In all fairness (not that I give a damn) the pope is right. Back in the 70's and 80's we tried to cure child molesters, and it was not treated all the seriously. If it was a father preying sexually on his kids, psychologists would try to keep the family together and attempt to cure the father rather than tossing him in jail, as we do these days. I was once offered a job that would have me applying a shock treatment to male sex offenders, including pedophiles, via a metal ring attached to the penis. You hook the guy up, show him kiddie porn, and if it excites him, ZAP! I didn't apply for the job, the woman I knew who worked for a clinic that needed such a person and they couldn't find anyone to apply. She knew I was looking for a new job. I wasn't that hard up for a career change.
The kicker for me, the recruiting story I was told that repulsed me the most, was that one of the men being given the shock treatment was being shown lewd photos of his own daughter that he had taken while molesting her. Had I taken the job, I would have been arrested for murder the first day I met him.
I asked the woman, who was a good friend of mine, if such treatments worked. She said no. I asked her what we should do. She said "shoot 'em".
We told drunk driver jokes on TV back then too, even as they killed 30,000 people a year on our American highways. Times have changed.
But we're talking the Pope here. So times also haven't changed.
