Another factor is the capacity of the State to enforce the law. Corrupt and/or under resourced police forces are a significant part of dealing with the problem. The Church can’t jail people and police forces that won’t or can’t enforce the law limit the ability for the Church to truly stop predators within their own ranks. Despots routin…
Another factor is the capacity of the State to enforce the law. Corrupt and/or under resourced police forces are a significant part of dealing with the problem. The Church can’t jail people and police forces that won’t or can’t enforce the law limit the ability for the Church to truly stop predators within their own ranks. Despots routinely use the threat of persecution to try and control the local Church too and there are plenty of despots in Latin America and Africa.
In Latin America of the 20th century, the Church was prominent but there were plenty of despotic anticlerical governments who did genuinely did screw their countries capacity to do anything other than follow their whims. Sometimes it was persecuting the Church, sometimes it was sucking up to the only institutionally civilising force in their society. Africa has similar problems, but since most of them didn’t decolonize until the 1950s and 1960s, it’s in a different stage of the maturation into state capacity.
We don’t know how lucky we are to have low corruption in law enforcement, high state capacity to meet basic needs and, and a high trust society. Predators take advantage of high trust and high capacity societies but at their peril. Low trust societies and low capacity is a deadly combination for anyone vulnerable.
Although in the Middle Ages the Church did use certain monasteries as prisons and consign clerical felons to them. This issue began the problems of St. Thomas of Canterbury with King Henry II over a clerical murderer who couldn't be executed because the Church never executed people. It did sometimes, beginning in the 13th century, hand them over to the civil authorities for execution, but that was a later period.
Sure, but that was 800-1000 years ago. States didn’t exist then and Bishops hired mercenaries to defend their territories and political manoeuvres against feudal lords. The Pope still does, technically. The basic function of a State MUST succeed in is enforcing a monopoly on violence and does so through maintaining a standing army to defend the population from external disputes and a police force to enforce the law and mitigate the damage from internal disputes.
Mexico, by this definition, has been various numbers teetering steps away from being a failed state since its bid for independence from Spain for example.
But if a semi-failed state can't enforce proper behavior in its populace I don't understand why the Church can't require a member of its hierarchy to live in a monastery somewhere without any contact with the world as a form of punishment for his or her sins.
She can most certainly do that independent of a state, but if he decides not to obey the Church, you don’t expect a bunch of nuns to bar him from leaving? And the Church can’t call the police and say “oi, Fr nastybuisness has left the premises against our instruction, can you drag him back please?” In a liberal
Democracy. In a semi-failed state it would depend on how much the local bishop is willing to bribe the police.
Usually friars rather than nuns. (Think McCarrick.) But I suppose how much the local bishop might be willing to give the police would depend on how much trouble the incarcerated had created.
Maybe. McCarrick, assuming his faculties were intact, he is within his rights as a citizen to accuse the church of violating his rights and could hobble out into the world with no one able to stop him or enforce the Church’s penalties, especially now he is laicised. If this were a less developed country, you’d still have major issues if your penalties are only enforceable by the capriciousness of bribery, assuming the police were not in cahoots with Fr nastybusiness in the first place.
Another factor is the capacity of the State to enforce the law. Corrupt and/or under resourced police forces are a significant part of dealing with the problem. The Church can’t jail people and police forces that won’t or can’t enforce the law limit the ability for the Church to truly stop predators within their own ranks. Despots routinely use the threat of persecution to try and control the local Church too and there are plenty of despots in Latin America and Africa.
In Latin America of the 20th century, the Church was prominent but there were plenty of despotic anticlerical governments who did genuinely did screw their countries capacity to do anything other than follow their whims. Sometimes it was persecuting the Church, sometimes it was sucking up to the only institutionally civilising force in their society. Africa has similar problems, but since most of them didn’t decolonize until the 1950s and 1960s, it’s in a different stage of the maturation into state capacity.
We don’t know how lucky we are to have low corruption in law enforcement, high state capacity to meet basic needs and, and a high trust society. Predators take advantage of high trust and high capacity societies but at their peril. Low trust societies and low capacity is a deadly combination for anyone vulnerable.
Although in the Middle Ages the Church did use certain monasteries as prisons and consign clerical felons to them. This issue began the problems of St. Thomas of Canterbury with King Henry II over a clerical murderer who couldn't be executed because the Church never executed people. It did sometimes, beginning in the 13th century, hand them over to the civil authorities for execution, but that was a later period.
Sure, but that was 800-1000 years ago. States didn’t exist then and Bishops hired mercenaries to defend their territories and political manoeuvres against feudal lords. The Pope still does, technically. The basic function of a State MUST succeed in is enforcing a monopoly on violence and does so through maintaining a standing army to defend the population from external disputes and a police force to enforce the law and mitigate the damage from internal disputes.
Mexico, by this definition, has been various numbers teetering steps away from being a failed state since its bid for independence from Spain for example.
But if a semi-failed state can't enforce proper behavior in its populace I don't understand why the Church can't require a member of its hierarchy to live in a monastery somewhere without any contact with the world as a form of punishment for his or her sins.
She can most certainly do that independent of a state, but if he decides not to obey the Church, you don’t expect a bunch of nuns to bar him from leaving? And the Church can’t call the police and say “oi, Fr nastybuisness has left the premises against our instruction, can you drag him back please?” In a liberal
Democracy. In a semi-failed state it would depend on how much the local bishop is willing to bribe the police.
Usually friars rather than nuns. (Think McCarrick.) But I suppose how much the local bishop might be willing to give the police would depend on how much trouble the incarcerated had created.
Maybe. McCarrick, assuming his faculties were intact, he is within his rights as a citizen to accuse the church of violating his rights and could hobble out into the world with no one able to stop him or enforce the Church’s penalties, especially now he is laicised. If this were a less developed country, you’d still have major issues if your penalties are only enforceable by the capriciousness of bribery, assuming the police were not in cahoots with Fr nastybusiness in the first place.