Charlie Rose

mabraham  04/11/2010 11:10 AM Report

This topic, rather than the iPad, deserved the whole hour.

gazellewoman  04/07/2010 01:42 AM Report

I absolutely never post comments or write letters but I was so incensed by this show and its handling of the topic that I had to write. Please Mr. Rose, let me come on the show. I am well educated, well spoken and surely can say something less prejudicial and more factual than your guest! My God, what an apologist for the Catholic Church. The man made sure to leave the impression that the Pope was as close to a saint as they come, which Allen apparently privately believes. did it occur to you to ask yourself, what kind of a man you would have to even have ACCESS to the Pope like Allen has? He downplayed the whole issue in the US that he said happened “a decade ago,” In fact, there are thousands of cases pending in the US right now! He said this Pope “is simply not a micromanager” as though a little matter of a few boys getting raped ranked just about the same as the nuns’ Christmas party! Don’t you think most high ranking managers would “notice” if a staff member was accused of raping a few children on their watch? He turned the Pope’s Easter message into a lovely global call to prayer rather than a whiny, irritated swipe at the press for simply printing the facts. Why, why, why would you have someone who writes for a Catholic newspaper and obviously plays poker with Ratzinger every Saturday night come on your show as the sole person to explain why or not the Catholic Church, including the Pope, have failed to act and then covered up all of these cases ? I kept sitting there waiting for the “other” guest to appear but there wasn’t another guest! It appears you took far more time and trouble to get a balanced and objective look at the IPad than you did at what may be one of the greatest news stories, let alone one of the greatest crimes against children, in history. There was even a priest at the German church who SAID that the he had been told that the Church wanted the actions of this pedophile priest and others like him to be covered up. Do you read these comments, Mr. Rose? If you do will you please pull on your right ear twice at the beginning of the next show so I’ll know you were listening to your viewers and then do another show on this subject and have guests who can give your viewers an objective picture of what could be one of the greatest news stories of conspiracy and intrigue in modern times. You know I have often wondered why this seemed to be happening only to Catholic priests. The argument that it stems from the fact that priest can’t marry just doesn’t cut it. They may be frustrated but that doesn’t make normal heterosexual or homosexual priests become pedophiles! I am beginning to think that the explanation is simply that there is zero tolerance in other religions for even the possibility of one act of pedophilia let alone many. There may some in their leadership who are not “micromanagers” but they pay attention to these sorts of incidents and take action accordingly. My husband was a consultant to banks and credit unions in cases of embezzlement. Often the banks would not prosecute for fear of bad publicity but they sure as hell fired the person and attempted to get restitution. They didn’t give the embezzlers the combination to the safe and promote them to vice president! Please do another show on this, if not on the subject of child molestation and the Catholic Church per se, then just do it on what kind of an organization the Catholic Church is historically and how many times has the Church been accused of conspiracy such as the collaboration with the Nazis during WWII. Don’t be discouraged Charlie, I still love you!

danyoung02  04/01/2010 12:30 PM Report

"...a sense that a priest stands in traditional theological language in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, and therefore a priest who is entrusted with that responsibility who would soil it in such a profound way through the sexual abuse of a vulnerable minor child, I think that is to him is a nightmare

from which it is almost impossible to wake up"

Did he not view the abuse in the same nightmarish manner when he had the opportunity not to mention the responsibility to do something about it?

PhysicsFan  04/01/2010 12:25 PM Report

Nice to see some serious shows bring this serious and sensitive issue to light. I hope the church has been awakened to the issues at hand and will no longer bury their heads in the sand.

robdverity  03/31/2010 11:50 PM Report

Afraid pedophilia may be a societal disease as much as a clergical one. In other words its incidence could be the same even sans Catholicism. The egregious part is the betrayal from behind the shiny clerical vestments (you know the kind that Jesus always peacocked around in).

Kirk7  03/31/2010 05:25 PM Report

In a way, I disagree with the last statement Mr. John Allen made in the interview: "there’s probably no one on the planet who would be more personally pained by the damage that has been done to the moral standing of the priesthood and the church as a result of this crisis than Pope Benedict XVI."

Jesus Is more pained. In Mark 9: 42-47 he warned molesters of believing children and ordered a "fix" for them:

(King James Version) "And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea. And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:"

Other translations use "trespass" or "scandalize" in lieu of offend.

[See also Matthew 18: 6-10]

I wander if any theologian in the Church considered voluntary castration of pedophile priests. Everybody, including the pedophile priests would have been better off.

robdverity  03/31/2010 05:17 PM Report

This is admittedly a stretch, but my bias against both subverts equity - fairness be damned. Henry Paulson and the Pope are two P's in a pod. They both enabled preying on our children.

REMant  03/31/2010 01:01 PM Report

The problem is that the Church is still basically divided into two quite different parts - monastic/priestly and secular - whereas Protestants essentially discarded the former and with it most of the homosexuality. Unfortunately, at the same time the secular has tended evermore toward liberalism, and away from philosophy, so that we have a choice of philosophical community tending toward homosexuality on the one hand, and a secular society tending towards market relations and enthusiasms, on the other. But, I am not at all sure which group pedaphilia belongs too.