Hand Of God Neutralisation

“In the 60s, the Catholic Church in Massachusetts began hearing complaints that Father James Porter was sexually molesting children. Rather than relieving him of his duties, the ecclesiastical authorities simply moved him from one parish to another between 1960 and 1967, actually providing him with a fresh supply of unsuspecting families and innocent children to abuse” (Ericsson 162).

Lisa Barnes Lampman's book "God And The Victim: Theological Reflections On Evil, Victimization, Justice, And Forgiveness" discusses the concept of crime and how it can be seen from a spiritual perspective. The writer is concerned about having people adopt a theological attitude in trying to understand crime and what triggers it. Victimization is also a principal concept in the book, as the writer relates to it in regard to crime and apparently wants to emphasize the fact that it is common for some people to consider themselves vulnerable to crime. The writer basically wants her readers to acknowledge that crime can have damaging consequences for society as a whole.

The issue of opportunity is a major factor in the sex offenses in Churches. In churches, opportunities for abuse are in activities such as taking children home after an activity or youth group, giving individual attention to a child, and being alone with children in summer camps. These opportunities allow priests to be alone with children without other adults being suspicious or concerned. Another factor in explaining the opportunity for abuse is the power and influence that clergy have. Since in the church, priests or ministers are influential in defining what is right and wrong, they may have the power to show abusive behavior as normal. Children are in a position that church workers can use their authority within the church to persuade a child to comply with sexual acts (Farrell & Taylor 2000). When authority is misused in this way it adds trauma to the abuse. The betrayal of trust involved is enormous, and for some victims it causes the difficulty to trust authority again.

This article interests me because they are eager to respond in this kind of situation by suspending the priest, whose mistake only is to used the product of modern technology as a way of reaching his young parishioners during mass, while the diocese authorities never suspend priests who keep molesting children.

A cross-cultural examination of certain deviant acts surface interesting observations of both the root of function of deviance in that given society. This observation will illustrate how the ways in which deviance is viewed in a specific culture is not universal. The author also touches upon how the “concept of normal” is equated with the “concept of good”; therefore, by consequence, anything remotely outside this pre-established box is viewed in a negative manner (Benedict 1934:4). The category of deviance is employed by society as a strategic means of reducing diversity, maintaining order and above else, upholding the social norm. Individuals who threaten this system are immediately labeled as evil wrongdoers who are then treated differently on every level. A further scholar, Erikson, compares the social system to a “nucleus, “which” draws the behavior of actors toward [itself] within range of basic norms,” (Erikson 1962: 309). This analogy provides powerful imagery of how the social system functions and the reason for why deviance is seen as such a threatening act. He further draws a comparison between the law and the norm arguing that both are reinforced by consistently being “used as a basis for judgment,” (Erikson 1962: 310). The entanglement of

The Boston Catholic Church’s dangerous employment of power prevented justice and instead allowed for the growth in number of churches and children that were exposed to the sexually abusive priests through the concealment of the abuse.

Michael Rezendes worked for the “Boston Globe” on the Spotlight team, which was small team of people who worked for months on a specific project to make a massive headline on the cover of the “Globe” about every other month. In 2001, Rezendes was working on a small story, one with some potential, alongside his team when they discovered a massive controversy hidden in the dusty files of law offices, parishes, and their own newspaper- the veiled crimes of the assaults on children by local Catholic priests, after which the priests were never convicted.

Brym, R.J., & Lie, J., & Rytina, S. (2010) Deviance and Crime. Sociology: Your Compass for a New World. 3rd Canadian Edition. Toronto: Oxford University Press. Toronto: Nelson

So, he was blameworthy on one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse based on the case of a local priest name Shawn Ratigan who had been known to be in possession of pornographic pictures of young children. A judge found the bishop, Robert W. Finn, guilty on one misdemeanor charge and not guilty on a second charge, for failing to report a priest who had taken hundreds of pornographic pictures of young girls. Instead of turning the photos over to police or reporting suspicions about Ratigan, Bishop Robert Finn sent him away for psychiatric evaluation and later ordered him to stay at a convent where he could say Mass for the sisters and stay away from

During a confessional, an emotionally conflicted Priest receives a death threat from a mysterious parishioner, but unwilling to report it, he struggles with helping other parishioners that could be the one that wants him dead. BRIEF SYNOPSIS: During a confessional, FATHER JAMES LAVELLE (50’s) receives a death threat from a mysterious man. The man tells Lavelle that a Priest raped him when he was seven years old. Now he wants to kill a Priest, but he makes it clear that he doesn’t want to kill a bad Priest, he wants to kill an innocent one. He tells Lavelle he has one week left.

What is moral neutralisation? How has it been used to explain offending ? Offending and crime is a wide open topic that seems to bring psychologist and criminologist together and apart. This essay discusses the reasons behind offending, focusing more on the moral neutralisation theory that was explored in 1957. The theory is quiet self-explanatory however behind it lay unanswered questions that actually when studied start to question the theory’s credibility.

There is a common assumption that criminals who have been convicted of heinous crimes are unable to turn away from their wicked ways.From this perspective, violent criminals are violent by nature; they cannot or do not want to perceive their actions to be immoral. This assumption might also suggest that human beings do not choose to be violent but are born violent. However, it is evident that once one realizes the horrid crime they have committed, they will change a new leaf and a new perspective. In this essay, I will argue that there are specific techniques of re-socialization that cause the transformation of a violent criminal to a law-abiding citizen. The transformation is not straightforward; there will be uncertainties and animpasse, however an individual’s criminal act does not changetheir human genealogy.

John Jay College Research Team. (2004). The nature and scope of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and deacons in the United States, 1950-2002. Washington, DC: United States Confer-ence of Catholic Bishops.

In an age where violent crime is more dominant than ever and morality is not heard of, there arise many problems that result from each other. The past thirty years, our society has been determined to secularize itself and to separate from many moral standards that root from the Bible. Since moral values were removed from schools in the 1960's, crime and immorality has steadily risen. It is evident that declining morals has a direct effect on the crime rate.

Preventive programs based on the social learning theory require placing an individual in favorable environment where he/she would be less tempted to imitate violent behavior. One of the examples of such environment is the social services of the church. The actual role of contemporary religion in delinquency prevention is not easy to evaluate. Its potential role is tremendous, but the fulfillment of