Tweet
The fallout from the global sex abuse scandal in the Catholic has created damage to the Vatican unheard-of in my lifetime. Even when the original cases of pedophile priests in America arose several years back, the moral authority of the Pope and the hierarchy at the Vatican was not challenged, only some of the archbishops and cardinals presiding over the cover-up. But then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s involvement in similar cases in Europe, from Germany to Italy, add a new dimension to this scandal. First of all, the abuse can be seen as systemic, as well as the response from the church leadership – to hide the problem, transfer the abusers and deny accountability. Ratzinger had primary responsibility for the cases for over two decades while serving at the Vatican, and his role in the scandals can therefore not be questioned.
Now Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger struck back in his Palm Sunday sermon, vowing not to be intimidated by “petty gossip.” But just the fact that the Pope has to go on the offensive in a fight for his own survival shows you how broken his pontificate has become. The cumulative effect of the scandals, across countries and continets, have sapped the pontiff’s ability to lead and blown a hole in any effort by the Church to raise morality in any context.
But Victor Simpson notes that this really isn’t localized to Benedict XVI, but has been how the Church has handled this case of evil within its ranks for a long time.
The Vatican is facing one of its gravest crises of modern times as sex abuse scandals move ever closer to Pope Benedict XVI — threatening not only his own legacy but also that of his revered predecessor [...]
But as attention focuses on Benedict, a perhaps thornier question looms over how much John Paul II, beloved worldwide for his inspirational charisma and courageous stand against communism, knew about sex abuse cases and whether he was too tolerant of pedophile priests.
John Paul presided over the church when the sex abuse scandal exploded in the United States in 2002 and the Vatican was swamped with complaints and lawsuits under his leadership. Yet during most of his 26-year papacy, individual dioceses and not the Vatican took sole responsibility for investigating misbehavior.
Professor Nick Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer and former chairman of the U.S. bishops lay review board that monitored abuse, said Benedict was “very courageous” to reverse Vatican support for the Legionaires of Christ, a sex scandal-tainted organization staunchly defended by John Paul.
What you really see here is a corporate, hierarchal response to crisis – characterized by cover-ups and payoffs and scandal management PR. Sinead O’Connor’s remarkable editorial, detailing her experience in one of Ireland’s infamous “Magdalene laundries,” is a testament to that.
The Catholic church is really experiencing a similar decline that other respected institutions have felt in recent years. And like those other declines, it’s entirely of their own making.
UPDATE: Postscript.
72 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
The Vatican should be restructured and turned into a rehabilitation center for the millions of adults that have been sodomized as children. Church funds should be seized and used as reparations. Church leaders convicted of pedophilia or acceptance of it should be severely punished.
“It’s an American problem!”
“It’s an Irish problem!”
“It’s a German problem!”
Nope, it’s a Catholic problem. Papi Nambla’s got to go.
Such an excellent article, David. I do not understand why Catholics tolerate this. The church needs to be bled dry of funds until all of the criminal activity is admitted, and all of the leaders involved are criminally charged.
Wiping tea off monitor.
You are exactly correct.
This is the chickens coming home to roost.
The root of the problem is the self inflicted priest shortage. The RC Church is armpit deep in highly qualified vocations. The hierarchy, however, will not ordain them if they are the wrong gender, or if they are the right gender, but refuse celibacy.
They could have eliminated this problem by ending MANDATORY celibacy for priests. Up until the 11th century, celibacy was OPTIONAL. That was the TRADITION.
Just as in the political spectrum, the medieval pope drags all the other Xtian denominations to the right.
The refusal to ordain both genders and to make celibacy OPTIONAL has left the hierarchy will some really untalented people. Even those who are not criminals, are frequently really dim.
Whenever one of these scandals hits, you can almost hear the Bishop praying, please, please Jesus, let him have fornicated with a woman.
When a priest is found guilt of having had sex with numerous underage boys over a long period of time, they send him to treatment. Then, if they cannot hide the facts, they go back to the parish and tell the parishioners how important MERCY is in the tradition of the Roman Catholic church.
When an RC couple divorces, that MERCY sh*t is nowhere to be found. Unless they are wealthy enough to afford an annulment and willing to go through the debasing process (they have to confess that they were delusional when they gave consent). The hierarchy condemns both to permanent celibacy. The divorce is allowed. Another marriage, however, without an annulment is a mortal sin and eternal damnation, same as sex outside of marriage, same as abortion, same as masturbation, and the same as using artificial birth control, and trying to kill the pope.
As a buddy of mine in high school used to say, if I’m going to hell, it ain’t gonna be for missing Mass on Sunday.
It is the Grand effing Canyon between the tolerance for priests and the intolerance for the laity.
I do not see Ratzinger ordaining women. The misogyny is too strong.
The best we could hope for is that he makes celibacy optional. If he did, and I doubt he will, he would probably make it optional for priests only. Celibacy would still be mandatory for bishops, because they have all the power. This is a monarchy.
When our bishop took office earlier in the decade he minced no words about his opposition to any tolerance of abuse though I don’t recall his exact terms since I am what they call a non-practicing catholic. (Is
“practicing” Catholicism kinda like “experimenting” with drugs?) If there seems to be a lack of outrage it probably stems from the high reverance many catholics have for priests. The fact that this can happen shakes the belief system.
Some years ago I stopped by my parents church for some reason when no services were occuring. I happened to notice a priest that taught at my high school many years before doing something around the altar. I went to the sacristy (the room behind the altar) to say hi. As we chatted he looked at me with a weird smile & started running his hand up & down my back. This is long before the abuse surfaced so I had no reference frame. But I left quickly & without comment. I was too shocked to respond. I can only imagine the dismay devout believers would have in the days before such behavior came to light.
You can’t blame this on the priest shortage since a lot of this stuff occured well before the drop in vocations. There is no reason why such abusers were reassigned. Back in the 60s when our pastor had a dispute with the bishop about “revenue sharing” he was unceremoniously yanked and “retired”. If they could do that over money, they could have done it over sexual abuse.
Dear Editor,
After reading Sinead O’Conner’s piece in the Washington Post titled, The pope’s apology in Ireland seems hollow. I remembered back when I was twenty five and cracking my Sinead O’Conner CD over my knee. I was angry at her act that I had just watched live on Saturday Night Live. On this episode of SNL she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II and sang a song of war against hatred and abuse.
After her action on SNL I felt I hated her. I didn’t even want to listen to her music but now looking back on it, knowing now she too was a victim of the industrial schools of Ireland, now knowing that child abuse in many forms was happening and being covered up by the Vatican throughout the history of the church. I see now that it was people like me that were turning a blind eye towards the abuse because I was raised to have blind faith. I was raised to protect and remain a part of the church at all cost or suffer the consequences of a place called hell.
I guess I can go on and on but why bother. I’ll just cut to the chase.
To: Ms. Sinead O’Conner
If you should ever read this, my apologies, as I am sorry for hating you for a long time in my life. I am sorry for being so blind and deaf to what you were trying to tell us. I guess some things had to just take some time to figure out. And I thank you now from the bottom of my Wounded Healer heart.
Peace is finding… that’s all it is.
I cherish you… Thanks.
Sincerely,
Former Catholic
Peter Deane
Madison, Wisconsin
What this all shows me is just how little support Ratzinger has among the Catholic faithful. Even though John Paul II bears a lot of responsibility for these scandals, and even though the evidence of that responsibility was out there during the last 5 years or so of his papacy, the scandal never got this close to John Paul II, certainly never really threatened his place as Pope. John Paul II was too beloved among a majority of Catholics for that to have happened. Many blamed local bishops and not the Vatican because holding John Paul II responsible for the sexual abuse was a line those Catholics were absolutely not willing to cross.
Whereas there really is a nonzero possibility, perhaps much greater, that Benedict XVI actually could be forced out because of these scandals. He has all of the same right-wing policies as John Paul II but with none of the charisma, which was what enabled John Paul II to do what he did (with Ratzinger at his side the whole time).
These scandals go to the core of the post-1978 Vatican. I don’t really know to what extent the “liberal” forces in the upper echelons of the church still exist, or whether they have enough power and backing to be able to force Benedict XVI out and replace him with one of their own. But we may just find out.
What these scandals also do is challenge Catholics about the basis of their interaction with their church. Since 1978 many have been able to accommodate an obsessively top-down hierarchy whose social values the laity generally does not share – an accommodation driven by John Paul II’s personal popularity. That may change as a result of this, but only if Catholics start to organize within their parishes and dioceses. That won’t be easy, and for many others, simply leaving the church will be their move. It’s certainly a well-worn path among North American and European Catholics over the last 50 years or so…
I heard the Pope quoted (or a spokesman, not sure which) on NPR this morning, saying that “God put me here (the papacy), only God can remove me.”
Blech.
This is the best news I’ve had in a long time. Hoping pope keeps on his disastrous course. democracynow did it’s final segment on it this morning, but had on a motor mouth female priest (apparently there are 85 who claim to be such in the U.S.) who didn’t say anything very insightful. Taibbi’s got a screed out which someone linked to in Swim.
Watch out for those lightning bolts, Bennie.
That he defends, or denies the seriousness of, his past behaviour is telling.
In the early 1970s I worked at my local public library while in high school. One day a priest was checking something out and I mentioned that I could always trust a priest. As a Catholic I was raised to believe that. I’ve never forgotten the priest’s reaction, he stated that even priests shouldn’t be trusted like that. Up until the scandal hit a few years ago, I never understood what he meant.
Yes, hierarchy and authority are bad! Look at the US gov’t, also. It is antithetical to human freedom and leads inevitably to corruption.
Off topic here…but the other day I was reading about the travails of the liberal talk show host Bernie Ward. He was busted for child porn. But before he was a talk show host, he was, yes, a Catholic priest. Need we say more?
Here’s hoping the Church dies a slow death!
I would like to see a web site “Cost of Clergy Pedophilia” showing the sum total paid out by the church, as an ever increasing $ number, for sex abuse breaking out the cost per parish and parishioner. It at some point it would make you think about Sunday offerings that went to a settlement for a scumbag priest who in the end pays nothing. I stopped dropping money in any plate a while ago.
That was moi. Here it is again:
The Catholic Church is a Criminal Enterprise
Morning Firepups: On the up side, the continuing stonewalling of these crimes by church brass might just turn out to be a good thing. Such a posture tends to make those performing such inquiries dig in their heels, not the other way around. In other words, ignoring it ain’t gonna make it go away.
I know I have already posted more on this topic than is useful. Mostly emotional and reactionary.
But the fact is as the systemic nature of the problem is exposed it must be creating a terrible crisis for devout Catholics. For them it must be as though God himself has betrayed them. And almost as profound for those who have relied on the church as a reliable institution for the good.
This is a huge segment of a Western culture already threatening to crumble into oblivion. I personally am grateful that my spiritual and religious beliefs have never relied on the infallibility of any religious institution. But those such as I are in the minority.
What grieves my heart the most is the failure of understanding that every Catholic, in front of the pews and in the pews, will be held accountable by God for not protecting the children who have been deeply injured in the past and those who will be in the future. History is showing us, more will be hurt by leaders in the church.
There is no earthly accountability within the church.
I pray their lies will find them out. The Pope is living on cheap grace and promoting evil through his own words to the masses. Catholic laity are just as spiritually accountable as the Pope and have the spiritual power and authority to address the crimes honestly and confront the evil.
If I were a Priest, ticked off by this history, I would understand that the Word would be calling me to act. Remember, there is a shortage of Priests and there is spiritual power in that reality.
The saddest part of the entire ordeal, is no matter how much evidence, no matter how much irrefutable proof, it does not matter to the flocks. Oh sure, they will feign outrage. They’ll deny, or show disgust, or both. But in the end, millions will still cling to their catholic faith/church system, knowing it’s corrupt and knowing that it harbors criminals to the point of promoting them. That is the saddest part. If I belonged to any group of any kind, and the heirarchy was shown as the Catholic system has been, I’d be out of there!
Hasn’t the way the Catholic church has handled the pedophile priests over the past many years an indication that they ALL are defending or denying?
I don’t have any psychiatry/psychology training at all, but I seem to recall reading that there is no increased probability of pedophelia among celibate men. Maybe someone with more expertise could chime in here. I did read one article suggesting a connection between that enforced celibacy and sexual abuse.
Or maybe the Catholic church has denied a connection…
It seems unlikely celibacy is the proximate cause of Catholicism’s problems with pedophilia over the past few centuries. Nearly everyone is aware that there used to be a problem and obviously many attempted to pretend that it had gone away. Unfortunately we keep getting reminders that is clearly not the case.
Consider the Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns. They don’t seem to have this problem, so far as any of us knows, and yet they have some of the same strictures for the monks and nuns. The difference is probably that Buddhism requires internal and external debate. Other than a few people that are reborn, as it were, the vast majority of monks are not required to respect authority and are asked to debate and think for themselves. The failing of the Catholic Church is the problem of any organization designed to create an inflexible authority based command structure. The same structure that requires obedience also protects the indiscretions of those to whom respect is required. A commitment to not questioning infallible authorities, in whatever organizational structure, creates the seeds for the same problems. The mindset that makes not questioning the deeds of others in roles of power a praiseworthy act is at the heart of this.
One might argue that as the Catholic Church has moved to eliminate dissenting voices, with the current Pope leading part of that purge, they have created the conditions necessary for this problem to flourish. Changing the faces of authority without a change in general attitudes will probably not fix this problem.
(Note: I am neither a Buddhist nor a Catholic.)
I work at a Catholic university. I wonder if anything will be said here?
EDIT: I’m not holding my breath.
Too bad the people leaving the Catholic Church probably aren’t losing their superstitions altogether. As religions go, the Catholic Church is responsible for far more than it’s fair share of violence and oppression but only because it’s been around longer than many others.
Silence is consent.
When the Pope is kicked to the curb he can take the American Bishops with him.
Thought I remembered it was you, but was too lazy to look or relink. *g*
I can’t and don’t want to defend indefensible behavior, but there are a couple of things that I’d like to note for those who are thinking this problem through:
The Catholic Church is far more decentralized than most people realize.
It also has a different relationship with the media than what many of us have come to expect because of our experiences with other leaders who use and abuse the media.
Speaking as a 63 year-old gay “lapsed Catholic” (not really “lapsed” as I jumped ship after conformation and never let a priest get his slimy paws on me) “celebacy” (a total fantasy) is not the problem. The problem is the church itself.
Catholicism is entirely devoted to sexual disgust and its totalitarian regulation among the laity. What do you expect from a church that worhips a flesh-eating zombie and claims his mother was a virgin?
Back in the day “good families” would, when the time came, cast a cold eye towards their gay sons and say “That one’s for the church.” Lesbian daughters of course became nuns.
Thanks to the overwhelming success of the LBGT rights movement kids today simply come out and live their lives — leaving the church behind in the dust.
So who do they have left?
The dregs. Serious pedos and other assorted freaks.
What’s the difference between the Catholic Church and NAMBLA?
The cassocks!
I could tell you stories . . . but perhaps I should contact Joan Walsh first as one of them is quite long and multi-faceted and concerns a pair of pedo-priests who ran a gay “clothing optional” hotel in Palm Springs back in the 80′s.
Re those Tibetan Buddhist as my friend Vivain Kurtz — a 60′s supermodel-vant-la-lettre who went off in search of spiritual enlightenment only to be teribly disappointed once said “I don’t want no Rimpoche Romance!”
Randy Newman put it best. . .
Apparently, molesting children is worthy of forgiveness. Unless you use a condom. Then you’re in REAL trouble.
Maybe the hippies should take over the church. Fill the incense thingies with reefer. That’s what “the faithful” need! The Pope would calm down a little too. The mass could be a Phish concert. Vatican 3 or 4 (lost count!) could be a human be-in, with folks selling hemp bracelets and Darwin fish bumper stickers–and organic tofu.
Sorry, couldn’t help myself. I know stupid, stupid….
Ross Asshat of the NYT blames The 70′s.
In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny “Oh Prunella!”
I hope what is happening in and to the Catholic Church is a sign of the decline of harmful superstitions in the world. At least for the most part the Catholics have stopped the large scale slaughtering of people in the name of their “god”. Now if we can only get the Muslims and the Israelis to stop…
Know what’s really funny?
Even as they’ve used the worldwide priest shortage as the go-to excuse for not defrocking the pedos, Ratzi and his clique were the architects and implementers of the Vatican’s decades-long policy of rooting out lefty priests, a policy implemented under JPII, over whom Ratzi had a ton of influence.
Here’s the website for the virtual diocese of Jacques Gaillot, one of the priests who was punished far more harshly for being a sensible and humane person than the vast majority of the kiddy-fiddler priests ever have been for abusing kids. The only reason he hasn’t been officially excommunicated is because Ratzi didn’t want to make a martyr of him. So instead, the Vatican had Gaillot transferred from his suburban Paris diocese into the diocese of Partenia, a portion of North Africa which hasn’t had an active on-the-ground Christian community since the 4th century.
If they’d done this ten or even five years earlier, it might have worked to shut him up. But they did it in 1995 — and Gaillot soon had a website up, the world’s first virtual diocese. IIRC, his website was up before the Vatican’s!
If you belonged to Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and found out that they were giving free legal aid to those arrested for drunk driving, would you still support the group?
It’s astonishing to me why anybody would publish Ross Douchehat or several others. They are completely divorced from reality. I guess it’s what we have to expect when news is a product, opinion is fact and facts are malleable.
Nicely put! :-)
With all that blackmail available it is no wonder he was elected to paedophile in chief.
New post up top…
I just don’t understand it. If my organization was going through these things, I’d be out of there in a heartbeat. I am yet to see a religion, any religion, that was truly worth the time or energy to join. They preach a great spiel, but I have never seen any of their members follow their rules.
Gaillot, it would seem, is the kind of priest all young seminarians would aspire to before becoming corrupted by the church.
Thank you for that website.
Blind faith loyalty to the Church. A total loss of perspective.
My expertise was crisis intervention and PTSD. Have never studied pedophilia. Dealt with an incestuous family once.
When people ask my faith, I usually say, “I’m a recovering Catholic.”
I hold no malice toward any religion or belief system, and have always felt that whatever works for the individual is what matters most. But the role fear plays in most Western faiths is irrefutable, and the Catholics have fearmongering – and of course its cousin, guilt – down to a science.
I believe the pedophilia and other abuses have a lot less to do with celibacy than with the fraternal nature of the priesthood. Frat boys, urged on my their more sinister brothers, will do things they would never dream of doing themselves. The priesthood is a fraternity, and fraternity members ignore their superiors at their peril.
As a former member of the Catholic church, I can say that the cover up was blanketing. I originally attended a church in England, where the parish priest was not interested in boys, he was interested in booze. To the point where one night, deep in his cups while doing midnight mass he had a wee bit of a vomit on the altar. It was a colourful experience, but not necessarily an ominous one.
That was to change when I moved to Ontario, Canada. Our family began to attend a parish there. Initially, it was refreshing to see they dynamic, friendly priest who seemed to try very hard to connect to the youth of his congregation. I’d been an altar boy since I was old enough to become one, at the behest of my parents. It seemed I was destined to have to suffer through the frilly white bib and thick and sweltering robe once more. My parents were actually approached by the priest in an attempt to sway me into service. Why did I say no? Why did I defy my parents with such vehemence? It was actually the last confession I ever performed. It was one of the creepiest experiences of my life. It was also the death of my faith as I know it. Nothing, thankfully happened, per se but to have a priest dispense with the screen and to hold my hand tenderly as he tried to guide me into a ‘sins of thought’ section ( it does not bear repeating, suffice to say his attempts to draw me out were graphic ) were the last straw. My attendance dwindled, and that would have appeared to be that.
Not really, though. I knew altar boys that served at that parish. Some were my school friends, one was my neighbour and best friend. We hung out often. Then the stories started at school. Father Crampton was away quite a bit it seemed. Then suddenly he was no longer there. No explanation other than “he’d been called away”. A new and improved priest was inserted to take his place. Then the ‘scandal’ hit. Father Crampton was on trial for molesting 7 ( HAH! ) boys. Here’s the funny thing…No one AT ALL was surprised. The majority of the parish ( i’m assuming those without male children or children at all ) fell in lock step behind their former priest. The church hierarchy fell in behind him. It was disgusting to see. There was a campaign against the children. “trouble makers” “liars” suddenly my friend was no longer at my school. He didn’t want to hang out anymore. He pretty much became a bit of a shell of the person I once knew. I wish at the time I was as emotionally mature as I am now, I would have reached out to him more than I did. I knew though, and he was ashamed. He was one of the ‘seven’.
Here’s the sad part. How the church approached this in this instance was standard operating procedure. It was carefully scripted. It was how the church did things and pretty much everyone knew this to be the case. In other words, it was an open secret, it was pervasive and it stretched the length and bredth of the church as we knew it. Discredit the child through vilification. When that doesn’t work, apply pressure to local law enforcement such that an investigation doesn’t occur or force proceedings to be sealed rather than just redacting the names of innocent boys in order to mitigate perceived damage. Here’s the kicker…Father Dale Crampton came to our parish from somewhere else after the heat started to come down on him there. The only reason this didn’t work this time around was actually a local catholic school teacher who worked tirelessly to expose the relentless cover-ups. That and the bravery of 7 boys who stood up to the ungodly pressure of a church in denial.
I apologize if my comment is a bit disjointed, it’s not very pleasant for me to type. I’d just like to say, what happened in the church I attended was the same as occurred in any number of churches worldwide. It was “how the church worked”, it was pervasive and as such I doubt there’s a single priest, bishop, cardinal or whatever who has served that was not part of or aware of it.
You can attempt to google Father Dale Crampton Ottawa, there’s not much there ( the powerful church ). I didn’t know Alex personally but I hope he gets his wish in spades.
Compelling. Thank you. I know all who read this, as I have, will have a better understanding of just how profound.y destructive this kind of abuse is.
As a physician I have heard justifications for keeping secret malpractice and other patient abuses similar to the church; “people need to trust such and important institution” “To have these things revealed destroys trust and faith.” No what these institutions need to acknowledge is that we are all fallible humans no matter the awesome responsibilities life places on us. Then we can accept that most of us do the best we can while accepting our own roles in needing to be discerning.
I know a number of life-long devout Catholics who have left the Church in disgust over this scandal.
On the flip side, the Baptists and the Mormons also have had serious problems with clergy sex abuse. Neither requires celibacy of their clergy (quite the opposite). It’s not the celibacy kids, it’s the authoritarianism.
Thank you for a personal, insightful story. I’m glad you got away but very sorry and saddened for all of the molested children, most of whom were probably abused twice (first by the molesting pedophile priest and then secondly by the church and congregation who chose to blame the victims and allow the priests to get away with it). Disgusting.
I’m not a catholic; never was. But I never “got” the need to have priests be celibate; it seemed stupid and waste to me. When I was younger, a Catholic priest used to run a book club that my parents attended. I got to know him some, and he was an interesting, thoughtful guy. He had issues with the celibacy situation and was arguing against it. Ultimately he left the church and got married. I don’t know what he did after that to make money. He as a smart, with it guy, who perhaps also saw the pedophilia going on and tried to do something about it. When I hear these dreadful stories coming out, it makes me wonder what, exactly, caused that priest to leave the priesthood.
I remember watching Nazi Ratzi when he was crowned Pope (that’s what it looks like to me), and he had that disgusting U.S. ArchBishop (or whatever his title is) from Boston, I think, sitting prominently to his right. This is after it had come to light how many pedophiles that Bishop has let “get away with it,” etc. It was puke-making, and it was abundantly clear to me then that Nazi Ratzi was right in thick of it. I wasn’t wrong.
I’m not a Catholic, as I stated, but it’s hard to imagine how one could stay in that religious organization given how widespread this is.
I want to say: for shame (re the priests and the pope), but it’s clear that these priests and the pope have no shame whatsoever. How they can pass themselves off as “men of god” or as having anything approaching “faith” is way beyond my comprehension.
It’s been evident forever that the Vatican is all about making tons of money for the male hierarchy (certainly not for the nuns, that’s for sure). To me, it’s sole purpose appears as a business concern: how to rip off the flock in various ways for fun and profit. Disgusting.
All churches have clergy who engage in abusive behavior, either with children or adults. Witness Ted Haggard who made such big noises being homophobic, but he cheated on his wife with a male prostitute and took drugs. At least Haggard did it with a willing adult, and he also didn’t abuse his role as clergy to seduce a female congregant. But still…
No religious faith is going to ever be free of all abuse. There’s always going to be something going on somewhere. The church that I attended as a child had a choir master, who abused kids, and whose wife joined in, as well. I knew something was “weird” about him, but luckily never was abused by them. But I wasn’t surprised when their sexual abuse came out. In that case, though, the congregation was informed immediately; the church paid out money for the kids and their families to get counselling; and he was given the boot and other churches were warned.
It’s all about how vigilent the organization is in terms of watching out for abusive situations, and what happens should abuse be brought to light.
In the case of the Catholic church, the abuse is clearly a worldwide phenomenon that’s been ongoing for decades; the church hierarchy is well aware of it and in fact is sometimes involved in it; and nothing has been done about it to this day. Nazi Ratzi is still trying to weasle out of any responsibility.
It is not about celibacy. Get over that! It is about easy access to children who are restrained from complaining.
Yes indeed all churches, youth ministries, youth psychiatric facilities, schools public and private are vulnerable. The Catholics are almost unique in the infallibility thing.
How many people are molested because the church puts these known offenders back in the priesthood? The churched remarked on NPR that one of these pedophiles was a skilled liar. Well, what the fuck. What is the primary skill of any predator? Manipulation. The Catholic church has blood on its hands. They are an enabler to this behavior. These pedophiles seek out priesthood because they know they are able to use a position of authority to abuse children (That is textbook behavior of an abuser to seek positions authority or control). And they know the church does nothing.
Send the Pope to prison for a year as an accomplice and then we would see true change. Lack of transparency into any bureaucracy invites fraud and corruption. The Catholic church bureaucracy represents nothing in the way of ideals embraced by Christ. The church is in a dysfunctional relationship with pedophiles and that dysfunction perpetuates more and more crimes because it enables the pedophile. This really just disgusts me beyond words.
The whoremongering Catholic church is morally bankrupt just as are the whoremongering politicians sucking on the tit of corporatocracy in Washington. Dens of vipers.
I’d go a bit further. It’s a culture of control and the ability to act with impunity. It has nothing what-so-ever to do with celibacy. Boy scout troop leaders are not required to be celibate, yet they have had similar issues ( with similar root causes )as have, to a somewhat lesser degree, the public/private school systems.
Simpson notes that during John Paul II’s 26 year reign as Pope, individual dioceses were responsible for investigating incidents of child rape.
What he neglects to add is that this “keep it down, keep it hidden, keep it deniable” was part of the entire strategy — as directed by the RCC hierarchy.
They’d try to hush it up at the parish level. When that didn’t work, the local bishop would get involved, usually send the offending priest away for a retreat or other counseling — but always under the seal of the Confessional. The kids and their parents would be urged to stay quiet.
When that didn’t work and the priest kept offending or the crimes were too big to cover up, there’d be a transfer to another parish. First, within the local area. Again, if too big, the priest would suddenly be transferred across or even out of the country. So now the archbishop would be involved in the cover-up. The whole system was designed to divert blame away from the RCC itself, and especially from its head. Yet there is no way such policies would exist without the pope’s direct wish that it be so.
Given the nature of the crimes, how often they happened and how systematic they were both condoned and covered up, can there be ANY doubt that this was anything but the official papally decreed policy. And that it had been in place for far, far longer than just the last 10 or 30 years?
The fish rots from the head down, and this one’s been lying around for centuries.
It’s not religion – it’s the Holy Roman Empire – an authoritarian thing. And this perverted behavior goes all the way back to Roman emperor behavior.
Catholics can vote with their feet and walk across the street to the Episcopal Church.
the pope included a statement about the scandal in his palm sunday address
which part of the scandal did benedict address ???
the media report
the news reports are terrible
raping children ???
not worth mentioning
this evil fuck thinks the problem is the news stories
do we need any more proof that this lying fuck isn’t Jesus’ messenger ???
pope benedict is the anti christ
he’s defending evil, and castigating the people who fight evil
what more proof do you need ???
I think the letter benny wrote back in the sixties threatening to excummunicate anybody who talked about the scandal is the main point missed
it’s like the law of Omerta in the mob
talk and we’ll whack ya
like God is some fatr greasy Don of an Itilian mafia family
welcome to Mario Puzo’s version of the bible
“In the beginning, God said ‘we’re gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse”
True — and what most non-Catholics don’t realize is that for the devout Catholic, the threat of Excommunication is worse than mere death. It’s being told that you will go to Hell when you die, where you will be tortured and punished for all of eternity.
Again, the current pope’s complicity in defining and codifying current and past RCC policy is becoming more and more evident. My main point it’s not just him. It’s every single archbishop, bishop, priest and brother who were also guilty in these crimes.
The letter benny wrote was not “back in the sixties.” He wrote the letter in 2001!
‘Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,’ Ratzinger’s letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.
Thank you for your comments. Spot on.
bellesouth’s comment about the benny letter should be a post.
Eliminate the church’s tax exempt status. Eliminate the billions in aid to Israel. Both of these would be giant steps in the direction of some kind of moral framework for society.
On Pope Benedict: If he was keeping all the secrets, I wonder how many cardinals voted for him out of fear of exposure?
I agree klynn. It is a smoking gun.
Religion as a whore of political ideology is bad for religion and bad for society. Its absurd and arrogant enough when religious leaders pretend to know precisely what a god who they claim is Infinite, Transcendent, and Unknowable says about issues like health care, financial reform, and terrorism, but when the guy who calls himself The Bishop of Rome, The Vicar of Jesus Christ, The Successor of the Prince of the Apostles and Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church is found guilty of covering up, for decades, the systematic sexual abuse of children by priests of which he demands a vow of chastity, it is abhorrent. When demanding honesty and lack of hypocrisy of those who lead, secular or religious, it matters not if one is an atheist or a believer. The rule should be: Don’t bugger underage boys and girls. Period. Don’t enable others to do it for years. Don’t belittle the crime and don’t hide behind “infallibility” to cover up your own complicity.
The Pope should resign. Benedict has predicated his entire ecclesiastical career on covering up sex crimes. His papacy has become a metaphor for the legitimation by cover-up of massive sexual perversion. After becoming Prefect for the Congregation of the Faith, then Cardinal Ratzinger was responsible for the cover-up of literally hundreds of thousands, perhaps, millions of cases of predatory paedophilia. After paying out over $1 billion, he met with George W. Bush in 2004, when John Kerry had a double digit lead in the US polls – and he agreed to write the now infamous “Bishops Letter” threatening to excommunicate every Catholic who would dare to cast a vote for any Catholic politician who had ever supported choice for women. Nine months later, Ratzinger popped out of nowhere to the shock and dismay of many Roman Catholics to emerge as the successor of John Paul II. It is now difficult to see his election as anything other than a reaction to the sexual abuse scandal that was beginning to engulf the Church. Thus, Ratzinger’s papacy is the darkest hour of the Roman Catholic Church since the Holocaust and the Inquisition before that atrocity. Benedict should go – and go quickly.
Thank you for your article about the clergy abuse scandal and the cover up of these crimes against children. Two web pages with additional information on child abuse crimes and clergy abuse are at
http://ritualabuse.us
http://childabusewiki.org
That is not true there are Buddhist nuns coming out saying that they have been molested and sexually assaulted by Buddhist monks. There is a documentary about it. These women are were trying to become Buddhist priests and many times they risked being attacked and harassed. So it is not only a catholic thing.
Sinead
I would suggest go ahead and get a very confortable chair. The wait might be a bit longer than you wish. But, of course, I do agree with you!
?
Links?
Sinead O’Connor is entitled to her opinion as you and I are, but that is all that it is. One has to look at the person making the comment to fully understand what he or she means –look at their background, track record and the like. When one has a poor track record, that does not bode well for truth. Certainly their is outrage, but let us face the fact that this has been going on and in the media since 2002…people are really getting tired of this kind of journalism especially when they are getting facts wrong and also not revealing even more kinds of destructive behavior on the part of other elements in society. But that is how those other elements might prefer things to be. Those who initiate Crusades always up end losing.