BBC News reports that Marie Collins resigned from the panel created by Pope Francis to investigate clerical sex abuse. Collins was invited to the panel by the Pope. She was molested at 13 by an Irish priest.
Four thousand four hundred Australians claim to have been victims of clerical abuse as children. A royal commission also investigated child sex abuse at non-religious organizations. Child sex abuse is more common among public officials.
In the Philippines we elect pedophiles to Congress. So you see the motivation for lowering the age of criminal liability to childhood. Public officials are sexually partial to children especially in bondage, either to poverty or plain shackles.
Seven percent of Australia’s clergy allegedly abused kids in the past 60 years—that is par for the course in the Catholic white world. You won’t see that statistic among Latin, Asian and African clergy. An Italian cardinal scoffed at the notion of a “crisis of the Catholic church. He said, “You mean the crisis of the American Catholic church. We Latins prefer mature women.”
What is it with white people and child sex?
Another victim, Peter Saunders, resigned from the same panel. He resented the Vatican panel’s resistance to real change. Even Pope Francis was criticized for reducing the penalty for errant priests. Perhaps there were mitigating circumstances or the pressure of declining vocations.
But the thing about religion is that, unlike politics, in which nobody believes, belief in religion turns entirely on the credibility of its preachers. “Listen to what I say, don’t do what I do” works only against the priest and the religion he preaches.