4 Responses to “Pope Blames the ’70s for Pedophile Priests, Says Wasn’t ‘Evil’”

4 Responses to “Pope Blames the ’70s for Pedophile Priests, Says Wasn’t ‘Evil’”

1. JOB on January 1st, 2011 3:26 pm

I get the distinct impression that who ever wrote this article cannot read.

“And he further reasoned that the 70s version of pedophilia was not “evil in itself.” ” Do you want to give the impression that the Pope condones the 70″ view of boy-child “love”? First, he is not for a minute conding it; and second, I am afraid he is right. This sick philosophy had its famous adherents already before the 70′s. Even in the psychology profession. And it is without a doubt true that some clerics and people outside the Catholic church (mis)used these views to try to rationalise their sick crimes, if only for themselves.

Thank God that era’s influence is waning fast.
2. Uma Kura on January 1st, 2011 5:19 pm

I’m amazed that more people are not outraged by the Pope’s comments and horrible thinking. For someone who heads a church that is supposedly not swayed by whims of popular culture, they dropped the ball here. And as someone who was a teen in the 70s, I know for a fact any sort of sexual behavior between adults and children was completely frowned upon. The church leaders are corrupt and I don’t know how we can fix it.
3. majii on January 1st, 2011 6:19 pm

I was a very aware and well-informed college student in the 1970s, and at no time to my knowledge was pedophilia “accepted as normal.” I taught high school for 33 years until I retired in 2009, and I recall that child abuse and pedophilia were always issues that we, as teachers, were instructed to be on the alert for. If some of my kids were being physically or sexually abused, I wouldn’t hesitate to report it, so I’m not buying the idea that other priests didn’t know that kids were being abused by their peers. What is shameful is that they and the Pope knew about it, covered it up, relocated the guilty parties, and hoped it would all go away. Furthermore, why reassign a priest and/or pay an accuser if the behavior was considered to be “not that offensive?” The Pope is grasping at straws here, imo.

Christianity teaches that we must confess our sins and ask for forgiveness, and the fact that Pope Benedict XVI wants to place the blame for priests molesting kids on the 1970s social climate is beyond the pale. The question I have for him would be, “Even if pedophilia was more “acceptable” in the 1970s, what does this say about the RCC’s screening of applicants for the priesthood?”

But, JOB, does saying that the 70s version of pedophilia was not “evil in itself” justify the damage that these priests did to these kids? The writer never stated that Pope Benedict XVI condoned the behavior, but she did point out that he is trying to justify/explain it away by blaming it on the social climate of the 1970s. I was a college student in the early 1970s, and due to my parents I was about as straight-laced as they come when it came to matters related to sex, and there were many more like myself. Not everyone who lived through the 1970s threw their morals away and accepted the idea that anything goes. The Pope knows this, too.
4. Tim on January 3rd, 2011 2:41 am

How did the author extrapolate this:

“And he further reasoned that the 70s version of pedophilia was not ‘evil in itself.’”

from this statement made by His Holiness:

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental PERVERSION of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself.”

The author somehow concluded the Roman Pontiff subscribes to an idea he is plainly condemning. This is what we call shoddy journalism as a consequence of having an infantile reading comprehension.