In this segment, we turned too Peru, where yet another child sexual abuse
scandal involving the Catholic Church highlights the gross immunization that this organization enjoys from law
enforcement authorities year after year, decade after decade, we learn about how sexual
abusers in the Catholic Church are protected by upper level Catholic leadership, and how
abusers are allowed to remain in service to their churches where they can continue to
pray on children. Why has the Catholic Church not been shut down and are
its leaders still allowed to operate unsupervised in the presence of children. I think
so if this were any other entity, a daycare center, sports team,
karate school, or just a school in general, would they be treated with
the same laissez faire approach as the Catholic Church. Why does the Catholic Church
get a pass, Infidel, Perhaps you can shed some light on specifically what
is happening in this Peruvian congregation. Well, this particular group has been under
a very close microscope, supposedly by the Vatican, attempting to rehabilitate them but
a relatively small order, and from their beginnings they have had a history of
sexual abuse. Literally from their founder. Now, this archbishop's early resignation doesn't
clarify anything or give us any motive. You know, again, the Catholic
Church, it's prioritizing its image and rather than addressing any allegations of abuse as
I said, that have been going on for over a decade in this particular
location. Now their founder, it goes back to him, even to the
point of having animals bite people and physically and mentally abusing people as well.
They've been linked to a violent gang land graving scheme. So really we don't
know what the reason for this particular resignation. It was unexpected, it was
early, but once again the Catholic Church remained silent and let you figure it
out for yourself. You know, the Bible says a good tree cannot a
good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, and neither can a corrupt tree bring
forth good fruit. I think that we've had over a decade to judge this
group both by its fruits and by its founders, and the right choice is
to shut them down. Now, I don't think that's what's going to happen
in this case. I think we're going to see this attempt to continue.
But you know, that's just my opinion. I just wanted to say.
This story comes from ap News by Nicole Winfield and Franklin Riseano on April second,
twenty twenty four, And I guess we'll just have to wait and see
where it goes from here. But with the history they have, the answer
should be simple. Yeah, it's it's gross, it's disgusting. It's probably
the worst thing, the worst crime that you can commit. Eli what does
this scandal say about the future of this church? Well, one of the
authors of the report that made the allegations against the Sodaitium, as well as
Fando Figari, the found under and jose Gourdn the artificially who's stepped down pedros
Alinas is actually reports having been a victim of Figari's earlier before, and seems
to believe that Agudun's resignation is unprecedented and that it should indicate the possible upcoming
closure of this odal medium. And I think that kind of sounds like it
would be a nice result. I mean, there's so much abuse going on
there. This is an organization with a bad history and a part of a
that is part of a larger organization with a worse history, and it doesn't
seem like anything good is coming out of there. They're not really doing any
good, providing any benefit that we can't get otherwise, and they're doing some
harm that we're not getting otherwise. So good riddance as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, you know, the Pope is weaited on this actually, and
Scott in this article, the Pope was quoted as saying, loving the church
also means having the courage to make difficult and painful decisions, always keeping in
mind the good of the church and not of ourselves. But what decision could
he be talking about that's so painful? Well, first of all, full
disclosure here that we should note that that was he was quoting Pope Benedict and
not necessarily not trances and so and uh, Pope Benedict who also retired early
under you know, suspicious conditions, and so it's it's uh, I mean,
And we also need to make sure that we point out to that,
you know, there we want to withhold judgment to some extent, although it's
very difficult in this case. The Catholic Church has a long history of of
cover ups of you know, moving priests around and and specifically what you're asking
about, what type of of what type of decisions are they are they asking
they're asked they're being asked to put the good of the church above their own
good, Okay, And and when I hear that, I think, we
don't want to be smirched the bad name of the church. We don't want
to be smirched the bad the reputation of the church. We don't we want
even if even at our sacrifice of ourselves. You know, we're sorry you
were abused, but you know, if if it comes out, what's gonna
what's that going to tell about the church? And so we need to be
careful that we need to be careful that that we're that we're viewing that that
we're listening to these accusations, and that we're we're taking consideration into the history.
And so I don't know, to me, it's just it's just it
just rubs me the wrong way. It's it doesn't pass the sniff test,
right. It's putting the priority of the church above of above abuse victims.
That seems you know, downright despicable to me. And then that merit that
very well could be part of uh, you know why Pope Benedict left left
office, so you know, it's it's it's interesting and difficult at the same
time. Well, I think Pope Benedict is, you know, a suitable
figure for this story, because Pope Benedict was actually accused of moving priests around
exactly. I believe there were four different cases of child sexual salt in churches
in Europe. I don't remember exactly which country, but in any case,
he moved these offenders around instead of facing any kind of backlash. So I
just want to kind of pivot to infidel and talk about some of these some
of these processes, if you can even call them that, that the church
undertakes. Now, this organization that we're talking about was paid a visit by
a Catholic inspector who was supposed to be the premier Catholic expert in child sexual
abuse. First of all, how the hell does any organization, any religious
organization, need a sexual abuse expert on their faculty. That I might be
a topic for a different discussion, but I mean, can you elaborate on
this visit that this church had. What does it say about the Catholic Church
to even have someone with this distinction and what did this person even do Oh
yeah, I have to agree with you that whenever your organization has an expert
on child sexual abuse, the only thing I could think of is either some
type of therapy group or a prosecutor. Outside of that, I can't imagine
why you would need an expert on the topic and what exactly that means.
And knowing that, but at the same time, knowing that they have a
fund set aside for the defense of people who are accused of sexual abuse,
it's not surprising that they'd want to be able to maximize their dollars in this
situation and have somebody who makes those determinations. Whatever that could possibly be is
obviously going to be just like the quote you mentioned from Benedict of Catholic Church
first. So with that type of mentality, I have little doubt that any
Vatican representation that's an expert on child abuse is an expert on maximizing what's in
the self interest of the church. Now, supposedly they came over in July
and they asked some questions and told everybody, yeah, everything's good, We're
just asked some question. Essentially sounded like they were just trying to you know,
dot I's and cross t's. But you know when the guy like that
comes to town that there's something going on, and of course the heads roll.
I think what they're trying to do is just let this guy take the
fall and move on. And I think they're going to continue to attempt to
rehabilitate this. They've got ten years into this, and at some point you
got to realize you can't get rid of every order and every group in the
Catholic Church that has somebody who's committed to sexual assault, or you'll shut the
whole damn thing down. And since they're not going to do that at some
point, and this is a small order, I think they're just saying,
you know what, let's go ahead and push this through. Let's kick this
one guy out and say, okay, we fixed everything. Everything's good,
everything's wonderful now, mission accomplished, moving right along, And I think that's
really what we're more likely to see here. I hope that the gentleman who
wrote the article is right and they do get shut down, but I think
this is business as usual for the Catholic Church. Sure crime sending kids going
to keep on going well, and they are taking some actions to at least
give the impression that they're in some kind of compliance or doing some kind of
internal investigation. But they have taken the offensive, haven't they, Eli,
I mean, they have been accused by people. What actions has this organization
taken to face their accusers. Yeah, so not the organization itself, but
the authors of the reports. So Pedros Alnas and Palo Gas. Actually,
uh, it was jose Agudun who filed a lawsuit against the two of them
for defamation. It was for different yeah, for different events or for different
writings, for different articles. Essentially, So Pedro Selenas had written about Agurun
being involved with the land grabbing schemes, that Infidel has talked about forcing out
peasants as the article described them to my out the land. And then Palagaz
has been reporting on this type of ship for years, so she's no stranger
to being, you know, to these lawsuits. But she had written and
I apologize because I left out that Pedro Salinas also accused that Josea gourn had
known everything about the abuses committed by Fernanda Fagari. So it doesn't seem like
they're accusing Agurin himself of the physical and sexual abuses, just that hey,
he's he knew everything about this, and also he's doing this other really shady
shade over here, and I don't have it up and don't remember quite what
it was for that Pealo guys had been sued, but he had filed a
lawsuit against her as well. Both in twenty nineteen. He even faced pressure
from the Peruvian Church to drop the lawsuit, and so he did so that
lawsuit didn't nothing came of that that the suit was dropped, and that's kind
of just where it landed. But as Infidel said, I am I am
all with, you know, completely with you know, Pedro and Paula,
and I really kind of just hope that this does get this solididium sot of
lydium just kind of shut down and I stopped some of this abuse, hopefully
at least. Scott, when we talk about some of these policies or these
processes that the church has taken in response to these accusations, what's your take
on how authentic they are. Are these attempts at transparency just a facade or
are they trying to be genuine? Ray? Well, that's the million dollar
question, isn't it right? It's it's you know, are they are they
being legit here? And and on one hand, you know, I'm happy
to see that there seems to be at least some attempts to appear accountable.
And I may be overly pessimistic here, I'm trying to be cautiously pessimistic.
You know, Like we said before that they they've definitely had excuse me,
they've definitely set up set themselves up here, right. They have a history
of the cover up, of the placing the good of the church above the
good of the parishioners and that kind of thing, you know. But I'd
like to see what's going to come out, like in another ten years,
another twenty years, another fifty years down the line. Wants that statue to
limitate has passed, right, you know, show me the money. We
see some accountability here. I want to see a little bit more transparency.
I want to see some more involvement of the police. If there's crimes happening
here, if there is abuse happening here, I want to see more actions
being taken place, being taken by the church hierarchy, by the by the
higher ups in the church, to invote to bring to judgment to earthly judgment.
You know, the people that are that are perpetrating these crimes. I
mean, there's horrendous crimes being committed against human beings here, and and it's
it's what it makes it more horrendous that it's a violation of this of this
holy trust that they're that they're putting forth here. It's unwarranted trust, but
it's it's still there. So you know, I, I, like I
said, I'm being cautiously pessimistic. I if you want to ask me to
put my money down. I don't think they're being I don't think they're being
authentic here, but you know, I have to reserve my my judgment if
I want to be a good skeptic, to make sure that I'm not jumping
to conclusions just because their position is against mine. But you know, it
would go a long way for them to involve the authorities, and I'm talking
about the police authorities, and that that would that would that would do a
lot to put my mind at ease. I guess yeah. And I think
this speaks to the larger picture where the church is just not held to the
same standards as everybody else. We've covered this, you know, other segments
we've covered this in recent weeks. They don't disclose or make financial disclosures.
Nobody has any idea where their money's going. We know that they are embezzling
billions of dollars every year. We have no idea what's happening to accused perpetrators
of children. We oftentimes never see them again. And we do know that
the church has a fund that protects these people, which is probably more asinine
than the fact that they have a expert on child sexual assault. But you
know, where do we see this getting better? What are some of the
avenues that can help this along? And infidel on that point, I kind
of want to turn to this idea of rehabilitation that you were talking about.
Could you elaborate a little bit more what exactly do you mean by rehabilitation for
this organization or for the Catholic Church in general. I think that for the
Catholic Church in general, you would need something along the lines of bottoms up,
opening of the books, opening the doors, and showing some level of
accountability. As Scott said, first, you'd have to welcome the police in
and really attempt to clean house. I have to admit that it's not something
that I would expect to ever happen. I think that well, we're more
likely to see are attempts and some of them may be honest attempts at rehabilitation
of changing the way things are done. I just think that there's so much
that goes into this idea of automatic trust, this idea of this holy trust.
Whether one of you mentioned earlier that it brings such an ea ease of
abuse that I think it invites exactly the wrong people for that type of situation.
So I don't think that's something that can be fixed. Maybe it can
be mitigated in some ways, But right now, I think we see the
term rehabilitation pretty much being a term thrown around by the Catholic Church to certain
things because they're trying to it's about image control more than it is anything that
you or I would see as rehabilitation. So time and again we see accounts
of sexual predators in the church, not just the Catholic Church, but largely
in the Catholic Church, going into confinement or being imprisoned, etc. But
also being rehired. And I've talked about this before that you can actually track
this stuff down, and I believe I have a website here abuse lawsuit dot
com can tell you which congregations in the country have been accused and what has
happened of the accusers. We see them come back and be reinstated. Eli,
I kind of want to just get your opinion, and I think I
know the answer to this. But you know, with all this talk about
rehabilitation, I mean, is this something that is rehabilitation for the individual something
that's possible. I mean, should somebody in this, should we be surprised
that they're being reinstated, should they be allowed? Can we ever trust them
again? I mean, what what do you kind of take away from this?
I was when you know, Scott was Sharon Hnstompson. As you responded,
I sat here thinking like it really like you mentioned the double standard Jimmy,
that churchers are held to that others. If you could think of any
other organization where you point to the CEO and you're like, that guy's fucking
kids, and that sounds really vulgar. Some people are like, why do
you have to say it that way, because there's nothing fucking nice about it.
It's vulgar, it's fucking horrible. He's they're fucking kids, and and
and the police aren't getting involved. You're going to the manager and you're saying,
these guys are fucking kids and they're not getting involved. Why is that
happening? And this idea of rehabilitation like, oh well, let's just make
them better and put them back. No, what are you talking about?
Like, there is no other circumstance in which you would go to a victim
and say, you know, we're sorry that this happened. We're going to
make sure your your abuser is better, and then we're going to put them
right back in front of you for you know, until one of you leaves.
Yeah, Like, that's so crazy. Pretty much a rhetorical question,
and I think you gave me the response. But my point is, can
anybody watching this show? Can any but any of our viewers who are followers
of the Catholic faith answer differently than the way that Eli just answered And I
would be appalled if you thought that you could. And so this is something
that we need to really hold a microscope to, just like we do when,
for example, we had a basketball coach a few years ago that said
some disparaging terms starts African Americans fired. Ellen DeGeneres was a not being nice
to people show canceled, but pastors, priests assaulting children still get to go
on living their life. And so I kind of want to end there,
but not without getting final thoughts from each of our panelists. I want to
start with Scott and move to Infidel and then Eli. So Scott closing comments,
what I think has to happen here is kind of contradictory, two different
things. There has to be a bottom up movement, right, the rank
and file Catholics has to stop accepting this, Okay, this is not okay,
this kind of behavior, this kind of cover up, this kind of
we can watch our we can police ourselves. You know who's watching the watchmen?
Right, And so there has to be a grassroots movement, But there
also has to be a change coming from the top down. We talked about
this Pope saying, or Pope Benedict saying, keep in mind the good of
the church above the above ourselves. Okay, that has to change. Okay,
So there has to be those two changes. A grassroots, bottom up
movement, We're not going to put up with this anymore, and then real
legitimate change coming from the top down. Absolutely absolutely Infidel. I think that
the only way that the Catholic Church changes is when the Catholic Church becomes irrelevant.
I think that they're so entrenched in literally thousands of years of bad ideas
combined into a box and with a lot of money behind it. So it's
not going to happen anytime soon. But I just have a hard time seeing
them make any meaningful changes. And you're right, though, this isn't something
limited to just the Catholic Church. It's in every organization because once again that
presumption of holy you know, expectation of you can trust this person, and
that is really what has to change. Sure, Eli, this is,
you know, one of those things that I think about when I talk a
lot about how I think religion causes harm that without providing any novel benefit.
And this isn't you know, unique harm. This isn't unique to Catholicism,
with the Catholic Church or religion in general, but it is is harm that
exists and there's no benefit coming from the organization that's providing it. So it's
one of those things I tend to agree with. Part of what Infidel said
is that as long as this organization is there, I don't think this is
going to change. This is going to continue happening until enough people are unless
enough people within the organization are tired enough of it that they make the change.
Just like Scott said, from the bottom up, in the top down
that I just don't see that happening. Yeah, yeah, I would ask
my viewers what if it were your child, would you still give the organization
money? Would you still trust them? And why are we just doing that
openly and not holding them accountable the way that we hold each other accountable.
So this is something that we come across a lot on this show.