Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

The Bishops will no doubt take comfort in the Canadian belief that punishment is not the proper response to sexual abuse. The National Post reports:

As North America’s top experts on sex abuse gather in Toronto this week, a philosophical debate about how to treat some of society’s most reviled criminals is coming into stark [...]

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Joe asked:

Leon, how have the Scouts followed up on this, since the incident is at least 30 years old? Are stricter controls in place? Do the Scouts now have a policy of informing the police if one of their leaders molests a Scout?

I was a scout leader in my sons’ troop, but I have not [...]

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Der Spiegel has an interview (in English) with Manfred Schneider, who has researched assassinations. Schneider thinks that assassins like Jared Loughner are not crazy but hyper-rational. He explains: 

Every assassin is a perceptive observer and interpreter of signs and events. For him, nothing happens by accident. He scrutinizes the world in search of hostile intentions, and [...]

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In reading the cases of sexual abuse, I pity the victims, but I often pity the abusers, who are often psychopaths on a straight path to hell. They must be punished, both to affirm  justice and to waken them to the enormity of their acts. Punishment is necessary for justice, and justice is necessary if [...]

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My discussion of the Schmidt case has obvious relevance to clerical sexual abuse. The abusers may have been, in some sense of the word, “sick”; they certainly had distorted personalities. But whatever the source of their desire to have sex with minors, they were guilty when they acted on that desire. 
As Joe said, a good [...]

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Nightmares are a hazard of those who investigate child abuse, and one of the most potent sources of the nightmares is the explicit sacrilege that is sometimes, perhaps often, involved in the abuse. Some abusive priests have dressed boys as Jesus and then assaulted them.
 
Bishop Lahey not only had child porn on his computer (bad [...]

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Everyone recognizes that music can affect the listener’s mood – that is why most people listen to music. Can music also either directly or through the mood affect the body? That is more debatable, but some therapists are convinced it can. The New York Times reports:
“Listening to finer music and attending concerts on a consistent [...]

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