The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Legal Responses PDF Download

Author: James T. O'Reilly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199350124
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The sexual abuse of children and teens by rogue priests in the U.S. Catholic Church is a heinous crime, and those who pray for a religious community as its ministers, priests and rabbis should never tolerate those who prey on that community. The legal disputes of recent years have produced many scandalous headlines and fuelled public discussion about the sexual abuse crisis within the clergy, a crisis that has cost the U.S. Catholic Church over $3 billion. In The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Legal Responses, two eminent experts, James O'Reilly and Margaret Chalmers, draw on the lessons of recent years to discern the interplay between civil damages law and global church-based canon law. In some countries civil and canon law, although autonomous systems of law, both form part of the church's legal duties. In the United States, freedom of religion issues have complicated how the state adjudicates both cases of abuse and who can be held responsible for clerical oversight. This book examines questions of civil and criminal liability, issues of respondeat superior and oversight, issues with statutes of limitations and dealing with allegations that occurred decades ago, and how the Church's internal judicial processes interact or clash with the civil pursuit of these cases.

Author: James T. O'Reilly
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199350209
Category : Catholic Church
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
Legal disputes over worldwide and U.S. sexual abuse by Catholic priests, and over efforts by Catholic bishops to conceal clerical misconduct, have produced many headlines and public discussion. However, the precise legal issues involved remain a mystery to most observers. In this study, James O'Reilly and Margaret Chalmers examine the role of canon law in these cases and the interplay between the global church-based law and the laws of individual jurisdictions where criminal actions and lawsuits are brought.

Author: Nicholas P. Cafardi
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 9780809105809
Category : Child sexual abuse by clergy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The clergy sex abuse scandal and its ongoing fallout have created the greatest crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church. Yet for well over a thousand years, the Church has recognized the problem of clerical abuse of children and has maintained strict canonical punishments for perpetrators, including expulsion from the clerical state. So why did Church leaders favor therapeutic solutions over the provisions of canon law in dealing with decades of abuse? This ground-breaking analysis of the Church?s response to the abuse crisis addresses that very question and engages in a vigorous assessment of the Church?s failures in the light of its own canon law. The author, a civil and canon lawyer, summarizes the history of clerical sexual abuse, from the New Testament era to modern times. He describes the major cases that brought the problem to the forefront in the United States. He goes on to explain why most bishops decided to take the ?therapeutic option? when dealing with abusive priests, rather than subjecting abusers to proper canonical punishments that might have brought the cases to light and resulted in greater sensitivity to the victims themselves. Finally, the author explains what the Church must learn from the abuse crisis.Insightfully written and thoroughly annotated, BEFORE DALLAS will become the accepted reference work on the Church?s legal response to clerical sexual abuse, and an indispensable guide for preventing the tragedy from happening again. It will be essential reading for church historians, canonists, clergy, and all those interested in the future welfare of the Church and her faithful.

Author: James T. O'Reilly
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199937931
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
Legal disputes over worldwide, including the U.S., sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests, and over efforts by Roman Catholic bishops to conceal clerical misconduct, have produced many headlines and public discussion. However, the precise legal issues involved remain a mystery to most observers. In this study, James O'Reilly and Margaret Chalmers examine the role of canon law in these cases and the interplay between the global church-based law and the laws of individual jurisdictions where criminal actions and lawsuits are brought.

Author: Paul R. Dokecki
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589014312
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The story of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests has sent shock waves around the nation and will not fade from consciousness or the news. We ask, "How could this happen?" And then we ask, "How could the Catholic Church let this continue for so long—in seeming silence and duplicity?" Paul R. Dokecki, a community psychologist at Vanderbilt University, an active Catholic, and a former board member of the National Catholic Education Association, investigates the crisis not only with the eye of an investigative reporter, but with the analytical skills and training of a psychologist as well. Moreover, he lays the foundation for reasonable and practical reform measures. Through the scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston as well as the earlier, if less well known but momentous, case in the Diocese of Nashville, Dokecki reports on and analyzes what is ultimately an abuse of power—not only by the clergy but by church officials. As distasteful as these instances may be, they are compelling reading, enlightened by the author's abilities to contextualize these events through the lenses of professional ethics, the human sciences, and ecclesiology. According to Dokecki, these and other instances of clergy sexual abuse reveal a systemic deficiency in the structure and the nature of the church itself, one that has prevented the church from adequately dealing with its own worst sins. Dokecki may shine a spotlight into the church's dark corners—but he does so in the service of enlightenment, calling the church back toward the vision of Vatican II and the spirit of Pope John XXIII—toward a greater transparency, a more open and participatory governance in the church, and for a greatly expanded role for the people of God who make up the church. It is in this way, Dokecki believes, the church will be better able to keep the innocent children of the church safe from harm.

Author: Merle Longwood
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317955285
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Examine the reactions of leading clergy to the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal! Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church is an eye-opening collection of Catholic and non-Catholic perspectives, statements, and responses regarding Catholic clergy sexual abuse from a public symposium entitled “Trusting the Clergy?” This book includes the viewpoints of some of today’s most influential members of the Catholic Church, such as Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, Bishop Howard Hubbard, and Father Donald B. Cozzens. It will bring you up to date on the ways in which the American Catholic bishops have dealt, or are attempting to deal, with the sexual abuse scandal. In Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, Archbishop Harry J. Flynn offers a bishop’s perspective on the sexual abuse crisis and describes how the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) has responded to issues of clergy sexual abuse since the 1980s. Fr. Donald B. Cozzens summarizes what has been learned from the clergy abuse crisis, and then moves to the systemic issues that need to be addressed—not just personal relationships but issues of structure and meaning. This book also includes viewpoints about the Catholic Church from renowned scholars and non-Catholic church leaders, including Michael J. Bland and Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune. This book offers presentations on: the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People created by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) the need for the Catholic hierarchy to convert from “an institutional protection agenda” to “a justice-making agenda” understanding the abusers’ modes of operation and motivations identifying future potential sexual abusers attempting to enter the priesthood including the sexual abuse of adults as well as children as future agenda issues the data the Church compiles on the numbers of perpetrators, victims, and costs associated with the scandal determining whom to believe when there are conflicting stories the impact of the clergy sexual abuse crisis on Latino and African-American communities Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church provides a historical marker for the state of the church’s discussion one year after the Boston Archdiocese was faced with intense media scrutiny resulting in the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. This book is a unique collection of credible, diverse voices engaged in public discussion of a difficult social problem facing the church. Use it to formulate your own opinion on how the Catholic community is responding to the sexual abuse scandal.

Author: Patricia Ewick
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022664443X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
In 2002, the national spotlight fell on Boston’s archdiocese, where decades of rampant sexual misconduct from priests—and the church’s systematic cover-ups—were exposed by reporters from the Boston Globe. The sordid and tragic stories of abuse and secrecy led many to leave the church outright and others to rekindle their faith and deny any suggestions of institutional wrongdoing. But a number of Catholics vowed to find a middle ground between these two extremes: keeping their faith while simultaneously working to change the church for the better. Beyond Betrayal charts a nationwide identity shift through the story of one chapter of Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), an organization founded in the scandal’s aftermath. VOTF had three goals: helping survivors of abuse; supporting priests who were either innocent or took risky public stands against the wrongdoers; and pursuing a broad set of structural changes in the church. Patricia Ewick and Marc W. Steinberg follow two years in the life of one of the longest-lived and most active chapters of VOTF, whose thwarted early efforts at ecclesiastical reform led them to realize that before they could change the Catholic Church, they had to change themselves. The shaping of their collective identity is at the heart of Beyond Betrayal, an ethnographic portrait of how one group reimagined their place within an institutional order and forged new ideas of faith in the wake of widespread distrust.

Author: Marie M. Fortune
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780789024640
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
Examine the reactions of leading clergy to the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal! Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church is an eye-opening collection of Catholic and non-Catholic perspectives, statements, and responses regarding Catholic clergy sexual abuse from a public symposium entitled "Trusting the Clergy?" This book includes the viewpoints of some of today's most influential members of the Catholic Church, such as Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, Bishop Howard Hubbard, and Father Donald B. Cozzens. It will bring you up to date on the ways in which the American Catholic bishops have dealt, or are attempting to deal, with the sexual abuse scandal. In Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, Archbishop Harry J. Flynn offers a bishop's perspective on the sexual abuse crisis and describes how the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) has responded to issues of clergy sexual abuse since the 1980s. Fr. Donald B. Cozzens summarizes what has been learned from the clergy abuse crisis, and then moves to the systemic issues that need to be addressed--not just personal relationships but issues of structure and meaning. This book also includes viewpoints about the Catholic Church from renowned scholars and non-Catholic church leaders, including Michael J. Bland and Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune. This book offers presentations on: the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People created by the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) the need for the Catholic hierarchy to convert from "an institutional protection agenda" to "a justice-making agenda" understanding the abusers' modes of operation and motivations identifying future potential sexual abusers attempting to enter the priesthood including the sexual abuse of adults as well as children as future agenda issues the data the Church compiles on the numbers of perpetrators, victims, and costs associated with the scandal determining whom to believe when there are conflicting stories the impact of the clergy sexual abuse crisis on Latino and African-American communities Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church provides a historical marker for the state of the church's discussion one year after the Boston Archdiocese was faced with intense media scrutiny resulting in the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law. This book is a unique collection of credible, diverse voices engaged in public discussion of a difficult social problem facing the church. Use it to formulate your own opinion on how the Catholic community is responding to the sexual abuse scandal.

Author: Brandon Vogt
Publisher: Ave Maria Press
ISBN: 1594717680
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Winner of a 2018 Catholic Press Association Award: Popular Presentation of the Catholic Faith. (First Place). With atheism on the rise and millions tossing off religion, why would anyone consider the Catholic Church? Brandon Vogt, a bestselling author and the content director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, shares his passionate search for truth, a journey that culminated in the realization that Catholicism was right about a lot of things, maybe even everything. His persuasive case for the faith reveals a vision of Catholicism that has answers our world desperately needs and reminds those already in the Church what they love about it. A 2016 study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 25 percent of adults (39 percent of young adults) describe themselves as unaffiliated with any religion. Millions of these so-called “nones” have fled organized religion and many more have rejected God altogether. Brandon Vogt was one of those nones. When he converted to Catholicism in college, he knew how confusing that decision was to many of his friends and family. But he also knew that the evidence he discovered pointed to one conclusion: Catholicism is true. To his delight, he discovered it was also exceedingly good and beautiful. Why I Am Catholic traces Vogt’s spiritual journey, making a refreshing, twenty-first century case for the faith and answering questions being asked by agnostics, nones, and atheists, the audience for his popular website, StrangeNotions.com, where Catholics and atheists dialogue. With references to Catholic thinkers such as G. K. Chesterton, Ven. Fulton Sheen, St. Teresa of Calcutta, and Bishop Robert Barron, Vogt draws together lines of evidence to help seekers discover why they should be Catholic as an alternative. Why I Am Catholic serves as a compelling reproposal of the Church for former Catholics, a persuasive argument for truth and beauty to those who have become jaded and disenchanted with religion, and at the same time offers practicing Catholics a much-needed dose of confidence and clarity to affirm their faith against an increasingly skeptical culture.

Author: Richard Scorer
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849547262
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Since the mid-1980s, the Catholic Church has been embroiled in a profound crisis of clerical sexual abuse. In many Western countries, paedophile priests have been exposed and convicted, and the Church's moral and social standing has suffered deeply. Scandals in Ireland and America have been extensively documented and much debated. The English Catholic Church has also been shaken to its roots by allegations of abuse, but until now the situation in England has not been fully examined. This book, by one of the UK's leading lawyers in the field, is a shocking exposé of Catholic sex abuse cases in England over the past forty years. Exploring the many facets of the crisis, it analyses the ways in which the English Church has responded - and the ways in which it has failed. The author considers the causes of abuse, allegations of cover-ups, campaigns led by victims, battles within the Church, the legal dimensions and the debate around the laicisation ('defrocking') of individual priests. He attempts to answer the following questions: How serious has the problem been in the English Catholic Church? How effectively has the Church responded? Can it hope to recover from this scandal - and, crucially, can it deal credibly and effectively with future allegations of abuse?