Documentary About Pedophile Priests Shakes Up Poland | Hacker News Reader

Documentary About Pedophile Priests Shakes Up Poland

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86 pointsblanche_38 comments

The documentary is very good and based on facts, and the Polish church never had and still does not have any means of getting rid of people such as the collaborators who have been implanted there by the old communist governments or child molesters who proliferate in this environment, having unrestricted access to children in schools and churches. They are simply moved from one chapel to another or, eventually, to houses for the elderly priests.

This needs to change, and, as a Polish person, I wholeheartedly welcome this documentary. I am glad that it has been made - it would never be possible if it was not for independent filmmaking.

It's time for the Catholic church to stop being associated with child molestation - and in order for that to happen, the child molestation must be purged from that church with all appropriate means. Otherwise, that stigma will just keep on going on.

But what if there’s nothing to purge? What if the church itself is the catalyst for creating predators?

The fact that this problem has spanned generations tells me that this isn’t something you can purge, it’s fundamental to the way the church operates. Ask a man to be celibate and then give him unquestioned, divine power over individuals? Of course you’re going to have a predator problem!

Institutions such as public schools and the Boy Scouts that do not require celibacy have had very similar problems. So have some Protestant churches that allow their ministers to marry.

The John Jay report done on clerical sex abuse in the USA didn’t find the percentage of abusers in the priesthood to be significantly different from those in other professions.

The impulse to cover up is not limited to the institution of celibacy by any means.

Unfortunately as a catholic I fear this is a ticking time bomb for many non first world churches. The church here in the US only put into place decent zero-tolerance policies in the late 90s and early 2000s and many churches in other regions have failed to take matching action.

> Institutions such as public schools and the Boy Scouts that do not require celibacy have had very similar problems.

All have one thing in common: adults with unchecked power over minors.

Its more common than that as it starts with mothers breastfeeding their kids. Other scientists argue Pedophilia and others are perfectly natural, you even see this behaviour in other animals, including castrated male dogs trying to copulate with younger dogs. For decades, the BBC hid the sexual habits of Bonobo monkeys from the wider public, they have sex with all ages of their species, something that was only known in small academic circles. Of course the accusation of pedophilia and other philia's is an excellent blackmail and extortion method most often used by security services of all people! Can you think of a better accusation to make where it can not be defended as it boils down to a historical event which is medically hard to prove and simply relies on the evidence of at least 2 people. Now why cant you make up a false accusation about a teacher who you didnt like and think about how it could be defended when you put yourself in either persons shoes.

After reading the below, at least you will learn why some men and women get so angry at mothers breastfeeding in public considering the sexual connotations.

Levin, Roy J. (May 2006), "The breast/nipple/areola complex and human sexuality". Sexual & Relationship Therapy. 21 (2):237–249.

    p240-241 wrote:
    Approximately 33 to 50% of mothers described breast feeding as an erotic experience, while some 25% expressed guilt because of the sexual excitement that they felt (von Sydow, 1999). In a few cases the arousal is strong enough to induce orgasm which causes some nursing mothers to abandon breast feeding because of the sexual stimulation (Dickinson, 1949, p. 67; Masters & Johnson, 1966, p. 162). In a questionnaire on orgasm and pregnancy published in a Dutch magazine for women, Gianotten (1988) asked ‘‘Did you experience, while breastfeeding, a sensation of sexual excitement’’, 34% (total n¼153) answered ‘‘Yes’’ and to the question ‘‘Did you experience, while breastfeeding, pleasurable contractions in the uterine region’’, 71% answered ‘‘Yes’’. Of these 153 women who had been breastfeeding who replied to the question ‘‘Did you experience, while breast feeding an orgasm (during or as the result of breastfeeding)’’, 12 (8%) answered ‘‘Yes’’. Ignorance about such normal physiological occurrences can sometimes create gross miscarriages of the law. According to Yalom (1997, p. 254), a mother in Syracuse, New York in 1992 had her two-year-old child taken away from her after admitting that she became aroused on nursing, the authorities claiming that she sexually abused the child. A judge found there was no case and after 8 months the child was returned to the custody not of her mother, but of her grandparents!

Catholic church is unique in the power to hide these things. At least in strongly religious countries with close ties between politicians and church officials.

Since this problem is seen in so many countries, that does seem to be the case.

All-male moral authority is a real problem.

> and the Polish church never had and still does not have any means of getting rid of people

Why do you think so? I believe they can be excommunicated. There's a known process around it, even if rarely used.

Excommunication is used for people who repeatedly offend the church via some dogmatic means, not for people who commit crimes while staying inside its structures.

Wikipedia:

"A person may be ferendae sententiae (i.e., upon judicial review) excommunicated if he:

...

4. who breaks a penal law allowing excommunication that was enacted on local level, which the local authority, however, may only do with great caution and for grave offences (for Latin Catholics, can. 1318 CIC)."

I would expect molesting children to be grave enough.

Is this rule even used at all?

Yes https://web.archive.org/web/20141109230706/http://www.huffin...

I wholeheartedly hope to see this happen in Poland.

>It's time for the Catholic church to stop being associated with child molestation

I disagree. The Catholic Church SHOULD be associated with child molestation. Systematic child molestation.

If they are moving known pedophiles around and giving them access to new children, why should they not be called out?

Finish reading the sentence you quote, and you'll find you do not disagree with them.

Perhaps I should elaborate. They should not be given a chance to rehabilitate their image and "come up with a way to address priests". They should be treated like any other sex trafficking organization, and all in charge should be imprisoned.

>the Polish church never had and still does not have any means of getting rid of people

The Polish government should get rid of them. The Polish church shouldn't be able to keep people out of jail, right?

> such as the collaborators who have been implanted there by the old communist governments or child molesters who proliferate in this environment

I find this repeated idea weird. We're not in a state which would politically protect them anymore. They could be easily removed/charged last week. Bringing up the implanting by the gov today sounds like "not only we hid child molesters, but also keep hiding old communist party spies now" - how does it make things better?

It's the other way around - communists wanted to inflitrate church as the only independent of them legal institution in Poland.

And what better way than to blackmail pedophile priests to force them to report on other priests and oppositionists?

And yeah, being not only pedophiles but also communist spies makes it it even worse that now 30 years later it's still not solved. It's mostly because all the governments compete to get favors of the church so that church tell people to vote for them.

The movie is available legally for free on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrUvQ3W3nV4

There are English subtitles.

Not very related, but I found this excellent yet sad news story via HN search half a year back: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christinekenneally/orph...

It's a long read but IMO was worth it.

It seems to be a long-running trend for Churches and similar religious organizations to do this sort of stuff.

Poland is insanely religious. I grew up in Poland and moved to US with my parents at age of 14. I became an atheist. Recently, I visited Poland, and was amazed that people my age are still mostly religious.

Recently, I read a story about people who took down a statue of a priest who molested children. There was an outcry and some politician had the statue put back in its place. That is just so twisted. Many people I talked to in Poland don't want to even discuss church and systematic protection of pedophiles. It makes them very uneasy but they want to ignore it i guess?

The problem with that particular statue was procedural - they illegally took down that statue before the city council decided what to do with it as the accusations appeared. I can understand why these people did it - they can be frustrated after decades of being ignored.

The late president of Gdańsk said they will take it down, but it takes time for the procedure, and the activists took it down themselves before that. So they will probably put it back and then take it down legally. As funny as this sounds Gdańsk is very liberal for Poland.

But, generally I agree - Poland is crazy religious, and the problem with that particular priest was that he knew all the highest officials in Poland, including even presidents. He was the Solidarity priest, that participated in the protests against communism. At first it was almost a national betrayal to say anything bad about him (because he was a figure of anti-communism opposition), then after communism failed he knew presidents and prime ministers and who would act on these accusations.

So he died without being officially accused, and now it's hard to even get people to remove the statues...

Here's another great documentary that reflects the efforts of the Catholic Church historically to not only hide the offense and move the alleged perpetrator, but would often move them back to positions where the abuse could take place again:

The Keepers

https://www.netflix.com/title/80122179

Tell sexual humans not to be sexual due to some made up non-sense myths and put them in positions of power and authority, what could possibly go wrong? They want to stop child abuse, and sure who is not for that, but how about stopping myth abuse?

I'm personally not convinced by the often exerted narrative that celibacy leads to pedophilia. It seems to me that a more likely explanation is that someone with a certain inclination would seek out a job (perhaps even subconsciously) that may offer him a chance to get closer to living out that inclination.

It's probably a bit of both. Homosexuality is, at least stereotypically, more common in environments where there are no other options, like sailing ships and prisons, even in cultures where it is strongly taboo. It's a small leap to say the same could apply to paedophilia.

I wonder if there's value in seperating homosexuality, the sexual preference/identity, from the act - I feel like in many of those "no other options" scenarios there probably wouldn't be a lot of identifying as homosexual, nor a preference for homosexual acts, but instead as acts of sexual pragmatism.

There are other options. It's a public secret that "kitchen helpers" of priests in Poland are often also their lovers. As long as they are adult and agreed voluntarily to such relationship I don't mind, even if it's highly hypocritical.

On the priest side the celibacy requirement probably attracts a certain type. Then there is the power over others angle which isn't limited to churches. The combination of factors stack on each other.

On the institutional side its the well known and agreed upon siege mentality where the church tries to protect itself out of arrogance and a probably accurate assessment that its enemies want to use and manipulate this for political gain.

Also much less talked about is the church's former policies were partially due to a misguided sense of mercy. If the church really did come down as hard and preemptively as people now want it to from the very beginning the world would probably be whining about how intolerant and cruel they were to potential and defrocked priests.

Religion has no bearing in this, it's the church who has been the facilitator, and the church is made of regular people.

Priests have sexual needs, that's understandable, but they could satisfy them without victimizing others. The line is harming someone, specially if they are defenseless. The beliefs of the perpetrators don't enter the equation.

You can't say religion has no bearing in this, as it quite literally says that Priests can't have a wife.

It seems entirely predictable to me that this drives selecting folks for these positions that don't want wives, but want something else.

You could apply the same reasoning to scientology.

I'm not saying it's relligion's fault. It's just that things rarely have a single clearly defined reason. Some correlations exist.

Any other organization with that behavior that is not a church would already have been shut down worldwide and leadership would be in jail. I hope that believers will put pressure on the church to clean up its act.

So far believers (and the government which is in bed with Catholic Church here) cry it's "an attack on the church".

EDIT: someone even flagged this.

This is an AP story: https://www.apnews.com/14f374e7c6a340e6bbf543223f968006

Ok, we'll switch to that from https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/05/13/world/europe/ap-....

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