Comments on: God’s Kiddie Rapers

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 15 May 2007 09:18:35 +0000

Malia - I guess I didn’t understand the point of your original comment. It sounded like you were saying that background checks wee useless and something better needed to be done. That’s what I took from “Does anyone else see the problem with that statement”.

By: Malia

Malia — Tue, 15 May 2007 03:32:26 +0000

Mark, I’m not sure what you’re asking for. I pretty much said the same thing you did. Background checks are all fine and good but they can’t predict future behavior. Background checks would never have excluded my two friends from working in ministry because they had never committed any crimes before that time. We’re saying the same thing.

By: nm

nm — Tue, 15 May 2007 02:11:21 +0000

Oh, Kat, half the time it’s a question of pedophiles being drawn to a religious environment because they think it will help them control themselves. Then they find that it does just the opposite, but having taken that one step to keep themselves safe, they can’t think of any others.

By: Katherine Coble

Katherine Coble — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:17:42 +0000

we also have to be careful not to let things get out of hand and turn into a witch hunt

I was very troubled by the tenor of the book Our Fathers, which seems to be the flagship chronicle of the Catholic Pedophile Takedown.

In fact, I’m very troubled by the entire Pedophile Crucifixion movement. I think Pedophilia is a serious crime and a serious aberration.

But I still think that we’ve got too much an atmosphere of witch-huntery about the whole thing, what with unproven allegations being stated repeatedly as fact, etc.

I’m also very tired of the accusation that “religion makes pedophiles”–that was one of the overarching themes of the Our Fathers book.

Frankly, I think it’s much more a matter of pedophiles being drawn to a religious environment because it furthers their own aims. But SNAP and I take opposite views on this.

By: Marc

Marc — Tue, 15 May 2007 01:07:46 +0000

Aunt B - I am sure the people who hired the pastor will be held responsible and in turn so will whatever legal entity represents that particular congregation. Some Baptist Churches (I mean the individual congregations), have more capital assets than the whole local Catholic Diocese. At least a couple of the ones in Memphis come to mind. I can actually see this causing fatal injury to Baptist communities.

Kat - That PR damage can sometimes be worse than the monetary damage of a lawsuit. I know of one priest who after what was obviously a false accusation left the priesthood because SNAP would not leave him alone. I understand that anyone in a ministerial role should be relieved of his or her duties if they commit this horrible crime. But we also have to be careful not to let things get out of hand and turn into a witch hunt.

Malia - Sort of the “ESP check”, I’m not sure what you are asking for. I went through the background check when I taught a class at my Parish in Memphis since there were kids in the class. It was very comprehensive and included a sworn statement that I had not been involved in certain activities in the past. It could not however have guess the future. The Book of Revelation has a lot in it, but it doesn’t a list of people who “will be” pedophiles. So I’m not really sure what you’re asking for.

By: Katherine Coble

Katherine Coble — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:36:27 +0000

You’re not misunderstanding. The SBC is basically a “life-raft” of churches, with everyone banding together for the purposes of seeming to be part of a larger group than they really are.

The actual differences between various SBC churches are huge. And there may be money in the SBC if they were to target the LifeWay organisation, but LifeWay has not one thing to do with ministerial placement.

The only damage SNAP can cause is PR-based at this point.

By: Aunt B.

Aunt B. — Mon, 14 May 2007 21:21:16 +0000

Well, yeah, it could be about the money, but if so, then they really are in trouble, because the Baptist church doesn’t work like the Catholic church. The Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t place ministers. They don’t move ministers who don’t work out. Unlike going after the Catholic church, they’ll have to go after individual Baptist churches. With the Catholic church, it was easy to prove that the Church hierarchy knew priests were molesting kids and were moving them to new churches without telling those churches in order to keep the priests in the priesthood.

It’s not going to be possible, I don’t think (unless I’m completely misunderstanding how the Baptists work) to prove some kind of top to bottom corruption like there was with the Catholic abuse scandal.

By: BerthaMinerva

BerthaMinerva — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:28:03 +0000

They go after the big organized churches because while pedophiles can be anywhere, the big organized churches are where the money is.

By: Malia

Malia — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:33:04 +0000

From Jamey’s post, “individual churches generally do a good job of policing themselves and completing background checks before ministers are hired.”

Does anyone else see the problem with that statement? All the background checks in the world are not going to turn up something that hasn’t already happened.

I know two men, one was a volunteer, one was paid minister who found themselves in situations that escalated into very inappropriate behavior. One of those two, is now in jail. Neither had ever, ever done anything like that before so there was no way that background checks could have “saved” anyone.

By: nm

nm — Mon, 14 May 2007 19:16:35 +0000

I don’t know anything about SNAP, but I would assume that their ’cause’ is whatever organizations/institutions/hierarchies are protecting pedophiles in the name of not stirring up religious controversy. The one thing pedophiles of the cloth have helping them out that other pedophiles don’t is that institutional backing (and the sanctity it bestows).