Mexican Bishop Blames TV For Child Sex Abuse

[give her dixie]

At this rate I dont think even Max Clifford could help the church.
This is from a Bishop in Mexico:

A Roman Catholic bishop in Mexico has sparked outrage by suggesting eroticism on television and internet pornography were to blame for child sex abuse by priests.


He also claimed sex education in schools was making it more difficult for priests to remain celibate.

Bishop Felipe Arizmendi was speaking before the Pope arrived in Malta where he is expected to meet victims of abuse by Catholic priests.

"With so much invasion of eroticism, sometimes it's not easy to stay celibate or to respect children," he told an annual meeting of bishops near Mexico City.

"If on television and on the internet and in so many media outlets there is pornography, it is very difficult to stay pure and chaste.

Blaming the problems that the Catholic Church has had with priests' sexually abusing minors on sex education borders on the pathetic.

"Obviously when there is generalised sexual freedom it's more likely there could be cases of paedophilia," he added.

His comments have been denounced by the Mexican Association for Sexual Health, a group of professional counsellors and educators.

"Those of good conscience in the church should stop this absurdity and find good help," the group said in a statement.

"Blaming the problems that the Catholic Church has had with priests' sexually abusing minors on sex education makes no sense," it added. "It borders on the pathetic."



Pope Benedict, who is 83, has been rocked by a series of revelations in recent weeks


Bishop Arizmendi's comments follow a series of controversial remarks by senior Catholic clergy about the child sex abuse scandal.

On Monday the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said paedophilia amongst priests was linked to homosexuality not celibacy.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia," he said. "But many others have shown that there is," he said.

The Vatican was hit by another embarrassing revelation this week when a website posted a letter by a senior cardinal congratulating a French bishop in 2001 for not denouncing a self-confessed abusive priest to the police.

[pintsofguinness]

"Those of good conscience in the church should stop this absurdity and find good help," the group said in a statement.

excellent advice.

[AZOffaly]

It's actually quite sad how ignorant (in the literal sense) some of the leaders of the church seem to be. Do they really think that watching sex on TV, or on the internet, leads to paedophilia? It's pretty staggering. Not to mind that when the majority of these attacks were actually taking place there was very little sex on the telly, and the internet wasn't even around.

I think a much more likely scenario is that these lads were paedophiles, and realised that the priesthood offered them the ideal situation and status to carry out their predatory attacks. That the church then covered up in some misguided attempt at protecting the church may well bring it down, at least as we have known it.

[give her dixie]

Cardinal defends protection of abuser


A former Vatican cardinal who congratulated a French bishop for hiding a sexually abusive priest has said he acted with the approval of the late Pope John Paul, a Spanish newspaper reported on Saturday.

Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the Vatican official in charge of priests around the world when he praised the French bishop in 2001, dragged the Polish pope into the controversy during a conference in the Spanish city of Murcia.

His comment came after a Vatican spokesman indirectly confirmed that a 2001 letter to the bishop posted on a French website on Thursday was authentic and was proof the Vatican was right to tighten up its procedures on sex abuse cases that year.

By invoking John Paul, Castrillon Hoyos appeared to up the ante in a subtle Vatican power struggle over who was to blame for past failures to deal effectively with the abuse cases whose revelations in recent months have shaken the Church.

'After consulting the pope ... I wrote a letter to the bishop congratulating him as a model of a father who does not hand over his sons,' the daily La Verdad quoted Castrillon Hoyos as telling the conference on Friday, to a round of applause from the assembled prelates, priests and lay people.

'The Holy Father authorised me to send this letter to all bishops in the world and publish it on the internet.'

Castrillon Hoyos, a Colombian who retired from Vatican service last year, argued on CNN's Spanish-language television last week that temporarily suspending abusive priests and then quietly reassigning them elsewhere was not a cover-up.

Castrillon Hoyos's letter, written in French in 2001, praised Bishop Pierre Pican of Bayeux-Lisieux for not denouncing a French priest who was later sentenced to 18 years in jail for the repeated rape of a boy and sexual assaults on 10 others.

Pican, who received a suspended three-month jail sentence for not denouncing sexual abuse of minors, admitted in court he had kept Rev Rene Bissey in parish work despite the fact the priest had privately admitted committing paedophile acts.

The case shocked France and prompted its bishops to declare that all abuse cases must be reported to civil authorities.

'I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil administration,' Castrillon Hoyos wrote in his letter to Pican.

At the Murcia conference, the cardinal said that Pican did not denounce Bissey because the priest had told sins in the confessional, where secrecy is respected under the law.

At his trial, Pican said Bissey admitted his abuse in a private conversation, which would not enjoy legal protection