The Double Standard About Pedophile

Read an interesting article that finally inspired me to post after months of being AWOL...

Father Polanski Would Go to Jail

The long and short of it - priests (and the Church as a whole, in fact) have a dark cloud placed over them and face tremendous malignment and vilification because a small number of them (roughly 4%) are guilty of pedophilia while famous director Roman Polanski, an admitted sexual abuser, gets an Academy Award.

As Fr. Reese rightly points out in his article, any person or organization who's members are guilty of such a crime should be placed under a microscope. Attempts should be made to get to the bottom of it, so to speak. And those guilty should be justly punished.

The point is that while this process is taking place in the Church, it is not in Hollywood for people like Polanski. There is a double standard.

Now, the thing that really struck me is not so much this double standard. It's a huge problem and one I am afraid will continue. But this article serves as a reminder of just how broken we are as people, across the board.

Sexual brokenness rears its ugly head in many ways. Pedophilia is just one of them. Any time our bodies are being used for anything other than to love as God loves (by giving ourselves over to another, not taking something from them) we deviate from the intent with which God created them. And when we deviate from God's plan, things get dicey.

What is worst of all is that ANYONE guilty of sexual abuse, would be given a free pass. People have viciously attacked the Church in light of the scandal, yet others guilty of the same crime are allowed to move on unscathed. Forget the double standard, it just reeks of evil.

Christopher West on Nightline

Video Here: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=7534337

Hey, so I know I'm like 2 weeks late on this bit, but there hasn't been anything "on-time" about this blog in the past year anyway :)

As many may know by now, Christopher West was featured on ABC's news show Nightline. I actually thought it was a success for the simple fact that hundreds (I imagine) of people who've never heard of the Theology of the Body before now have been introduced... sort of.

The feature was not without it's eyeball-rolling moments - ABC labeling West a sex therapist, over-exagerrating West's analogy with Pope John Paul II and Hugh Hefner (founder of Playboy), to name a couple. Yet, seeds were planted. I've gotta believe that some people investigated TOB a little further because of this 8 minute presentation.

At any rate, it has made for a lot of dialogue on the net, especially in the Catholic blogosphere. For the record, here's the TOB Institue's reaction to the feature... http://www.tobinstitute.org/announcement.asp?AnnouncementsID=22

Love & Monkeys

A neat little snippet of a talk by Dr. Janet Smith

Only by His Divine Mercy

So, I'm becoming increasingly convinced, in what I see happening in the world around me and in my recent prayer experiences, that the Divine Mercy is the single most important devotion to come from the 20th Century.

I do not say this to slight other devotions. Indeed I love Our Lady and find much comfort and hope in her appearances in Fatima. Lord knows we need her prayers and her guidance.

What I see is a world just absolutely lost. Like, in the middle of the jungle, without a compass or water, beaten within inches of death, lost. We are pushing God further away every day, and finding ourselves deeper in that jungle.

I wish I could express my thoughts more clearly. All I know is that WHAT BUT HIS MERCY CAN SAVE US? I mean really, THANK GOD FOR HIS MERCY! How lucky are we that HE IS SO FORGIVING!? We've spit in His face and pushed Him away. We've given away the freedom he blessed us with. We've fallen for the same lies of the evil one over and over again. We're KILLING EACH OTHER and we've practically buried ourselves alive. And yet - His Mercy is more powerful than all of that. All the sin in the world COWERS at His Divine Mercy!

No matter how bad things get, and I can only imagine how much worse they will get, we have such a good reason to hope - because God is Merciful. If only the world would whisper at once... "Jesus, I trust in you".