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.