Baptist Ministers, unlike Catholic Priests may marry. The Roman Catholic Church requires that they be celibate, an unrealistic requirement for many men.
Though that is true what you have said has that prevented certain Baptist Ministers from Cheating on their wives, or molesting children, or using prostitutes, or a multitude of other sexual deviate activities?
No.
The problem is sin.
Just as their are Catholic preditors there are Baptist preditors,as there are methodist preditors.
Its sin.
However, I will say this.
Baptist are accountable to their congregation and will be punished appropiately.
It seems the Catholics have played a game of shells which I think is dangerous and against propriety.
Priest need to be brought to justice for these type of crimes and must be able to be prosecuted by our civil authorities.
A close pastor friend of mine was faced with an angry church when the music minister molested a child in the congregation. I had know the man personally and so did my friend. There were no early warning signs until the police came in and arrested the man and took the computers in the church.All of the staff eventually left even though it was the fault of one person while others were blamed.
Absolutely. And necessary. Due to the Baptist distinctive of autonomous churches there is no centralizing body to screen, monitor, and assign (or remove) ministers. We need to be able to protect our sheep...particularly when wolves come so well dressed like shepherds.
When it comes to this kind of abuse, no. We must remain above and beyond reproach and suspicion.
Maybe someone can answer this.
Why is it churches in general, not just Baptist or Catholic, tend to hide, transfer, or ignore the problem instead of confronting it directly?
That is not true in all cases, but the pattern is there.
How does that make us look Christ like before a lost world?
Hey gb, no doubt 99.9% of these offenses take place in Southern Baptist churches, isn't that right?
I think there are alot of reasons. Partially, we hide them because we don't want others to see our dirty laundry. But sometimes, we hide it because we are afraid of how it will effect the victims of it.
I think sometimes we hide it because we don't know what to do or how to react.
I dealt with one case where the perpetrator went to jail, we got counseling and help for the victims and his by then ex-wife. Worked with the church to help them call a healer as a new pastor.
But when the pervert got out, he came back to the city and became the pastor of a non-denom church. We contacted the church, told them and gave them the documentation of the man's wickedness. They told us it was none of
our business. We let the police know. But at that point there were no children, so he was not violating the conditions of his release. 6 months later there were children at the church and they were abused.
He was re-arrested.
btw, we got slammed because we had not done enough to stop the predator.:mad:
It sounds like to me you did the exactly correct thing.
You should have been commended for the way it was handled.
One thing your story points out, is the very low rate of getting these people to change their behavior.
If a person like this was able to say, leave a church because this was about to come out, then move across the state to another church and say stop the activity, he would probably never be caught.
There is something about this particular sin that seems to have almost no success in getting the offenders to stop, and that is what gets them caught, not a one time occurrence.
In Baptist circles it seems to be more of the "well you're gone because of this" they go, disappear and we never know where they've gone. There is no tracking system. Since we want to protect victim's rights, because we want to get rid of the person as quietly as possible (since guests might reasonably avoid such churches with known issues) and the basic nature of trying to get through this fast are the big issues imho.
Honestly I know of a guy who went to a church right out of seminary, had some encounters that are horrifying to know about. He got fired and moved to another church in another state. Picked up, same cycle. Then another church. This was back in the 70s through early 90s. He did this multiple times and his wife was in complete denial the whole time. Finally this thing called the internet came around and background checks became common. He's serving time now.
The Roman Catholic thing, that's completely different in some ways. That is a denial of a problem and if we push it behind the "veil" of silence we can ignore it. Yet a couple of Baptist transgressors (not SBC necessarily) were pushed through churches by their high powered buddies for years.
Its a deeply concerning thing. I'm thankful for more openness. I think openness is the requirement of living the Gospel. Hiding behind lawyers and legal tricks about these things just means you've got something to hide. The qualifications for church leadership are about openness.:thumbs:
Do you really want to go on another one on one with me?
For the record, I will take whatever image I have with all of its flaws to your vengeful agenda . Best thing for you to do is find someone who cannot see through you.
According to you there would have to be at least 1000 cases and 999 were SBC. That is huge! I find that hard to believe? Are things really that bad in the SBC? What is the source of your information? With 999 cases being SBC out of every 1000 what are you doing to curb such predatory behavior?
I would hate to think that you are given to exaggeration--the truth tainted with a lie.