In the New York Times "Complete Coverage" is the article about closing schools and declining membership in parishes, but it never mentions the thousands of felonies.
Oh, and the pope will be reaching out to other religions in his “first visit to an American synagogue by a pope.” That's another sound byte you will hear over and over again, his first visit to an American synagogue, about the same time A Matter Of Truth will be holding its vigil in New York City next Friday night.
When I read a report out of Arkansas that they were doing bingo and car wash to raise cash to go see the pope, I had to stop searching.
This made me laugh out loud, not for reasons you’d think, quoted several places from a press release:
“The Church has changed its rules so that it is easier to dismiss priests whenever there is a credible claim of abuse, according to Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Walsh could not say how many priests were removed - many had died or retired by the time the report came out.
“But she said the Pope would address the victims' suffering. 'It's very close to Holy Father's heart. He is horrified by this crime,' Walsh said.
I'm not laughing because you know it’s not true, that's old news.
I'm laughing because I knew someone named Mary Walsh in college. Hmm, the Mary Walsh I knew was a journalism grad and hmm, a lesbian, could she have gone on to become a nun?
Does anyone know if Sr. Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the US conference of bishops, is a lesbian who went to The University of Texas at Austin in the 1970s?
These were felonies committed by 4500 known pedophile priests (and counting)
More than 4.5 thousand priests who were pedophiles committed 14 thousand felonies in the form of child rape, and that is only the number the church has acknowledged so far, through settlement of civil lawsuits. Statistics show with 14 thousand admitted pedophile acts there are most likely ten times that number of crimes committed -- while the Catholic Church aided and abetted the crimes.
The motive is not yet clear, some say the coverup and protection of pedophiles was to “save face” and “avoid scandal” but since face is lost and the scandal has not been avoided, why is the Catholic Church still spending millions on defense attorneys and PR consultants?
To manipulate the media and justice system and keep the truth from coming out about the Sex Crimes in the Catholic Church.
MEANWHILE IS IT A COINCIDENCE?
Same date and time as the Pope’s Mass in Washington on April 17 is a significant hearing on the status of the women and children taken in the West Texas raid on the fundamentalist Mormons.
So anybody who Googles pedophile clergy that day will come up with stories about the FLDS cult in West Texas:
Wordsmith working in TV production in Los Angeles. Also free lance journalist with an active blog. Old enough to have demonstrated against the Vietnam War but still young enough to dance.
I'm about halfway through a recently released book called A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom, published 2008 by Mark Gregory Pegg.
Two particular characters might even sound familiar:
"Innocent III (Lotario di Segni - 1160/61-1216) Elected pope in 1198 and exhorted Christain knights to expunge the Provenal heretics from the lands of the count of Toulouse in a mighty crusade in 1208. He envisioned himself 'below God but above man, less than God but greater than man, who judges all things but who no one judges.' "
"Amaury de Monfont (died 1228) Incompetent and uninspiring eldest son of Simon de Monfort. He succeeded his father in 1218 and conducted the holy war in a determinedly woeful manner. Easily manipulated by the pope, the count of Toulouse, and the king of France."
The Pope has NOT dealt with the fact that approximately half of the priesthood in American and much of the world is gay. When you have such a high percentage of priests who are gay, you will have trouble. That may not be politically correct to say, but it is the truth. Not that all gay men, by any means, are interested in underage children, but most of the "pedophile" acts involved young males between 12 and 18, and that is behavior that a higher percentage of gay males engage in than straight males engage in with underage females.
There is NO dogma that requires priests to be unmarried. In the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church, most priests are married. In the Orthodox Church (whose priesthood the Catholic Church recognizes as valid) most priests are married. For the first thousand years of the Catholic Church most priests were married and for the first few hundred years most bishops and many popes were married.
With the great shortage of priests and the high rate of gays in the priesthood all Catholics should be demanding that the rules preventing married men from being priests and bishops be ended at once. There is NO legitimate reason to continue with the Dark Ages policy of allowing only unmarried men in the Western Rite of the Catholic Church.
After my wife died of cancer, I entered the deaconate program of the Catholic Church. What I saw was sad. The priest in charge of our program had served time in a Federal prison for child porn possession (boys as young as eight years old being raped by adult men were some of the "topics" of the porn found in his rectory). Many of the professors in the program were gay. I found that the gay priests were usually the ones who had a theology that was simply so far out that sometimes it could not even be called Christian in the broad sense of the word, much less Catholic in the specific sense of the word.
If the Pope truly wants to clean up the pedophile mess in the Catholic Church he needs to allow married priests and bishops. That is not a absolute cure, but having a much larger number of straight men in religious life, including men with families with young children, will go a long way to forcing the pedophiles out of the priestly ministry and in keeping future pedophiles out.
Stirling
by
Lord Stirling (23 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 131 comments)
on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 12:13:16 PM
The point is the Catholic CHurch aided and abetted thousands of pedophiles. 4500 is the number identified in a database at http://bishopaccountability.org you can start from A to Z, 4500 identified with enough credible evidence to be included.
For each of the 14,000 plaintiffs who've gone through civil court and gotten settlements there are likely 10 for each one, as less than one in ten come forward. To save the family embarrassment, because family are still Catholic, because they don't want to be FOUGHT by church attorneys.
The part of the story yet to come out is how vicious the attorneys defending archdioceses were to the plaintiffs in every city, without exception.
So much still has not come out about these crimes.
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
