Creative Writing: Zero Tolerance Policy

“In the 60s, the Catholic Church in Massachusetts began hearing complaints that Father James Porter was sexually molesting children. Rather than relieving him of his duties, the ecclesiastical authorities simply moved him from one parish to another between 1960 and 1967, actually providing him with a fresh supply of unsuspecting families and innocent children to abuse” (Ericsson 162).

Fr Fleming was employed as president of Sydney Catholic Liberal Arts Institute Campion College at the time the accusations were made public. An additional investigation has revealed that Cardinal George Pell had been made aware of the claims regarding at least one victim, before Fr Fleming was appointed to head the Catholic College in 2005.

At this point in my life, I had become an altar server. The presiding pastor of my church was an old Brooklynite named Msgr. Dominick. In retrospect, if there was ever a pastor who had tragically lost his faith, it was surely Father Dom. Father Dom was the kind of man you picture with a scratchy voice and a pipe in his glove compartment. He was a sarcastic and cynical man, who would do everything in his power to mess with the congregation. When the choir would go on strike, he would use a tiny thrift shop speaker to play children 's choir music in spite of them. On occasion, Father Dom would pretend the altar servers were deaf to confuse the lectors. Every Sunday morning, he would tell me it was time to “wake up the Jews”, and would play the church bells as loud as he could.

In over a period of years, an increasing amount of attention has been shed to the problem of child sexual abuse in the church. While churches, and other facilities which care for children, have had their experience of this problem, most attention has been brought to the abuse in the Catholic Church. Around the world, case after case has been seen in the press of clergy and members of religious orders being charged with sex offenses against children. Some of these cases go back decades. The issue has certainly brought attention around the world. The reason why, is the question that ponders in everyone mind.

This article interests me because they are eager to respond in this kind of situation by suspending the priest, whose mistake only is to used the product of modern technology as a way of reaching his young parishioners during mass, while the diocese authorities never suspend priests who keep molesting children.

Issue #2: What are the remedies in this situation? How can Lakewood stop the use of the sermons?

The Catholic church shouldn’t have let it slide under the rug and move him to a different school, avoiding any controversy that may have come up. Shifting forward to Keough, Franz is positive that the Catholic church knew about his abuse from Maskell prior to 1992 when Jane Doe came forward. While the Archbishop denied this, they also said that “the initial allegation could not be corroborated and Father Maskell returned to active ministry in 1993 to 1994” (The Conclusion). With Franz’s account of what happened with Maskell prior to Keough, Jane Doe would have had the corroboration she needed to make the case against Maskell.

Per phone conversation with him, he stated those are false accusations, he became agitated and disruptive and hung

He further explained that “the faithful ought not to think that just because priests preside over Mass that they are more important than the people who make up the church itself” (USA Today). Pope Francis is pushing for these reforms in the church because he believes that some of the old traditions in the church are incorrect and immoral and that something needs to change for the better.

During a confessional, an emotionally conflicted Priest receives a death threat from a mysterious parishioner, but unwilling to report it, he struggles with helping other parishioners that could be the one that wants him dead. BRIEF SYNOPSIS: During a confessional, FATHER JAMES LAVELLE (50’s) receives a death threat from a mysterious man. The man tells Lavelle that a Priest raped him when he was seven years old. Now he wants to kill a Priest, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t want to kill a bad Priest, he wants to kill an innocent one. He tells Lavelle he has one week left.

He wrote, “offenders were unlikely to change and should not be returned to ministry." He discussed the problem with Pope Paul VI (who’s papacy began in 1963 and ended on his death in 1978) and "in correspondence with several bishops" (Zoll, 2009). It was not until 2001, that offences were to be reported straight to the Rome hierarchy at the Vatican before that, it left management of the cases to local dioceses (Paulson,

Leader X self-referred himself to counseling. He does not believe that his family or any of the members of the church know about his problem.

The question asked is, “This priest molested kids in six different parishes over the last thirty years?”, the answer being, “Cardinal Law found out about it fifteen years ago and did nothing”. The questions that arise are, why are the convicted priests not punished and why did Cardinal Law excuse them? The smaller narrative tensions arise when Spotlight attempts to answer this question. Spotlight is approached by Cardinal Law trying to shut down the investigation and arguing, “...that the city flourishes when its great institutions work together”. As Spotlight continues its investigation, their relationship with the Catholic church is redefined from gregarious to timid as the church attempts to thwart Spotlight’s investigation.

Lewis, Aidan (2010). "Looking behind the Catholic sex abuse scandal". BBC News. Retrieved May, 2014 from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8654789.stm

Throughout the semester, we examined many different topics that are important to know and which are beneficial to the priestly ministry. One of these is the church’s Magisterium which is held as the authoritative teaching office of those who teach the community in the name of Christ. It serves its role to safeguard the truth of God by faithfully interpreting and applying God’s revelation. It seems that, in our current society, many people don’t know what to believe anymore. This crisis of people not knowing what to believe has affected the Catholic Church even moreso because of the whole sex scandal in recent years. Because of incidents like this, Catholics no longer trust nor do they know what to believe when it comes to morality, faith, and