Pedophile Priests

rockin'robin

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(April 1) -- The story of the Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald, a pioneering priest whose name surfaced this week as one of the first clergymen to repeatedly warn the Vatican about pedophile priests, started off as heroically as a Bing Crosby movie.

The Boston-born Fitzgerald drove from Massachusetts to a deserted, picturesque canyon in New Mexico where he founded the Roman Catholic Church's first order for wayward priests in 1947, three years after Crosby starred as a young, idealistic priest in "Going My Way."

But in the end, things did not go the way Fitzgerald had planned for his Jemez Springs order, called the Servants of the Paraclete. He had envisioned a place for the healing and renewal of priests with alcohol problems and other emotional issues easily identifiable in the 1940s. He never expected that many of the priests who would come to his new retreat would be pedophiles.

In an especially ironic twist, Fitzgerald's prescient warnings about pedophile priests came true in what happened to his own order after he was forced out in a power struggle around 1965. The battle revolved in part around his belief that pedophile priests were incurable. He suggested they be housed on an island for treatment.

Fitzgerald wrote a follow-up letter to Pope Paul VI in 1963 after he went to Rome to warn the pontiff that pedophile priests were dangerous and should be removed from the ministry.

The letter is among documentation used in litigation by lawyers for California clergy abuse victims. It has been analyzed this week as questions surrounding how much the Vatican knew about child sex abuse and how much it may have helped cover it up increase.

The Paracletes eventually became known as "Club Ped," or as one lawyer termed it, "a dumping ground for toxic ecclesiastical waste."

The sordid reputation developed as the order turned into a cushy temporary retreat for pedophile priests who enjoyed healthy food and mineral baths before they were returned to the outside world to resume parish work.

Even worse, some of the sex-offender priests being treated at the order were allowed to work on weekends in local parishes, where they molested more children.

Among the many notorious pedophile priests sent to Jemez Springs, often more than one time, was the Rev. David Holley, now serving 275 years for molesting boys, and the Rev. James Porter, who was believed to have molested at least 131 victims and who died in 2006 while serving a 20-year prison sentence.

Fitzgerald, who died in 1969, never expected to deal with the serious issues presented by the pedophile priests who began arriving at the Jemez Springs order in the late 1940s, said the Rev. Liam Hoare, vicar general of the Servants of the Paraclete. He runs what is left of the order in the United States, a small retreat for troubled priests in Dittmer, Mo.

"They came on Greyhound buses, by trains, often sent by bishops who never told the Paracletes what their real problems were," Hoare said in a telephone interview with AOL News. "Back in the '40s nobody talked about this. You can't look at it through 2010 lenses."

Fitzgerald became so alarmed by the gravity of pedophiliac priests' disorders that he wrote letters for years to U.S. bishops and met with Pope Paul VI in Rome warning that such priests were "devils" and should be defrocked.

"These men, Your Excellency, are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary layization," Fitzgerald wrote in a 1957 letter to an unnamed archbishop.

Nor did he want them at his retreat, Hoare said. Fitzgerald even tried to buy a Caribbean island where they could be treated in isolation without fear they could harm children.

"It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished the island retreat -- but even an island is too good for these vipers of whom the Gentle Master said it were better they had not been born -- this is an indirect way of saying damned, is it not?" Fitzgerald wrote in the same letter.

Hoare said Fitzgerald was tormented by a problem he never saw coming. According to the history of the order, Fitzgerald, a former diocesan priest and military chaplain, got the inspiration to create the Paraclete order on a "bitterly cold" night during the Great Depression when someone who appeared to be a beggar knocked on the back door of his rectory.

Fitzgerald gave him some food and warm clothing, and as the figure walked back out into the dark night, he turned around and said he had also been a priest once. From that point on, Fitzgerald wanted to help troubled priests.

"Father Gerald was a really personable guy with a great Irish sense of humor," said Hoare. "He was in the business of the salvation of souls. He was part of the solution. He wanted to help priests. Instead he -- and all of us -- became casualties of the clerical sex abuse crisis."

The New Mexico center closed in 1995 after being inundated with lawsuits stemming in large part from pedophile priests staying there who molested children when they were allowed to work in local parishes on the weekend. A branch of the order near Gloucestershire, England, closed around 1998.

Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald Founded Order to Help Troubled Priests but Couldn't Curb Abuse - AOL News
 
At least there is a place for them to receive treatment.

Is it just priests that are pedophiles? What about the pedophile ministers, reverends, and preachers of other religions? Do they have a place where the offenders can go for treatment?
 
At least there is a place for them to receive treatment.

Is it just priests that are pedophiles? What about the pedophile ministers, reverends, and preachers of other religions? Do they have a place where the offenders can go for treatment?

They go to a christian counseling and usually treated as a regular citizens.
 
Have there been any cases of buddists or other leaders of other religions being phedophiles? Just curious...
 
I have no idea where they go for treatment...or for any pedophile goes for treatment....but with as many as we have here in the USA and other countries...something drastic needs to be done.
They are using the shield of religion to cover theselves! And even one priest who was a convicted pedophile was buried with his priests' robes on!

But does treatment really help?...I don't believe so! They are released and offend over and over again....
 
In a baptist church, if a pastor does something like this, he'll have to be reported to the police. And he have to step down from his position whatever church he is pastoring. He may not get to pastor again unless another church don't know his background.
 
At least there is a place for them to receive treatment.

Is it just priests that are pedophiles? What about the pedophile ministers, reverends, and preachers of other religions? Do they have a place where the offenders can go for treatment?

What treatment? There's no cure for pedophiles. They live on impulse, not by logic. They know it's wrong, but they cannot stop themselves. When they see children, they react as if they are candy.

Yiz
 
At least there is a place for them to receive treatment.

Is it just priests that are pedophiles? What about the pedophile ministers, reverends, and preachers of other religions? Do they have a place where the offenders can go for treatment?

oh and yes, there are pedophile ministers, reverends, preachers, pastors. They are not immune which is why I say allowing priests to marry does not help at all. Just that some church have worst system on protecting the kids than others.
 
Have there been any cases of buddists or other leaders of other religions being phedophiles? Just curious...

Buddhists seem to have the highest moral standing but good question tho... we may be ignorant.
 
At least there is a place for them to receive treatment.

Is it just priests that are pedophiles? What about the pedophile ministers, reverends, and preachers of other religions? Do they have a place where the offenders can go for treatment?
Do you mean after they get out of jail?
 
Have there been any cases of buddists or other leaders of other religions being phedophiles? Just curious...

If you are talking about in other countries, I find that they don't really talk about it much. If they have social service like we do that keep in track of abuses, we probably could tell. Other than that, countries that is heavily buddisms did have child marriages and have sold their child off to sex trafficking before. but as far as Monks, I don't think it is really talked about if it did happen.
 
In some other countries, sexual abuse is dealt with much more openly than in the U.S. I saw a great German PSA that the American media would never show because it's too blunt and graphic. I think that PSAs like that in the U.S. would help raise awareness. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
 
Have there been any cases of buddists or other leaders of other religions being phedophiles? Just curious...

I would say that it has happened in all religions, since everyone that belongs to a religious organization is human, and human weaknesses are universal.
 
In some other countries, sexual abuse is dealt with much more openly than in the U.S. I saw a great German PSA that the American media would never show because it's too blunt and graphic. I think that PSAs like that in the U.S. would help raise awareness. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Agreed, sallylou.
 
What treatment? There's no cure for pedophiles. They live on impulse, not by logic. They know it's wrong, but they cannot stop themselves. When they see children, they react as if they are candy.

Yiz

You are making some assumptions that aren't quite true.
 
Does that means everytime I see a girl with a decent set of racks and short hair, that I am going to be impulsive? :giggle:

Control yourself, souggy. Repeat after me..."I will not act on impulse.I will consider the consequences of my actions.":P
 
Yep, just like the ministers, reverends and preachers.

from what I've seen in churches I've been, in order for someone to show true repentence, they have to openly confess and let others know that they have anproblem AND in order to prove his repentence, he has to do everything he can to make sure nothing like this will happen again. He have to accept his conquences that he can never be around children again. That mean he'll have to avoid churches that have children (there are some churches like that) Or keep far distance from them. If not, then they don't want him in the church if they ever find out about him or he is not truthworthy. Most sin issues are usually a private, personal thing (either to themselves, or if it is bothering them, they can talk to the pastor), but in this case, he have to let the church know about it if he truly love the Lord (our religion teach alot of confession and repentance... and other things too).
 
Do you mean after they get out of jail?

The church covered up the whole mess about pedophie priests and nuns and never reported it to the cops , so the pedophie priests never went to jail! The whole is disgusting , now the Pope is lying about his role in this !

I did see on Date Line a show about men having sex with underage girls , and one guy was a Rabbi .
 
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