| Author |
Message |
Randall (Randall)
Member
Username: Randall
Post Number: 646
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 6:28 pm: | |
"One fundamental problem is a priests vow of abstinence. They are human beings after all. Other religeons allow marraige.
DL"
I heard something regarding this that I found fairly interesting. A friend of mine said that becoming a priest was a reasonable choice for years for gay men raised in Catholic familes. It provided a career path where they wouldn't have to explain why they weren't getting married and starting a family, especially when being gay wasn't so widely tolerated.
It doesn't excuse the behavior (nothing can), but it could explain why it has happened so often in the catholic church vs. others. |
arthur chambers (Art355)
Intermediate Member
Username: Art355
Post Number: 2466
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 11:25 am: | |
The Catholic Church has been hiding this facet of their behavior for at least the last 40 years. The people within the Church, that knew they had a problem, and who hid it are as much to blame as the perps.
As to the death of this priest: This was a judgement call by the guards in charge of the housing. I know of few of those types, and to put a pedophile in with this guy was asking to get him killed. The problem that I have with this, as I do with a good many other things that those in law enforcement do, is that they are not authorized to judge others. In my humble opinion this was a subtle murder, for which the guards won't be penalized.
Regardless of what you think, this country is ruled by law. If we let that slip away, we'll have a lot more problems making sure our lives are decent.
Art |
DL (Darth550)
Junior Member
Username: Darth550
Post Number: 152
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 9:20 am: | |
One fundamental problem is a priests vow of abstinence. They are human beings after all. Other religeons allow marraige.
DL |
Rob Lay (Rob328gts)
Board Administrator
Username: Rob328gts
Post Number: 6048
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 8:52 am: | |
Slight tangent...
All the publicity and convictions right now are within the Catholic church. Is this something only happening within the Catholic church or in the future will we start hearing from other denominations, religions, and groups with the same problems? |
DL (Darth550)
Junior Member
Username: Darth550
Post Number: 151
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 8:40 am: | |
DGS,
The perpetrator of this crime will be subject to due process. He murdered Geoghan and will face a murder charge. If it can be proven that he was commissioned to commit this crime, then whoever else was involved is an accessory to murder. What more can be said? He knew it and committed the crime anyway. His choice. I have no respect for an Aryan Brother/murderer...no pillar of society either, but he knew the consequence of this crime.
Geoghan should have known the consequence as well. Prison generally means death for child molesters and rapists. Within the walls of a prison, it is known that occurences such as this are commonplace.
Outside of a prison setting, your view is valid. Vigilantism is a danger to advanced civilization. However, too many people are appalled by Geoghan's actions to acknowledge your point.
DL
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Randall (Randall)
Member
Username: Randall
Post Number: 642
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 27, 2003 - 2:33 am: | |
"If society wanted to march that pedophile priest to an electric chair and pull the switch, I wouldn't object."
Even if that's what society wants, society can't have it. Rights organizations have too much power in this country. Majority doesn't always rule, and this is an example of that. About 10 years ago the idea of physical punishment (ie. caning) was brought up and many people seemed okay with the idea, but the ACLU can shut down something like that in a second.
Our judicial system has become weak, and the prisons aren't an adequate form of punishment. That's the reason people aren't upset when some sick a$$hole gets bumped off while serving a weak prison sentence. |
DGS (Dgs)
Member
Username: Dgs
Post Number: 276
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 7:07 pm: | |
Darth, where in the name of Zarquon Q. Klaatu did you get the impression that I was denying that pedophile priests should be punished by the system?
Jim, "rehabilitation" is the alternative to life imprisonment for every offense. At some point the criminal is going to get out of prison (if, for no other reason, the prisons become overcrowded and some judge degrees that the prison population should be reduced). You want to make sure that a released / paroled criminal will not repeat his crime.
Impressing a fear of punishment is at the core of rehabilitation. By giving the criminal the same apprehension of being apprehended that the rest of us share, we are converting criminals into citizens like the rest of us.
I wonder what some of you think "rehabilitation" is? I'm not referring to some group hug therapy. Read Locke's definition again: to "bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that Law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his Example others, from doing the like mischief". The only difference between calling it "punishment" or "rehabilitation" is the recognition of the end purpose of the process: to convert a minor criminal into a citizen, rather than into a major criminal.
It is beyond our ability to rehabilitate some forms of criminal. That's where a life sentence - or a death sentence - comes in.
But there's a world of difference between a death sentence imposed by due process of law, and simply getting "the criminal class" to commit our crimes for us.
Anyone who arranged to have a known gay killer gain access to that pedophile's cell is an accessory to murder. Hiring a hit man doesn't make you innocent.
If society wanted to march that pedophile priest to an electric chair and pull the switch, I wouldn't object.
But I do object to society condoning (and even applauding) murder committed outside of the law.
And it really bothers me that nobody else seems to have a problem with that.
The next Dark Age is due to begin on : (what was yesterday, again?)
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Jim E (Jimpo1)
Intermediate Member
Username: Jimpo1
Post Number: 2437
Registered: 7-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 9:03 am: | |
I always wonder about the attitude that 'prisons are for rehabilitation'. That's crap. They're for punishment. If you really believe they're for rehab, go spend a year there. |
DL (Darth550)
Junior Member
Username: Darth550
Post Number: 149
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 8:56 am: | |
DGS,
You seem to possess some intelligence. Answer me this. Are you, or have you, been tempted to commit rape, murder or any capital crime? Even though you will undoubtedly answer no and that you have no propensity toward violence, you ALSO must aknowledge your fear of the consequenses for such actions, and that you are unwilling to risk your freedom. After all, there is not much room for ideology in prison.
Are you going to equally assess blame on the hundreds of victims for simply having faith in their belief that the priest they came to know would not, in fact, be a chickenhawk? After all, isn't it possible for those victims to rehabilitate themselves and live with the emotional scars of the molestation they endured at the hand of that (thankfully) dead piece of ****? What? Have you no faith in the hundreds of psychologists that have been put to task either?
Do you have a son? If he was one of the victims would you still go on about the state of our prison system and our level of civilization?
If so, I pity him.
Why is it that I do not drive my Ferrari at speed past the CHP on the freeway? I know I can outrun or outdrive most of them. It is because I do not wish to be arrested and have some idiot with a towtruck destroy my car. Effective deterrent.
DL |
Ryan Alexander (Ryalex)
Junior Member
Username: Ryalex
Post Number: 56
Registered: 8-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 7:10 am: | |
By the wicked the wicked are punished. |
Jeffrey Wolfe (86mondial32)
Member
Username: 86mondial32
Post Number: 471
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 6:01 am: | |
DGS... the courts lost it years ago. I have no faith in our legal system.. it's run by mouth breathers called lawyers. Give me swift justice anytime. The west was as close as we ahve ever gotten to real justice. I take your Cattle you hunt me down and kill me. I rape your wife.. you hunt me down and kill me. A priest molests my son.. I hunt him down and kill him. As for rehabing some ghettto trash that runs whores and sells crack..... GOOD LUCK. Once you are a criminal you are NEVER going to be a model citizen... just check the records. REHAB is a failure. This preist got his "reward" as far as many are concerned. One can only hope they made him suffer for awhile before finishing him off.
Man is able to deliver the wrath that god can not. |
Thomas I (Wax)
Junior Member
Username: Wax
Post Number: 161
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 6:00 am: | |
Oh, Crikey.
It was a Prison murder. In prison, Paedophiles are the least respected of all prisoners and are targeted for death. That's why Geoghan wasn't part of the general prison population.
Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in prison though he wasn't part of the general population either. Surprised? Not me - nor millions of others. While Fr. John Geoghan didn't cut people up in the literal sense, he sure as hell did figuratively. Their behavior contributed to their downfalls and eventual murders.
Just try and remember that it was through decisions they made to commit reprehensible crimes that they were incarcerated in the first place. The system is not to blame for that, nor is society.
If I may interject some biblical mythology here, this isn't Cain and Abel. Cain didn't sacrifice what he was supposed to. Abel did. Cain grew jealous of Abel's favored status in the eyes of God, and killed him.
In this case, the children were figuratively sacrificed at the hand of the Priest, leaving mental scars for all who were touched by the Priest's affliction. The former Catholic priest had been accused of molesting more than 200 young boys. He was convicted for abusing a 10 year-old boy. A fellow prisoner sacrificed the priest, and in a sense, himself -Only now, he's "immortalized". The priest long ago fell out of favored status, just as his killer did. But now the killer's got status around the yard, and by God, in the eyes of John Q. Public. The mental scars of the afflicted can begin to heal.
If you've ever known anyone who was molested - you'll know the relief their mental scars feel when the accursed, not the accused - the accursed is silenced. The guilty are not favored in the eyes of God or society. Through one dogma or another, it is believed that those who seek retribution on behalf of their fellow man or God are.
Regardless of how we agree or/to disagree about splitting hairs over moot points over whether Joseph Druce, the executioner of a paedophile did something equally reprehensible as his "victim" - One thing is for certain:
Geoghan's killer ain't nobody's b*tch now. |
DGS (Dgs)
Member
Username: Dgs
Post Number: 275
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 4:47 am: | |
quote:What? Rehab? Puh-LEEZE!
Q.E.D.
If we've abandoned the notion of rehabilitation, then what are courts for? Do we execute every criminal, if they can never return to society? Why have cops instead of vigilantes?
What about those ungodly eye-talian cars speeding through the town where your child plays? Hang 'em high! That'll teach 'em.
Don't let your fears confuse vengeance with justice.
"And thus in the State of Nature, one Man comes by a Power over another; but yet no Absolute or Arbitrary Power, to use a Criminal when he has got him in his hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of his own Will, but only to retribute to him, so far as calm reason and conscience dictates, what is proportionate to his Transgression, which is so much as may serve for Reparation and Restraint. For these two are the only reasons, why one Man may lawfully do harm to another, which is what we call punishment." -- Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government, c.1689
I have no problem with a convicted criminal facing punishment by due process of law. A "cruel and unusual punishment" may be appropriate for a cruel and unusual crime. (When do you expect a crime to be "usual"?) But I do have a problem with the system violating its own laws to exact revenge, even on the most despicable criminal.
It is within the function of our criminal justice system to, as Locke puts it, "bring such evil on any one, who hath transgressed that Law, as may make him repent the doing of it, and thereby deter him, and by his Example others, from doing the like mischief". Isn't that how you'd define "rehabilitation"? But if we feel that, instead, we have to circumvent our system of justice to extract vengeance, even calling it "justice" doesn't keep us from starting the slide to barbarism. If the system isn't working, you fix the system rather than go behind its back.
If we were to capture Bin-Laden, would you display his severed head on the "gates of the city" in New York? I have to admit that such was my first instinct when I saw those planes hit the twin towers. But if we abandon the rule of law, how then are we any better than the terrorists?
One of the purposes of terrorism, spelled out in the guide many terrorists follow (Lenin), is precisely to goad a society into violating its own laws, in order to "reveal" just how "evil" that society really is. The way to deal with crime is not to become a society of criminals.
"An eye for an eye" makes for a blind world.
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DL (Darth550)
Junior Member
Username: Darth550
Post Number: 147
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 2:35 am: | |
DGS,
There is one thing you, I suppose, neglected to mention. If he HADN'T sexually molested children (priest or otherwise) he wouldn't have been there in the first place.
I have a 2 1/2 year old son. The thought of something like that happening to him absolutely horrifies me. If ONLY ONE closet pedophile keeps his urge in check out of fear that he will meet the same fate...then justice was served. Period. End of story.
And another thing, where did the courts go wrong?
He was put away wasn't he? Are you suggesting he should not have been? What? Rehab? Puh-LEEZE!
Your point is that the guards turned their backs? Well, they probably did. Maybe one or two of them have a young child as well.
As for God's will? The current state of affairs within the Catholic Church, with regard to the fundamental reasons that led to these numerous molestations, is a debate that can (and probably will) go on for years and years.
DL |
Thomas I (Wax)
Junior Member
Username: Wax
Post Number: 159
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 2:27 am: | |
Randall, you'll have to pardon any confusion on the part of viewers to commentary, as to go from:
"...Hopefully some of the other priests guilty of this will soon get their punishment also."
to
"I can't really appreciate the god comments at all..."
impies that the will of man punishing a man of the cloth for doing the unholiest work is good - but isn't inline with that of the will of God, though the outcome is God's will, if one were to read your original statement's intent. Or something crosseyed like that.
Then again, your second statement could all be a *wink-wink nudge-nudge* disclaimer to avoid the wrath of God...
Were it me, I'd shove a hollow glass crucifix up an offending priest's bungholy, snap it, and let another preying priest get circumcised when he goes for the prize. Kill 'em all - let God sort 'em out. *The church* gave them every chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of God and man - namely by moving them to another parish, but still, given the opportunities which were ignored - these poseur priests have the wrath of man and God to deal with. |
DGS (Dgs)
Member
Username: Dgs
Post Number: 274
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 2:11 am: | |
Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!
Does anyone else see this discussion as a vote of "no confidence" in both our courts and our "correctional facilities"?
Prisons are supposed to be for rehabilitation, not for state tolerated vendettas. (Only one guard on hand at the time?)
If we lose sight of the difference between justice and vengence, then we're on the fast track to the next Dark Age.
People talk about "the Wild West" and "Judge Colt and his jury of six". But there were more guns in the east than in the west, so it wasn't the guns. Compare the court system of the east and the lynch mob of the west.
The difference between chaos and civilization is the rule of law.
Do I feel sorry for someone convicted of abusing a religious office? Not especially.
But I feel sorry for a society that thinks that this is as close to justice as they can achieve. |
Drstranglove (Drstranglove)
Member
Username: Drstranglove
Post Number: 848
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2003 - 12:49 am: | |
If I were his attorney I would go with the "God told me to do it." defense.
Hell, he (god) probably did!!
And Randell, you should have known better.
DrS |
Randall (Randall)
Member
Username: Randall
Post Number: 641
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 11:56 pm: | |
Hmmmm...... I can't really appreciate the god comments at all. If you can blame god for the punishment of that man, then why not run around spouting how good it was of god to have those kids get molested. LOL, what a great sense of humor. |
Jeffrey Wolfe (86mondial32)
Member
Username: 86mondial32
Post Number: 463
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 7:25 pm: | |
ROFL...I have always said that GOD has the best sense of humor. This event proves it...
Perhaps he could not wait to sit in judgement on such slime |
DL (Darth550)
Junior Member
Username: Darth550
Post Number: 145
Registered: 7-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 6:38 pm: | |
Apparently this murder had been planned for a month. Unfortunately he forgot to use the redwood broomstick and the knotted rag.
Oh well, too bad
DL |
PeterS (Peters)
Intermediate Member
Username: Peters
Post Number: 1373
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 6:35 pm: | |
Be it right or wrong, the fact is that the inmate that killed the priest saved the taxpayers a lot of money....."Next".. |
Robert McNair (Rrm)
Member
Username: Rrm
Post Number: 639
Registered: 5-2002
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 5:55 pm: | |
I saw an interview with one of the victims who brought up the point that he had mixed feelings about what had happened as he felt the priest should have had to suffer in prison for the rest of his life and he felt that he got off easy by death. My feeling is it depends on where the priest is now in regards to whether he got off easy or not. |
Dave (Maranelloman)
Advanced Member
Username: Maranelloman
Post Number: 2741
Registered: 1-2002
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 5:38 pm: | |
Indeed. While we disagree on much, Randall, we agree on this. And I will guess that 99.999995% of Mass. residents are not upset that this happened in their prisons.. |
Randall (Randall)
Member
Username: Randall
Post Number: 638
Registered: 1-2003
| | Posted on Monday, August 25, 2003 - 5:33 pm: | |
Anyone hear that ex-priest/child molester Geoghan was attacked and killed in prison recently? Hopefully some of the other priests guilty of this will soon get their punishment also. |
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