Child Abuse in the Catholic Church: Are All Catholics Complicit?

[Andrew49]

Are all Catholics complicit when it comes to the systemic, institutionalised abuse within the Church?

If you are aware that an organisation you donate to is actively diverting some of that money towards activities that are both unethical and illegal, and you keep donating, you are now knowingly contributing to those activities.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpkuMsDlIX8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpkuMsDlIX8[/ame]

[5intheface]

Catholics aren't contributing money, their Church is simply taking notes.

[Andrew49]

Catholics aren't contributing money, their Church is simply taking notes.

I'd say a note taker in an organisation like the Church would be a fairly responsible position!

[5intheface]

I would be slow to accuse ordinary Catholics of being complicit and not out of respect for their Church or religion but out of pity for what their Church has put them through but that said, I think there is an onus on all Catholics to take a long, hard look at how they interact with their Church and decide if they feel that contributing further might be encouraging the hierarchy that their present approach is correct.

[fluffybiscuits]

I would be slow to accuse ordinary Catholics of being complicit and not out of respect for their Church or religion but out of pity for what their Church has put them through but that said, I think there is an onus on all Catholics to take a long, hard look at how they interact with their Church and decide if they feel that contributing further might be encouraging the hierarchy that their present approach is correct.

If anything this is a time when Brian D'arcy and other priests in the Association of priests should be looking at disconnecting the church from the population at large and look to create a schism. The church wouldnt be worried about a few people but f they saw that their coffers were not going to be filled and were going to be hurt in the pocket then they may think twice. After all the sky fairy can be worshipped at home, there is nothing much mentioned about worshipping him in a church or mass...

[Ephilant]

Father Benedict Groeschel has his own airtime on a Catholic TV station in the US, he is Director of the Institute for Spiritual Development in the diocese of New York and he is professor in Pastoral Psychology. He is a member of the American Psychological Association for 36 years.
In an interview with the National Catholic Register, Father Groeschel made a few very strange remarks.
He claims to have successfully treated many homosexuals with "reparative therapy" which

has as its goal the establishment of a heterosexual orientation in place of a homosexual one.

Groeschel went on in the same interview to describe how in many cases of clerical child abuse the seducer was in fact the young person looking for a father figure and finding a "victim" in the overworked, often stressed out priest.
He can't understand why these "paedophile opportunists" aren't treated more lenient, given that they are really the victim themselves.

They should not be punished for this, as there was no intent to commit a crime

.
He even says he feels very sorry for "that poor man Jerry Sandusky" (the former football coach convicted on 52 counts of child abuse).

The interview itself seems to have been taken down by National Catholic Register, but some of his less offensive musings haven't, including this one

[Andrew49]

Father Benedict Groeschel has his own airtime on a Catholic TV station in the US, he is Director of the Institute for Spiritual Development in the diocese of New York and he is professor in Pastoral Psychology. He is a member of the American Psychological Association for 36 years.
In an interview with the National Catholic Register, Father Groeschel made a few very strange remarks.
He claims to have successfully treated many homosexuals with "reparative therapy" which

Groeschel went on in the same interview to describe how in many cases of clerical child abuse the seducer was in fact the young person looking for a father figure and finding a "victim" in the overworked, often stressed out priest.
He can't understand why these "paedophile opportunists" aren't treated more lenient, given that they are really the victim themselves.
.
He even says he feels very sorry for "that poor man Jerry Sandusky" (the former football coach convicted on 52 counts of child abuse).

The interview itself seems to have been taken down by National Catholic Register, but some of his less offensive musings haven't, including this one

Groeschel also said he doesn't think child sex abusers should be prosecuted for their first offense. "I'm inclined to think, on their first offense, they should not go to jail because their intention was not committing a crime."

The Bishop of Tenerife blamed child abuse on the children - apparently the children provoked the clergy into sexual violence!

SOURCE

Link

National Catholic Reporter TV Picks from a few years back

MONDAY, APR. 30

The Story of Knock: EWTN, 9 p.m.

This 20-minute show depicts the wordless visit of Our Lady, St. Joseph and St. John, along with the Lamb of God standing on an altar, to Catholic parishioners in oppressed and hunger-beset County Mayo, Ireland, on the rainy evening of Aug. 21, 1879. The program also shows the reverence of present-day pilgrims. Pro-life singer Dana (Rosemary Scallon) presents beautiful Marian hymns.

TUESDAY, MAY 1

Fr. Groeschel: St. Joseph

EWTN, 6 a.m.

In this 30-minute show on the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, Franciscan Friar of the Renewal Father Benedict Groeschel explains the dignity of labor, the function of work in our lives, and the great virtues St. Joseph exemplified as foster father and breadwinner of the Holy Family. To be rebroadcast at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/site/artic...#ixzz253Glh1Jc

[toxic avenger]

No. We're not.

[Saoirse go Deo]

The money you give in church each week goes to the upkeep of the church, priests house, and the priests. Every so often there is a collection that goes to the diocese as a whole. That's how it works in my parish anyway.

[Ephilant]

slightly off topic, but talking about collections...
In the last year I lived in Ireland one of my sons was visiting with his French girl friend. We drove past the Cathedral of Assumption in Tuam and she nearly made me crash the car with the shriek that came out of her.
It took some explaining that the gate collection in progress was for the political party PD, not for "des peedees"...

[Andrew49]

No. We're not.

Definitely not Father Flanagan - founder of Boystown in the US.

He was dismayed at the state of Ireland's Industrial schools and blasted them as “a scandal, un-Christlike, and wrong.” And he said the Christian Brothers, founded by Edmund Rice, had lost its way. Speaking to a large audience at a public lecture in Cork’s Savoy Cinema he said, "You are the people who permit your children and the children of your communities to go into these institutions of punishment. You can do something about it." He called Ireland’s penal institutions "a disgrace to the nation," and later said "I do not believe that a child can be reformed by lock and key and bars, or that fear can ever develop a child’s character."

Surprisingly his words fell on stony ground. After all Ireland in those years prided itself on its piety, its Catholicism, its adherence to the pope and that jazz.

Fr. Flanagan wasn't simply ignored. He was taken to pieces by the Irish establishment. The then-Minister for Justice Gerald Boland said in the Dáil that he was “not disposed to take any notice of what Monsignor Flanagan said while he was in this country, because his statements were so exaggerated that I did not think people would attach any importance to them.” Despite that, the Irish Church and the Irish authorities felt comfortable ignoring Fr. Flanagan, ignoring the fact that he was considered to be an expert in the matter of providing for the education and upbringing of boys who were otherwise considered to be “lost causes.”

When he arrived back in America Fr. Flanagan said: "What you need over there is to have someone shake you loose from your smugness and satisfaction and set an example by punishing those who are guilty of cruelty, ignorance and neglect of their duties in high places . . . I wonder what God's judgment will be with reference to those who hold the deposit of faith and who fail in their God-given stewardship of little children."

Again, his efforts fell on stony ground.

What was it about the Irish Church and the Irish authorities that made them so insular that they felt comfortable dismissing someone of Fr. Flanagan's stature? Despite the fact that Fr. Flanagan was a popular hero to many Irish people, his words had no sway with those in authority, whether in the government or the Church. And, once those who endorsed the industrial school model survived Fr. Flanagan's broadsides, they must have known that no one would challenge them again.

They were right, for 50 years anyway.

Fr. Flanagan was a devout Catholic, a man who Catholics and non-Catholics world-wide had deemed a hero. He was the Mother Theresa of his day.

If Fr. Flanagan WAS a devout Catholic then it stands to reason that the Irish establishment (From McQuaid to DeValera) were not devout Catholics. And IMPORTANTLY this means the answer to the question is that Catholics are not complicit in the abuse of children - in Ireland in anyway. This brings up the intriguing puzzle that Archbishop McQuaid + his successors, and all those under his direct authority - bishops, priests, religious orders et al, were some kind of cult whose raison d'être was the maintenance of secrecy on the physical & sexual torture of children, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the Cult's reputation (as a holy Catholic Church) and the preservation of its property and financial assets – other considerations including the welfare of tortured children and justice for victims, were completely subordinated to these priorities.

[Andrew49]

The idious pile of *****, Benedict Groeschel has retracted his assertion that child victims of sexual violence ask to be raped. Source

Editor in Chief Jeanette De Melo [also] posted a small note apologising for "publishing without clarification or challenge Father Benedict Groeschel's comments that seem to suggest that the child is somehow responsible for abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our publication of that comment was an editorial mistake, for which we sincerely apologise."

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Some- unfortunately the ones in the habit of drawing a line between ancient dogma and today in the catholic church- are warped beyond measure in their human values.

If you look at catholicism as a pathology- and it is entirely possible to regard it as such in the same way that any other religious grouping operates on a pathology- then people like this Groeschel are at the extreme end of the spectrum.

The vast majority of catholics aren't catholic in practice or thinking- the vast majority of those who do practise catholicism are at the mild end of the spectrum as they accept custom and ceremony without ever questioning what it means. Then you come to the full-blown end of the spectrum with people like Brady, the pope, Laws of Boston and latterday Rome who display a psychological autism as regards any kind of ethic recognisable to any other group of humans.

The final tail on that are the abusive clerics themselves who are so messed up in the head between their own damaged psychology and the nonsense at the weird end of the dogmatic catholic spectrum that they cannot even know right from wrong but reach into a bucket of pathological reasoning in order to exculpate themselves from blame. They are so screwed up that they cannot even empathise with another human being and that is noticeable in their profiles despite the words tumbling on a Sunday from their mouths.

So we cannot say that all catholics are to blame or are complicit in the current disgrace of that religious sect but we can say that those who dip into their pockets and fund a sect unchanged are exhibiting the same ability to deflect responsibility as the nutty end of the clerical pathological spectrum.

There are functionally incapable people in responsible positions in the catholic church and outbursts from those like Groeschel reveal it every time. Putting money in a collection plate he controls is a form of vindication in his eyes.

[Andrew49]

Jonah Waters gives us his definition of 'Catholicism' in a very turgid* piece in today's paper of record - LINK

Catholicism seeks to optimise the conditions of the greatest number in the common good

The quote is slightly out of context as his piece seems to be an attack on Liberals (or is it liberals?) and abortion.

- - - - - - - - -

* turgid: By a process of purposeful osmosis, Irish culture has of late been painstakingly manipulated to make one set of understandings appear outmoded and pernicious, and the other axiomatic and benign. And because this arriviste thinking clicks into a superstructure of logic which supports it to the disadvantage of prior or contrary ideas, it becomes easy to caricature different ways of seeing things as outmoded, obscurantist or Neanderthal.

[Trow]

If you ask me, were child abuse of a sexual nature occurs involving Priests then your dealing with a ''demonic'' possession.

Makes you wonder how the likes of that would get into a Priest in the first place.

It might stem from the fact that many Churches are built on or very near ancient sites which are pre Christian and that the proper rituals to contain these beings are no longer used.

In days of old the Drui could direct these entities against enemies. Is there a conspiracy to destroy the Catholic Church using Supernatural entities? I'd say quite possibly.

It would be a healing/protective thing to have the Priests and congregations drink from East flowing streams in their individual doicese.