So what's one more?
Not a drag queen among the numbers.
Look, the DA can make recommendations all day long, the church will only make these changes when they are forced to. As evidenced by its reporting history. Let’s stop pussyfooting around and fucking nail them to the wall. Force them to report, force them to be transparent to their congregations, throw the perps in prison no matter how old they are ( can’t do anything about the dead ones) and hold the rest accountable for aiding and abetting, then make them pay every penny they have to the victims. If they file for bankruptcy, make victim payment the same as student loans, exempt from bankruptcy protection. No more turning the other way. No more special pleading. No more religious exemptions. NO MORE.
If we do this to the individual dioceses enough, we will start to get at the Vatican.
Yeah, having members walk away is good, but as we have seen for years and with lots of issues (mass shootings) it will be difficult to overcome the apathetic and sadistic. We need to take control legally to enforce the laws and morality they can’t manage with their god.
Catholics, we gotta talk. I know you've heard quite a few people now say "the only good child abuser is a dead child abuser..." but I think you guys 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 have misinterpreted something, somewhere. You see, when people say that, what they 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘯 is "we should make child abusers 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 dead," and not "we should wait until the child abusers 𝘢𝘳𝘦 dead to 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮."
OT - Trivia time
2. Where did Ron DeNazi and Casey DeNazi get married?
1) Mar-a-Lago
2) Las Vegas
3) Disney World
4) The Villages
The answer won't surprise you.
"But... but... but... that's different! Because... reasons! How can you expect me to- look, over there, a drag queen!" *𝘴𝘮𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘣𝘰𝘮𝘣 𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦*
I would have thought it was in the center ring. She wore white pancake makeup, he wore giant red shoes.
Gatorland or Cypress Gardens.
(old news : )
A woman married him ? Does she lack a brain or was she drunk that day ?
She is as evil as he is.
Which is why she was smoten with breast cancer. God's will.
“Tradition is no excuse to prop up a criminal institution.”
I think it is more than just tradition, some folks sincerely believe the church will get them to heaven and only through the church can they get there. A few molested children can’t stand in the way of their eternal salvation, not as heartless dismissal (though it really is a heartless dismissal) but eternity cannot compare to the struggle the victims experience. They just can’t recognize the deep and enduring pain the victims face and they conceive that their eternity is much bigger than anything on Earth. Delusions of grandeur it may be, but if they’re true believers it will be impossible to convince them otherwise. And they can find ways to excuse or justify their indifference to the pain. “It’s not my priest. Well, it was my priest, but he didn’t do it recently. It was recent but it wasn’t anyone I knew. It was my friend’s kid but it was only once…”
Never do they think that maybe the church really doesn’t have a line on heavenly access, since they are so mired in so many corruptions they can’t possibly be trustworthy. Or even if the church does get you into heaven is that heaven worthy of your devotion with all the baggage that’s tied to it, or where you really want to go for eternity.
But then, I already reject the idea of god, the idea that this god is the embodiment of good, or that heaven is desirable.
If they really want to get into heaven, are they still eligible if they turn a blind eye to child abuse?
"Whatever you do unto the least of these..."
...yeah, they 𝘮𝘢𝘺 want to stock up on asbestos underpants.
Sure, it’s not like they’re the ones molesting the children. Even if they could do something about it, it isn’t their place.
Yes, I think they can and it is their place. Even if it is walking away.
For Catholic heaven? Probably. Pretty sure their first Commandment is "Preists are sacrosanct, they are not to be held accountable".