{"id":30391,"date":"2017-06-27T18:22:16","date_gmt":"2017-06-27T22:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/?p=30391"},"modified":"2019-06-29T13:16:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T19:16:14","slug":"when-the-state-sanctions-child-abuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/when-the-state-sanctions-child-abuse\/","title":{"rendered":"When the State Sanctions Child Abuse","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at Toronto Pride Parade<\/i>, Andrew Chin\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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Open your mouth for the dumb,
\nand for the causes of all the children that pass.
\n(Proverbs 31:8)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

First published June 27th, 2017.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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FOR <\/b>years, we as Catholics have endured one of the greatest scourges to ever grip the Church in her 2000 year history\u2014the widespread sexual abuse of children at the hands of some priests. The damage it did to these little ones, and then, to the faith of millions of Catholics, and then, to the credibility of the Church at large, is nearly inestimable.<\/p>\n

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It is a particularly serious sin when someone who is actually supposed to help people toward God, to whom a child or a young person is entrusted in order to find the Lord, abuses him instead and leads him away from the Lord. As a result, the faith as such becomes unbelievable, and the Church can no longer present herself credibly as the herald of the Lord.<\/b> \u2014POPE BENEDICT XVI, Light of the World, <\/em>The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times: A Conversation With Peter Seewald, p. 23-25<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And so, I and many others who witness to the Gospel and Catholicism, have had to endure a hail of anger and hateful language toward us for the simple reason that we are Catholic and therefore \u201cbelong to a pedophile cult,\u201d as one atheist recently put it. Of course, such people are throwing the baby out with the bath water. When I was sexually abused by a sports trainer in high school, it never dawned on me then, or now, to conclude that all football programs across the country are, therefore, \u201cpedophile cults\u201d\u2014even though the same \u201cculture of silence\u201d covered up or turned a blind eye to these abuses.<\/p>\n

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TWISTED IRONY<\/p>\n

Ironically, it is very often the same people who cry foul over the Church\u2019s abuse who are now participating in the mass abuse of children through what is called the \u201cPride\u201d parade that takes place annually in cities throughout the world.<\/p>\n

It is a crime in most countries for men or women to expose themselves indecently in public. [1]<\/sup><\/a>In Canada, Section 174 of the Canadian Criminal Code defines nudity as such: “a person is nude who is so clad as to offend against public decency or order.” S. 173 says “Every person who, in any place, for a sexual purpose, exposes his or her genital organs to a person who is under the age of 16 years is guilty of an indictable offence…” cf. justice.gc.ca<\/a><\/span><\/span>