Human Lives Human Rights: There have been recent reports which found that 230,000 French children were victims of sexual violence by French Catholic priests. In this article, an attempt is made to analyze the causes and dimensions of this tragic event.
The issue of sexual abuse of children by the Catholic priests or the sins of pedophiles is not a new issue rather is an old one. This issue existed since the Middle Ages, which was the culmination period of the Church’s absolute rule in Europe.
This problem was often met with protests from bishops and church cardinals in various parts of Europe. Not only was the phenomenon of pedophiles very common in the church, but there were also illicit connections between priests and workers with and women and even the European cities were involved.
The reason for this mishap was the church forbidding its employees to marry and quench their instincts in the right direction. Thus, by incorporating a wrong decision into a system, the Church deprived human beings of their basic rights, this decision established an ominous heresy that has persisted for centuries.
In fact, one of the main reasons for the emergence of the Protestant Reformation in medieval Europe was the occurrence of such abuses in the church.
Interestingly, the founder of the Protestantism movement, Martin Luther, himself was a priest and a descendant of the church. This in itself indicates the depth of catastrophes such as pedophiles in the Catholic church.
However, even the Protestantism movement could not prevent these sinister events in the church because the Protestantism movement sought to limit the church’s involvement in social affairs and focus on the relationship of Christian citizens with their Lord, not the mishap of Church.
However, the continuation of this sinister tradition over the centuries has caused hundreds of thousands of innocent children to fall victim to this tragic event.
The important point to notice here is that these crimes take place in countries that consider themselves the creators of human rights and democracy.
Indeed, the recent tragedy in France was shocking and terrifying after the discovery of mass graves of children found in church run boarding school in Canada.
This tragedy, the crime of child murder in the Canadian Catholic Church, violates many of the principles of human rights and international law, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (OHCHR).
