Bishops are the Real Criminals, Not Pedophile Priests

Prosecute the bishops on a federal level 

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In the last week of papal news, when it got to the topic of pedophile priests, everyone seemed to repeat that the bishops should be removed from office and the pervert priests should be in prison.

I think it's the other way around.

The priests should have been taken out of office and the bishops should be in prison. Pedophile priests were sick men who should not have had access to children once it became obvious what they were doing with the children. Pedophilia is a sickness. 

Bishops committed serial felonies when they repeated the same pattern of transferring priests, paying off victims to be silent, and covering up the crimes in almost every city in the United States. There has to have been some kind of collusion from the beginning, at the top, or the same pattern of coverup would not have happened in almost every archdiocese in the United States. 

Transferring the pervert priests to another location where they could continue to predate until they got caught again is a pattern of felonies on a federal level committed by the bishops. Yet I don't remember hearing any of our spokespersons mention that critical part of the decades long crime epidemic in the ubiquitous coverage of the Pope last week, although I have to admit, I did not see all of it. 

So I wish reporters would ask tougher questions, dig deeper than a paid spokesperson for the story. Stop focusing on the pedophile priests, they're not the bad guys here.  It's the bishops who aided and abetted and covered up the crimes, using every means possible and all you have to do is look at what happened in my life to see just how far they will go to keep just one little old lady blogging from a slum SRO in Tahoe from exposing them.

The perp priests are not on their own capable of the massive crimes that happened on a national and apparently international level in the Roman Catholic Church in the way they apparently let the priests have sex with children.  In pursuit of justice, focusing on the sick priests instead of the criminal bishops who kept them in neighborhood churches with access to children is going in the wrong direction.

The sound byte should be: Prosecute the bishops on a federal level.
 

Federal indictments probably would have happened in 2010 if Eric Holder hadn’t been the Attorney General (how soon we forget). If the federal government can investigate these crimes in Australia and Ireland, why can't they do it here. 

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By

Kay Ebeling

Producer, City of Angels Blog

(Cartoon comes from Papal Conference of the Philippines, honest, it was on Google images from their website)

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