Clerical abuse!

[lynchbhoy]

plenty of clerical abuse going on in the civil service for donkeys years now
the passport office fiasco is only the tip of the iceberg !

[orangeman]

Brady wants 'just resolution' of abuse case


Friday, 26 March 2010 12:45


Cardinal Seán Brady has responded to a news report that he has been urged to withdraw his defence in a legal battle with one of Fr Brendan Smyth's alleged victims.

High Court documents show that the solicitor for the alleged victim says he was incredulous at recent expressions of remorse by the Primate and other church leaders when those statements were compared to Dr Brady's defence in the proceedings.

In a statement, Cardinal Brady said he wanted to work towards a just resolution of the case, conscious of the rights of all concerned.

He added that he had asked his legal representatives to engage today with the complainant's legal representatives with a view to progressing the case.
He said the matters concerned are the subject of ongoing legal proceedings, and in light of the instructions he had given to his legal representatives today, it would be inappropriate for him to offer any further comment at this time.

[Mack the finger]

Cardinal Brady was supposed to have celebrated confirmation at a parish in Armagh during the week.
The parents complained and threatened to protest if the Cardinal did arrive, and in the end he didn't.
This issue is tearing the church apart at a local level and it's increasingly obvious that the Cardinals postition
is now untenable. He may believe that he acted according to Canon law but people look and see a cover
up, of which the Cardinal is head. The devout may believe that the man did nothing wrong, but if the
church is to attract a new generation of followers it has to act quickly.

[orangeman]

Cardinal Brady was supposed to have celebrated confirmation at a parish in Armagh during the week.
The parents complained and threatened to protest if the Cardinal did arrive, and in the end he didn't.This issue is tearing the church apart at a local level and it's increasingly obvious that the Cardinals postition
is now untenable. He may believe that he acted according to Canon law but people look and see a cover
up, of which the Cardinal is head. The devout may believe that the man did nothing wrong, but if the
church is to attract a new generation of followers it has to act quickly.

Seriously ??  There was rumours of this but I didn't think it would happen.

[Mack the finger]

Seriously ??  There was rumours of this but I didn't think it would happen.

Seemingly so, yes. I think it's very sad that its coming to this. The church has
seriously underestimated the anger that's out there surrounding this issue. I was
talking about this to my mother last night, a very devout woman, and I've
never heard her question so much. She still has her faith, she can separate it
from the church, but she wonders just how corrupt of an organisation the
Catholic church has become. There's a generation of people who never questioned
the church the way we do and can today, there just wasn't the freedom to do so.
And a lot of them are wondering what sort of organisation have they supported all these
years. I have a lot of sympathy for those who have faith and are trying to
understand how they feel about all of this.

[orangeman]

Vatican cardinal calls for sex abuse 'housecleaning' 
The Vatican has been accused of failing to act quickly enough against abusers
A leading Vatican cardinal has called for "housecleaning" as paedophile priest scandals from Italy to Ireland pile pressure on Pope Benedict.

Walter Kasper, who heads the Catholic Church's ecumenical council, said the needs of victims should come first.

Defending the Pope, he told an Italian newspaper the Church needed a "culture of alertness and bravery".

Meanwhile suggestions that Ireland's Catholic leader will be forced to quit have been rejected by his spokesman.

Cardinal Sean Brady has apologised for his role in the handling of sex abuse cases, saying he wants to work towards a just resolution of a case being taken against him by a man who alleges he was abused by a priest.

There have been calls for the cardinal's resignation since it emerged he was present at two meetings in the 1970s when victims of Fr Brendan Smyth were sworn to silence about their ordeal.

Information provided by the victims was not passed on to police and Smyth went on to abuse many more children before finally being convicted, in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, of nearly 150 sex attacks on children.

'No turning back'


  There is no turning back on the path we are now on and that is good

Walter Kasper
Head of the Vatican's ecumenical council


Profile: The Vatican's watchdog
Can a pope resign? 
In his interview for daily Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Kasper said Pope Benedict had been the "first to feel the need for new and stricter rules".

As head of the Vatican watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger took action which led to a flood of cases of alleged sexual abuse by priests being processed.

"We need a culture of alertness and bravery, to do the housework," Cardinal Kasper said.

"There is no turning back on the path we are now on and that is good."

The Italian interview with the cardinal appeared on Saturday morning, hours after three deaf men, who say they were repeatedly sexually abused by priests as children in northern Italy, confronted a Church spokesman on prime-time TV.

The three former pupils of a Verona school for the deaf asked why their alleged abusers had not been punished and demanded justice.



The three alleged Verona victims talked to AP before going on TV

They did not go to the police because of the expiry of a 10-year statute of limitations.

They have asked the priests they accuse to waive the statute so a case can be opened but to date none have done so.

The spokesman for the Verona diocese, Fr Bruno Fasani, said he hoped Friday's confrontation had been constructive, but the three men refused to shake his hand.

Last month, the CDF ordered Verona's bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Zenti, to interview former pupils of the school to determine if any action should be taken against priests.

The Verona case has echoes of one in the US state of Wisconsin where the CDF, which was then under Cardinal Ratzinger, told bishops in 1998 to shut down the Church trial of an elderly priest who allegedly molested 200 deaf boys at a school.

Speaking to the BBC this week, one of the alleged Wisconsin victims asked why the man who is now Pope Benedict had not acted against their alleged abuser.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has denied there was a cover-up and denounced what it described as "an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost".

[pintsofguinness]

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has denied there was a cover-up and denounced what it described as "an ignoble attempt to strike at Pope Benedict and his closest aides at any cost".

I dont understand that line, obviously these idiots still think they are above any law.

[Main Street]

This is a few years old, but well worth a look if it has been missed.
BBC - Panorama: Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006)

http://rapidshare.com/files/366086192/BBC.Panorama-Sex.Crimes.and.the.Vatican.2006.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/366086060/BBC.Panorama-Sex.Crimes.and.the.Vatican.2006.part2.rar

It is a bit all over the place patching up a case against the Pope, nevertheless some direct witness is given by the canon law advocates and the active stonewalling by the church towards prosecution attempts to build a case.

The few chilling scenes in it with O'Grady testifying in court carry a haunting emotional shock warning.
I don't have words to describe Bishop Comiskey's cameo.

[longrunsthefox]

This is a few years old, but well worth a look if it has been missed.
BBC - Panorama: Sex Crimes and the Vatican (2006)

http://rapidshare.com/files/366086192/BBC.Panorama-Sex.Crimes.and.the.Vatican.2006.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/366086060/BBC.Panorama-Sex.Crimes.and.the.Vatican.2006.part2.rar

It is a bit all over the place patching up a case against the Pope, nevertheless some direct witness is given by the canon law advocates and the active stonewalling by the church towards prosecution attempts to build a case.

The few chilling scenes in it with O'Grady testifying in court carry a haunting emotional shock warning.
I don't have words to describe Bishop Comiskey's cameo.

'Disgusting'  is one word comes to mind. 

[give her dixie]

Catholic League head: Abuse not pedophilia because boys were 'post-pubescent'
The head of the influential Catholic League says that the priest who allegedly sexually abused 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin did not engage in pedophilia because 'the vast majority of the victims [were] post-pubescent."

Bill Donohue made the argument during a raucous debate on Larry King Live Tuesday night, during which he repeatedly pointed the finger to homosexuality -- rather than pedophilia -- as the cause of the church's sex abuse problems.

"You've got to get your facts straight," Donohue said, addressing sex abuse victim Thomas Roberts. "I am sorry. If Im the only one thats going to deal with facts tonight then that'll be it. The vast majority of the victims are post-pubescent. Thats not pedophilia, buddy. Thats homosexuality."

A rather surprised panel of commentators -- which included pop icon Sinead O'Connor -- then began to debate at what age, exactly, does sexual attraction to children cease to be pedophilia.

Donohue argued the age at which children become "post-pubescent" is around 12 or 13.


Click on this link to read the article in full, and then watch the 3 minute clip from the show where he springs this wild claim.
Is now a defence that is going to be used in the future by elements within the church?

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0331/catholic-league-boys-pubescent/

[Ulick]

As good a take on it all as I've read yet.

Brendan O'Neill
   
Why humanists shouldn't join in this Catholic-bashing

The reaction to the paedophile priest scandal is as guilty of scaremongering, illiberalism and elitism as the Catholic Church has ever been.

With all the newspaper headlines about predatory paedophiles in smocks, terrified altar boys and cover-ups by officials at the Vatican, it is hard to think of anything worse right now than a sexually abusive priest. Yet today's reaction to those allegations of sexual abuse is also deeply problematic. For it is a reaction informed more by prejudice and illiberalism than by anything resembling a principled secularism, and one which also threatens to harm individuals, families, society and liberty.

When considering the problem of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, it is important to distinguish between the incidents themselves, some of which were of course horrific, and the way in which those incidents are understood in today's political and cultural climate. The acts of sexual abuse themselves were no doubt a product of various problematic factors: the Catholic Church's culture of celibacy, its strange views on sex, the fact that in some institutions priests were given ultimate authority over young boys and girls. But the way in which those acts are understood today – as supremely damaging to individuals and the inevitable consequence of people 'deciding it is a good thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith' – is powerfully informed by two problematic contemporary trends: the backward cult of victimhood and the dominant 'new atheist' prejudice against any institution with strong beliefs.

With all the current claims about Pope Benedict XVI himself being involved in a cover-up of child abuse by an American priest and a German priest, and newspaper reports using terms like 'stuff of nightmares', the 'stench of evil', and 'systematic rape and torture', anyone who tries to inject a bit of perspective into this debate is unlikely to be thanked. But perspective is what we need. Someone has to point out that for all the problems with the Catholic Church's doctrines and style of organisation – and I experienced some of those problems, having been raised a Catholic before becoming an atheist at 17 – the fact is that sexual abuse by priests is a relatively rare phenomenon.

Even in Ireland, whose image as a craic-loving nation has been replaced by the far-worse idea that it was actually a nation of priest rape, incidents of sexual abuse by priests were fairly rare. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, which was launched by the Irish government in 1999 and delivered its report last year, intensively invited Irish-born people around the world to report on incidents of abuse in Irish religious-educational reform schools, where the majority of clerical abuse is said to have occurred, between the period 1914 to 1999.  For that 85-year period, 253 claims of sexual abuse were made by males and 128 by females. It is important – surely? – to note that these are claims of sexual abuse rather than proven incidents, since the vast majority of them did not go to trial.

The number of sexual abuse claims in these institutions fell for the more recent period: for males, there were 88 claims from the pre-1960s, 119 from 1960 to 1969, 37 from 1970 to 1979, and nine from 1980 to 1989. The alleged sexual-abuse incidents ranged in seriousness from boys being 'questioned and interrogated about their sexual activity' to being raped: there were 68 claims of anal rape in reform institutions for boys from 1914 to 1999. Not all of the sexual abuse was carried out by priests. Around 65 per cent of the claims pertain to religious workers, and 35 per cent to lay staff, care workers, and fellow pupils.

Of course, one incident of child sexual abuse by a priest is one too many. But given the findings of Ireland's investigation into abuse in religious-educational institutions, is there really a justification for talking about a 'clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of exorcism to dispel'? As Ireland is redefined as a country in recovery from child sexual abuse, and the 'scandal of child rape' spreads further through Europe into Germany and Italy, it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.

The discussion of a relatively rare phenomenon as a 'great evil' of our age shows that child abuse in Catholic churches has been turned into a morality tale – about the dangers of belief and of hierarchical institutions and the need for more state and other forms of intervention into religious institutions and even religious families. The first contemporary trend that has turned incidences of sexual abuse into a powerful symbol of evil is the cult of the victim, where today individuals are invited not only to reveal every misfortune that has befallen them – which of course is a sensible thing to do if you have been raped – but also to define themselves by those misfortunes, to look upon themselves as the end-products of having being emotionally, physically or sexually abused. This is why very public revelations of Catholic abuse started in America and Ireland before more recently spreading to other parts of Western Europe: because the politics of victimhood, the cult of revelation and redefinition of the self as survivor, is more pronounced and developed in America and Ireland than it is in continental Europe.

In Ireland, for example, the state has explicitly invited its citizens to redefine themselves as victims of authority rather than as active agents capable of moving on and making choices. The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse discusses at length the 'debilitating' impact that abuse can have on individuals, to the extent that many of Ireland's social problems – including unemployment, poverty, drug abuse and heavy drinking – are now discussed as the products of Ireland's earlier era of abuse rather than as failings of the contemporary social system.

This, I believe, is why claims of sexual abuse in Ireland's religious-educational institutions were so much higher for the period of 1960 to 1969 (nearly half of all claims of sexual abuse against boys during the period of 1914 to 1989 were made for that decade). It is not because priests suddenly became more abusive in the 1960s than they had been in the far harsher Ireland of the 1940s and 50s, but because the people who attended the institutions during that period were in many ways the main targets of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. They would have been in their mid-40s to mid-50s when the commission began in 1999 and many of them had suffered long-term unemployment, health problems, and other disappointments. Reporting their misfortunes to the commission offered them the chance, not only of getting financial compensation, but also of validating their difficult life experiences as a consequence of their having been abused. In a grotesquely convenient marriage, the state redefined social problems as consequences of Catholic abuse and the individual redefined himself as a sufferer from low self-esteem who did not bear full responsibility for the course of his adult life. In such a climate, not only are incidents of abuse by priests more likely to surface, but they are also more likely to be heavily politicised, turned from undoubtedly distressing and possibly criminal acts into modern-day examples of evil capable of distorting society itself. Thus did the contemporary cult of victimhood ensure that Catholic abuse was blown out of proportion.

The second contemporary trend that has elevated something quite rare into a social disaster is the rise of the 'new atheism'. Now the dominant liberal outlook of our age – in particular in the media outlets that have most keenly focused on the Catholic abuse scandals: the New York Times, the Irish Times, and the UK Guardian – the new atheism differs from the atheism of earlier free-thinking humanists in that its main aim is not to enlighten, but to scaremonger about the impact of religion on society. For these thinkers and opinion-formers, the drip-drip of revelations of abuse in Catholic institutions offers an opportunity to demonise the religious as backward and people who possess strong beliefs as suspect.

Many contemporary opinion-formers are not concerned with getting to the truth of how widespread Catholic sexual abuse was, or what were the specific circumstances in which it occurred; rather they want to milk incidents of abuse and make them into an indictment of religion itself. They frequently flit between discussing priests who abuse children and the profound stupidity of people who believe in God. One commentator wildly refers to the Vatican's 'international criminal conspiracy to protect child-rapists' and says most ordinary Catholics turn a blind eye to this because 'people behave in bizarre ways when they decide it is a good thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith'.

Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, unwittingly reveals what draws the new atheists towards the Catholic-abuse story: their belief that religion is itself a form of abuse. 'Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place', he argues. He admits that physical abuse by priests is rare, but only to flag up what he sees as a more serious form of abuse: 'Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds?' In this spectacularly crude critique of religion, no moral distinction is made between being educated by a priest and raped by one – indeed, the former is considered worse than the latter, since as one Observer columnist recently darkly warned: 'We have no idea what children are being taught in those classrooms...'

If 'bringing a child up Catholic' is itself abuse, there can only be one solution: external authorities must protect children not only from religious institutions but from their own religious parents, too. One new atheist has proposed an age of consent for joining a religion: 14. In an Oxford Amnesty Lecture popular amongst new atheists, a liberal academic argued that children 'have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people's bad ideas', and parents 'have no god-given licence to enculturate their children in whatever ways they personally choose'. Here, a simplistic leap is made from protecting children from paedophile priests to protecting them from their own parents, since in the new-atheist view strong beliefs and freedom of religion – which, yes, includes the freedom of parents to bring up their children as they see fit – are the real problem. They exaggerate the extent of Catholic sexual abuse in order to strengthen their prejudicial arguments.

Whatever you think of the Catholic Church, you should be concerned about today's abuse-obsession. Events of the (sometimes distant) past which nobody can change are being used to justify dangerous trends in the present. A new kind of society is being solidified on the back of exposing abusive priests, one in which scaremongering supersedes facts, where people redefine themselves as permanently damaged victims, where freedom of thought is problematised, and where parents are considered suspect for not adhering to the superior values of the atheistic elite. Seriously, radical humanists should fight back against this.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his personal website here.

[muppet]

It is not because priests suddenly became more abusive in the 1960s than they had been in the far harsher Ireland of the 1940s and 50s, but because the people who attended the institutions during that period were in many ways the main targets of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse. They would have been in their mid-40s to mid-50s when the commission began in 1999 and many of them had suffered long-term unemployment, health problems, and other disappointments. Reporting their misfortunes to the commission offered them the chance, not only of getting financial compensation, but also of validating their difficult life experiences as a consequence of their having been abused

Is this your opinion Ulick?

[pintsofguinness]

that article is a load of shite

The acts of sexual abuse themselves were no doubt a product of various problematic factors: the Catholic Church's culture of celibacy, its strange views on sex, the fact that in some institutions priests were given ultimate authority over young boys and girls.

Bullshit!

[mylestheslasher]

Ulick won't be giving his own opinion instead he trawls the net to find shite reports like this new one. That piece of shit is a disgrace. The man has no moral substance what so ever. Why don't you tell us what you think Ulick instead of posting this rubbish?

[Hedley Lamarr]

1963 letter indicates former pope knew of abuse
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: Apr 1, 2010 09:54 Updated: Apr 1, 2010 09:54

LOS ANGELES: The head of a Roman Catholic order that specialized in the treatment of pedophile priests visited with then-Pope Paul VI nearly 50 years ago and followed up with a letter recommending the removal of pedophile priests from ministry, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

In the Aug. 27, 1963, letter, the head of the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry and strongly urges defrocking repeat offenders.

The letter shows that the Vatican knew, or should have known, about clergy abuse in the US decades ago, said Anthony DeMarco, a plaintiff attorney in Los Angeles who provided the letter. The accusation comes as plaintiffs in Kentucky are attempting to sue the Vatican for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about priests who molested children.

Yet the problem was very well-known to Rome well before the 1960s. The 1917 code of canon law criminalized sexual abuse of minors. Five years later, the Vatican penned a document outlining detailed procedures for handling such cases. In 1962, that document was updated and has been used in many of the lawsuits by victims against US diocese and the Vatican itself.

The letter, written by the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald, appears to have been drafted at the request of the pope and summarizes Fitzgerald's thoughts on problem priests after his Vatican visit.

The letter echoes other Fitzgerald writings about wayward priests.

Several news organizations, including the AP, reported last year that Fitzgerald was intent on buying an island where priests attracted to men and boys could be segregated, and even made a $5,000 down payment on a Caribbean island for that purpose.

"It is for this class of rattlesnake I have always wished an island retreat, but even an island is too good for these vipers," he wrote an acquaintance in 1957.

In 1960, he sent two priests from the Paracletes to the island of Tortola to investigate the location — but his dream of an island monastery dedicated to trouble priests ended when the new archbishop of Santa Fe overruled him, his successor, Rev. Joseph McNamara, has said in an affidavit.

A message left with the Paraclete order at one of their two existing facilities in Missouri was not returned. A number for the second facility was disconnected. The offices of the Vatican spokesman were closed late Wednesday.

Tod Tamberg, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, defended the church and said it was unlikely Paul VI ever saw the 1963 letter.

"The fact of the matter is, the prevailing ideas at the time about how to deal with abusive behavior were not adequate," Tamberg said. "Clearly, society and the church have evolved new understandings of what causes sexually abusive behavior and how to deal with it." Fitzgerald opens the five-page letter by thanking the pope for an audience the day before and says he is summarizing his thoughts at the pope's request on the "problem of the problem priest" after 20 years working to treat them.

He tells Paul VI that treatment for priests who have succumbed to "abnormal, homosexual tendencies" should include psychiatric, as well as spiritual, counseling — but goes on to warn about the dangers of leaving those individuals in ministry.

The letter also touches on priests who have consensual affairs with women.

"Personally, I am not sanguine of the return of priests to active duty who have been addicted to abnormal practices, especially sins with the young," Fitzgerald wrote.

"Where there is indication of incorrigibility, because of the tremendous scandal given, I would most earnestly recommend total laicization," he wrote. "I say 'total' ... because when these men are taken before civil authority, the non-Catholic world definitely blames the discipline of celibacy for the perversion of these men." The letter proves that Vatican officials knew about clergy abuse decades ago and should have done more to protect children, plaintiff attorney DeMarco said.

The church has come under fire for transferring priests accused of sexual abuse to other parishes, rather than reporting the abuse to civil authorities and removing them from ministry.

The problem of clergy abuse has been known to Rome well before then. The 1917 code of canon law criminalized sexual abuse of minors. Five years later, the Vatican penned a document outlining detailed procedures for handling such cases. In 1962, that document was updated and has been used in many of the lawsuits by victims against US diocese and the Vatican itself.

Fitzgerald's letter shows the pope knew how pervasive and destructive the problem was, DeMarco said.

"He says the solution is to take them out of the priesthood period, not shuffle them around, not pass them from diocese to diocese." The letter was released in Los Angeles by attorneys who represented more than 500 victims of clergy abuse in their record-breaking $660 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2007.

Attorneys working on the Los Angeles cases found it among court papers related to clergy abuse cases filed in New Mexico in the late 1980s and early 1990s and fought to get it unsealed.

Thousands more pages of confidential priest personnel files from the Los Angeles cases were to be released as part of the 2007 settlement after a review by a retired judge overseeing the process. The review, however, has dragged on for nearly three years.

The letter released Wednesday is different from a 1957 letter made public last year in which Fitzgerald seeks help from the Bishop of Manchester, New Hampshire, in finding a placement for a priest leaving the treatment program.

Attorneys also released a 250-page, redacted transcript of the 2007 deposition of the Rev. Joseph McNamara, who took over the Paraclete order after Fitzgerald.