Dear John:

You have your facts incorrect.

Mr. Corapi's superiors found what they thought was credible evidence. His superiors, therefore, were preparing for formal hearing to determine his guilt or innocence, but Mr. Corapi refused to cooperation and instead resigned as a clergyman.

He was not given the punishment of laicization. He asked for it himself. He voluntarily asked to be laicized.

Rash Judgment does not border on presumption, it is presumption. Rash Judgment is a grave sin. The sin of rash Judgment is, in essence, jumping to conclusions about thing when one does not have all the facts.

I am sorry to say, John, that you are committing the crime of rash judgment in your opinions about how Mr. Corapi was treated and about the actions of bishops in the sex scandal. You need to get the facts before making any conclusions.

As far as a sex scandal is concerned what you have posted here is about 100% incorrect. The vast majority of people who were molested by priests were not young boys, they were teenagers. The perpetrators were mostly homosexuals and/or ebophiles, not pedophiles.

In addition the number of priests who were involved and guilty of molesting other people was only about 1-1/2  to a maximum of 4%. Now don't get me wrong, even one is too many. But we must keep this in perspective.

A Wisconsin study found that of professionals who molest children 66% of those cases involve psychiatrist, psychologist, and social workers. The clergy (of all denominations) represented 11% of those cases. As we have seen it from recent events there are huge numbers of children being molested by teachers in our public and private schools. So this is hardly an exclusive problem to the Church.

As far as bishops moving a priest from one parish to another, the reason they did that is because that is what they were advised to do by the psychiatrists. This was at a time in the 1950s, 60s, 70s that the psychiatric community was not familiar with the dynamics of someone who is a ebophile or pedophile. It was thought by the psychiatric community that he attraction was singular and thus removing the priest from the parish to another one would solve the problem. We now know that the attraction is not to a singular individual but to individuals in general that are in a particular age group — pedophiles attracted to prepubescent children; ebophiles attracted to minor teenagers. Thus, moving the priest from one parish to another did not solve the problem.

This is not to say that there were not bishops who actively covered up these things. But the primary reason for moving a priest for one parish to another is because the church was given that advice by the psychiatric community.

I have no idea where you get the idea that convicted priests are not laicized. If convicted, they are indeed laicized. I am not familiar with any exceptions. There are priests who have been permanently suspended and allowed to live out their lives in cloister. This, however, only happens in cases that the Bishop considers credible, but legal action is not possible for lack of evidence (as the Court defines admissible evidence.)

There are other matters that are involved in this complex issue which I will not get into here, but it suffices to say that Bishops were not as duplicitous as the media tried to make them, nor were "some" the bishops innocent of wrongdoing.

The Pope has ordered the bishops to set policies that will protect children and adults from abuse. But, we must always remember that sexual abuse is not the unforgivable sin. On a case-by-case basis it is not necessary to forever prohibit a priest from going back to ministry. The Catholic Church believes and is based upon the concepts of repentance, atonement, and forgiveness. There is no sin excluded.

Some will say, however, that once a molester always a molester thus these priest should be forever banned from ministry. This notion is a total lie.

Every study done that I know of going all the way back to 1970 shows that once a sex offender is released from prison they have the least recidivism rate of any other ex-con (except for a murderer who is released from prison). The US Department of Justice also has statistics on their website that confirms these statistics. The fact is, that once a sex offender is released from prison they are the least likely among other ex-cons to re-offend. This is not opinion. This is the conclusion from study after study after study on this issue. Those people in the media or in law enforcement who refuse to accept this fact have no honor or integrity.

It is true, John, that we sin when we commit rash judgment. To avoid rash judgment one needs to reserve their opinions until they have the facts, all the facts, a nothing but the facts. As Sgt. Joe Friday, from the TV show Dragnet, always said, "just the facts, ma'am."

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary