Comments

For Good Friday — 24 Comments

1. Pingback:The Anchoress | A First Things Blog

2. I must object using the term “paedophilia” in most of this cases. It is medically incorrect: it is pederasty, not paedophilia. In legal consequences, this difference is irrelevant, but not in medical reasoning: a different kind of perversion. Most media prefers to ignore the difference: they fear, and for a reason, the implication for wider cultural and legal war about homosexuality. If it can be asserted, and rightly so, that paedophilia has nothing to do with homosexuality, and so homosexuals should be protected from the stigma of association with this disgusting crime, to pederasty this logic obviously does not apply.

3. “”smacks of agenda-driven overreach””

   The MSM is a major player in destroying millions of young lives plus the free world. They have zero credibility in pointing fingers at anyone.

4. The secularists and the government media like the New York Times, a, fortunately, dying newspaper, have hated Josef Ratzinger for decades. This latest barrage is just part of their Holy Week and Easter gift to Christians. In addition, almost all of the sexual molestation cases, call it what you will, involve homosexual predators and the loosening of restrictions on homosexuals in the priesthood beginning in the early ’60’s. Where is the headline in the New York Times concerning these facts? Don’t hold your breath.

5. David Warren hypothesized that the likely culprits behind the latest “new documents” are Catholics in the Church who are opposed to Pope Benedict’s orthodoxy. The internal enemies have very good allies in the secular/liberal media.

   Pope Benedict has done more than anyone else at the Vatican to change the way that the Church handled these cases and prevent any more sexual abuses, but the media will NEVER report that.

6. The MSM is starting to engage in Catholic bashing. It’s just the latest excuse in an ongoing secular campaign to engage in discreditation of Christianity.

   That said, the Catholic Church’s policy of avoiding removal from the priesthood and transferring the offending priest to another parish or diocese is what led to the controversy.

   But I have yet to read a satisfactory explanation as to why the Church formulated and retained that policy.

   I suspect that they didn’t come down harder because, even given the horror of child abuse, they believed that it was of greater importance to protect the Church from scandal.

   Which meant that the defrocking(?) of hundreds of priests couldn’t be done, as it would have quickly brought the scandal to light.

   What they could have done is expand the capacity of the Church’s monasteries and isolated these priests permanently. Other than the minimal cost of money and the more difficult need to replace these priest’s, which given the Church’s declining priestly enrollment, would have been a challenge, the whole controversy could have been avoided.

   What I believe prevented the hierarchy from instituting that corrective policy and what few seem to have considered is the rationale that the Church hierarchy relied upon, in reaching the decision that it must protect the Church from scandal at all costs.

   Some have postulated that it was to avoid the monetary cost, a rationale that I reject. Some have speculated that it was to avoid an exodus of former believers from the Church. That I believe is closer to the truth, but not for reasons of revenue, rather it was to protect the central mission of the Church.

   The Catholic Church’s hierarchy really believes, that, to one degree or another, the Church is the primary bulwark standing between mankind and eternal damnation. That the eternal salvation of BILLIONS of soul’s rests upon the Church’s continuance. And, however regrettable, what is the calculus of what is after all, a temporary physical and psychological life of pain for a relative few, balanced against eternity for billions…

   That because Satan is constantly scheming and acting to lead mankind astray, the priesthood is necessary for intercession and mankind’s guidance toward salvation. It’s a central tenet of Catholicism.

   Whether this is actually true or not is irrelevant, to what they believe.

   Some, in the Church’s hierarchy, have to be aware that their belief’s may NOT be true..but they ALSO have to consider…what IF they’re right?

   And, what we believe; religious/spiritual believer, agnostic or atheist… liberal, conservative, or libertarian, guides our actions.

   What would you do, if you KNEW that in order to save billions… you must sacrifice thousands? That no one could make the decision for you and, that upon your decision, whichever way you decided, the fate of billions rested…

   Not plausible? Au contraire!

   That’s exactly what Truman faced, in deciding to use the nuclear bomb upon innocent Japanese citizens.

7. I am not a Roman Catholic, doubt that I ever shall be. I do not have to defend a church of which I am not a member. However, I can see the same outline in use to defame the Bishop of Rome, as is always used on the enemies of the Left. Bush, Reagan, Cheney, Anne Coulter are numbered in a very long and honorable list. The guilt by association, the outright false charge, repeated often enough that that will be what people remember, the “He didn’t do enough to prevent XYZ”, the twisting of words, or elision of parts of a sentence, to give an opposite meaning, all the usual krep, which, if the schools were doing their job, people less perspicacious than the readers of Neoneocon would know how to dissect, are part of the standard manual of psy-ops for the Left.

8. Sexual abuse of children categorise been the common with church priest. its not hold just for Christianity its quite common over other religions.
   Some stories about Mullah and their horrific stories of child abuses well none but sadly none of them come under the lights just like the Catholic Church

   looks these men have entered the charge to satisfy their sex ambitious.

   But here is a very interesting story about Sex claims bankrupt US archdiocese

9. VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Attacks on Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church over a sexual abuse scandal are comparable to the most shameful anti-Semitism, the pontiff’s personal preacher told a Vatican Good Friday service.

10. Geoffrey Britain – the Catholic Church continued with this policy of “counsel, admonish, transfer” for the same reason that everyone else in the world did: they hoped it would work. What is now considered common knowledge – that the reoffense rate of sexual predators is enormous, with many doubting that cure or even treatment is possible – was not the received wisdom not so long ago. People believed that standard interventions that one might use for people dipping into the till or driving too fast would work for sex offenders as well.

    Many factors went into this blindness. An unwillingness to discuss the matter at all was one. The inaccurate and agenda-driven Kinsey statistics were another. The conceit of psychoanalytic schools which believed all conditions were treatable by their methods was a third. But greatest of all was the general cause that we Didn’t Want The Truth. We wanted bad things to go away with a little kindness, or failing that, to just go away and be someone else’s problem.

11. For Good Friday:

    My Lord gave his life my sins One Thousand Nine Hundred and Seventy-Seven years ago today on the eve of Passover, Friday April 3, 33 CE.

    May all of us who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and await the Messiah (or His return) pray for peace on Earth and for peace in His Holy city, Jerusalem.

    And, let us all be vigilant and faithful lest we fall with these evil men who called themselves servants of God.

    Let us pray for Pope Benedict XVI, that he might show wisdom and strength.

    And, let us forgive him for failing to fully demonstrate those qualities in the past.

12. Ironically, they’re attacking Ratzinger when he is one of the people who developed a policy to remove priests who were accused of criminal offenses. Also, according to a report I read yesterday, he had a hand in ordering a church criminal trial for that Milwaukee priest, which involved waiving a statute of limitations.

    Then again, I think our culture has split personality when it comes to sexually exploiting children. On the one hand, we want to protect them from abuse, but we sexualize them through entertainment, clothing, etc. It used to be one of the “signs of sexual abuse” if elementary students knew about sexual acts or used sexual references in everyday speech; now it’s shocking how commonplace the knowledge is.

13. I despise the MSM. It is evil the same way the USSR was evil. That does not excuse the Catholic Church for its tolerance of pederasty. That includes an archbishop who did not have the common sense to remove a sexual pervert from the clergy. The Church should have turned over this jerk over to the police. The fact that they did not means they are responsible for his subsequent actions.

14. Avi,

    What you report about omitting the time context is typical of leftist outrage at our past sins. This is why not teaching real history is so important to them.

    There have been a few other developments in Germany regarding abuse. One involved the Odenwald School in Hesse. This is an elite alternative school that was adopted as a Unicef model school. Its board of directors just stepped down because they failed to deal with a pederast on the faculty.

    People from Thuringia are now protesting that the abuse of students in GDR institutions is not recieving the same attention as that in Catholic schools. There doesn’t seem to be a media rush to follow up.

    And now, Bishop Mixa is being accused of abusing young people who were in some sort of Catholic residential facility that sounds to me like a place for disturbed children. He was the parish priest in the town where the school was located. The charges are that he slapped a kid in the face and punched others with his fist. He denies all charges. I’ve seen 2 accusers briefly on TV crying about how being slapped has affected their lives ever since. This is getting lots of coverage.

    There is a lot of anger by progressive Germans that God’s Rotttweiler became the first German pope (at least in modern times; I don’t know about the past). There is definitely a bit of revenge in how this is being played. Strange that many who call Americans prude because of wanting to prosecute Cannne’s favorite anal rapist of a 13 year old now are so upset. Strange that those who ignore the leanings of our safe sex czar are so upset.

    Sexual abuse of the young is abhorent, but it would be a bit easier to fight if the left (and some libertarians who refuse the see the problems with disgusting internet porn and the young) would have a more coherent view. Catholic priests are certainly not the only hypocrits. And Benedict seems to be one who is trying to confront the problem in a meaningful way.

15. Benedict has been a thorn in the side of the “progressives”, including the MSM, for decades, for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the greatest was his unyielding, principled opposition to abortion. Of all of his many conservative, orthodox positions, this one is the one that was probably the hardest for the “progressives” to take. While Paul VI and JPII held these same views (JPI’s reign was too short to count), it was Cardinal Ratzinger who was on point, drawing the fire of those for whom “choice” is the ultimate litmus test. This is simply a continuation of the left’s temper tantrum at the Pontiff for not acquiescing to their “if it feels good, do it” philosophy. Like he would.

16. Why be Catholic when so many bishops, and popes, have been great sinners or made terrible mistakes?

    Because they are simply not important enough.

    As Frank Sheed put it in, I think, his autobiography, we are not baptized into the pope nor do we receive the bishops sacramentally.

    http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/authors/franksheed.asp

    Newman put it this way, shortly before he converted: “Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, “solus cum solo,” in all matters between man and his God. He alone creates; He alone has redeemed; before His awful eyes we go in death; in the vision of Him is our eternal beatitude.”

    http://www.newmanreader.org/works/apologia/part6-2.html

17. It all started with Carl Rogers and the Immaculate Heart Nuns in California. Carl Rogers was a progressive psychobabbler of the 60’s who had a theory of “Humanistic Psychotherapy”. In 1965 he was invited to “Explain” his concept of “Basic Encounter Groups” to the Nuns in Los Angeles. The Nuns under the progressive misconceptions of Vatican II, thought it was a fine idea and began encounter group training immediately. Under the auspices of “Change” for the better, the Habits and robes were done away with Sister began to call each other by their first names and “special” friendships became the norm. As one Novitiate put it later,
    “They promised me monastic robes, glorious Latin liturgy, the protection of the three sacred vows, the peace of saints in a quiet cell, the sisterhood of a holy family. But I entered religious life the year John XXIII [sic] was taking it apart: 1966. The fathers of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church were sitting at the Vatican Council destroying in the name of CHANGE, my dreams. Delete Latin ritual. Dump the habit. Damn holy obedience. Send nuns and priests out into the REAL world. If I had wanted the real world, I’d have stayed in it.”
    And on the issue of Sex,
    ”I harnessed my anger into love for gays as an oppressed people. My bitterness demands the straight world to move over and accept our rights. I have learned that my anger takes me where others are afraid to go and that outrage is good in the eyes of whatever Higher Power gives us righteous, if misguided, anger to protect us.”
    Thus, progressive psychobabble, from the left infiltrated the Church and spread like wildfire and hooking up with the “Liberation Theology” of the Socialist began to change the culture inside the Church. Now we see the reaping of what the Progressives have sown. The Pope is under attack by the same progressives who got us to this place because he is against the continued spread of this sub-culture which has nearly become a dominating force in the Catholic Church. If they have to throw a few of their own kind under the bus to accomplish a complete takeover of the Church and the removal of any opposition then so be it, after all as Uncle Joe Stalin said, “If you’re going to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs”

18. The this and the that …
    A good start would be a no tolerance policy about fucking the kids …

    Why give ammunitions to the enemy.

    As it is, the Institution has allowed itself to become a base of operation for a select few with a very specific agenda.

    Time for a major and transparent cleaning. If not … It speaks for itself.

19. > In its reportage on a different case of priestly pedophilia and allegations of coverup by the present Pope, the Times appears to have misrepresented the situation with what amounts to callous disregard for the facts.

    You might consider contrasting the MSM’s reportage of Polanski vs. this sort of thing, especially with their “Hey, it was long, long ago, fugeddaboutit” attitude where Polanski is concerned, but boy they don’t want to let this sh** go here.

    I’m not a fan of it being let go in either case, but it is the vilest, rankest hypocrisy to make it insignificant in one case and to get into a high dudgeon about it in another.

    > it is pederasty, not paedophilia

    Not seeing any real difference there, per se, other than that you can tar homosexuals with one but not the other. Pederasty is merely a subclass of pedophilia — If you’re doing the former, you’re doing the latter. Both are reprehensible when dealing with almost anyone under about fifteen in most cases, and sometimes up to 17 for many others.

20. IGotBupkis:

    Love your name, by the way.

    But I don’t agree with you on one point. I agree that some of the MSM had a cavalier treatment of Polanski’s despicable crime. That was despicable in and of itself (and I believe I wrote as much in a post or two on the subject). But there is still a huge difference between child sexual abuse by a movie director and by priests. The latter are in a position of sacred trust. This makes their offense qualitatively different, and potentially even more damaging to the victim.

21. the American Thinker has a great article this week about how the MSM writes a ton about sex abuse in the RCC but ignores it in the public school system. I will try to link here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/the_scandal_driving_the_church_1.html

22. The Pope should be indicted but the Vatican is it’s own state, hmm.

23. nyomythus, you mean, “the Vatican is its own state.”

    Now, why on earth do you say the Pope should be indicted? I didn’t know you were an expert on German law.

24. As a Catholic, these crimes, committed by our trusted priests, sicken me. Yes, members of the Church hierarchy often acted as it did for many reasons, both innocent and deceitful: a desire to avoid scandal, a naive faith that these individuals could be cured, a desire to uphold the presumption of innocence, a fear of the financial and legal ramifications of disclosure, a belief that sins can be forgiven and sinners redirected and supervised, and a feeling of disbelief that these priests, often beloved within their communities, were capable of these heinous acts.
    The power of last of these factors is considerable: Many individuals use personal charm to gain access to children and teenagers, and predatory individuals can be patient. As one FBI expert said, “First they seduce the parent, then they seduce the child.”
    When a male teacher, a layman with a girlfriend, was accused of molesting a troubled teenager at my child’s school, we adults reacted with disbelief. In retrospect, it was no accident that the accused man had chosen to befriend a lonely, fatherless boy who had a reputation for dishonesty and a known taste for porn. Choosing that child made it more likely that the child’s claims would be dismissed as lies. When they learned who the accuser was, some adults in our community spoke of the charge as the boy’s attempt to profit financially by suing. To my shame, I thought the boy was lying – until I heard undisguised panic in the voice of the accused adult when he spoke of the possibility that, if convicted, he would never be permitted to work with children again. In that chilling moment, I realized the teacher was guilty. He later confessed to the molestation; to my disgust, he served a greatly reduced sentence that was measured in days, not months and not the years to which he had been sentenced. Despite his guilty plea, some adults in our community still believe in his innocence!
    A priest who ran a summer camp for boys once told me that no matter how carefully he screened the college students who applied to be camp counselors, he had to dismiss at least one counselor each summer for inappropriate behavior with campers. Father was the first to warn me that people inappropriately attracted to children seek jobs where they can have frequent access to children: teachers, clergymen, Scout leaders, coaches, camp counselors.
    I urge parents whose children are involved in sports to find and read the Sports Illustrated article (from September or 1999, I think) on coach predators. I was aghast when children on a local swim team told me that before each meet their coach would rub “motion lotion” all over each swimmer’s body. Many parents of the swimmers had no idea this sort of thing was taking place. They trusted the beloved coach.
    If an adult repeatedly flatters you and your child, beware. If someone who chooses to spend a lot of time with children seems too good to be true, be on guard.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>