The clerical sex abuse scandals in Ireland are not representative of the behaviour of the vast majority of priests in the Catholic Church, a senior Vatican figure has said.
Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy, said the abuse by priests in Ireland constituted “painful” and “criminal” behaviour.
However, in an interview yesterday in the Vatican daily, L’Osservatore Romano, he said it would be wrong to “make generalisations” as a result of the Irish experience.
The cardinal was asked if events “in certain parts of the world” did not suggest that something had “gone wrong” in relations between bishops and their priests.
“The painful Irish happenings – which by the way have seen some bishops assume their responsibilities and resign – simply do not relate to the entire episcopal ministry.“The bishops are good fathers for their priests,” he said.“Certainly, there are some unbecoming situations but they are very limited in number. Unfortunately, we are talking about situations linked to the human condition. And that’s what happened in Ireland. (They were also terrible fathers for their lay children. And that is the problem. Interesting that the 'soul' murder of thousands of children is now 'unbecoming'. Maybe it's the translation.)
“This is a very painful business which, it is true, hurts above all the victims but it also profoundly wounds the heart of the church. Once responsibility for so much evil has been objectively established, then we need to go all the way, handing the matter over to the state judicial authorities.” (Which does not include criminal conspiracy charges for bishops. This is not 'going all the way".)
L’Osservatore asked Cardinal Hummes if, in his view, the credibility of priests worldwide has been undermined by such scandals: “Unfortunately, in a society that has little inclination to dig deep in its search for the truth, [such scandals] damage the image of the priest. Above all because the media concentrate on these events rather than on all the good that is done by the vast majority of priests.
“It is undeniable that painful episodes have happened but we are talking about a limited number of cases which, according to the numbers, are proportionately modest.
“These are of course very serious, criminal happenings which the church can in no way tolerate. But let me repeat it, the vast majority of priests worldwide are decent people, committed to their ministry, ready to give their entire lives, often lose their lives, for the Gospel.” (Except it has for centuries until it was exposed by 'the media' concentrating on the truth.)
Appointed Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, Cardinal Hummes is a Franciscan who himself was often considered a possible candidate for pope at the 2005 conclave which elected Benedict. He is known as a moderate on social justice issues.
Cardinal Hummes’s reference to Irish church scandals is further proof that, while the Vatican may well have kept a very low initial profile with regard to the fallout from the Murphy report, the matter of the Irish church, its scandals and its reorganisation is currently weighing heavily on Holy See minds.
Pope Benedict is to deal with all these matters in his forthcoming pastoral letter to the Irish faithful, expected on or before Ash Wednesday, February 17th.
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It looks to me as if the Vatican strategy in dealing with abusive priests is to make the case it is primarily and Anglo/Irish problem. Cardinal Hummes is ignoring the entire problem as it exists in Hispanic countries, and of course, totally ignores the abuse of women. Abuse of women and girls is a global phenomenon. Well, so is pedophilia, but it's only been widely exposed in Anglo countries.
It will be most interesting to see if Legionare founder Marcial Maciel is treated as another statistical aberration, an aberration not indicative of pedophilia having spread outside the Irish/Anglo lavender mafia. I'll be interested in reading Pope Benedict's letter to the Irish just to see if he treats sexual abuse as the power issue it is, or if he maintains it's part of the homosexual disorder as the Vatican has in the past. Just guessing here, but since Hummes completely leaves out the abuse of women I suspect Benedict will not be treating the Irish situation as an issue of power. It will be an issue of sexual disorder, and ignore the whole power thing.
And speaking of power, there may be a very unwelcome lesson being driven home to the Vatican in the Irish response to abusive priests and all the hierarchical power dynamics that kept it going in secret for so long. That lesson is the clerical caste only has the power their people allow them to have and no more. There is nothing intrinsic in ordination that makes priests uniquely powerful without the consent of the laity. Once the laity wake up to this fact, all the clerical glitter and gold can't hide this truth.
The good priests that Cardinal Hummes reference know this fact. Their authority, as opposed to power, comes from their service and the authentic way they live the message they preach. Jesus knew something about real spiritual authority when He told His disciples they must be servants to the servants. They must go where the people are at. This is what He Himself lived after all. It's one reason He drug the disciples around for three years.
I'm sure if Jesus thought He could get His message across in a truly meaningful way by setting up His own statically positioned temple, He would have done just that. He would have used His power and majesty to force people to come to Him. If secular power was truly part of His spiritual authority He would have dressed the part like a temple priest. He would have buttressed that notion by insisting on worship. But He did none of those things, and when tempted with them He told Satan to go to hell. Literally.
Somewhere along the line the leadership of the Church decided Satan had a better idea about leadership, authentic spiritual authority, and power. The Irish, but especially the victims of this notion of spiritual power, are forcing a systemic re evaluation of what constitutes authentic authority. Should Benedict ignore this aspect of the abuse crisis with more rationalization, denial and scapegoating, he will send a very powerful message: that the Vatican prefers to preach Jesus's message of service, while living in and affirming Satan's notions of power.
Jesus determined in His temptation in the desert that basing spiritual authority on the foundation of secular expression of power is a seductive delusion, but no matter how seductive, it is still a delusion. Irish Catholics are demanding a reality check. They will not abide any more rationalizations in support of delusion. Archbishop Martin gets it. The question is, does the Vatican?
Excellent point about the temptation of using Christianity as a means to secular power. I wish the Christian Right, both Catholic and Protestant, would heed that message as well. Unfortunately they won't, and in their efforts to create the perfect Christian polity, they will make others' lives a hell on earth.
ReplyDeleteColleen, you said, "Somewhere along the line the leadership of the Church decided Satan had a better idea about leadership, authentic spiritual authority, and power."
ReplyDeleteI believe that was when Constantine was accepted, recognized & propped up by certain religious factions at that time & the Faith was romanized. The world was offered and it was bought. Hans Kung said the name "Roman Catholic Church" is an oxymoron. I agree. It was also at this point that Christians were no longer persecuted for being Christians, but became persecutors almost overnight towards those who were not Christians, as defined by the newly Romanized worldly and pharisaic Christians of Constantine. That is when the Church became worldly focused and oriented and began a succession of rationalizations of evil, and proceeded in time for over a thousand years plus to become less spiritually allied with Jesus Christ and denying the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Satan is dancing along within the history of the RCC Popes and Magisteriums & various lay groups. Pope Benedict XVi still denies or rationalizes the history of this complacent relationship with evil & the rationalization of evil by the hierarchy.
The current formation of priests into a false history of the Church and denial of the devil in the details of the RCC's history, which Hans Kung admits & reveals, infallibility being for example (a core delusion), makes such new priests very poor shepherds of the flock. The flock has scattered under such poorly taught leadership since the Reformation & it will continue to split from Rome until there is new leadership that is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, of whose voice those who are truly followers of Christ know and recognize.
http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteFrank Schaeffer (a former Religious Right Evangelical) also lambasts the evangelical Protestant wing of Christianity, along similar lines. His blog is worth a look.
And now we see the propaganda machine of the Empire go back to work. Seems like someone once said "you can fool some of the people some of the time.............." We will see the continued implosion of the RCC structure even with such defenders as the John Jay reports etc....
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the totalitarian mind set is that it fears truth and only uses factoids to subvert anything that decreases its power. Looking for horrible disfunction even to the point of the vestige of evil...? Look inside the authoritarian mind. We all have him he was taught to us at a very early age in books called catechisms that claimed to have all THE truth. The greatest threat to the totalitarian are those that fear not and speak truth. The problem with any fundamentalist mind set is its own internal fear of truth. We continue to see the fundamentalist propaganda mind set at work.
Recall the tobacco industries use of factoids against the harmfulness of that wonderful plant and the dire warnings of economic disaster if politicians regulated tobacco and told the medical truth. Witness the scientists who now are paid by the oil companies to use factoids against global warming and the need for a green environment. Witness the hierarchy's many factoids to betray truth. John Jay is similar to the corporate scientists mentioned above! Where will all these lies (mental reservations) lead us. The hierarchy are Scott Peck's "People of the LIe." Is this all hyperbole? I wish it were.
May we gain understanding and the grace to express truth with courage.
dennis
i found this comment by a person commenting on an article by Bishop Kevin Downing in NCR. I think John XXIII said so much with it that I wanted to share it.
ReplyDeleteSubmitted by Martin (not verified) on Jan. 12, 2010.
"Authoritarianism suffocates truth, reducing everything to a rigid and empty formalism that is dependent on outside discipline. It curbs wholesome initiative, mistakes hardness for firmness, inflexibility for dignity. Paternalism is a caricature of true fatherliness. It is often accompanied by an unjustifiable proprietary attitude to one's victim, a habit of intruding, a lack of proper respect for the rights of subordinates." John XXIII
I just notice that society seems far more tolerant of pedophile and ephebophile behavior when it is non-clerical. In Ireland there has been a rather muted reaction to Gerry Adams' behavior in allowing his brother, whom he knew to be an incestuous rapist (something far graver than any Irish priest is accused of) to remain high in the Sinn Fein hierarchy and to have jobs giving him access to children. Moreover, there have been calls to rename Archbishop Ryan Park (Merrion Square) Oscar Wilde Park -- even though Wilde hunted young boys with Gide in Algeria in 1895, launching Gide on a pedophile career that involved 8 year-olds! (Wilde was also convicted of sex with underage male prostitutes.)
ReplyDeleteSociety is NEVER tolerant of pedophilia! In prisons, they literally have to keep these people separate from other prisoners - often in solitary - to protect them. Pedophiles are the lowest of the low among a criminal population! And regular citizens also view them as monsters. Clerical or not, they are despised by the vast majority.
ReplyDeleteI think anonymous that if you worked with victims of child sexual abuse you would not make such distinctions. Child rape by a priest is not at all different from child rape by a family member and in some cases the damage is worse, at least in terms of suicides.
ReplyDeleteNeither Gerry Adam's brother nor Oscar Wilde claimed to be celibate representatives of Jesus Christ capable of Eucharistic Consecration.
My, my, my, there is a terrible hatred unleashed for the Church of Jesus Christ in some of these exchanges. In no western country has sexual abuse by Catholic priests been any higher (or significantly different)than it is been for any other kind of man who has had access to children (public school teachers, coaches, scout leaders, Protestant ministers, fathers) EVERY ONE of whom held privileged roles in the lives of those children. This does not excuse the Church for the evil done by these priests, but to continue to hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer away at the Church as if she alone, uniquely, individually and primarily is the author of this filthy chapter in human history is anti-Catholicism of the worst kind and it hampers the Church from doing the good she continues to accomplish everywhere. Remember, stastictically the Catholic Church is the greatest provider of help, aid, assistance and charity in any form on earth. And the countless priests, practically all of them on earth, who have not contributed to this scandal do not deserve to have their profession so demeaned. I suggest you make a holy hour before the exposed Blessed Sacrament before speaking or writing on this subject again. It's not that we need to be silent; no, we need to be truthful and just, and outraged, but get a grip, we need to be merciful, too! After all, are you not a disciple of Christ yourself? Has He not taught us how to act toward one another?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteOur anger and outrage comes mostly from how the Bishops handled this situation. They found a way to lie by calling it mental reservations. The Bishops sent their criminal priests for counseling but did not see to the spiritual and psychological needs of the little boys and girls who were raped. We are outraged by the hypocrisy of the leadership that would do such horrible things. At least in most the Protestant churches or public schools when these sinful acts took place, they were swiftly dealt with by the leadership or employers. Not so in RCC.
" but to continue to hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer away at the Church as if she alone, uniquely, individually and primarily is the author of this filthy chapter in human history is anti-Catholicism of the worst kind and it hampers the Church from doing the good she continues to accomplish everywhere."
We and the whole society will continue to hammer the church until it accepts full responsibility. It is not because we are anti-catholic as you say. It is because we must hammer a sinful faulty leadership that acts as totalitarians rather than loving pastors. We must continue to hammer a sinful leadership that refuses to accept responsibility. We must continue to hammer a sinful Cardinal Ratzinger and his sinful fellow bishops that could have put a stop to much of this had they put their minds and resources toward it. These men have simply lost the ethical high ground. They are not being very well funded by their flocks and more and are causing our institutions to implode from within. The hammer, for certain, is coming from within our institution. We as the People of God will not be silenced in this time of disgraceful leadership.
May we gain grace by demanding truth and responsibility of these men for their sinful negligence not protecting our children. The anti-catholic are those that want to paper over truth about this leadership. dennis
Two corrections are needed, and these receive very little press, practically none, yet they are monumental to the discussion (and the refusal to acknowledge these crucial distinctions is yet a further sign of the anti-catholicism in the Mainstream Media that has been bought hook, line and sinker by many).
ReplyDeleteFirst, one is incorrect to continue to speak of this scandal as something that generally occurred to small children, as if priests preyed upon prebuscent youngsters. Savage as it was, this filth was primarily homosexual activity with minor young men, in most cases - the statistics are readily available - sexually developed males not yet eighteen years old. That is a statistic. Yes, it still makes my blood crawl, but this is a far different kind of depravity than the sexual molestation of countless seven year-olds, which is the predominating image that the mainstream media (and some contributors here), seem to want to perpetuate.
Secondly, and perhaps more significantly to this discussion, is that with a very small number of desperately devastating exceptions, the Church handled the sexual misconduct of its clergy in exactly the same way every other entity working with youth handled its sexual misconduct. Yes, today, we understand much better the treatement, its limitations, realistic diagnoses, etc., than we did in the past. But be fair and do your research! The Church did precisely what the common wisdom of the time had to offer by way of diagnosing, understanding, analyzing and treating these problems. Today we know that they were generally ineffective. Then the Church did basically what every other entity did that was touched by this kind of filth. I mean it, be fair, because far too much is at stake if you refuse to be reasonable about the truth of this situation. The Chuch was as taken off guard and confused about what to do with these problems as everyone else was. Do you ever remember reading in the news about a youth leader, a Protestant minister, a high schol basketball coach, etc., in the past, having to answer for crimes like this? No, of course not; yet we know this was happening. Has the mainstream press chosen to acknowledge that this was going on in those other entities statistically just as much as in the Church? No. Why not? Does it not occur to you that the Church is itself a victim of anti-catholicism here? Open your eyes and be fair! The Church followed the common wisdom of the time, as it was offered by the secular experts of the time. This doesn't make any of the hurt any less painful for the victims nor does it lessen the Church's institutional responsibility to
make amends as well as it can for past atrocities, but it straightens the record about intent.
anonymous if you are referring to the fifties and sixties, your analysis holds some water. By the seventies and eighties secular society was well aware of the recidivism rate and that pedophelia or ephebophelia was resistant to therapy. I do remember many people turned into authorities for sexual abuse of minors principally because it became a mandatory reportable offense for many professions.
ReplyDeleteThe incidence of abuse with young boys more than likely has far more to do with access than it does with a particular orientation. Had altar girls been more prevalent we could very well have seen different statitistics.
The problem Dennis raised, which you ignore, is the anger with the bishops and the Vatican. There was no learning curve what so ever at all until this was all exposed in 2002. Priests were still being shuffled around from parish to parish long after secular society had made the adjustment to the reality of child sexual abuse.
And then you don't address the abysmal treatment of victims, which is another very sore point for some of us.
One of my own personal issues is the generative nature of this with in the priesthood. The system was creating priest abusers while simulultaneously protecting their abusers. It has been doing so for centuries.
I understand that sexual abuse is not just a problem for Roman Catholic spiritual leaders. One finds it in all spiritual systems, this confusion of spiritual authority with sexual release and domination. It's very much a male thing.
Maybe the Holy Spirit desires Catholicism to take the lead in dealing with this issue since it insists on an all male leadership. Making excuses and throwing blame won't cut it in the face of the facts and the pain of the victims.
Abuse of authority is always wrong! Priests (and therapists too for that matter) who prey upon anyone, even an adult, have betrayed the trust, not only of their victims, but of the church at large or patients at large. Children are most in need of care. Adolescents very much as well. Care is not sexual predation! And predation it is! Without a doubt!
ReplyDeleteThere is definitely a double standard. Gerry Adams' brother was involved in years-long incestuous rape of a child; and Gerry is complaining about the unfairness of criticisms that he ensured access to kids for his brother! In the Murphy Report only a tiny number of priests were guilty of rape (in the physical sense) or adolescent girls or boys. The double standard is due perhaps to the special sacredness of the priestly vocation. "Neither Gerry Adam's brother nor Oscar Wilde claimed to be celibate representatives of Jesus Christ capable of Eucharistic Consecration." But I suspect there is also a vicious anti-clerical agenda at work. (Conservative Catholic hang-ups on celibacy also play their part.)
ReplyDeleteColleen says "if you worked with victims of child sexual abuse you would not make such distinctions." I know a psychoanalyst who has counseled victims of child abuse and he makes such distinctions as part of the basic grammar of his work. "Child rape by a priest is not at all different from child rape by a family member and in some cases the damage is worse, at least in terms of suicides." I would of course not deny this, but I would point out that "the offense of touching" against adolescents (to quote the judgment in the high-profile case of Fr Ivor Payne) -- damaging as it undoubtedly was to its victims -- is not quite the same thing as child rape. All of this blurring of quite basic distinctions is witch-hunt thinking, in my humble opinion.
The real reason that the Irish are so slow to condemn Gerry Adams is that there is a possibility that criticism of the former IRA leader can still draw punishment in the form of a bullet (kneecapping). Suzanne Breen is one of the rare journalists who have the courage to ignore this threat: http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2010/jan/03/exclusive-revealed-sf-cover-up-of-liam-adams-senio/
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteLegally and ethically any intercourse with a child under 18 by a powerful adult-and priests that hear confessions and teach catechism to our children are extremely powerful adults in the their lives - is criminal rape. Early and late adolescents do have different brains and minds than do prepubescent children, however they are still extremely vulnerable to this horrible crime. Why were these children never offered the counseling when priests were?
Doctors, nurses and psychologists automatically loose their license to practice and have lost them depending on the state for over 30 years even for having licit relationships with patients. This is just one more clear case that society leads the RCC in ethical structure.
By the way when I attended medical school in the 1960's, it was clear that pedophiles were not curable, and I was so taught by my text books and my instructors. It is further interesting to me that the Bishops did not make use of there own social services in the diocese for help with these priests. These professionals were trained in the same curriculum as I was. I know they would not have allowed any priest to go back into parishes and rape the children and grandchildren of their piers. Finally the facilities that the priests were sent were special few facilities that are known for charlatan activity.
It is further interesting to me that every scientist except one currently in the Vatican Academy of sciences have declared their allegiance to what the bishops say about science before they were appointed. They can hardly be true scientists if they can not stand for scientific truth but must agree with the bishops about science. Their can be very little truth come from this authoritarian system of appointment. This is also what happened with the therapists that treated the rapist priests, they whitewashed what was known in psychotherapy, psychiatry and psychology to satisfy the Bishops. Of course they did receive their accustomed payments from the Bishops.
May we gain more grace finding more clear ethical structure for our leadership and our society!
R. Dennis Porch, MD
Sex molestation of any kind counts as rape in the law. But the actual rapes (vaginal in the case of Adams, sodomitic in the case of Wilde and his friend Lord Douglas -- on African and London boys aged as young as 12) that the Wilde and Adams supporters are making light of show the double standard here. The Facebook petition asking for Abp Ryan Park to be renamed Oscar Wilde Park now argues that Wilde's reckless behavior was not abusive because it was consensual!!! Wilde himself seriously repented of his behavior and ended up a Catholic.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeletePerhaps if Church leaders would admit to their culpability in this scandal which has pointed toward the ongoing crisis in Church leadership; perhaps if we had the resignations of all Bishops responsible for their lies and the admission that there can be few if any mental reservations that could be used to aide and abet chronic, criminal rapists; perhaps if we could have a leadership moving away from totalitarian structure; then perhaps and only perhaps, would it make any sense to look down the small tangents of possible double standard which you refer.
Anonymous, your defense of this leadership is
is dependent on side issues that have little relationship to the guilt of our leadership. It seems in fact to be a part of the propaganda that I was referring to in my first post!
R. Dennis Porch, MD
I don't deny that the bishops slipped up, but I do have sympathy for them. If you are running a huge archdiocese you cannot keep track of highly deceptive and manipulative sexual deviants -- which would be a full-time occupation in itself. I think the excoriation of the bishops has become a sort of apotropaic ritual, ultimately radically anticlerical, as one can see from Andrew Madden's latest display of narcissistic rage: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2010/0118/1224262565753.html
ReplyDeleteQuotes: The bishops “added insult to injury by a collective failure to immediately offer their resignations in acknowledgment of what they had done, or failed to do, and out of respect for the experiences of children sexually abused by Catholic priests in Dublin”. He continued: “A church whose leading members behave in this way is not a church I want in my life, not even in name only. A church whose bishops shielded paedophile priests is not a church I want in my life. “A church whose priests congregate to express support for those bishops continuing in office in direct opposition to what many victims asked for is not a church I want in my life. “A church which finds Bishop Drennan acceptable in its episcopal ranks, despite having been part of a church in Dublin between 1997 and 2004 which covered up the sexual abuse of children is not a church I want in my life . . . A church which parades itself as a state when it wants to avoid accounting to the citizens of a country whose children it has abused is not a church I want in my life.”
He said: “No priest will ever preach to me standards his own church doesn’t even try to live up to. No priest will ever comfort me when I am sick. No priest will hear my ‘sins’. No priest will instruct me in penance. No priest will bless my relationship with my beautiful partner, Alan. No priest will pray over my coffin when I am dead. And no priest will bury me in ‘consecrated ground’,” he added.
He recalled that in 1983, the church in Dublin decided he was not suitable for the priesthood. “Two years earlier the same Catholic Church had allowed Ivan Payne to continue as a priest despite knowing that he had sexually abused me for 2½ years when I was aged 12-14 years.”
NOTE: Payne served a prison sentence for "the offense of touching". On release he was hounded out of his Dublin residence and moved to a village in Wales; he was consequently hounded out of that village by invasive vigilantes, to the distress of the villagers. Mr Madden nonetheless continues to vent rage against Payne in letter after letter. He has succeeded in getting 4 bishops to resign in record time -- something with no precedent in church history -- yet he continues to vent rage that a fifth (the blameless Martin Drennan) did not resign and the the four others did not resign immediately.
Both on EWTN (your friendly Opus Dei tv network...) & in the usual conservative/traditionalist online Catholic forums, one can see what is being taught to the new generation of priests:
ReplyDeleteRevisionist history: Catholic style.
Literally scores of EWTN 'presenters' & authors spew forth a barrage of from 'spin' to outrageous lies. The basic thesis is that 'the Catholic Church invented (western civilization, science, technology, education, or insert lie of your choice....)'. And 'all was well as long as the Church was in charge & ppl did what it said'.
That pretty much sums it up! Things such as the Crusades, Inquisitions, Vatican approved conquest & plunder are either ignored, played down; or reinvented as "good".
Of course in school I recall being taught that "only the evil Communists re-invent history to their own designs as propaganda"...
Denial of spiritual reality is a sin; as it is a refusal of the action of the Holy Spirit. Only when & if one truly allows the Spirit to work in you, so that you can see yourself as you truly are (i.e. as God sees you), does any real conversion take place. With this conversion its companion: holistic healing of the person.
The Vatican is in Denial.
Currently there is a clever campaign to use misdirection away from the Catholic Bishops & clergy. To shift focus on the incidents of abuse allegedly done by public school teachers, Rabbis & Protestant clergy & church employees.
ReplyDeleteWhile this has filtered down to the 'foot soldiers' of Opus Dei, the Legion of Christ & Regnum Christi, its point man has been identified:
Fr. John Morris of the LC....a FOX news commentator/analyst.
This rather sick enterprise is an offensive move, designed to take the heat off the Bishops. By use of innuendo & 'statistics' of spurious & un-verifiable provenance. Very sick indeed! Yet, you will find many virtually brainwashed 'Catholic' drones online endlessly repeating this drivel.
Just another example of the "Denial".
Rather like a little kid - caught with his hand in the cookie jar, with cookie all over his face. Who, when confronted about swiping cookies, loudly blames his siblings for the deed.
...or when Adam was confronted by God - blamed his wife, Eve:)
Denial.
Scapegoating is very traditional.
ReplyDelete"Currently there is a clever campaign to use misdirection away from the Catholic Bishops & clergy. To shift focus on the incidents of abuse allegedly done by public school teachers, Rabbis & Protestant clergy & church employees."
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is an organized campaign, but some bishops have used this ploy (Dolan).
"While this has filtered down to the 'foot soldiers' of Opus Dei, the Legion of Christ & Regnum Christi, its point man has been identified: Fr. John Morris of the LC....a FOX news commentator/analyst."
Don't know this guy, but why should he be seen as the agent of a campaign? Surely this sort of reaction is pretty par for the course. It's called "whataboutery" -- the IRA used it for decades when anyone reproached them with their crimes.
"This rather sick enterprise is an offensive move, designed to take the heat off the Bishops. By use of innuendo & 'statistics' of spurious & un-verifiable provenance. Very sick indeed! Yet, you will find many virtually brainwashed 'Catholic' drones online endlessly repeating this drivel."
Brainwashing? Sounds like a Soviet conspiracy! And it sounds like you want to make Catholic priests uniquely exemplary of pedophile and ephebophile sexual abuse; a sort of scapegoating too?
If one looks up Fr, John Morris, LC, you will find the pertinent information. Either in his own blog or on FOX news. He has indeed been the main identifiable point man in the blameshifting/scapegoating of ANYONE but the Bishops, in re sex abuse.
ReplyDeleteAs to 'brainwashed Catholics'....that would describe much of the Conservative to uber-Right/Trad mileau. Evidence? Listen to Pro-Lifers. On EWTN or select Catholic web forums. Or watch videos of their speeches & marches.
They have been (willingly...) indoctrinated. Ask them a question & they will all sing the same song.
One of the hallmarks of brainwashing is to repeat back what has been conditioned into you. Verbatim; without any attempt to express or shade the concept with their own understanding, indicative of independent thought.
Wanna test it? Watch a news report on TV about 'X'. Now ask someone about this item or issue. If they parrot back verbatim what the TV told them to think & say.......their pilot light has gone out!