In the United States today, anyone, male or female, can easily obtain a ministerial license by mailing one hundred dollars to one of the many licensing organizations. After obtaining a license, an aspiring organizer can advertise her own religion in a big-city newspaper such as the “New York Times” and, within a week, have at least ten receptive believers in her congregation. I am sure that Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple conjure horrific visions of murder, suicide, mayhem, and the cruel betrayal of the public trust in the minds of the families of the unfortunate victims of the Jonestown massacre. Yet few objectively religious Americans today realize how easy it is for sexually aberrant leaders within certain religious sects to gain the full trust of the families of their supplicants, in order to, over time, voraciously satisfy their sexual appetites with the innocence of trusting little children.
There are, today, certain popular religious organizations in the United States, which have been around for over a hundred years, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which maintain large male lay clergy and advertise, through the mass media and the printed word, their adherence to traditional family values. Many thousands of single men and women, as well as families, change their religious affiliations each year through contact with itinerant missionaries and representatives of these very wealthy sects. Many of these proselytizing missionaries pay their own expenses to knock on the doors of potential converts. The Watchtower Society of Jehovah’s Witnesses has a saying, which they sometimes wish to deny, that it says: “publish or perish.” This means that Witness converts are intimidated into knocking on doors and publishing Jehovah’s Witness doctrine, disseminating that ubiquitous pamphlet, “Awake,” to all they see, by their leaders’ threat that they will perish spiritually if they don’t. .
When a man is accepted and ordained into such a typical lay clergy, his background is not officially examined, to any extent, by those who ordain him. If the willing individual agrees to pay a title of his income and adhere to the strict rules of the particular sect, his word is generally accepted as truth in an interview prior to the admission rites. The leaders of these cults—high priests, priests, elders, and so on—actually believe that they have the same discerning power as the biblical apostle Peter, in determining whether a person is lying or telling the truth. They believe that by ordination these powers can be conferred. This leads to one of the most heinous acts that cult leaders can commit, which is to cover up and shield an accused sex offender when that person is an ordained priest or elder, to keep out accusation and crime. from the media This is what the Roman Catholic Church has done on numerous occasions.
Believing such doctrines is fine, as personal beliefs per se. But when the physical well-being of young children is deliberately endangered by sexual predators who have successfully forced their way into the community of local congregations for the express purpose of satisfying their sexual urges, as a result of such practices, the doctrine of discernment, and the rituals that accompany it, must immediately become suspect. The old scenario of a convicted murderer, rapist or criminal seeking refuge in a monastery to purge himself of a world of sin is melodramatic but unrealistic when dealing with a pedophile. In a monastery, the aberrant person is at least isolated from the rest of the world and cannot harm others behind the monastic walls. But a pedophile, convicted or not, cannot be contained and will commit his vile crimes over and over again if he is allowed the freedom to associate with or be around children. Even after decades of psychiatric therapy, it’s nearly impossible for pedophiles to change places. This fact alone makes me wonder why a cult leader would have the temerity to declare a convicted sex offender free from sin, as innocently clean as a newborn lamb, and free to interact with the children of parents who They are unaware of the man’s criminal record.
Since it will be a long time before US law requires cult church leaders to conduct background checks on so many men and women, they will induct them into their ranks and, after a year or more, ordain lay clergy, I encourage all fathers in the congregation to beware of single or married men who take abnormal interest in their male and female children. You can recognize potential pedophiles as those men and women who regularly carry candy in their pockets and give it to children before, after, and between Church services. Pedophiles are usually older men who regularly offer to freely transport children to their after-school or summer activities. Be wary if there are older men in your congregations seeking to associate with children by offering to give free computer/video game lessons. Sometimes these men will salivate for months and years, before working their way into their lives for devious ulterior purposes. That is why I seriously believe that the universal penalty for child sexual abuse should be chemical castration.
Unfortunately, in a libertarian religious society, such as that which exists in the United States, the main burden of protecting young children against pedophiles falls on the shoulders of concerned parents. When I was a California peace officer in the 1980s, I was amazed at the number of children placed in the care of San Diego County Child Protective Services for months as a result of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. , home alone. And it really hasn’t changed that much. In both large cities and small communities, there are adult child molesters who regularly harm children, physically and sexually, as a result of uncalculated anger or premeditated design. More American parents are now being accused of child rape than ever before. It may be time to change the laws to protect innocent children, who can become victims of sexual predators in uncontrolled religious societies.