Harkening back to one of the shows Dunc and I did last week, today in this article about the latest round of sexual misconduct (which is a PC way of saying “having sex with little boys) allegations against the Catholic Church, I found this:
In a BBC documentary produced last year, a reporter traced the sexual abuse crisis back to the Vatican and to Pope Benedict XVI himself.
According to the report, while Pope Benedict was still Cardinal Raztinger, he authorised a document in 2001, which was then approved by the late Pope John Paul related to crimes of solicitation. The document instructed all bishops to put the interests of the church ahead of those of law enforcement.
So basically Papa Benny along with J.Piddy 2, both conspired, as recently as 2001, to protect Mother Church ahead of their victims.
So don’t tell me “oh that’s all in our past, we’ve all changed now”. Bullshit. The Catholics are dirty and should be shut down. How long are we going to tolerate this kind of behaviour?
I love ya Father Bob, but your mob are rotten to the core at the highest levels.
C’mon Cam. Say what you really mean!
And you have proof that this is factual??? Do you believe every thing you read & hear on the media or only what you choose to believe.
No mum, I have faith that it’s true. That’s good enough, right? Who needs to worry about evidence??? 🙂
Now now Cam Catholicism is not the issue here. The issue is that you have a bunch of sexually repressed men who historically have entered the church so that people don’t start talking when they don’t court ladies and an opportunity. Add to this the fact that because this has been going on for so long most of these offenders have been abused themselves and you have a recipe for institutionalized sexual abuse.
Hiding the sexual abuse is of course a problem, however this isn’t unique to the Catholic church and despite the theory behind the church, most Catholics don’t give a rats arse what the pope has to say. I should know I was one.
If you take everything the Catholic church has to say totally literally then it is one of the most backwards denominations but the really important thing about Catholics is that most of them follow their conscience rather than the word of the pope. So in reality Catholics tend to be some of the most liberal Christians.
At least they (omg I nearly typed we… scary!) don’t speak in tongues or practice ascending into heaven before the apocalypse by jumping in the air repeatedly.
Miriam, when you have an institution such as the Catholic Church that has been responsible over its history for genocide, oppression, torture, war, the systematic cover-up of child molestation, and is now telling people in AIDS-ridden countries that they shouldn’t use condoms… I’d say it’s well overdue to send in the UNSC.
Exactly what I was getting at Cam….
Whether its facts or faith seems to be when it suits you! 😛
I say don’t paint everyone with the same brush. There are gonna be perverts in any large organization, but there are also a lot of good people there too. But don’t get me started on the whole genocide, oppression, torture, and war thing… How many wars have been started because someone had a bad idea, but people followed along because the original idea-person, no matter how insane, was supposedly in charge?
Oh wait…I just described Iraq.
Herne, that is the biggest cop-out and the Catholics just *love* pulling that one out. I could say the same thing about the Nazis. Just because a few millions Jews got killed, let’s not paint the whole Nazi organisation with the same brush, right?
The major point about the above story isn’t that child molestation happens inside the Catholic Church, but that the guys at the very top, the Pope and his Cardinals, continue to cover it up and instruct their Bishops to protect the Church at all costs. THAT’S the real story.
The other point is, “Interests of the Church” does not necessarily mean condoning or covering up child molestation. That’s what you are reading into it. “Solicitation” generally refers to prostitution. The interests of the Church over law enforcement can mean that what is confessed to a priest in a confessional is sacrosanct & must not be repeated to anyone, even if it is about a crime that has been committed. You have to look at the whole picture & not just take a passage out of context.
Father Tom Doyle is a canon lawyer. He had a diplomatic career with the Vatican but was sacked after he criticised the church’s handling of child abuse. Here’s what he had to say about the document in question:
But what you really have here is an explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen.
You’ve got a written policy that says that the Vatican will control these situations and you also have I think clear written evidence of the fact that all they are concerned about is containing and controlling the problem.
Nowhere in any of these documents does it say anything about helping the victims.
The only thing it does is say that they can impose fear on the victims and punish the victims for discussing or disclosing what happened to them.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/5392338.stm)
Oh and here’s a link to the actual document. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_09_06_Crimen_english.pdf)
Clause 11 says (in part):
Because, however, what is treated in these cases has to have a greater degree of care and observance
so that those same matters be pursued in a most secretive way, and, after they have been defined and given over to execution, they are to be restrained by a perpetual silence, each and everyone pertaining to
the tribunal in any way or admitted to knowledge of the matters because of their office, is to observe the strictest secret, which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office, in all matters and with all persons, under the penalty of excommunication…..
Cam… Cover up and denial is nothing new for the church… Just look at the Inquisition! The Crusades! It’s nothing new.
I imagine there were a few good Nazis…
Oh yeah… excommunication is good too. “Do what we say or you can’t be part of our club!” Since when did a bunch of priests get to decide who goes to heaven or who goes to hell? Doesn’t “god” decide that on his own? Is “god” going to send you to hell because Pope what’s-his-name excommunicated you for laughing at his hat? Sheesh.
The Chaplain at my school got excommunicated from the anglican church because of his work in kings cross helping prostitutes and drug addicts. They didn’t like the fact that he didn’t judge them.
The church isn’t too keen on free thinking individuals.
That’s because “free thinking” is the opposite to “faith” and then they would lose all of their power over the lives of individuals and therefore their economic power. All religions are, without exception, about economic and temporal power.
Herne, it’s not just the Inquisition and the Crusades. I’ve been educating my kids lately about how the “white people” invaded countries such as the Americas and Australia and committed terrible acts of genocide during the 15th – 18th centuries. And when I tell them the stories I explain that it was the “Christians” who were responsible. Belinda keeps trying to say it was the “Europeans” but I think that obfuscates the point. The Europeans were all Christians during this period and their acts of genocide against the “heathens” of the countries they invaded were justified through the bible.
If you add up the acts of torture and genocide committed in the name of Christianity over the last 2000 years, you can see that they really do see themselves as being made in the image of the old testament god Yahweh who was quite fond of destroying entire nations (Sodom, Gomorrah, etc) if they disagreed with him.
So does this make Bush the pope of the new religion of the US of A? Isn’t he destroying countries and cultures under the banner of “freedom from terrorism” and such?
“We’ll have world peace…if we have to kill everyone else to do it!”