Saturday, October 20, 2007

Sexual misconduct by teachers?

In a recent article:
ttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071020/ap_on_re_us/teacher_sex_abuse the vast problems of sexual abuse by teachers with students is finally beginning to be revealed. Naturally, the sex-abuse crisis in the Church is brought in, but no attempt is made to put it into perspective with the same crisis in American public schools. Private schools also get bashed because they often use non-credentialed teachers. (Of course this not true of accredited private schools, all of which have sexual abuse policies in place.) Here is a quote from the article:

Two of the nation's major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, each denounced sex abuse while emphasizing that educators' rights also must be taken into account. "Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations," said NEA President Reg Weaver, who refused to be interviewed and instead released a two-paragraph statement.


Notice that the concern is for both the rights of students, and the rights of teachers. This is something lacking in the Catholic Church's situation, where even a false accusation results in immediate suspension a divinis, i.e., net able to celebrate the liturgy or sacraments, and the priest is immediately removed from his position,often overnight, and is then never allowed to serve again, contrary to the decrees of canon law. Said priest must then go to therapy and evaluation before he can be cleared (if the accusation was unfounded). But since no one can get any higher clearance than that they are probably unlikely to commit such an offence, what bishop would ever put said priest back into service again? It's like trying to prove a universal negative: the priest will never do it again. Only when he's dead.


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