This is nothing to do with the polemics about the Pope or the Church

[fpb]

It only involves one of the protagonists, Stephen Kiesle, the priest whose request for defrocking was discouraged by the then Cardinal Ratzinger. What I read is this: Stephen Kiesle was found out having sex with minors when he was a parish priest. The Church removed him from the parish and the civil authorities put him on probation. Now, I don't know what happens to records of criminal cases in the USA, but that means that there must have been a record of his first conviction somewhere. Some years later, he became a volunteer youth worker in a distant parish. There can be no doubt that he did so in order to get at children, and it is certain that he lied to the local Church - which was very distant from his previous parish - in order to be taken on. He punctually offended again. Nobody can doubt that this is a criminal beyond correction.

So my question is: when Kiesle sought to be laicized, some time after all these events, he did so because he wanted to be married. What kind of a woman would marry a man with two convictions for paedophilia?

This is not about the Pope or about the Church. It is about something really disturbing that has nothing to do with them. Somewhere out there there is a woman who wanted to marry, and maybe did marry, a man with two convictions for paedophilia, the second of which proved to any reasonable person that he was both incorrigible and intent on indulging his criminal tastes. That is not a nice thought.

Comments

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

Did she know?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

She may not have. The material I have read has nothing to say about her, but the man was charged again after his conviction - indeed, some accusations that surfaced went back to his seminary years. Well, I hope she left him.

[pathology-doc.livejournal.com]

Out of interest: would you, in the event that she did not know and later found out, support an annulment of such a marriage?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I'd be very surprised if there is no canonic rule against marriage by false pretences. One Vatican sentence a few years ago annulled a marriage because the partners could prove that, having married in the sixties at the height of the sexual revolution, they had never meant for the act to be permanent!

[shezan.livejournal.com]

My immediate question.

But there are some pretty deluded women (and men) out there.

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

One does not even need to be that deluded. Most people don't think to do a criminal check on their beloved.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

True, but this guy did it over and over again over a space of decades. Can you live with a man with this kind of filth in him - share his bed, his intimacy - and not find out that something is wrong?

[dustthouart.livejournal.com]

It makes me sick to say this, but my guess is that she had children from a previous relationship and he lied to her to get at them.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, it sounds all too likely. And incidentally, it means that the then Cardinal Ratzinger was right to advise caution in the process of laicization.

[cheyinka]

Iiiiiiiiiick why do I find that plausible :[

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Very probably true. Uck.

[panobjecticon.livejournal.com]

everyone's vulnerable, one way or another.