Roman Catholic Press Backs R.C. Archbishop Of Wales For His Disgraceful Leniency In The Case Of Paedophile Priest
The Roman Catholic Newspaper The Catholic Herald reported the following in their issue of Oct.27.2000.
Dr. Ian R.K. Paisley
Archbishop John Ward of Cardiff was this week resisting pressure to resign from office after he refuted claims that he knowingly ordained a suspected paedophile to the priesthood.
Calls for his resignation were made by the Daily Telegraph, the BBC, and by a group of priests within his own diocese after Father Joseph Jordan was sent to prison for eight years for indecent assaults against two nine-year-old boys last year and a twelve-year-old boy in the late 1980’s while he was a teacher in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.
A jury at Cardiff Crown Court also found the priest guilty of making indecent photographs and of intending to pervert the course of justice by trying to conceal the evidence. Jordan committed most of the offences within eighteen months of being ordained at St. Mary of the Angels Church in Canton, Cardiff in 1998.
Archbishop Ward (71) has been accused of ignoring concerns raised by Bishop Christopher Budd of Plymouth who had first accepted Jordan as a candidate for his diocese. Both Archbishop Ward and Bishop Budd knew that Jordan had been tried for indecent assault in 1990 in a case which took a jury at Sheffield Crown Court just twenty minutes to dismiss.
Archbishop Ward was also accused of failing to observe the Church’s child protection guidelines by ordaining a man previously accused of abuse and by not notifying the child protection team of Jordan’s earlier trial.
In its editorial of 27th October 2000 the heading is: ‘Why Archbishop Ward should no no account resign’ and the paper makes a case for defending Archbishop Ward and makes a case against those who have called for his resignation.
Double-speak of the Roman Catholic Church
This shows clearly that the Roman Catholic Church speaks with two voices on the question of child abuse. When such a case can be covered up the church will remain silent. When an important Archbishop in the Church is questioned in regard to his actions in such an affair then the Catholic Herald editorial says that the Archbishop should not resign.
The editorial in the Catholic Herald stated:
‘Once again, the Catholic Church’s handling of child abuse issues has been cast into the public arena by the admission of Fr. Joseph Jordan, a priest in the Archdiocese of Cardiff, to six counts of indecent assault
against a 12-year-old boy, for which he received a sentence of three-and a-half years to run consecutively with the four-and-a-half years he received last month for indecent assaults on boys, making indecent photographs and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
‘These are crimes for which, as Catholics, it is impossible to express adequately either our horror and shame, or our sympathy for those who have suffered at this man’s hands. But this is not unhappily the first case of its kind
‘What makes this one unique is that the case itself is beginning to be over-shadowed by its implications for the future, not of the perpetrator or the victims but of someone else – the Archbishop Ward of Cardiff who ordained Joseph Jordan to the priesthood.
‘And the reason this is happening is that certain individuals within the church-including a group or priests within this diocese and certain influentially-placed individuals outside it – have begun to express the view, both public and behind closed doors, that the Archbishop should go.’
It is clear that the Church will come to the defence of those who, with knowledge of the character of a priest and having before them his past record concerning his activities in child abuse, ordains him to the priesthood and continues to excuse him even after he has been exposed. This shows the leniency with which these cases are being handled by the Church of Rome and the church authorities.
In pre-Reformation times the evils of the priesthood and the sad fruits of the so-called celibacy of the clergy were exposed, and those exposed to them as well as those who exposed them felt the full vigour of the Church. The Church could do no wrong, her priests were holy men and her Bishops were holy men, and no one dare point a finger at them or their actions.
For years the Church of Rome has carried out a campaign of wilful abuse of Protestants who have exposed, and continue to, expose the evils of the monastic system and the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. Now that the rottenness of the Church is coming to light, the Church – unchanged and unchanging, actually defends those who ordain such men to the ministry, and after these men are found out and condemned for their evil, the Bishops of the Church are defendant.
Archbishop Ward, even if he is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wales, should most certainly resign and this episode should warn others that today the Church of Rome can no longer conceal the evil in her bosom, which results from her doctrines and leads to such shameful activity.
The Lord Jesus Christ said, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’.
The Church of Rome’s Catholic Herald goes to great lengths to abuse the accusers of Archbishop Ward as leading a witch-hunt against him, and also accuses them of making him a scapegoat. Nothing could be further from the truth.
http://www.ianpaisley.org
Email: eips_info@yahoo.co.uk
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