The Board of Trustees at Penn State University has fired both the president Spanier and the legendary coach Paterno for their failure to act legally and ethically in handling the allegations of child abuse against Sandusky.
Note the contrast to the Vatican, which has NEVER removed a bishop for similar failures.
The behavior of the coaches and administrators is eerily parallel to the behavior of the clergy, which perhaps shows that general institutional dynamics are at work, rather than causes (such as celibacy) unique to the Catholic clergy.
When I was a federal investigator during security clearances, I noticed that the standards for janitors in sensitive installations were higher than the standards for Catholic priests. Even then, the type of behavior that was tolerated by the Church would have gotten a janitor fired immediately.
My wife also noticed how molesters like to taunt the public by half-revealing their activity. Bruce Ritter at Covenant House used to write fund-raising newsletters in which he described the bulges in the tight jeans of teenage male prostitutes. Sandusky gave his book the title Touched. He knew that administrators at Penn State were aware of his criminal activities and basically did nothing to stop him. Manipulating the administration was an additional pleasure.
A large number of students rioted at Penn State IN SUPPORT OF PATERNO. Congregations have applauded their molesting pastors. Administrators in church and state did not act to protect children in part because their publics were willing to tolerate child rape in order to keep something else: an entertaining priest, a winning coach.
About 2,000 people gathered at Old Main and moved to an area called Beaver Canyon, a street ringed by student apartments that were used in past riots to pelt police, Fox affiliate WTXF-TV reported.
The disorder escalated after the school’s board of trustees held an emergency meeting Wednesday night and later announced that they had dismissed Paterno, the longest-tenured coach in major-college football, and Graham Spanier, the school’s president for the past 16 years.
Both were ousted by a board of trustees fed up with the damage being done to the university’s reputation by a child sex-abuse scandal involving Paterno’s one-time heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky.
Sandusky is accused of sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period through a charity he founded for at-risk youth.
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Ambrose Bierce had too high an opinion of humanity.
PS – Rumors now of Sandusky pimping out Second Mile boys to rich donors. The timeline published by NPR certainly supports the idea that Sandusky had something on someone big/rich/powerful.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142111804/penn-state-abuse-scandal-a-guide-and-timeline
Wonder how big Sandusky’s retirement package was.
I’ll be looking forward to Sandusky being prosecuted for his egregious crimes. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out he was sexually abused as a youth.
The good thing is that finally society have to accept that ‘sexual molestation’ is EVERYWHERE and we need to enact laws to protect them.
Exactly Tony! It is everywhere and is more a problem than people realize. It may be true that true perdophiles -people who are exclusively or primarily attracted to little kids-are a small minority. But a larger number of people have “some” attraction to them, and not a few like “tweens” (ages 10 through 12). In fact, I’ve heard that most boys who are sexually abused are in this age group.
My cynicism makes me wonder whether it was true concern for victims or fear of decreased donations that moved the Board of Trustees at Penn State to act. Regardless, they did act. It’s good to know that a secular institution takes accountability more seriously than Christ’s Church.
Mere Catholic, there’s one major difference between Penn State and the Catholic Church. The Church, essentially, is a private institution. Penn State is funded by taxpayers, regardless of the grants or donations it receives. If you were a Pennsylvania taxpayer, how would you feel if you knew your taxes were going to a university whose administrators at the highest level refused to confront repeated sexual abuse by one of its employees forthrightly?
This goes beyond reduced donations. This affects funding for the university. Why do you think so many Catholics have refused to donate to the Church after the clerical sex-abuse crisis broke? It was the only avenue they had to protest, given the stonewalling the victims and their families received from Church officials.
Something else to note: In those places (Austria and Germany, among others) in which the Church receives some taxpayer support, the Church has been bleeding members. People are leaving for the exact same reason I mentioned in the last paragraph.
The fact that “a secular institution takes accountability more seriously than the Catholic Church” is more proof that God will judge this faithless, apostate Church in His own good time.