…and this is a 
I know, it's Thanksgiving in America, and I've already been curmudgeonly enough for you—but I have to do you the favor now of ruining your appetite with this tale of institutionalized child abuse in Ireland. It involves the Catholic Church, of course (and isn't that unsurprising ennui just another indication of Catholicism unsavory reputation?).
Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs, the report said..
Hundreds of crimes against children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law.
In a three-year inquiry, the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese uncovered a sickening tactic of ''don't ask, don't tell'' throughout the Church.
''The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,'' it said.
''The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.
There is one bright spot of common sense.
The inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said the hierarchy cannot claim they did not know that child sex abuse was a crime.
That's good to hear. The spectacle of a gang of gruesome old sanctimonious virgins looking befuddled and trying to claim, "We had no idea that buggering children was a bad idea, your honor" would be a bit much to take.
Politics
Comments
Posted by: Brownian, OM
|
November 26, 2009 2:23 PM
But that's exactly what some of them did claim. I can't find the citation, but wasn't there some pontiff or another who claimed they "knew the buggery was immoral, they just didn't know it was illegal as well"?
Posted by: Clemens | November 26, 2009 2:31 PM
It was that asshole Donohue that said that all these stories weren't, like, "real" abuse.
Posted by: Úna | November 26, 2009 2:37 PM
They will get away with it for the most part, after all the past is another country. I will be [s]happier[/s] [s]relieved [/s] ? more hopeful when there are investigations into all the diocese in Ireland.
Posted by: Ruaidhri | November 26, 2009 2:38 PM
One of the frustrating facts about this is that the Vatican and Papal Nuncio to Ireland ignored requests from the commission doing the report for information. Four times they were written to and not only did they completely ignore this request they had the gall to complain to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Irish government should expel the Papal Nuncio from Ireland and cut off diplomatic relations with the Vatican for this complete lack of respect for a government investigation into the covering up of crimes against children. As an Irish person I'm writing to my TD's and government ministers to ask them to do this and I urge other Irish citizens to do the same. Not that I think the present government will have the balls to do it.
Posted by: hahaha oh wow | November 26, 2009 2:40 PM
Yeah, they're really virgins.
Shut up and go eat some turkey.
Posted by: lazlow | November 26, 2009 2:42 PM
I guess we have to remember that these people answer to a higher power who thinks child abuse is just hunky-dory!
Posted by: David B
|
November 26, 2009 2:43 PM
It's abhorrent.
Might I suggest that those of us who are lapsed Catholics take steps to formally leave the church in protest.
I link to a website with which I have no personal connection which facilitates this process. If others here would help publicise this, in blogs, discussion boards, social messaging sites...then that would be good, too.
http://www.countmeout.ie/
I also link to a thread on a message board I do have a connection with, since I picked out a few snippets skimming through the report online, which I found of interest.
http://secularcafe.org/showthread.php?t=4182
David B
Posted by: Mark | November 26, 2009 2:44 PM
This 2002 documentary/report kicked off the investigation... http://www.rte.ie/news/2002/1017/primetime.html
Stunning and disgusting behaviour by the priest.
The report today deals only with a "sample" of circa 40 priests.
Posted by: PaulJ | November 26, 2009 2:51 PM
But how can this be? The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.
Posted by: minimalist
|
November 26, 2009 3:01 PM
The Danbury News-Times has recently been heavily covering the ongoing investigations in the Bridgeport (CT) diocese as well.
One of the eight accused priests was at the high school I attended, while I was there. He was only there for a year -- golly, I wonder why. Some were more overt than others, of course; I remember Father Bob having an eye (and a hand) for the female students at their lockers. Never failed to creep me the fuck out.
Posted by: Mystic Olly | November 26, 2009 3:07 PM
I don't know what 'citizen's arrest' laws or protocol there are in Ireland, but it would be immensely satisfying if some Tatchell-like figure collared the Pope next time he is on an official visit and marched him down to the local cop shop to be charged with being the head of a criminal organisation. (By which I mean he is the head of an organisation that as part of its protocol routinely aids and abets criminals in its orders.)
I know there are RICO laws in the States by which the head of a criminal gang can be charged with crimes of the other junior members - is there a similar set of laws in Ireland (or the UK as Pope Bend-over-son-and-take-my-dick is planning a visit next year)
I realise this fantasy is a crude analysis of events, but one can dream.
Posted by: FlameDuck | November 26, 2009 3:23 PM
Excuse me. Why aren't these criminals in prison yet? Surely there is more than enough evidence by now to at least issue an arrest warrant for conspiracy to commit child abuse. I don't even care if they're found innocent, so long as they spend enough time in prison to gain some first hand experience of what it's like being in a vulnerable position, under constant sexual abuse, and why that's not a good thing.
Posted by: Lyr
|
November 26, 2009 3:25 PM
It's just disgusting how the church covered this up, and how others in authority helped them. Anything they say about the immorality is nothing but hypocritical bull.
Posted by: Arlene | November 26, 2009 3:33 PM
It's sickening to read the reports, sickening and heartbreaking-those poor little kids, what they must have suffered. One of the priests -a colomban- was moved from his post-due to a complaint- and then was sent on a bloody tour of the parishes of Ireland. They SENT this virus out to use and abuse as he saw fit.
The guards here were just as culpable, ignoring evidence and taking a hands off approach. Rotten to the core, the lot of them.
Posted by: RogerJH
|
November 26, 2009 3:37 PM
Hmm. How sad and painful for the victims. But we can make an important point here.
I imagine that these priests justify their heinous deeds quite readily, knowing that they're illegal and immoral. Quite simply, all they have to do is confess and they will be forgiven.
Cloistered in their medieval rituals and worldview, they are absolved if God forgives them. All they need is faith and a confession every now and then.
The confession is an invention that allows anyone (if they are Catholic) to commit any sin (crime) and to feel okay about it. How better to expunge oneself of guilt for the most dastardly of deeds.
So religion has facilitated a human invention that is quite effective at circumventing a human trait (guilt) that evolved to moderate and limit actions that contravene society's standards.
Posted by: lloyd | November 26, 2009 3:38 PM
A small thanksgiving offering for you-all:
A poem in 3 Acts
http://tinyurl.com/yevr7wc
Posted by: Newfie
|
November 26, 2009 3:49 PM
we didn't start the fire...
Posted by: DemetriusOfPharos | November 26, 2009 3:52 PM
Not a problem, I've never once thought about sexually molesting or otherwise abusing a child.</sarcasm>
Posted by: Alan B | November 26, 2009 4:00 PM
#3 Una
Try angled brackets (less than and greater than signs) in place of your square brackets. We all know what you meant, though.
Posted by: Michael Lonergan
|
November 26, 2009 4:06 PM
Looks like Father O'Bendover has been a naughty priest!
How can people continue to attend the churches every week, and claim that they are NOT supporting child abuse?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
November 26, 2009 4:17 PM
Let's not forget, folks, that it is official policy of the Roman Catholic Church to support and protect child rapists. This policy was promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI himself when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was head of the
InquisitionCongregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.Posted by: cag
|
November 26, 2009 4:22 PM
How long until Donohue and other liars claim that the power of satan is so overwhelming that even a man of god can be overwhelmed, so more praying is needed to overcome the preying. Nothing like having a built-in excuse for their disgusting actions. Bugger the buggers, and all those who support them by either their beliefs or their actions.
Posted by: anonymous bloger | November 26, 2009 4:27 PM
I'm glad this god a mention here, I was afraid it might not since it's not very big news outside the UK (it should be made global news since the problem is global).
I've added my 2p and linked to a lot of other things on my blog.
http://carnifexinsania.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Pinkydead
|
November 26, 2009 4:40 PM
The irony of this is tangible:
http://www.irishtimes.com/
Maybe if there had been proper separation of church and state when John Bruton had to power to do something about it, some children might have been saved this horror.
Posted by: Pinkydead
|
November 26, 2009 4:43 PM
My link got done in...
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1117/1224258981090.html
Posted by: JoDo | November 26, 2009 4:46 PM
Actually, it does mercifully look as though the abuse was not as widespread and truly institutionalized as had been feared. Although the truth is still bad.
Flameduck, surely no civilized country allows sexual abuse to occur in prison?
Posted by: Flea | November 26, 2009 4:56 PM
What I found really amazing in its loveliness is that the Pope (And the Vatican, the last dictatorship remaining in Europe), is not considered responsible at all. Archdioceses go bankrupt and the Vatican wealth remains untouched.
And, of course, Tis Himself (#21) is right: "it is official policy of the Roman Catholic Church to support and protect child rapists. This policy was promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI himself when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he was head of the Inquisition Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."
See
Crimen sollicitationis
and
De delictis gravioribus
where Ratzy writes: "Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret."
Posted by: Holbach | November 26, 2009 4:57 PM
An imaginary god and religion persists in spite of blatant reality of all that has transpired throughout history. It will endure as long as there are humans to perpetuate this insanity.
Posted by: Cowcakes
|
November 26, 2009 4:57 PM
Well I unfortunately cannot feign shock and surprise. After all as shown in leaked Vatican documents, signed off by the creature that we now know as the Nazi Pope, it was and is official Vatican policy. Pity the Vatican doesn't have oil, then everyone would be happy to invade and overthrow their monstrous regime.
Posted by: Kausik Datta | November 26, 2009 5:12 PM
Today's NY Times reports it also here. Sad to hear about this any day (not just thanksgiving day); I feel frustrated that this cult is still allowed to exist and corrupt more and more minds.
Posted by: shonny
|
November 26, 2009 5:18 PM
Have sent the report to a couple of major Norwegian papers, and am wondering why the hell this is not BIG news!
But of course the winter olympics are coming up, and that is MUCH more important.
Though there has been a bit of a stir about all the kids from disadvantaged families in the UK who were sent to Australia where they were treated like slaves and exposed to all kinds of abuse, in particular by the Christian Brothers, a particularly nasty bunch, and of course catlickers.
Posted by: MoeLarryAndJesus | November 26, 2009 5:29 PM
My parents are Irish and I've been visiting the country since the late 60s, and these stories horrify me. But if there's a good to be obtained from this situation it's that the authority of the Church has finally been broken in Ireland - perhaps not totally, but in large part. The economic revival helped, too, but these revolting scandals really made it clear to many Irish folks just how sick it was to worship priests and nuns.
Let's remember the victims and keep up the pressure - these crimes can not be forgotten or forgiven, especially since they're ongoing and there hasn't been any sort of honest contrition (hah!) by the Church "fathers."
Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot | November 26, 2009 5:38 PM
It got a headline position in the online version of The Age here in Melbourne, Australia this morning.
(*Typepad sign-in is fooooked*)
Posted by: Jason Febery | November 26, 2009 5:44 PM
Unfortunately, I've heard all about the terrible stories of child abuse in Ireland. My grandmother is Irish and was sent at a very young age to live with the nuns. Some of the stories of the things they had her do are absolutely horrifying. I can't see how they could have gotten away with it for so long, nor how any person could such things to another without feeling even the slightest twinge of guilt.
I'm glad to see that finally some of the details coming to light. My grandmother is around 70 years old now, so it's been a while since this all happened. But I suppose it's better to see this information become public later than never.
--
http://jasonfebery.wordpress.com/
Posted by: not a gator | November 26, 2009 5:45 PM
Wow, sounds exactly like Boston under Irish Catholic rule (with the little detail that the too-trusting legislature was tricked by the archbishop into waiving their prosecutorial rights, and the fact that when the truth became known, a prosecutor did try to go after the rot at the top, but didn't have the authority... of course, that might have been knowing grandstanding).
The high price of ethnocentrism.
Posted by: not a gator | November 26, 2009 5:58 PM
Una, if you're still reading, the function you were looking for is <strike>, although I agree "s" would seem more logical. ("s" used to mean "substitute string" in perl, so I think that's why the programmers didn't use it for html.)
Also, I think Ireland will follow the Boston example. The power of the Archdiocese in Boston has really collapsed. They are in a position of having to get rid of property they can no longer care for and to raise funds to pay off civil judgments. The revulsion really will sink in for many people. Hit them, and hit them hard. Social change is possible. Change the law so they can't avoid prosecution again. Make it clear that this sort of behavior is wrong and morally unacceptable. Stop going to church and stop giving them money. Found non-church charities. Never forget.
Right now the shock is real and immediate, but you will see in the coming years that RCC authority will be diminished in a way they will find damned difficult to fix. As well it should be. There's a high price to submitting to authoritarians--justice, mercy, humanity go right out the window. The RCC puts on a humanitarian face but it is an authoritarian organization at its heart and always has been. (How do you think they became the "only" church?)
Also, check out jesusneverexisted.com. It will piss you off, then give you hope. There really is a better world out there without the RCC.
Posted by: porco dio | November 26, 2009 6:00 PM
and Ireland has that new blasphemy law which leads to greater protection of wrong doing cults...
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | November 26, 2009 6:01 PM
Lukashenko would like a word with you.
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 26, 2009 6:12 PM
But if there's a good to be obtained from this situation it's that the authority of the Church has finally been broken in Ireland - perhaps not totally, but in large part. The economic revival helped, too, but these revolting scandals really made it clear to many Irish folks just how sick it was to worship priests and nuns. - MoeLarryAndJesus
I think it's gone past the point of no return. There was an Irish priest (or ex-priest, not sure, if still a priest then an unusually outspoken one), saying there would soon be no such thing as an Irish Catholic priest. What a day of rejoicing that will be! I don't think the evilvangelical Protestants are likely to be able to muscle in, either - maybe, despite the blasphemy law, Ireland will be the first European country where Christianity dies out!
Posted by: DuckPhup | November 26, 2009 6:18 PM
Louis CK had this nailed a couple of years ago, as detailed in this penetrating investigative report...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k
Posted by: Andreas Johansson | November 26, 2009 6:20 PM
On a brief look, I'm not impressed. Apart from the unpleasant attitude, claims like that the Greek for Jesus is "Ioshu" or logic like that the NT contains nothing original therefore Jesus didn't exist (unoriginal thinkers can't exist?) do not inspire confidence.Posted by: ema | November 26, 2009 6:21 PM
Did anyone catch the part where one of the archbishops does a William Saletan in order to defend the sexual abuse of children?
More than twice as many complaints related to boys than girls, but the report also said it was "risible" when an archbishop defended one case by saying it arose merely from a priest's "'wonderment' about the female anatomy."
There's just not enough snark in the world to respond to something like this.
Posted by: DemetriusOfPharos | November 26, 2009 6:23 PM
@not a gator
Actually, <s> is in HTML, its shorthand for <strike> - granted, both are deprecated and <s> is perhaps not semantically correct, but it is there.
Posted by: Newfie
|
November 26, 2009 6:37 PM
fta
Child rape insurance, Jesus approved. Which insurers would take that policy?
I've heard first hand accounts of abuse in our former school systems at the hands of the Christian Brothers here in my lifetime. I went to public/integraded school, but plenty of friends and family went through the Catholic school system, which was still heavily publicly funded and subsidized by the government. Until 1997 when we had a referendum, and got rid of Separate School, in the wake of the Mount Cashel scandal.
But fear not, they still have a Youth Ministry.
Posted by: Peter Mc | November 26, 2009 6:40 PM
One more case of widespread abuse with the Church digging its heels in over liability and compensation from England.
Posted by: anonymous bloger | November 26, 2009 6:42 PM
It's good to see this getting global attention.
I'd urge anyone who has a blog to have an entry on this, to link relevant things on facebook and twitter, etc..
keep this public and hot for as long as possible. The more attention this gets the more chance of something meaningful being done and also awareness will help more victims to come forward and denounce those responsible.
http://carnifexinsania.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Vince Whirlwind | November 26, 2009 6:47 PM
Many of the commenters here are committing a combined logical fallacy of Composition/Biased Sample.
What seems like a large number of paedophile priests (is it scores of them? hundreds?) is actually a tiny proportion of all priests.
Take the comment above about the orphans taken to Australia, some of whom were subsequently abused: by far, the majority of these children were cared for very well despite being born in a society which condemned and punished people for their poverty or illegitimate birth - there was no government safety net for these children, and the catholic church was practically the only organisation to take care of them. (Maybe you can name *any* significant non-Catholic charity from 50 years ago?).
So when your population of orphan children is almost entirely cared for by one organisation, then it is hardly surprising when the tiny subset of that population which is abused turns out to have suffered that abuse almost exclusively by that single organisation.
Unfortunately, irrational thinking is common even on Science blogs.
Incidentally - I saw mentions of "Satan" above - I'm no theologian, but doesn't the catholic churchnow officially teach that "Satan" and "Hell" are figurative concepts? All that hellfire and brimstone stuff is the preserve of the conservative protestant sects.
Posted by: Aunt Benjy | November 26, 2009 6:50 PM
They took out insurance in case they were found out. Can't tell me they didn't know it was wrong/illegal. Cynical in extremis...
Posted by: WowbaggerOM
|
November 26, 2009 7:05 PM
Their organisation claims to have access to a perfect supernatural being. There being even one paedophile priest who can trick an omnipotent, omniscient being completely undermines the validity of their claims.
Non-existence of their god aside, the real complaint isn't that there were child-raping priests; it's that when the church hierarchy found out about it they didn't act to protect the harmed (or those who would come to be harmed); instead, they moved to protect the 'good name' of the church - and let the child rapists continue raping!
Again, if they only protected one priest who went on to destroy another person's life they are revealed as corrupt, morally bankrupt hypocrites. No decent, honest person should have remained a member of such an organisation when the atrocities were revealed.
Posted by: anonymous bloger | November 26, 2009 7:12 PM
@Vince Whirlwind:
I would agree that it's easy to confuse total numbers and percentages, however this is not the point, at least for me. Whilst each individual act is disgusting and a terrible thing I do not not claim the Catholic church for it (although enforced celibacy can't help).
No, what I blame the catholic church for is the cynical and deliberate policies of cover-up, secrecy, protection of the guilty, intimidation of the innocent victims and lack of cooperation with state authorities. The policies which made these sad problems much prolific than needed to have been the case came right from the top of the organisation and are built right in to its structure. The church hierarchy put the protection of its own reputation and offender priests above the safety of children to such an extent that children were threatened with both public humiliation and excommunication if they 'caused a fuss' or spoke to anyone about their ordeals. It is because of this that I am condemning the church, not the fact that they had a few individual paedophiles among their organisation. Read up on "crimen sollicitationis" and "De delictis gravioribus".
If you think I am wrong to be appalled by the behaviour or the organisation and not just the individuals then do let me know why, either hear or on my blog.
http://carnifexinsania.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Newfie
|
November 26, 2009 7:12 PM
sure, and it's just a stale cracker that somebody chanted over.. they teach that now too, right PZ?
Posted by: Holbach | November 26, 2009 7:13 PM
Vince Whirlwind @ 47
There was no god to prevent this freaking nightmare; religion is a nightmare turned real.
Posted by: Charlie Foxtrot
|
November 26, 2009 7:37 PM
@Vince Whirlwind
The abuse happened down on the 'factory floor' of the organisation - but it was the decision makers at the top of the organisation that decided to cover it up, ignore it, pretend it didn't happen, deny deny deny.
It is that 'tiny proportion of all priests' that allowed the abuse to continue for decades that must also be held accountable, for their role in running a corrupt and fetid organisation.
Posted by: Ted | November 26, 2009 7:57 PM
Kennedy is an Irish bugger. Isn't he?
Posted by: Patricia, OM | November 26, 2009 8:01 PM
Flea - Thank you for the link to De delictis gravi oribus. Hadn't seen that one before.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
November 26, 2009 8:08 PM
Vince Whirlwind #47
It isn't really the pedophile clergy that upset us. Most of us realize that there will be a certain percentage of sexual deviants in any large population. What most of us are objecting to is that the RCC, which claims to be the moral authority, has n official policy to support and protect these deviants. The dignity of the Church is more important to people like Pope Benedict than the welfare of children.
See post #27 for details.
Posted by: Armand K. | November 26, 2009 8:20 PM
Crime against humanity. As defined by the International Criminal Court at the Hague.
It certainly qualifies as such under the definitions in Art. 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal, letter g): "Rape, sexual slavery [...] or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity." And it meets the other requirements: part of a widespread practice, perpetrated with the knowledge of, or tolerated by government or de facto authority.
Mind you, the RCC was "de facto authority" at least in the catholic schools -- without taking in account its position as "spiritual authority," unconditionally trusted and obeyed by what they define as "good Catholics" (as opposed to "sunday" catholics and "apostates" -- I believe that's the technical term -- like myself).
Also, as someone already observed, the RCC had and still has an active and official policy of covering any unconvenient facts that might come to light during their internal investigations, consistently applied throughout the world.
Posted by: Insightful Ape | November 26, 2009 9:00 PM
@Ted 54: Kennedy is failing to toe the line. That is why the church is twisting his arm.
@Vince 47: Have you no shame, really? Are you still telling us we are dealing with just a few isolated cases here and there? How many more tens of thousands of victims do you need? In how many countries? Over how many decades? Isn't the conspiracy going beyond the church hierarchy and involving law enforcement enough to think this is a systemic problem? How about Cardinal Law of Boston getting a nice position at the Vatican after resigning his job in the middle of the abuse and coverup scandal? How about instructions for handling the allegations of sexual abuse with secrecy coming from the Pope himself no less?
You are disgusting.
Posted by: Rorschach | November 26, 2009 9:22 PM
Vince the moron babbled :
Poor strawman ! I dont think anyone is inferring from the known cases that all priests are pedophiles.
What people are saying is that the RCC systematically covered up the abuse and took out insurance, which makes them and their pope and clergy guilty of conspiracy.
Posted by: L.Minnik | November 26, 2009 9:41 PM
(quotes from the above linked NY Times article)
How many files of abuse are in the Vatican (as copies of the reports had to be sent there) and in many other countries? All safely locked up. That the church will not hand this crime documentation over to the authorities immediately and voluntarily just says how bogus their 'apology' is.
Well, then the report got it wrong, because if the church just wanted to preserve its reputation, it would have quietly discharged the abusing priests (or put them in a monastery or somewhere where they would not have contact with kids), but what the RCC did instead was issue and enforce an official secret doctrine forbidding any priest do disclose anything about abuse on penalty of being dismissed (Crimen Sollicitationis & other) and keep the abusing priests just moving them from one place to another to avoid trouble.
At minimum it means that the RCC knowingly and actively facilitated the sexual abuse of children by its members.
And there is no reason to believe that this has changed as it has in its possession documentation indicating who should not be left with children yet chooses not to take these positions away from them. And although the church officially renounced the Crimen Sollicitationis after it came to light, by all accounts the RCC seems to be following a very similar policy.
What they are sorry about is just about getting caught.
Posted by: Anon | November 26, 2009 10:12 PM
Actually, this was a report into just the Archdiocese of Dublin over a 29 year period. Never mind the rest of Ireland or the rest of the Catholic Church in other countries.
Posted by: PoxyHowzes | November 26, 2009 10:16 PM
Re: Vince Whirlwind @ #47:
I'm late to the party on this, but consider:
The US population is around 300 million, of which the tiniest fraction, fewer than one in 2,000, are troops deployed to Iraq. So of course, all the media in the US and abroad are wrong to be making such a fuss about the war, since, after all, it is "just a few" who are causing all the trouble.
That's right, isn't it?
Posted by: Clara Mublingdatch | November 26, 2009 10:18 PM
I just found this on RD.net:
Sex in a Cold Climate: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1732953937770017672
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 26, 2009 10:18 PM
wow terrible analogy
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 26, 2009 10:20 PM
Exactly
And really, it's not that hard of a concept to grasp.
Why do so many have problems grasping it?
Posted by: L.Minnik | November 26, 2009 10:22 PM
Um, that wording could suggest that there still may be some things that would protect a criminal. High social standing, like a seat in the government, perhaps?How about equality under the law: 'Nothing will protect any criminal?'
Posted by: Newfie
|
November 26, 2009 10:25 PM
pay not attention to thine number 47, for it art only but one number among many... that have a 4 or a 7 innit?
Posted by: Armand K. | November 26, 2009 10:33 PM
Rorschach wrote (#59), along the lines of many others:
Indeed. The vast majority of Catholic priests are, I trust, decent people and a great many of them do quite a lot to help others -- sometimes in spite of official Vatican policy (like the missionary priests in some corners of the world, who distribute condoms).
As far as the clergy abusing children are concerned: The first fact is that we don't know the exact number of them. Mostly due to the Vatican's cover-up policy, and to the unease of the victims to disclose the "happenings". (Unease due both to the social pressure of blaming the victim, as with sexual abuse generally, and to the specific pressure the implicated clergy put on people, as described both in USA and Ireland.) The cases thus far exposed are probably, as with many other types of abuse, only a small part of the total.
The point is, however, that when taking in account RCC's pretentions to be the absolute guide to morality, even ONE SINGLE event hidden by church officials is more than enough to prove the case. There are, so far, hundreds of documented cases.
If it were virtually any other type of organization but a church with such a track record of protecting criminals and explicit omertà policy, there certainly wouldn't be so many voices to defend it.
Posted by: N.A. | November 26, 2009 10:35 PM
Have you ever done a post on the number of students sexually abused by teachers?
I am not suggesting that schools are bad or that they should be banned. I'm just curious.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 26, 2009 10:38 PM
Have you always been this good at missing the point or are you just trying to be an ass or is it an acute case of obtuseness?
If the schools systematically covered up the abuse them MAYBE you could make a analogous connection. But schools and teachers don't pretend to have the ultimate moral authority so even that connection would be tenuous at best.
Try again
Posted by: Holbach | November 26, 2009 10:43 PM
N.A. @ 69
Priests, teachers, bosses, or whatever; there is no god to prevent abuse of freaking free will.
Posted by: WowbaggerOM
|
November 26, 2009 10:43 PM
Do the schools these teachers are employed at claim to get special attention from an omnipotent, omniscient superbeing who could easily prevent abuse from happening via a number of methods?
Posted by: Insightful Ape | November 26, 2009 10:46 PM
NA # 69. Didn't you see the reports of school teachers moving their colleagues from place to place (including from nation to nation) to protect their reputation? How about teachers union refusing to report such cases to the police (or the POLICE sending them back to be investigated by the teachers), or the teachers issuing a policy document saying such cases should be checked on exclusively by them, and in secret?
I am not remotely suggesting you are stupid or have an agenda, just curious.
Posted by: Lion IRC | November 26, 2009 11:10 PM
The catholic church has to reap whatever it sows. And if the price is empty pews and hatred towards religion for what took place then that is a large millstone around the neck which the church must wear. And GOOD!
There is a valid defense to claim you did not know but there is no defense against why you did not act once you did know.
There is a reason why things are done in the dark.
Pedophiles disguise themselves as priests and try to keep their actions unseen / unheard. (Lying to protect self interest)
It’s the same reason why church hierarchies tried (try) to disguise what they had discovered and try to keep those things secret. (Lying to protect self interest.)
It’s a familiar mantra. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t speak. Keep quiet. Shut up or else!
Heaven forbid that I should be afraid to speak.
Religion may be hated by atheists (and pedophile victims) for many reasons but if religion IS evil and religious acts ARE “evil” then the only conclusion an atheist could reach is that it must – I SAY MUST be destroyed. It would be immoral for someone who thought religion to be “evil” to do nothing or look the other way. But be careful because preventing “evil” acts (and axis) is a morality which can become uncontrollable. The end could justify any means. Someone could be sitting in a small room somewhere writing their own Atheist Mein Kampf
Slay the religious wherever you find them
Usama bin ….whatsisname
Kill them all, the nonexistent God will know his own.
Sergeant Cathar.
The personification of religion as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
Adolf who?
Perhaps if Albert Camus had thought of religion as a cancer and the guillotine as a scalpel his book might have been a little different.
Lion (IRC)
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | November 26, 2009 11:13 PM
Still inane and myopic as ever.
Posted by: Feynmaniac | November 26, 2009 11:25 PM
Lion (IRC),
How did your brain master human speech?
Posted by: Patricia, OM | November 26, 2009 11:28 PM
Lion change your handle to Ass. Thanks.
Posted by: sasqwatch | November 26, 2009 11:32 PM
Omigosh, Lyin' JIRC. That was really, really stupid. So stupid that I'm going to have to figure out this filter-monkey business once and for all.
Really... I've seen some of the worst... on Youtube, on the Rotten... but congratulations, it was YOU that finally got me off my butt to figure out message filtering. For that, I thank you. You were the stupid that broke the camel's back.
Posted by: Holbach | November 26, 2009 11:42 PM
Lion IRC @ 74
Does the "IRC" stand for "Insensible Religious Convert"? Or perhaps "Incoming Religious Crap"?
Posted by: Insightful Ape | November 26, 2009 11:45 PM
Sorry lyin' jerk, you've have one too many. Try again once the hangover goes away.
Posted by: not a gator | November 27, 2009 12:09 AM
@43
Okay, that was interesting. Turns out Netscrape 2 didn't support "s" so out it went. Dang, that could have saved me a lot of typing back in the day.
Posted by: Newfie
|
November 27, 2009 12:17 AM
and with a 7 and a 4 he doth confirm the revelation
Posted by: Lion IRC | November 27, 2009 12:22 AM
Hi Patricia OM,
Speaking of changing your handle to ass.
Did you ever read………actually, never mind.
There’s a good book about a bullying ape (Shift) and a donkey (Puzzle) with self esteem issues. The ape finds a dead lion skin and convinces the donkey to wear it in order to trick people into believing it’s a real lion. It’s a good story about abuse of power, lying to the weak, naivety, inability (fear) in speaking truth to power.
It’s only around 200 pages.
Something to read in between commercial breaks.
You should give it a look. The Last Battle – CS Lewis
Lion (IRC)
PS – I meant “during” commercial breaks – sorry. Forgot who I was talking to.
Posted by: wiley | November 27, 2009 12:24 AM
Drowning's too good for 'em.
Posted by: Vince Whirlwind | November 27, 2009 12:25 AM
I didn't comment on the corruption and cover-up aspect of it, because that's a separate issue, totally in keeping with the actions of any unaccountable and authoritarian organisation. The police do it, bureaucracies do it, it happens everywhere, all the time, and the guilty always have a way of rationalising what they are doing - in this case, the particular weakness of the catholics is their ridiculous urge to "forgive" everybody all the time.
The cover-up has no bearing whatsoever on the illogical demonisation of the vast majority of individual catholic priests whose life is devoted to selfless and non-materialistic community service.
And I see from "...RCC systematically covered up the abuse and took out insurance, which makes them and their pope and clergy guilty of conspiracy.." that some people here still can't spot the logical fallacies they are infected with.
Which "clergy" is responsible for the cover-up?
You need to be more specific - specific individuals were involved, not "clergy" in general - "clergy" were busy giving 99% of their time to selfless community service in a way the shrill and childish demonisers here would never do in a million years.
Posted by: not a gator | November 27, 2009 12:25 AM
@47
What we have here, ladies and germs, is an example of false or deceptive framing.
What is at issue is _not that some percentage of priests are pedophiles or child molesters, just as some percentage of the general population is. (Though the percent of RCC priest is estimated around 4% which is QUITE high for the general pop. But that's not the point.)
What _is at issue is that the church authorities allowed the abuse to occur, through their structure and rules. What is at issue is that when they learned of the abuse--and with the best expert opinions of the psychiatry profession in front of them--they chose to cover it up, pay hush money, and shuttle the offenders from parish to parish, rather than use their authority to keep them away from children. What is at issue is that they lied and lied and lied about the conditions in their schools and orphanages. What is at issue is that to this day they refuse to accept any responsibility for wrongdoing and don't even think what they did was morally wrong. What is at issue is that they believe that they're above the law. What is at issue is that they further abuse the victims by calling them the true perpetrators and dodging legal judgments and fighting them in court for years.
What _is at issue is that they then turn around and have the audacity to lecture others about morality.
If this is just a "minor problem" why is it that this problem has been festering for years in the RCC while the MCC (a glbt-friendly protestant sect) has never had a single case of abuse, even though they have youth ministries and the like? Btw, I'll answer that question: it's because the MCC knew when they were founded that they would be under unusual public scrutiny and they adopted from the beginning stringent rules to insure that adults were never alone with children and so on. Their rules are more stringent than those in many public schools today.
The RCC, by contrast, feels they need answer to no "temporal" authority and hence can do as they please. They also believe--as a matter of dogma--that all men of the cloth receive a special "charism" from the Holy Spirit which makes them able to be celibate. Therefore, there is no need for rules such as the MCC has about leaving adults alone with children. The RCC does not recognize any concept of human rights either, therefore does not recognize the rights of the child, so why would they have any problem with egregious and systemic child abuse?
Note: there are some teaching orders (like the Ursalines) who have banned corporal punishment, but they are a special case. Kind of like the way the Franciscan brothers welcome everyone into their churches (homeless, hobos, gays). Most don't.
Posted by: Vince Whirlwind | November 27, 2009 12:31 AM
"If this is just a "minor problem" why is it that this problem has been festering for years in the RCC "
Cool, is that a strawman to top off all the lack of sampling logic?
Posted by: Mr T | November 27, 2009 12:34 AM
We need better trolls.
Posted by: Mr T | November 27, 2009 12:44 AM
Would you go back to that part about the fallacy of composition?Posted by: not a gator | November 27, 2009 12:47 AM
It may be illogical, Mr. Spock, but it's human nature. What you're seeing is the reversion and revulsion of the Catholic people to an icon inverted.
The priest was held up as a person of great status in the community, considered holy and good. The priest could do no wrong (even if he indulged in some obvious pecadilloes). Priests were welcomed into the homes of devout Catholics like a member of the family and were allowed every kind of intimacy.
But it is this very scenario that was the classic scenario for abuse, with the friend of the family priest grooming the young boys to be his next victims. (The study that was posted on this blog a couple weeks ago had a lot of statistics on the relationship of the priest to the victim. More importantly, there were cases of this sort in the news.) The priest had become in the minds of the people a potential predator (like that creepy uncle or--at least in some people's minds--that dreaded homosexual school teacher).
People don't like to be disillusioned. The blasphemous black humor that exploded in the community of ethnic Catholics in the US in the last ten years was a very human response to childhood idols being shattered and befouled. Furthermore, the abuse itself was simply horrible, and after recoiling from it, it's common to ridicule it, to minimize it.
So yeah, priest jokes. It was the zeitgeist. In the past, those jokes were made by Proddies, but now it's lapsed Catholics who make them, ex-Catholics, never-going-back Catholics.
In a rational discussion, yes, the bishops' sins were far more enormous than the priests'. But the human fear response is not rational, worry is not rational, and the black humor we weave as a defense is not rational either.
Childhood's end for the American Catholic Church. The RCC will now march to the right, as its moderate middle sloughs off (the left is getting hacked off by Ratzi--until now they've held out in their enclaves because they were doing "important work" with the homeless, prisoners, AIDS sufferers, etc.). The spell the church had over the children and grandchildren of immigrants has forever been broken.
Are the jokes offensive and over the top? Yeah, maybe, but they speak to anxieties that are widespread. And truly, how could one in good conscience remain a priest, a footsoldier in an organization that knowingly, over and over again, put children at risk? The US is full of "failed" (defrocked) priests and nuns, and has few willing to replace them in the ranks. (Catholic mothers stopped pushing their sons to be priests since the advent of the women's movement. So they've had problems for a long time in the US but they'd managed to hang on. No longer.)
What I say to the 93% unfairly impugned is that they might want to consider a new career, one that doesn't involve being an authoritarian tool. You know, like a decent member of the human race.
Posted by: not a gator | November 27, 2009 12:50 AM
Cool, is that a strawman to top off all the lack of sampling logic?
You're the one making the apology, not me. You said the percentage of pedophiles was low. (It's not really low, in the sense of general population incidence, but it's low in a naive sense, I mean, it's less than 10% of total.) Most people would take this as an attempt at minimizing the issue, but not you... No, you were just throwing that out there, not really saying anything... Just like your entire excusialia... You're not saying what you're saying, you're just sayin'...
Posted by: Patricia, OM | November 27, 2009 12:50 AM
Lion - Commercials, what are those? CS Lewis is some sort of christian with a child fixation. I know nothing about that.
Posted by: Mr T | November 27, 2009 12:51 AM
I forgot to note above that you also generalize "the catholics" as being "guilty" in this case, which contradicts the completely irrelevant point you've tried to make.
Posted by: Macweenie | November 27, 2009 12:53 AM
Today I am thankful that I scraped god and the church off of my shoe long before it had enough time to damage me to much.
Posted by: Cerberus
|
November 27, 2009 12:55 AM
Here's the thing to the apologists.
The Catholic Church contained a certain number of child molesters within its ranks. This would be one thing if the Catholic Church has not been an organisation which has trumpeted its supposedly unique claim to morality and the exceptionalism and flawlessness of its priests and pope. Furthermore, it highlights hypocrisy considering the negative sex obsession the Church has had in policy demanding not only celibacy in its priests, but demanding practical celibacy in its followers if they didn't want to get pregnant.
And that's already national highlight for hypocrisy. That is, if they did what every organization on the planet who works with children has had to do time and time again. That is either quietly release or full on in front of press make an example of those who slip past screening processes (and unlike the Church, they all have screening processes that focus specifically on child molestation rather than bullshit like supposed celibacy in adult consensual relationships). Because organizations that work with children in official capacities attract those who would molest and rape kids.
But they didn't do that. Instead, so afraid they were of having to admit that they were in some ways more open to child molesters and that their priests were not protected from the bullshit of infallibility from being monsters, that they decided to up their game and begin organizing their not inconsiderable power to begin shuffling around the child molesting priests, intimidating nuns and children who tried to speak out, and ordering the bishops and fellow priests to keep the secret or be let go.
In short, they started a criminal conspiracy to shield child molesters from prosecution.
This starts getting into monster territory. Then it becomes revealed that not only is it rape of boys and girls under their care, but there is widespread abuse of the physical nonsexual kind as well in their schools and charities which was not only not condemned but again kept silent, protected, and even in many cases encouraged owing to outdated child care ideas in the Church doctrine.
So really bad at this point.
But then the shit gets out. Now at this point, they're proper fucked, but they have an option to save face, make a big show of contrition and of allowing the Church to be reformed to try and prevent an era like that from repeating itself.
That wasn't the tact they took. In all cases, they have resisted any secular authorities from investigating their priests or books and have refused to jail their bad priests, nor to be sued in civil court. They have used their powers to try and obfuscate, stall, and simply refuse any authority but their own. They have promoted and moved to other countries molesting priests and the bishops who directly covered them up. Especially on the promotion. The worst and nasty coverer-ups (Bernard Law, the nasty bishop from Chicago, and the current Pope) were all promoted to Vatican jobs of high importance.
So they doubled down when caught. Now, they are not only a criminal conspiracy but a flagrant, morally corrupted one of no small order. This is pretty bad.
But then the Pope and the high bishops now made almost entirely of evil men decided to bam that up a notch.
They decided to put even more effort and power into trying to interfere with the sexuality of Catholics and non-catholics publicly coming down on the wrong side of condoms and sex education even in areas with plague levels of HIV.
They began to use the money they were avoiding paying to their former victims and began hiding it even further from scrutiny or liquidating it for things like Maine's Prop 1 or to fund anti-choice terrorist groups in no small order over the wishes of their followers and further try and bully them to mobilize their forces against equality or be threatened with lack of communion or by removal from the Church by excommunication.
That's already about as bad as one can get and now well earning of the vile hatred of not only every non-Catholic, but many honest "good" Catholics.
But the Catholic Church wouldn't be who they are if they couldn't top themselves.
So they've decided that the fallout from all that evil needed a response. So the Pope and the hierarchy decided to respond by declaring war on the few things that spoke well of them. They've begun mobilizing and quietly removing and excommunicating left-leaning nun organizations and good liberal minded and poverty-relief-focused priests and parishes and otherwise trying to remove anyone still upholding Vatican II and the "Good Church". Further they have begun dissolving their charities and using them as pawns to be sacrificed in attempting to push through their anti-equality battles (see the DC Catholic Charities bullshit or some of the nastiness in MA or with the Catholic Hospitals) as well as closing parishes and cutting back in helpful services of all kinds.
And as the cherry on the top of evil, they have added a kick in the balls to copious injury by excommunicating all who give them any good name and do any good works while simultaneously opening the door wide for those who openly hate groups they hate with their big public offer to Anti-gay, anti-woman Anglican bishops and priests, further underlining their new priorities.
It is at this point that the bloodletting of all non-evil-catholics will commence.
The unfortunate thing is, while good in the long run, the Catholic Church has perfected emotional child abuse and instills it in every young follower. It takes about two generations to fully leave the Catholic Church. Even children of those who leave the Church often have immense psychosexual issues stemming from Catholic ideology they can't remove from their heads.
So we'll be living with the effects for awhile now yet, but the Catholic Church is committing a slow seppuku. I feel for those in the parishes who cannot escape the knowledge that the Church they were abused into worshipping hates them and wants to hurt them while also grappling with that two generation time to fully leave and all of the massive guilt waiting to drop once they officially leave as well as the dissolution of long-built-up social networking by social terrorism. The loss of friends and family members who refuse to accept.
It's a tough choice and they have my sympathy, especially those who make the correct choice in the end. It's not as easy as just leaving. But leaving is an eventuality. A necessity. Unfortunately, because the Catholic Church is NOT a force for good in this world by any sane standard there is.
Posted by: Lion IRC | November 27, 2009 1:02 AM
Hi Mr T,
I was gonna pass on this thread all together but it commenced with an opening salvo from PZ Myers
"Try not to think............."
There must be a better way to influence how people think than condescension.
Lion (IRC)
Posted by: Cerberus
|
November 27, 2009 1:04 AM
Also what was said @90.
The real crimes are the rest of the myriad of evils. The insults to injuries and the transformation of everything to the sole duty of covering up and protecting the child molesters and abusers within their ranks as well as the immensely ballsy stuff after they were caught out and done for.
But the stuff that have had the greatest emotional trigger has been the transformation of Catholic priest from the social justice superhero, super friend to his parish, and all around moraler than thou guy as seen in movies like "Sleepers" in the public image to someone who pretty much has to be assumed to be a child molester.
That's a big public image shift in a very short time and it was probably the fear of that occurring which lead to the escalating snowball of evil we are doing today. They wanted to ride out the fantasy built by Vatican II as long as they could in order to get into power and destroy Vatican II.
Now they reap what they have sown.
Posted by: Mr T | November 27, 2009 1:19 AM
I have already told you not to say "Hi" to me, Lion. I did not address you in this thread, and as long as you continue your dumbfuckery, there is little use in having a conversation.
However, if you actually do want anyone to influence how you think without condescension, then stop making ridiculous claims that beg for it.
Posted by: not a gator | November 27, 2009 1:37 AM
Well said Cerberus, although I must say to me the only shocking bit about the corporal punishment is that it continued so long after the rest of society had decided it was child abuse. (Heck, Dickens was railing against that kind of thing almost 150 years ago.) The thing to me was, it was an open secret.
The orphanage scandal is really, really horrible and yes, the victims were shushed for years. But the child abuse at Catholic boarding schools (where well-off families dump their legitimate spawn) has been openly acknowledged for a long time, as everyone who went there knew what was going on. (Sometimes made light of--here's some "Irish wit and wisdom": the story goes of a nun who beats a child for some classroom offense and hears some kids giggling in the back. "How dare you laugh at the misfortunes of others!" she says and beats them as well, causing some other children to giggle. "How dare you laugh at the misfortunes of others!" she says again, and beats these children as well. Soon the whole class is giggling as she repeats this phrase and beats every child in turn.)
Hanging children out of windows, scaldings, beatings, humiliation, force-feeding soap... Long before the priest-altar boy jokes there were the nun jokes. (Remember "Blues Brothers"?) The French nuns at the boarding schools in New England were particularly infamous for their viciousness.
I don't know why parents think this kind of crap is "good" for their child. The old banned film "Maedchen in Uniform" wasn't just a risqué flirtation with teenage lesbianism, it was also intended after all as an exposé of the military schools favored by the upper class in Prussia for their children. But rather than be moved by how crushing and exploitative these schools were, the Germans rather took the concept to all social classes, with the Hitlerjugend in the public school. Ugh.
Posted by: not a gator | November 27, 2009 1:52 AM
Cerberus buddy, I think you mean that this exposure and destruction process will be good in the long run, but you sound like you're saying the emotional abuse is. ;)
But I actually quoted this for truth because you have so hit the nail on the head. Catholic "morality" is an evil mind virus that fucks up your relationships, your self-esteem and relationship to yourself. It also distorts your priorities and leads you to believe silly things like the idea that some aging bishop who majored in philosophy from a Catholic seminary has any bleeding clue about bioethics whatsoever.
They have all these "good Catholics" running scared about abortion and teenagers having sex (wooo) while they ignore real problems right around them like poor education, institutional racism, wars, an unfair tax system, abuse of women, bullying in schools, homelessness, AIDS and Hep C, you name it...
Wait, there are groups who care, like the Franciscans, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Catholic Charities, etc, but Catholic Charities is finding their governance wrested from them, the nuns are being threatened with expulsion by Ratzi, etc, etc. (Ratzi started in on the Catholic universities in the US while JPII was still living.) I'm surprised that the Franciscans haven't been on the receiving end of some papal firebreathing yet. Maybe Ratzi has a soft spot for St. Francis, depicted in Western art as "the fey one". The real St. Francis probably would have beat him around the head with a stick for loving finery and frippery and forgetting to serve the poor.
Posted by: Cerberus
|
November 27, 2009 2:24 AM
@100
Ha ha, yeah, I actually meant what you clarified. That it is good that there is exposure and the resulting fallout and that people are leaving in general to at least less restrictive religions though a lot of ex-catholics tend to drift fairly secular and more towards the "spiritual" side of agnosticism.
But yeah, the tragedy is how long it takes to fully leave and the two generation thing isn't just a number I pulled out my ass. I have a number of friends who are either ex-catholic or children of ex-catholics (they are especially numerous in the queer and BDSM communities) and even the ones who never set foot in a Catholic Church or attended a service still carry massive Catholic baggage especially of the sexual variety that infests in their heads.
It can get really bad. My partner in college was engineering a lot of self-destructive behavior or staying longer than she should in abusive relationships because of massive Catholic guilt attacks about having a sexuality, not thinking enough about family, and becoming an atheist. She still hasn't fully worked through it and will likely be fighting those impulses all her life. And her mother was the one who left the Church.
And this has been the same in a number of my other friends. There is something in the style of the authoritarianism and guilt-induction that creates an abusive inner-voice that haunts the victim long after they leave.
Posted by: corkscrew | November 27, 2009 2:26 AM
The news was big here in Thailand.
Posted by: WowbaggerOM
|
November 27, 2009 2:48 AM
Lion IRC wrote:
Only if the people in question have demonstrated they're capable of critical thought and intellectual honesty - if not, condescension is appropriate.
Guess which category you've demonstrated you fall into? Ergo, condescension - you dumbass.
As for your lame reference to The Last Battle, you - in your ignorance - don't seem to have realised that the entire problem would have been avoided if no-one had believed in the god Shift made Puzzle pretend to be in the first place. Lewis's stories are only valuable as analogies if there actually is a god - which we know (and you, deep down, do as well) there isn't.
So, in the real world you are Shift pretending that your donkey is a god. And, while we don't expect Tash to show up to deal with you, you'll still lose, just like Shift did, when you realise we've been right all along.
Posted by: Rorschach | November 27, 2009 3:18 AM
*should not respond to Lion's insane ramblings,but SIWOTI and all*
No pie-for-brains, it's not pedophiles disguising as priests, it's virgins for jebus getting jittery from having their sexuality denied by their god, and needing to vent some jesus juice.I'm so totally sick of your dumbfuckery mate.
No you stupid fuck, the only conclusion this leads to is that your god is ok with child buggery, fine and dandy for the omnipotent ruler of the world.That's all it means.Destroying, that's so christian.
Bring heddle back and swap him for this brainless moron, already.
Posted by: Urmensch | November 27, 2009 4:11 AM
As an Irishman, who lost his father and aunt within days of each other this year, it was made worse by having to endure the rituals in the church.
I would love if this broke the back of the RCC in Ireland but I'm not that optimistic. It is so ingrained in the Irish culture.
I have an aunt and uncle that are the most religious in the family who have separated themselves somewhat from the church but still go to Lourdes every year. I love them both dearly and they were a great comfort at the time, but my aunt, when hearing the various derisive comments of my brother and I, said she didn't believe that people really disbelieve in the existence of God.
Even though we are 41 and 43 years old she still looks on our atheism as an almost childish rebellion that we'll grow out of one day.
Pinkydead's link at #25 about Bruton calling attempts at separating church from state naive, and the irony of having Dermot Ahern, who put the blasphemy law on the statutes, quoted about collar's being no protection for criminals, show how cosy the politicians in Ireland are still with the RCC.
When the scandals were breaking they were falling over themselves trying to limit the financial damage to the church, passing the burden on to the taxpayer.
As a gay man, the injury is worsened when I see them try to lay the blame at the feet of homosexuals in the priesthood.
It is all too depressing.
Posted by: FlameDuck | November 27, 2009 5:24 AM
If they allow it in Church, it should be allowed in prison too.Here is the thing I don't understand. Fair enough you want to protect the RCC from scandal, so you don't want to go to the authorities, because you're unable to see that the actions of an individual need not reflect badly on the organization (Timothy McVeigh and Nidal Malik Hasan were both in the US Army).
But why doesn't the organization punish the guilty? I mean we are talking about an organization who has burned people at the stake for the most absurd reasons and on the most flimsy evidence.
One can only conclude that the RCC is indeed a gay paedophile conspiracy.
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 27, 2009 5:39 AM
If they allow it in Church, it should be allowed in prison too. - Flameduck
My impression is that the USA is unusual both in the high prevalence of rape in its prisons, and the readiness of many of its citizens to express their approval of it. Rape is always wrong, no matter what the victim has done.
Posted by: Richard Eis | November 27, 2009 5:55 AM
The only person who brought up death was Lion. Not that I have any problem with the ending of a pernicious lie such as religion.
What I want to know is whether Ireland is still oh so very proud of its blasphemy laws now that it fully understands EXACTLY what it has been defending.
Posted by: Hywel | November 27, 2009 6:09 AM
This is a must see …
Louis CK learns about the Catholic Church
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VABSoHYQr6k
Posted by: Mrs Tilton
|
November 27, 2009 6:10 AM
Knockgoats @39,
Ireland will be the first European country where Christianity dies out!
From your lips to God's ears.
Patricia @92,
CS Lewis is some sort of christian with a child fixation
Lewis wasn't remotely a paedophile. Indeed, although he was fond of some individual children, as a general matter he did not much like kids at all.
No, his was another paraphilia: sado-masochism. He preferred to be the giver rather than receiver of pain, but wasn't above the occasional role reversal.
I have no reason to think he was guilty of hypocrisy here, BTW. Presumably he began to think his desires wrong after he became religious (if he hadn't already thought so for some other reason) and I imagine he'll have tried hard after that to keep from giving in to them. And for all I know he succeeded, at least most of the time -- I've read a fair bit about Lewis, by no means all of it from his hagiographers, and have never come across anything that made me think he was leading a double life, lecturing on morality during the day, then slipping on leather chaps and engineer boots by night.
Indeed, though he was burdened with the baggage of Christian "sexual morality", his writings on that topic are about as humane as a Christian's could possibly be. (To sum up: he thought people with "perversions" -- his word -- were unfortunates deserving sympathy rather than monsters deserving hatred; he thought sexual "sin" bad, but much less bad than the other sorts of sin, and disapproved of religious leaders who focused obsessively on sex while ignoring things Lewis thought far worse, like pride or greed) Doubtless his own distress at having desires that his beliefs told him were wrong helped him to be less of a dick about sex than so many other Christian moralists.
(NB: "less of a dick" != "less repressed". Of course Lewis was repressed; he was, after all, an Irishman from the first half of the 20th century. But that repression was about what is proper for display in the public sphere. His ideas about sexual morality itself were, relatively speaking, much less unhealthy than a lot of what's on offer from other Christian authorities. Lewis still believed a lot of nonsense about sex, but if all Christian churches adopted his views on the topic, they'd reduce -- I do not say eliminate -- the mental misery they inflict on their members.)
Sorry, BTW, if I misunderstood your post. I see that you were replying to LIRC. As it is my invariable practice to skip on to the next post whenever I see that tedious blitherer's byline, I have the disadvantage (if disadvantage it be) of not knowing what he wrote to provoke your response.
Posted by: TheBiologista | November 27, 2009 6:31 AM
Between this, our entire public sector workforce on the picket lines this week, the west of Ireland flooded for a week as our politicians shrug and the economy bafflingly worse than most other western nations, I have come to the conclusion that Ireland is over.
I am now taking suggestions for a new country I can move to. Preferably one with a function research sector and less water all over the place.
Posted by: TheBiologista | November 27, 2009 6:36 AM
@108"What I want to know is whether Ireland is still oh so very proud of its blasphemy laws now that it fully understands EXACTLY what it has been defending."
Who says we were ever proud? We never got to vote on it. The current government will be ejected at the next election for this reason amongst many others.
Posted by: BigBob | November 27, 2009 6:41 AM
Author Colm O'Gorman wrote a book called 'Beyond Belief' : Abused by His Priest. Betrayed by His Church. The Story of the Boy Who Sued the Pope.
Mr. O'Gorman was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's 'PM' program by presenter Eddie Mair at 5pm on Thursday 26 November on the subject of the abuse that he and others suffered.
Colm has this to say, about 13 mins, 40 seconds in
"... in 1986 the then archbishop of Dublin took legal advice about, first of all, what responsibilities did he have in law on ... a complaint about a priest raping or abusing a child, and secondly, what consequence could he face financially if a victim took a suit against him. The advice he got back told him that he had obligations not to allow a priest to remain in ministry against whom a complaint had been made in law, and that equally he would face potential financial liability in any civil case that a victim like [O'Gorman] took, as a result of abuse. What did he do? Did he put in place child protection measures? No. What he put in place was insurance. He insured his diocese and his church against financial losses, so he protected his assets, he protected his reputation, he protected his wealth, but he did not protect children and that was willful and deliberate, it wasn't passive, it wasn't benign.
Within a couple of years every diocese in Ireland had exactly the same insurance cover because the information was shared, and indeed the same thing happened in North America and in other countries".
The full interview is available on BBC iPlayer at http://tinyurl.com/yakcfq8 (though unfortunately not available to people outside of the UK, unless anyone knows of an alternative access method).
Posted by: Arlene | November 27, 2009 6:41 AM
Proud of the blasphemy law? Are you for real? Most of us are disgusted with it.
Posted by: L.Minnik | November 27, 2009 6:47 AM
This movie illustrates the church's child abuse in South East Asia:
(although I don't remember if it's the RCC)
Prisoners of a White God
This movie illustrates the church's child abuse in Canada (not the RCC):
Unrepentant
Report by Panorama:
Sex Crimes and the Vatican
Posted by: Matt Penfold | November 27, 2009 6:52 AM
Given how insurance companies like to avoid paying out whenever possible, I can only hope that they decline to payout on the policies taken out by the RCC in Ireland.
I suspect they might have good grounds for doing so. You are supposed to declare all relevant information to your insurers, and knowing you have priests committing sexual offences against children but having a policy of doing nothing to prevent them offending in the future would seem to be something an insurer against being sued would want to know.
Posted by: The Swede | November 27, 2009 6:54 AM
Vince the apologist spake:
I didn't comment on the corruption and cover-up aspect of it, because that's a separate issue
Separate issue from the post? Can't you read, or are you just deciding to act stupid to gloss over your naked apologism?
The issue at hand, raised in the post and talked about in the comments, is the corruption and cover-ups. That "aspect of it", which you consider perfectly normal (and by extension perfectly defensible) is exactly the issue at hand. Not the straw man you have built of "all catholic priests are child buggers oh noes!".
You're a lousy apologist, and an even lousier troll.
Posted by: Michael Cowtan | November 27, 2009 7:05 AM
For daily coverage of clerical abuse stories around the world, see the site that is kept at;
http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/
Posted by: Michael Cowtan | November 27, 2009 7:15 AM
The full report is at:
http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 27, 2009 7:26 AM
To sum up: he [C.S.Lewis] thought people with "perversions" -- his word -- were unfortunates deserving sympathy rather than monsters deserving hatred; he thought sexual "sin" bad, but much less bad than the other sorts of sin, and disapproved of religious leaders who focused obsessively on sex while ignoring things Lewis thought far worse, like pride or greed - Mrs. Tilton
Well if you're right about his SM tendencies, that's readily explicable in terms of self-interest.
Posted by: Michael Cowtan | November 27, 2009 8:10 AM
"the Catholic Church has perfected emotional child abuse and instills it in every young follower. It takes about two generations to fully leave the Catholic Church. Even children of those who leave the Church often have immense psychosexual issues stemming from Catholic ideology they can't remove from their heads."
I can attest to that on a personal level
Posted by: RobNYNY1957 | November 27, 2009 8:28 AM
http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/45191277.html
Weakland says he didn't know priests' abuse was crime
By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: May 15, 2009
In the early years of the sex abuse scandal in Milwaukee, retired Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland says in his soon-to-be released memoir, he did not comprehend the potential harm to victims or understand that what the priests had done constituted a crime.
Posted by: Freethinker | November 27, 2009 8:40 AM
PZ, stop trying to overcompensate. Everyone knows you are a theist sympathizer.
Until you state unequivocally that all theists, without exception, are delusional faith head freaks, you are no better than the theists.
Posted by: Holbach | November 27, 2009 9:02 AM
Freethinker @ 123
You sound as if your name should be "Freesympathizer". Anyone who harbors a belief in things that do not exist is most assuredly delusional, and unequivocally in a lower state of mind.
Posted by: CunningLingus
|
November 27, 2009 9:38 AM
If stupidity ever becomes intensely painful, then retards like freethinker would be in perpetual agony! The stupid in this one is incandescent.
Posted by: Freethinker | November 27, 2009 9:49 AM
What you say does not change the fact that PZ (and apparently you) are theist sympathizers.
Posted by: llewelly | November 27, 2009 9:50 AM
Lion IRC | November 27, 2009 1:02 AM:
Why the sudden change of heart? After all, you've been using it since long before you started posting here. Hasn't it served you well?
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | November 27, 2009 10:54 AM
Thanks for the 'Count Me Out' link, David B. #7.
Yup, it's finally time to sack the pope and all the archbishops. Just need to track down that baptismal record (emailed mum today), and it'll be just a few clicks away. Earlier would have been better, but it makes no difference to me (never experienced abuse directly, atheist >20 years), and now is as good a time as there will ever be to send the message of contempt.
Cerberus #95 has the analysis right. Molly material.
Knockgoats #107, as a furriner and consumer of US culture, that is one of the most repugnant things about the place. But it doesn't seem to be just the prisons: in sports, in the military, on the street, the dominant metaphor always seems to be about who owns whose ass. In case any of you were wondering, that's not universal.
Mrs Tilton #110, I didn't know that about Lewis, apart from his sadistic habit of constantly ashing his cigarettes on Tolkien's carpet - which obviously speaks of bad character (though I had read that T.H. White, who I started reading even earlier, had some 'nasty' habits). Can you recommend a non-hagiographic biog?
Posted by: Holbach | November 27, 2009 11:15 AM
Freethinker @ 126
I am not sure if you include me in your reply, but I am most certainly not a theist sympathizer as many people here can attest to. I cannot see how you link PZ and others with sympathizing with the theists frame of mind with their ovbious derivisive comments. My comments and opininons are at best, nasty, and in the extreme, very caustic and demeaning, as they should be, to all religionists and their obvious sympathizer.
Posted by: Blake Stacey
|
November 27, 2009 11:18 AM
The Church doesn't like the Twilight series:
Hmmm. Given that the morals of Twilight seem to boil down to "Don't have sex before marriage, stay in abusive relationships and drinking blood can make you immortal", they're probably just upset over copyright infringement.
Posted by: Holbach | November 27, 2009 11:45 AM
Blake Stacey @ 130
Ha, I like the church's description of the word "deviant", especially considering the hordes of deviant priests molesting their charges. Surely no message of concern there. The vile slime, having the gall to evaluate what should not be in their otherwordly attention. Morons.
Posted by: truthspeaker
|
November 27, 2009 1:13 PM
No, it's the issue PZ's post is about.
If you read PZ's post, it is obvious that he is condemning that people responsible for the coverup. Nobody is demonizing the vast majority of individual Catholic priests.
Maybe next time you should read a post before commenting on it.
Posted by: truthspeaker
|
November 27, 2009 1:26 PM
The one thing the other 96% of the clergy are guilty of is willingly remaining under the authority of an authoritarain institution that engaged in this coverup. They could leave the clergy and still do exactly as much good in the world, if not more.
The same goes for the parishoners who continute to support the church financially. If you find out an organization's leaders are corrupt, you have a moral obligation to either replace them or leave the organization.
Posted by: Peter | November 27, 2009 1:32 PM
What's even more damning is that the Vatican rejected the Irish government's requests for information as to what they knew. The requests didnlt come through the proper channels.
Guilt. Something to hide. Hypocrisy. Suffer little children to come unto me...
Posted by: Philip T | November 27, 2009 2:23 PM
Regarding the Bishop's taking out insurance against suits for child abuse: I know that insurers can and do deny payouts for pre-existing conditions that policyholders knew about and failed to declare at the time they purchased the insurance.
(And disease does seem an apt metaphor for this sickness in the Catholic Church).
Anyone qualified care to comment on whether the insurance companies could decline to pay out on the grounds the Church was already aware of the abuse at the time it bought the coverage?
Posted by: Úna | November 27, 2009 3:26 PM
Thanks to all those folks for the advice on html. Still quite new at this.
Posted by: McBrolloks | November 27, 2009 3:28 PM
Check out my blog. I have dozens of articles about this scandal breaking.
Posted by: Crom | November 27, 2009 3:49 PM
Kick them out of the Catholic church and they're back in business within a week.
If people ever really start taking the crime of buggering children seriously, there will be tumbleweeds blowing down the rainbow flag festooned streets in San Francisco, New York and Minneapolis.
Posted by: Mrs Tilton
|
November 27, 2009 3:52 PM
Kg @120,
that's readily explicable in terms of self-interest
Oh, sure. Still, Lewis was relatively less inhuman about sexual matters than, say, the Rev'd Gary Aldridge (of 2-wetsuits-and-a-dildo fame, late of Liberty University and the Moral Majority). If self-awareness did that for him, well, that's one point in his favour to set off against his many negatives.
John @128,
[Lewis's] sadistic habit of constantly ashing his cigarettes on Tolkien's carpet - which obviously speaks of bad character
Can't say I blame Lewis for that. Tolkien isn't around any more, and I no longer smoke. But if he were and I did, I'd be tempted to ash on his carpets too -- I dislike him far more than I do Lewis.
Can you recommend a non-hagiographic biog?
The most recent book I've read on Lewis, and one of the best, is Laura Miller's The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia. Not a biography, strictly speaking, but packed nonetheless with biographical info.
PM @135,
it would be more accurate to say the Church is a victim of a gay paedophile conspiracy, which infiltrated her clergy and preyed on her children
Of course. Like the Republican Party, the Roman Church cannot fail, it can only be failed. But since every bishop who covered up the Roman priests' child-rape conspiracy has been sacked and imprisoned, including the current pope who ordered the conspiracy be kept secret during his days as head of the Inquisition, it's all right now, isn't it. Bah - fuck off back to the dungeon, child-rape apologist.
Posted by: Midnight Rambler
|
November 27, 2009 4:10 PM
One thing is that everyone (in the US at least) seems to focus on the sexual abuse, because that's what was most prevalent here. But in Ireland it went a lot deeper than pedophile priests and their enablers. It's chilling to read the stories of people who endured the system - the sheer brutality and inhumanity is reminiscent of the Khmer Rouge. At least you can see why, however wrong they were, pedophiles needed to satisfy their sexual urges, and their superiors saw a need to cover things up. Where is there any kind of justification, however grossly perverted, for torturing children?
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0523/1224247210382.html
Posted by: Crispin | November 27, 2009 5:28 PM
Off Topic, sorry:
Any Americans want to put a few catholic strait on the causes of poverty in the US? I'd comment but as a brit I don't really know the situation in the US of A. Looks like there is one sane person in there anyway, but heavily outnumbered. Here's the link:
http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/archives/2009/11/discontinuing-o.php
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 27, 2009 5:41 PM
Pilty,
You are a complete scumbag. An evil piece of festering filth. You know damn well what the difference is, you loathsome shit. Clywd council did not cover up the crimes of these evil people for years, move them to where they could abuse again, take out insurance rather than go to the police. How can you live with yourself, you disgusting pustule on the face of humanity?
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
|
November 27, 2009 6:22 PM
Thanks, Pilty, for showing that banning you was a reasonable, warranted action on PZ's part.
Posted by: Aquaria | November 27, 2009 7:56 PM
Thank you, Pilty for demonstrating that he was too stupid and deranged to learn the kindergarten lesson of "two wrongs don't make a right."
You're lower than a piece of shit. That at least has some worthwhile use.
Posted by: Susan | November 28, 2009 12:33 AM
@ Vince Whirlwind
You must have totally missed the memo about the lessons to be learned from the Watergate scandal.
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 28, 2009 7:00 AM
Pilty,
For once, you have a point: I failed to read the quote in your comment properly and for that, I apologise. Clywd council, however, does not lecture the world on morality and claim the right to universal obedience.
Posted by: Knockgoats | November 28, 2009 11:25 AM
Pilty,
True, but so what?
So their moral pretensions are exposed as fraudulent. Even apart from that, the RCC is of rather greater import than that of Clwyd Council: the former, but not the latter, is both a multinational corporation of great wealth, and a sovereign power.
Perhaps you wil say that while Catholic teaching as such does not advocate child abuse, elements of Catholic religious culture encourage it.
Indeed it does. The disgusting authoritarianism and patriarchalism of the Church: children are taught that they must obey the priest. So when the priest says a child must suck his cock, or take down their trousers, they often do as they are told. In addition, child abuse of a non-sexual kind is at the core of Catholicism: indoctrination, terrifying them with descriptions of Hell, lying to them about the history of the Church, conducting ritualised violence against them as you yourself have repeatedly advocated. Once you are used to accepting abuse, other kinds of abuse are more readily imposed.
Now fuck off, you shitbag: you know you're not welcome here.
Posted by: Mr T | November 28, 2009 12:00 PM
Pilty, you're a sick fuck.
Read your bible again and explain how there's nothing in there that advocates rape and pedophilia. Here's a small sample:
The story of Lot, in Genesis chapter 19.
Numbers 31:17-18, "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
Deuteronomy, chapter 22 (or just the whole fucking book of Deuteronomy)
2 Samuel 12:11, "Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun."
Posted by: Lynn MacDonald | November 29, 2009 10:24 AM
I don't know if somebody already posted the link, but here is the commission's report in full:
http://www.dacoi.ie/
Quite honestly, I believe an outside group rather than the church should have investigated this - perhaps the actual police????
Great column! Thanks for the info (I had almost forgot to see the conclusion of the investigation)!
Lynn
Posted by: chris | November 29, 2009 10:37 AM
I believe catholic means universal, not thinking about anything becomes tricky, pass the beer and keep em coming.
Chris
Posted by: Lynn MacDonald | November 29, 2009 11:45 AM
Mr. T,
I'm not sure who you were commenting to about there not being any rape or pedophilia in the bible but I must disagree. I have read the entire bible several times. I found a short summation online so that I did not have to dig into my bible and find every verse for you:
http://www.philosophyforum.com/religion/abrahamic-religions/christianity/1535-how-do-christians-possibly-rationalize-these-things.html
For those of you not wishing to click on the link, here is a nice summation:
Murder, rape, and pillage at Jabesh-gilead (Judges 21:10-24 NLT)
Murder, rape and pillage of the Midianites (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)
More Murder Rape and Pillage (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
Laws of Rape (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)
Death to the Rape Victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)
David's Punishment - Polygamy, Rape, Baby Killing, and God's "Forgiveness" (2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB)
Rape of Female Captives (Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)
Rape and the Spoils of War (Judges 5:30 NAB)
Sex Slaves (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
God Assists Rape and Plunder (Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB)
Posted by: baju
|
February 1, 2010 11:10 AM
sn't the conspiracy going beyond the church hierarchy and involving law enforcement enough to think this is a systemic problem
Posted by: baju
|
February 1, 2010 11:12 AM
I was afraid it might not since it's not very big news outside the UK