And just to make things clear, the priest sex abuse scandal was a problem of ephebophilia, not pedophilia, according to the Vatican in yet another report on this issue since the mainstream media has time and again failed to make this key distinction: http://www.lifesitenews.com...

Pax, your Christian charity never ceases to amaze me.

 And just to make things clear, the priest sex abuse scandal was a problem of ephebophilia, not pedophilia

Ahhh, so that makes it okay.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Pax, you are just making excuses for the immoral deeds by the Catholic church, and you know it.

However, I will admit that I'd have more sympathy for these child-molesting priests if they directed "Rosemary's Baby," "Chinatown," or "The Pianist."

Pax would be happy if they could bring the Inquisition back

There's no doubt about that, pogo.  That way priests could molest children *AND* torture adults!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

The best of both evil worlds!

Well, well, well Pax. Now you're defending priests?  Seems to me the priests and all the way up to the Pope coddled and protected child molesters in the priesthood for - how long??????????????   I'll ask my spouse, who at the age of five was molested by a catholic priest whom the diocese of Los Angeles sent home to Indiana without benefit of reporting him to the LAPD.  To "how long" my spouse says, "At least since 1930."  What happened?  In 1930, a mere one year after arriving in Indiana, the LA Diocese's holy "gift" to Indiana wasn't plucking alter boys because the church "retired" him. He was literally the "priest with the candy" having a field day with the local kindergartners in the neighborhood. Daily! 

So you're here to make a distinction about the treatment of priests versus the treatment of Polanski.  "Rescue" you call it.  Who "rescued" the catholic priests?  We KNOW.  The Catholic Church DID IT. So there's no double standard here. At least we can actually hear the molestation-enablers who stand up for Polanski.  But the church?  Why, a century(s?) of silence. It was a big secret. Didn't want to stain the good name of the Holy Roman Church for the benefit of some little kids.

So try as you may to keep the light of the Catholic Faith OFF of the that culture of child molestation called the Catholic priesthood, it doesn't wash.  Again, you're exploiting the misery of children to advance a political point. 

Ray forgive him, for he knows not what he does.

He knows **exactly** what he's doing.

Oh yeah.  That's what I meant to say.

You know, I can even summon up some modicum of sympathy for the priests, they were at least sick people. It is the bishops and above who covered for them so no scandal would hit the Church that I would go after. Sometimes when I walk into Mass I ask myself "what the hell are you doing here"?

so then, who here thinks Polanski should be able to skip out?  should the priests be able to skip out?

what if it was YOUR daughter?

I am not saying he should have skipped out. But try this on for size: There was a deal in place, time served or something like that, then the judge starts making noise like he is going to impose a harsher sentence. You are Polanski, not an American citizen, you have the means to go on the run and a place to run to where you can't be extradited. Would you stay and trust the judge or run?

so you are saying it is ok to run to avoid a punishment that you deserve? ( i wonder what the punishment is for raping a child in other parts of the world....death maybe)

maybe the deal wasnt in place, and his lawyer didnt have all the Is dotted and Ts crossed.

and so what if a blowhard judge started complaining....you did the crime....now face the music  I cant believe you are actually attempting to justify that justice isnt for everyone.  what next?  sympathy for child molesters?  oh sorry, you already are showing that

he's damn lucky it wasnt my daughter, Id be in jail for killing his punk a$$

It's not merely that he couldn't be extradited. It's also because the age of consent in France is something like 12 years old; thus Polanski would not even be committing a crime there. I imagine that knowledge weighed on him pretty strongly.  As far as I'm aware, in the U.S. each state sets their own age of consent and the youngest I knew of is 14 years old. Wiki says all the the U.S. states *now* are between 16 and 18.   This country hasn't always had an age of consent standard.  My own great-great grandfather's second wife was eleven when they married. He was 35. The *key* is that the *married*.  Still unusual for even that time period (1878)They had two children by the time she was 13. This was in Texas where the age of consent is *now* 17.

spamcode: xx Txx

I was wrong about the age of consent in France. It's 15. It was 13 for heterosexuals only from 1942 to 1945 and increased to 15 in 1945. Homosexual sex was illegal for most of French history until it was set at 21 in 1942. In 1981 it was set at 15.

I don't give a Rat AZ what was or wasn't in place, he should be Required to come back and face the music and do his time. Aren't we not a Nation of Laws and don't those laws mean something?? A CRIME of rape is not only against the victim but also society and as such it doesn't matter if she forgives him (money exchange) to forgive him. 3 decades doesn't change to charge, it is still a crime and NEEDS to face his day in court.

so RAY...you are making excuses for a child molester too?

Ray, let it go, we are swimming upstream and will never get heard.

You are talking about consent. How does a child given drugs offer consent? I think rape is rape pretty much where ever you go in the world. Polanski should fry for it.

Funny how so many of you deflected the real story to instead focus on the priests. Actually, it's not funny.

 so RAY...you are making excuses for a child molester too?

Sigh.

We forget that the man is GUILTY.  He pled guilty to these charges.  If he was afraid, there are legal avenues in place to deal with these types of situations and Polanski could have used those. 

You do the crime, you get sentenced, you do the time.  You don't get to run away because you are afraid of the judge. There is an appeals process that can be utilized. She was 13 years old, let's not forget that.  He should have manned up, taken his punishment and be done with it.  Running away obviously didn't solve his problems.

He pled guilty!!!  It's not like this is some guy who maintained innocence, he said he did it, but then basically said, "Well, I had sex with a 13-year-old CHILD, but I don't really want to stay in jail so hey...I'm outta here!"

Thanks, Learnem, BakoBeachBum, witbee and wndrwoman for setting the spinmeisters straight. That this got twisted into a ludicrous accusation that I'm defending the priests is par for the course. All I did was point out the hypocrisy of those who bashed them but then looked the other way when it came to Polanski, not to mention distorting the facts to cover up the main cause of the priest scandal so as not to make the liberals who are enamored with homosexuality look bad.

It's evil whether performed by a priest or a movie director.

Pax, the Catholic Church has a problem with priests who rape children below the age of consent. That is a fact which is not changed by what name it's called (your "ephobophilia" comment).  And, at this point, the last thing any thinking person was a conscience wants to hear from the Vatican is a bunch of B.S. technicalities being substituted for any SERIOUS acceptance of accountability.  But, as usual, that's all we're gonna get.

This is Ratzinger's REAL view: that the sex abuse crisis was basically a liberal plot to discredit the Church, rather than what it was, an international conspiracy for the molestation of children, enabled by the VATICAN.

Well said Ray

Ray, what did you base your slanderous accusation on? For sure it couldn't have been based on one thorough study. Perhaps you will change your tune -- even better if you recanted -- after reading it: http://www.catholicleague.o...

As you can see from the report, a Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey found 64 percent of the public thought that Catholic priests frequently abused children. Perhaps such silliness can be explained by the reckless caricatures from folks like yourself. But it is no caricature to say that homosexuals perpetrated a vast majority of the priest sex abuse cases. Perhaps the church was wrong to defend and cover up for them, but, hey, that's Christianity to you.

Gee, a citation of the CATHOLIC LEAGUE, now that is a neutral site.

 Pax, somehow you don't get the irony of how the Church HID priests who abused over and over and over and over again while out in the real world the police and jail time curbed those predatory impulses.

Pax is just pulling a fast one:

   1. Somehow it's supposed to be a "liberal" issue when Hollywood didn't come running to support the child molesters hidden in the Vatican's closet for a couple of centuries. See?  It's now a political issue. That how he's framing child molestation.

2. Enter Archbishop Silvano Tomasi's statement from the Vatican where the Church not only is minimizing how many perverted priests were involved, they are shifting the focus of the conspiracy they enabled by pointing at:

    a.  Statistics from the Christian Science Monitor that show that other regligious organizations have a similar or worse problem, and

    b. How "ephebophilia" definition somehow absolves the Church of accountability.  In other words, they're really placing the entire blame on homosexuals but giving the perps a nuanced renaming.

See any acceptance of accountability there? Neither does my spouse who remembers with such clarity how he learned that the Diocese of Los Angeles KNEW this priest who molested him was a pedophile and then just sent the guy out into the world to molest even more innocent children. But that was 1930. Do you think the memory of the horror would just go away? Judging from what the current crop of innocents say, it's something they will never. ever forget.

Pax got his daily marching orders from the Vatican and now here we are busying ourselves with deconstructing what the Vatican is up to today. Blame gay, blame anyone, just don't blame the Catholic Church. It's really pretty sick, Pas. that you think there is some kind of fundamental difference between Polanski your church: they both wanted to hide. It not a liberal conspiracy. It's a call for accountability. Man up and face it. You make a lousy apologist for the Vatican. 

Well said, my friend, well said.

Gee, a citation of the CATHOLIC LEAGUE, now that is a neutral site.

Worse, it's from 2004, not this week like Archbishop Tomasi's new volley. The Catholic League may have offhandly acknowledged the Catholic Church's accountability, but now we're into the "clarifying" and "nuancing" and "distancing" phase of the charade. In ten years the Vatican will be saying, "What molestations?"

Speaking of the Vatican's indefensible position, here's one on Polanski's defenders that ought to be rubbed into the noses of his apologists:  

Kate Harding:

Imagine if the Knight of Columbus decided to give an award to a pedophile priest who had fled the country to avoid prison. The outcry would be universal. Victim groups would demand the award be withdrawn and that the organization apologize. Religion reporters would be on the case with the encouragement of their editors. Editorial writers and columnist would denounce the knights as another example of the insensitivity of the Catholic Church to sexual abuse.

And they would all be correct. And I would join them.

Ditto me on that one, Kate.

Nice to see Bill O'Reilly dismiss Debra Winger as a pinhead for her defense of Polanski on his show tonight.

By the way, Ray, your Knights of Columbus analogy falls flat. I've been a member of the organization and I know it would never knowingly honor a pedophile priest. If it did, I'd be giving 'em hell.

There seems to be a prevailing attitude among the rich and famous, especially among the film crowd, that success and achievement is also an entitlement to be above the law. It shouldn't be applied to them like us "little people." 

This jerk drugged and raped a child. The crime is yet to be resolved, whether he did it yesterday or 30 years ago. How anyone can rationalize such an act as being o.k. and should not have consequences is beyond my comprehension.

Indeed, Catpaw. Michael Jackson set the standard in that regard, wooing the kiddies with filthy lucre and animals like Bubbles the chimp.

The panel on Sean Hannity's show tonight, including a Democratic strategist, was unanimous in its condemnation of Polanski for living luxuriously on the lam, expressing disbelief at those who would rightfully bash the homosexualist priests only to turn around and shrug off Polanski's drugging and raping of a girl.

This just in: Two Catholics talking yesterday. Andrew Sullivan publishes a letter from a reader.

I grew up in Boston and was raped by priests beginning at age 6. I just let you into a very small circle. When the predators who liked young children had no more use for me because I had aged they traded me to other priests. Unlike some I have remembered my abuse on a daily basis (forgetting would be such a blessing). While the Pope may find comfort in the fact "that only 1.5%-5% of Catholic clergy were involved in child sex abuse," he should wonder and worry about the morality of the many who knew and said and did nothing. From my experience I would say that over 50% of the other priests knew and allowed the horror to continue. As an adult I have talked with some and their evasions and justifications are disgusting.

I chose not to sue the Catholic church because I did not think that punishing the people of the church, taking their hard-earned money, would help my mind or slay any of the demons. Plus I hoped that the church would have some kind of soul-searching, maybe public hearings, that would shine a light on that whole ugly chapter in its history. So far all we have is rationalizing and blame-shifting.

My spouse didn't sue either. He just had to live with the knowledge that the Church knew, but did nothing about the predator.

Was the predator an ephebophiliac? Were those who covered up for him homosexuals themselves or just some misguided "Judge Not" pipsqueaks? Or were they all pedophiliacs who just happened to be Republicans?

Once again, Pax misses the entire picture because of his myopic perversion with defending the Catholic Church without question.  Pax, I can point to thousands of "liberals" who think Polanski should go to jail.  This is not a "liberal-v-Catholic" issue (and, btw, has it occurred to you that "liberal" and Catholic aren't mutually exclusive terms?).  Every post you make is a defense or quasi-rationalization of why the priests shouldn't be accountable and why their actions, sanctioned and HIDDEN by your church, shouldn't be considered as an indicator of the possible abuse of power in the Church.   It's disgusting, really.  Clearly, you've never seen someone suffer at the hands of a priest.  It's clear that you've never watched a family, literally, split apart because certain members just can't believe that their church would let them down like this.  You have never seen a mother so desperate to reconcile her faith with this madness that she insists her child has "mistaken" the intents of the priest that molested her child.  So desperate is her desire to retain her faith and her position in the church that she turns on her child.  Consequently, I'm guessing you've never watched a child's world crumble because the people they're supposed to trust, the people they're told are GOD'S REPRESENTATIVES ON EARTH, subject them to the cruelest and most demeaning acts one can commit upon a child.  It just stuns me that you claim to be on the side of life for the unborn, but have little desire to scream at the top of your lungs about the criminal and horrifying way that lives are ruined by God's chosen few.   I guess the life of a child only matters when they're in utero?  No matter how much you wish it to be so, there is NO evidence suggesting that homosexuality and pedophelia are related.  None.  Molestation isn't about sex or consentual pleasure - it's about an abuse of power and control.  What better way to abuse that power and control a child than to claim to be representing God and take advantage of the trust a parish puts into a priest?  The Vatican should've turned each and every priest into the authorities immediately.  But, it didn't!  The Vatican perpetuated the abuse by a) ignoring the problem, b) attempting to silence the victims, and c) playing a sick shell game with priests at the expense of the victims. 

Reason, while I have never witnessed these horrors, I'd gladly call out these criminals whether they're liberals or conservatives. But I have witnessed the havoc wreaked on the church by those who consider themselves to be liberals. And I'm not going to back down from my contention, and supported by the Vatican, that they are largely to blame for the priest sex abuse scandal that has brought a hypocritical response from those who bash the priests but then stick up for Polanski. If only they knew that while homosexuals are thought to make up a third of the priests, they have committed half of the sex abuse cases. And roughly 40 percent of the males who make up 80 percent of the sex abuse victims are 14 years of age or older. That, my man, is ephebophilia. As for the rest, it'd be interesting to know who were the products of distorted Vatican II theology.

pax:  I said it once, and I'll say it again:  anybody who did what he did is a piece of unmitigated offal who should have flushed his own pathetic self down the sewer.  Another thing:  he is no man.  He may be a male, but he is no man. 

I don't believe this has anything at all to do with the Roman Catholic Church or to the Pope or any of the priests in the attacks on children since the beginning of the papacy.  Nothing.  It has to do with one contemptible male who raped a 13-year-old girl.  It happens to have been against the law at the time he did it.  It was a punishable crime to which I believe he admitted.  Yet for 30 years he has escaped the pathetic "justice" that may have been meted out to him.  He has run like the spineless coward he is. 

What the priests -- and others in positions of religious standing -- have done and continue to do is wrong and should be punishable by courts of law.  The offenders should be arrested, tried, and, if convicted, slammed into prison for the remainder of their unnatural lives.  The same thing applies to all such offenders, whether "religious" or not. 

There's the "holding Joseph's coat" violation, too, if anybody knows of that. 

Reason, while I have never witnessed these horrors, I'd gladly call out these criminals whether they're liberals or conservatives. But I have witnessed the havoc wreaked on the church by those who consider themselves to be liberals.

Pax, have you ever heard the old saying that "using "but" after a statement negates the statement".  I would have more respect for you if you didn't follow up an admission ("I'd gladly call out these criminals") with a "...but,...".  You're still trying to justify the crime by saying, "well sure, they did it, but...those evil liberals are doing this..."  One has nothing to do with the other.   Speaking from experience,  I happen to know that the majority of people who are exposing the crimes of the priesthood are NOT "liberals" or "anti-Catholic" -  they're children and families and Catholics who are horrified at what they see as a great injustice and abuse of power.  Saying that liberals wreak havoc upon the church because they call out the abuses and call a spade a spade is placing the blame on the wrong people.  Once again, there are also liberal Catholics.

One of those who "wreaked havoc on the church" is now its pope.

Another, who helped settle the molestation cases in Canada, was just busted the other day crossing the border with child pornography.

And nobody here is "rushing to defend" Polanski.  He's as bad as those in the Roman Catholic Cult who molested, and nearly as bad as those who covered for them.

Not that anyone listens to anyone else, but I read that the 45 days in polanskis case was an evaluation.  If they were going to count that as time served they might have realized that it, in fact, was not a sentence.

I caught hell yesterday because I (lamely) tried to explain why I thought Polanski ran, not defending what he did - it was despicable and he deserves prison, don't understand why it took 30+ years. I also don't understand why Pax has to try to tie this to the Church scandals. Sweet Jesus! Stop defending these people and the people who covered up for them.

Pax, I know from my long ago catachism that whatever a priest does is right and we are not to question him, but times have changed, we are all educated now and the Church does not have to lead us in all things. Get out of the Middle Ages. You act like you are afraid to face the truth and are flailing around looking for any kind of defense. The Church is guilty of a horrible sin, but is also a force of good on earth. Live with it, don't be blind to her faults.

Polanski ran because he was guilty and the plea bargain he struck wasn't going to be honored.  I've seen speculation that his lawyers more-or-less set up his arrest in order to get things over with one way or another.  I understand extradition may still be up in the air.

If he gets off because of a technicality, that's the price our society pays for not convicting (too many) innocent people.  The system is *SUPPOSED* to make it hard to convict.

 Ex-Parte communications are an explicit violation of the California Judicial Code of Ethics.  How or what is the remedy for that in such a case?

The judicial violation affects the plea agreement.