Southern Baptist Convention vs. Catholic record-keeping about and punishment of clerical sexual predators

Unintentionally, Christa Brown points out how unfair it is of us to allude to Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) clerics as Batholics. Unfair to Catholicism.

As required by canon law, the Catholic Church keeps meticulous records on its clergy. In part because the Catholic Church has dealt with sexual predation by the clergy for hundreds of years, the records are inclusive of such matters.

Whereas the SBC neither keeps such records nor requires that any be kept, as she explains:

Usually, they not only allow the accused ministers to continue in ministry, but they don’t even keep any records about victims’ accusations. It is as though it never happened.

It is as though Baptist leaders believe “no records” means “no abuse.”

It certainly means no action, whereas the modern Catholic abuse and scandal appear to have arisen in part from a departure from early church practice, which required action against clerical predators. For in the early church, there was no tolerance for it, as Brendan Kiley explains:

The first official decree on the subject was written at the Council of Elvira, held around A.D. 305 near Granada, Spain. The precise history is complicated, but the council is traditionally believed to have set down 81 rules for behavior, the 71st of which is: "Those who sexually abuse boys may not commune even when death approaches." It was the harshest one-strike policy: If you're caught abusing a child, you are not only laicized, but permanently excommunicated—damned for all time."

The SBC simply accepts no responsibility for dealing with such transgressions by Southern Baptist clergy. It embraces and defends a hands-off policy which permits clerical predators to move from church to church, unimpeded by denominational record keeping, accumulating victims as they go.