Catholic Church woes continue

[maggot]

A brutally frank assessment by Damian Thompson, editor of the Catholic Herald, in the Spectator

The Catholic Church is confronting a series of interconnected scandals so shameful that its very survival is threatened. Pope Francis himself is accused of covering up the activities of one of the nastiest sexual predators ever to wear a cardinal’s hat: his close ally Theodore McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington, DC.

Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI are also implicated; they did nothing, or almost nothing, while Mc-Carrick was seducing every seminarian he could get his hands on. (‘Hide the pretty ones!’ they used to say when he visited seminaries.) Yet powerful cardinals kept quiet and are now suspected of lying their heads off after Mc–Carrick’s crimes were recently made public.

What has Pope Francis covered up? | The Spectator

And from the USA, the domino effect has started with two more states (NY and NJ) setting up multi-diocese commissions to look at abuse and the cover ups.

New York, New Jersey probing potential cover-up of sex abuse in Catholic dioceses - The Boston Globe

Subpoenas are flying:

Underwood’s action represents the first statewide investigation of sexual abuse and potential cover-up by the Roman Catholic Church in New York. Several district attorney’s offices in the state have investigated abuses within single dioceses, but those investigations took place more than a decade ago.

The subpoenas were issued Thursday by the Charities Division of the attorney general’s office, which has the authority to oversee nonprofits, including religious institutions. They cover all documents related to sexual abuse and the church’s response to that abuse over decades, including information from secret or confidential church archives, the source close to the investigation said, requesting anonymity because the information is related to a continuing investigation.

Those of us old enough to remember Watergate will know that messing with this process is dangerous.

Especially in the light of this admission from 1985

Until recent years, the church also had little to fear from the courts. But that has changed, as predicted in a 1985 confidential report on priest abuse prepared at the urging of some of the nation’s top bishops, Law among them. “Our dependence in the past on Roman Catholic judges and attorneys protecting the Diocese and clerics is GONE,” the report said.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/spe...DNM/story.html

[statsman1]

A brutally frank assessment by Damian Thompson, editor of the Catholic Herald, in the Spectator




What has Pope Francis covered up? | The Spectator

And from the USA, the domino effect has started with two more states (NY and NJ) setting up multi-diocese commissions to look at abuse and the cover ups.

New York, New Jersey probing potential cover-up of sex abuse in Catholic dioceses - The Boston Globe

Subpoenas are flying:



Those of us old enough to remember Watergate will know that messing with this process is dangerous.

Especially in the light of this admission from 1985



https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/spe...DNM/story.html

This is dynamite.

[maggot]

This is dynamite.

Losing charitable status, if that were to occur as a reaction when the stones are turned over, would be disastrous for the Church in the USA - expect more declarations of bankruptcy etc.

And playing the don't throw the baby out with the bathwater card won't work once it is shown that they have drowned the baby.

[statsman1]

Losing charitable status, if that were to occur as a reaction when the stones are turned over, would be disastrous for the Church in the USA - expect more declarations of bankruptcy etc.

And playing the don't throw the baby out with the bathwater card won't work once it is shown that they have drowned the baby.

+1

[Gerd Muller]

A bill that would amend the statute of limitations to allow more victims to seek justice has failed to pass the state Legislature for years, in part because of lobbying by the Roman Catholic Church and other religious institutions

That and the giving of crucifixes to mark out victims to other predators n PA are pretty unspeakable. And of course just about as contrary to the teachings of the founder as it's possible to get. I

[maggot]

That and the giving of crucifixes to mark out victims to other predators n PA are pretty unspeakable. And of course just about as contrary to the teachings of the founder as it's possible to get. I

Jaw dropping:

http://www.kvoa.com/story/38915144/p...ylvania-report

[Count Bobulescu]

I'm certainly no defender of the RCC, but that Spectator article strikes me as more than a touch sensationalist, and while it likely wouldn't qualify as libel in the US, I'm not so sure about the tougher UK standards.
Thompson has no way of knowing whether McCarrick was seducing, much less attempting to seduce, every seminarian he could get his hands on, and that could leave him vulnerable to charges of malicious intent.

[maggot]

This story has been rumbling along in India since June and is now being picked up further afield

On the road across from the high court of Kerala, a state that was once known for having a matrilineal society, the nuns stepped out of their cloistered lives, marching with placards warning that their lives were in danger. They were demanding action against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who they say raped one of the nuns 13 times between 2014 and 2016. After failing to get the church to respond to her complaint, the nun registered a police complaint in June. While the man charged with rape has so far been interrogated just once, the woman has been questioned five times. The police made no arrest. This is despite 81 witnesses being questioned by the police, including two critical testimonies that blow a hole in the bishop’s alibi.

The nun who has taken on Bishop Mulakkal wrote a searing letter to the Vatican alleging that her assaulter was a predator who was using money and power to bury the investigation. In the letter she says she is not the only survivor; 20 nuns were compelled to leave the congregation because of the sexual abuse by the bishop.

In India, a nun’s #MeToo moment exposes the failings of the Catholic Church


Of course, the status of women in India generally is an issue, but that a Bishop should be accused of raping a Nun, despite some dirty tricks, seems to have been taken seriously by both Police and the justice system.

And the Vatican has finally responded

Kerala nun rape case: Franco Mulakkal hands over duties as Bishop of Jalandhar, Vatican breaks silence

Following a day of developments in the case against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the Missionaries of Jesus, the Vatican has finally broken its silence over the matter. In its response, the highest seat of authority in Christianity has decided to constitute a one-member panel to investigate allegations of rape against the Bishop of Jalandhar by a 44-year-old nun. Soon after the correspondence from the Vatican, Bishop Franco Mulakkal in a letter announced that he is handing over his duties as the Jalandhar of Bishop writing, "I am likely to be called for further clarifications by investigating officer in Kerala". He also announced that in his absence, the charge of his duties will be led by Reverend Father Joseph Thekkumkattil and Revered Father Subin Thekkedathu.

On Friday, Missionaries of Jesus, the congregation to which both the accused Bishop and the complainant nun belong to, denied all the allegations made against Franco Mulakkal. They even released a picture of the nun flouting laws that prohibit anyone from revealing the identity of a rape victim. The nun has accused the Bishop of Jalandhar of raping her as many as 13 times while confining her to a guest room at the Kuravilangad convent in Kerala between 2014 and 2016.

A special investigative team (SIT) is investigating the claims made against the Bishop on the orders of the Kerala High Court. The team has summoned Bishop Franco Mulakkal to appear before it on September 19 ahead of the next hearing of the case on September 24. Meanwhile, Kottayam SP Harishankar told news agency ANI that the Bishop has been asked to appear before the SIT on September 19. He further added that a case has been registered against the Missionaries of Jesus for publishing a letter along with a photo of the complainant nun.

[Count Bobulescu]

A bishop in West Virginia has fallen on his sword. The Archbishop of Washington DC Cardinal Wuerl has indicated he will shortly offer his resg due to claims he overlooked his predecessor's malfeasance.

[maggot]

A bishop in West Virginia has fallen on his sword. The Archbishop of Washington DC Cardinal Wuerl has indicated he will shortly offer his resg due to claims he overlooked his predecessor's malfeasance.

He sent his obligatory age related resignation in 3 years ago, Francis has yet to accept it, but He is Flying to Rome to discuss it

https://triblive.com/local/allegheny...atholic-church

[maggot]

And China...

Another Vatican Diplomatic Blunder

Eighty-five years ago, on July 20, 1933, a concordat defining the legal position of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich was signed by Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII) and German vice chancellor Franz von Papen. The Reischskonkordat was then ratified by the Nazi-dominated German parliament some six weeks later, on September 10. Pope Pius XI, under whose authority Cardinal Pacelli had negotiated this treaty, was under no illusions about German National Socialism; he detested its racial ideology. And unlike some Vatican diplomats who seem to have imagined that the Third Reich would be a short-run thing, the pope likely thought that Hitler and his gangsters would be in power for some time. So he wanted to negotiate legal protections for the Church so that it could operate pastorally under a totalitarian regime that, with the passage of the notorious “Enabling Act” of March 23, had assumed virtually dictatorial powers. That one condition for the Reichskonkordat was the de facto destruction of the Catholic-based Center Party was evidently a price Pius XI thought worth paying if the result were the protection of Catholic institutions and pastoral life.

This legal-diplomatic strategy — which seems to have been based on the belief that even a totalitarian regime would honor a treaty commitment — didn’t work. The Third Reich began violating the Reichskonkordat shortly after the ink dried on the treaty. Then after some two dozen stiff diplomatic notes to Berlin (drafted by Pacelli) had not produced results, an irate Pius XI issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge [With Burning Concern] in 1937, had it clandestinely printed in Germany, and ordered that it be read from all German pulpits. In the encyclical, Pius denounced an “idolatrous cult” that replaced belief in God with a “national religion” and a “myth of race and blood,” and his stress on the perennial value of the Old Testament made it quite clear what he thought of the Nazi swastika and what it represented.

It is beyond ironic, and it borders on the scandalous, that the lesson of this debacle — paper promises mean nothing to totalitarians — has not been learned in the Vatican, which now appears to be on the verge of repeating its mistake by completing a deal with the government of the People’s Republic of China, on the 85th anniversary of the Reichskonkordat.

[Casablanca]

The woes continue alright. I find this simply unbelievable:


Archbishop Says He Didn’t Know Sex With Children Was Illegal

[Derelict]

The woes continue alright. I find this simply unbelievable:


Archbishop Says He Didn’t Know Sex With Children Was Illegal

The St. Paul law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates released a video in which Carlson is asked whether he’d known it was a crime for adults to have sex with children.

In response, Carlson said, “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not.

I understand today it’s a crime.”





Archbishop Says He Didn’t Know Sex With Children Was Illegal

Not another Anti-Catholic thread.

And I thought this was supposed to be an Irish website.

What are the Mods doing? This should go straight to the Zoo.

Why is an unworldly bishop being criticised for his totally non-culpable ignorance of civil law?

With child-abuse by Roman clergy being so rare isn't it likely that this was the first time in all his life that the holy patriarch had ever encountered the issue, or even heard of such things?

[maggot]

Not another Anti-Catholic thread.

And I thought this was supposed to be an Irish website.

What are the Mods doing? This should go straight to the Zoo.

Why is an unworldly bishop being criticised for his totally non-culpable ignorance of civil law?

With child-abuse by Roman clergy being so rare isn't it likely that this was the first time in all his life that the holy patriarch had ever encountered the issue, or even heard of such things?

Discussion site discusses Global issue affecting the largest denomination in Ireland shocker.

And considering the OP was based around an opinion piece by the editor of the Catholic Herald, attempts to sweep these issues under the carpet as anti-Catholic, let alone anti-Irish, are rather pathetic.

[Count Bobulescu]

Discussion site discusses Global issue affecting the largest denomination in Ireland shocker.

And considering the OP was based around an opinion piece by the editor of the Catholic Herald, attempts to sweep these issues under the carpet as anti-Catholic, let alone anti-Irish, are rather pathetic.

I thought he was being facetious......