Reply #12: The organizational structure of the Catholic Church increases... [View All]

[JVS]

possibility for covering up abuses of this nature though.

Staffing and placement decisions within the Catholic church are not made from below, but rather from above. This is the essence of the scandal involving Cardinal Law. It was his responsibility to deal with the problem and he didn't "Critics have accused Cardinal Law of moving priests from one pulpit to another rather than confronting the problem" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2572517.stm
The problem with this kind of a system is that those at the parish level are not used to questioning the decisions made by superiors and one day Fr. Bob shows up and because decisions have been made above nobody questions what the reason for his arrival is. It's not in their hands.

Before I move on to describe the alternative methods of organizations, I'd like to criticize the methodology of the study. Protestant is not a denomination, in fact the word has taken on a set-theoretical definition of "all that is Christian but neither Catholic or Orthodox" This category covers a wide variety of clergy members ranging from Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian pastors who have been through a ordination (and presumably a moral screening) process every bit as demanding as those of a Catholic Priest all the way to guys who got their ordination through the mail or who simply started a church on their own. Thus to study "Protestant" clergy in comparison to Catholic clergy is akin to studying birds in comparison to chickens. One of the reasons that many Catholics and mainline Protestants have confidence in their clergy is that they know that these men and women have dedicated several years of study to becoming clergy and done so under the supervision of authorities that would likely expel them from seminary if questionable behaviors were to surface (i.e heavy drinking, going to whorehouses, etc.). The study would be better to compare like to like instead of comparing Catholic clergy to a broad "other" category. Frankly, I'd expect priests to be held to a higher standard than do it yourself holy-roller church starters.

In most mainline Protestant churches staffing decisions are made by the congregation. Individual congregations hire and fire pastors. Thus situations where it would be possible to cover up a minister's wrong-doing are less frequent and would require the cooperation of numerous members of the congregation, in particular the victims as well. If pastor Bob is screwing around with the kids there is not going to be a call from the archbishop to move him somewhere else. Pastor Bob can either quit and go looking for a new opening somewhere or he can wait until the congregation gets suspicious of him and fires him. Congregations where Bob would apply would likely be suspicious of his inability to stay anywhere for long. For Bob not to face prosecution and remain a clergy member would be difficult because there is no way for him to just up and disappear without arousing suspicion. Basically, the Catholic church's efficiency when it comes to assigning and rearranging priests from above like so many soldiers is really good at putting priests into churches, but its practices can lend itself to cover-up and placement of clergy who should not be there.