Over the last year we’ve tackled many topics on the Tentative Apologist Podcast from big bang cosmology to biblical interpretation. But no topic is as difficult or immediately gripping as the topic of this podcast. Today we are tackling the topic of pedophiles: their crimes … and their redemption.
Redemption? To many, talk of redeeming and restoring these egregious victimizers of the most vulnerable back into society is misplaced sympathy at best, and offensive and dangerous at worst.
And yet, Scott Drennan thinks we must. Mr. Drennan is the Edmonton Coordinator for Circles of Support and Accountability (aka CoSA), an organization that works with high risk sex offenders as they reintegrate into society. CoSA works by placing these offenders into communal accountability networks of volunteers, people to whom they can be accountable and with whom they can be friends. For many, these are the first healthy relationships they’ve ever known.
Drennan is not dewy-eyed about these offenders: he recognizes the evil of the crimes involved. Even so, he believes that the pedophile is not beyond redemption. And so, in this conversation we explore the possibility of saving these, the chiefs of all sinners, both for their own sake, and that of the societies which they have offended.
For more on Scott Drennan and CoSA you can read this article from The Edmonton Journal and visit CoSA Edmonton here.
For further discussion see my article “Pedophilia and other unforgivable sins“.
