In not wanting The Pope to visit uk at the taxpayers expense?

[Alouiseg]

Apparently The visit wil cost 12m pounds. That's 12 million pounds to be pinched from other budgets. For a man who has been responsible for covering up crimes against children.

My MP will receive an email today and I will make my abhorrence very clear.

"If one of my colleagues was implicated in a child abuse allegation, my response would not be to hush it up."

And the response of the General Teaching Council (or whatever it's called) would not be to quietly move the teacher to another school, warn the parents of the abused child to keep quiet at all costs. Then to issue an edict which said that ALL allegations of abouse shoulf be sent in complete confidence to the head of the aforementioned GTC without passing them on to the police or any other authority so that they could be dealt with appropriately without risk of damage to the image of the teaching profession.

I repeat - nobody is blaming individual catholics, or saying that all catholics are possible paedophiles. It is the hierarchy of the church we are talking about, not the laity.

YANBU to resent the cost of £12m being met by taxpayers. As others have said though, the Pope has been invited by the Queen and her government. I don't invite people to visit and then ask them to pay me for the cost of their lodgings etc.

This is the same for any other visitor invited by the State. Is the issue paying at all or the fact that he has been invited or the incredible cost of £12m?
If it cost "only" £2m for example, would that be acceptable?

It's no point reporting daftpunk's posts - she is obviously kept on by Mumsnet Towers as some sort of court jester. She has total license to sat whatever she likes!

Loving the idea of MNHQ alterego

Don't know what that particular post said (and personal remarks are different anyway), but I've always thought that generally Daftpunk performed a useful service. She tends to say the things that someone, somewhere, is thinking and it gives everyone the chance to show how wrong those things are.

NetworkGuy, you should probably start a thread sometime about the military/arms. I think they are a necessary evil, but I know that not everyone does.

'And the response of the General Teaching Council (or whatever it's called) would not be to quietly move the teacher to another school, warn the parents of the abused child to keep quiet at all costs. Then to issue an edict which said that ALL allegations of abouse shoulf be sent in complete confidence to the head of the aforementioned GTC without passing them on to the police or any other authority so that they could be dealt with appropriately without risk of damage to the image of the teaching profession.'

But seeker you are talking about the situation as it applied nearly a decade ago now. It hasn't been like that in the English catholic church for years. It's fair enough to criticize what happened (God knows, how could it be defended?) but you need to get your facts about the current situation updated.

When did the Pope reverse his 2001 letter saying that all child abuse accusations should be sent to him under strict confidentiality rather than given to the police?

I can't remember what I said..?

Dunno seeker, the GTC would probably be quite happy as long as it had its £36...

But otherwise yes, that was what I was trying to say but you put it much better.

Earlier this year -- there's an account of the papal communications here.

As the article points out, unlikely to make victims of abuse feel less angry, and tbh, why would any shutting of the stable door after the horse has bolted make anyone feel better, but the idea that nothing is being done to effect change is a falsehood.

As usual, Custy gets straight to the point.

Math, fair point, but why hasn't he given up all the evidence about all the priests whose cases were kept secret in the past? There are cover-ups going back decades. Full and frank disclosure to the civil authorities is the only thing he can possibly do to assuage his critics.

So, on the 12 April this year the Vatican made it clear that all cases of suspected child abuse should be reported to the Police. That's this year. 2010.

Rather gives the lie to the "Oh, it was all a long time ago and things are different now" argument, don't you think?

I believe the way it works is that all records are/were kept at diocesan level and not necessarily sent to the curia. It's up to the prosecutors in each individual jurisdiction to subpoena records. However, civil law has its problems too -- in some cases the statute of limitations applies, i.e., it's too late to prosecute some crimes. This is an issue wrt a lot of crimes, with the exception of murder and maybe war crimes afaik. (This has to be salt in the wound of victims.)

I think it's interesting too that this change only took place a couple of months ago.

What about the records that prosecutors in various countries have been trying to get from the church? Are they still refusing to cooperate there or has that changed too?

You are correct,mathanxiety. In my case and of many others, we were told that the 'passage of time' has affected our case. We had been waiting since 1998 to be heard,and then finally we hear that most of our tormentors are now deceased or in poor health that it wouldn't be in the public interest.
The Church managed to stall our cases from being heard. They did this by claiming that they had never heard of us. It took court orders to get our details/records from them - about two years in fact.

'When did the Pope reverse his 2001 letter saying that all child abuse accusations should be sent to him under strict confidentiality rather than given to the police?'

That Pope died, seeker. Five years ago.

I know he did - but his instructions weren't changed until April of this year!

Hold on. The letter was from the man who is currently pope. Unless you mean a different letter.

Ah, so you DO admit that things have moved on! Frankly, the instructions weren't adhered to over here, anyway. The English dioceses took their own line, in accordance with Nolan and what followed Nolan.

This pope in his previous job told them that they had to keep the abuse from the police.

We are told that only a couple of months back he changed those instructions. So he still thought covering it up was right until then.