He wanted priests merely defrocked for their sex crimes, rather than tried as criminals.
Some saint.
It helps to know how the system worked back then, as as vinidici points out. If a priest, a monk, etc. did a horrendous crime (think major theft/embezzlement, sexual abuse, murder, etc.), they would first be convicted by the Church and defrocked, in most cases leaving them without funds. Remember, as vanguard59 points out, that this was in the 12th century, not the 21st. Afterwards, the defrocked priest, monk, etc. could be further convicted by a secular court, and was often sentenced to death, if the crimes where horrendous enough to warrant that. The same with a knight. He could be tried by both courts. So what was athe issue between King Henry and St. Becket was NOT whether or not the priest were to be convicted by a secular court, which he would be, if found guilty, but an issue of control. What King Henry II wanted was total control. He was not out to ‘catch pedofiles.’ He wanted the state to have total control over everything in his domain, including the Church (including the right to appoint bishops). He started a process that eventually resulted in Henry VIII. And the extreme version is found in today’s China, where the government insists on appointing Catholic bishops in the official ‘Catholic’ Church (the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association).
St. Becket wanted the Church to be able to exercise her right to judge and defrock her ministers, before they would, eventually, be tried and sentenced by a secular court.
Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!Spoilers!
reply
share
kenny-164
10 years ago
k-mann,
The problem with your analysis is it ignores that the Church would first have had to decide to try, and then proceed to convict, the priest before the secular courts could get jurisdiction over the case. My understanding is that if the Church merely did nothing, for whatever reason, the King's courts could not obtain jurisdiction.
No doubt there was a political, and arguably bad, motive on Henry's part to undermine the Church. But by today's standards we would hardly want to accept the notion that religious institutions could insulate their clergy from being tried for what after all are crimes that anyone else having committed would be brought before the civil authorities. I think that is what the OP was driving at.
reply
share