What Father Bradel Did to Me

[elleng]

The power of seeing one priest’s name on a list.

'When I saw the name of the priest who molested me listed in the Pennsylvania grand jury’s report, I thought: I’m gonna be in big trouble. The abuse started when I was about 12 years old, so it’s not a surprise that the language that came to mind was straight out of that period of my life.

I scanned through the nearly 900 pages of the report that was released by the attorney general last week. It detailed abuse in six dioceses over 70 years, listing more than 300 abusive priests. The accounts were horrifying — young victims were given gold cross necklaces to signal to other predators that they were ‘optimal targets’ — and the documentation of what happened is surely a good thing.

But what stunned me was my second reaction: a perplexing disappointment that I still don’t know whether I was his only victim. Of course, I didn't want others to have experienced what I did. But I did want some confirmation that his behavior was part of a pattern.

In the 1960s, Catholic priests were a special class of bachelors, fed pot roast dinners by a bucket brigade of parish women, so when Father Bradel came to our house in central Pennsylvania for the first of many regular visits, my mother got out the good china.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/opinion/sunday/victim-church-abuse-pennsylvania.html?

[TexasProgresive]

1. "God loves his priests and will always give his priests cute guys and sexy women..."

I read a regular posting from Jack Dick a lay Catholic theologian. He was in seminary but was never ordained a priest. This snip and the quote above and in full and bold below just floored me. This would've occured in the mid 60s.

After three years in Louvain, and just one year before my ordination, I realized I did not want to spend my life as a life-long “celibate” bachelor. And I had some theological issues like the prohibition of artificial contraception and extreme clericalism and misogyny in the church. I realized my “calling” was to become a critical-thinking theologian and teacher, not an ordained minister. I informed my bishop. He was not just disappointed in me but became furiously angry. He told me I had sold my soul to “1960s humanistic sex-craving secularism.”

Some months later, one of the bishop’s key advisors invited me to have a “friendly chat” with him. We met in his rectory. He welcomed me with a Scotch on the rocks and we started talking. Very friendly. Then he became very serious: “You know of course that the bishop is very disappointed in you. The bishop and I want you to come back. Please come back. Forget that marriage nonsense. Most married people are unhappy and the sex is not always that good. We want you to understand that, as a priest, you can always have a boy or a woman whenever you need sexual relief.” That was my introduction, and invitation, to clerical sex abuse. As I sat there, speechless, staring at him, my host started laughing and continued “God loves his priests and will always give his priests cute guys and sexy women for their sexual comfort.” I put my glass on the table and walked out. Never saw the man again

https://anothervoice-greenleaf.org/2018/08/17/sex-in-church/

[elleng]

2. Oy!

'He told me I had sold my soul to “1960s humanistic sex-craving secularism.”'

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Ugh, it's not about a "few bad apples." It's systemic. The entire system was built and grew to

protect criminals. It's entirely corrupt and "reform" won't help.

[malaise]

4. If you deprive people of relationships and sexuality

They will finds ways to defy your orders. The fact that the institution is so fucking greedy that it did want want those serving it to have families and hence property is the source of this mess.
It will never stop. Sexuality is normal.

[mopinko]

6. exactly. not just normal, but

intrinsic in the human animal, and a central part of our evolution as a species.

[malaise]

10. You are 100% correct

Further it is such a part of our being that it is a natural part of stress reduction. Can you imagine the stress levels these celibate folks are carrying. Then like bombs, they explode on innocent children all over our planet - and then they cover it up. Fuck them.

[RVN VET71]

16. I respectfully disagree with what you are saying

I really don't think the perversion rises up in these men because of celibacy. In some cases, perhaps that's the case. But I suspect that the perverts are drawn to the priesthood because they know -- or strongly suspect -- that they'll have a constant supply of boys (and occasionally girls) to sodomize. There not driven to pedophilia because of the constraints of celibacy. Most of them never had any inclination to marry in the first place. It's about free lodging, an audience to preach, with no trace of sincerity whatever, any Gospel morality they stumbled upon during the previous week, and, of course, boys, the sodomizing of whom would go undetected because who would believe a filthy little creature's word over that of a man of the cloth?

The evil these men did, and continue to do, runs far deeper than you might imagine. In most cases, I'm certain, there was no "explosion". The sodomizing of innocents is the real lure of the priesthood, itself, to these men. And the fact that they all know, should the day come when their raping of children is no longer a secret their bishops can conceal, that their punishment will be a short stay in a comfortable church-run retreat house for "therapy", followed by a reassignment to another parish, and another parish's children.

Not all priests, of course, are pedophiles. Many are decent men who do, in fact, struggle with celibacy. But I have to wonder how many of these non-pedophiles know of priests who are child rapists and yet keep silent about it -- or strongly suspect certain priests but deliberately choose not to investigate to find out the truth.

Someone on another site suggested the situation with the R.C. Church is as with a once mighty oak whose core has become rotten and corrupt. That oak needs to be dispatched as, perhaps, does the R.C. Church.

[malaise]

17. That's an interesting perspective

Thanks

[lunatica]

14. The entire required celibacy thing is a sick perversion

There’s nothing like religion based on god’s supposed love to pervert normal human behavior, which according to their own tenets god himself created. It’s truly perverted.

[malaise]

15. It's not merely perverted

It is also greed and control on steroids -go prey on the weak and vulnerable and they'll cover it up.

[rusty fender]

8. Jeebus!

[smirkymonkey]

18. Jesus effing Christ.

So fucked up.

[Guilded Lilly]

5. Catholic Priests are a special class of serial sexual predators. Nothing will...

Make up for their vile deceit and hideous calculating lack of humanity.
But put the remaining guilty slimes behind bars anyway.
For life.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Organized crime. Period. . . . nt

[mopinko]

7. they not only protect their own. they protect all sexual predators.

a friend of mine found her bf's stash of child porn, and turned him in.
they were both very, very active in their parish. but he was pulling in more money than she was. she was just working her ass off doing invisible "women's work".
guess which side the priests came down on?

[BigmanPigman]

11. You never hear about the women in the Catholic Church.

By that I mean the nuns. Is there any evidence of them committing these same crimes as the men? They have to be celibate too. Do they abuse their authority like their male counterparts?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

13. My n equals 1, but I know someone who says they were sexually abused by nuns. Also, nuns were

certainly physically and emotionally abusive (and still can be).

[RVN VET71]

19. There are examples of sexually perverted nuns

But, so far at least, they are few in number -- or at least reportedly so. I was taught by nuns in grammar school, some of whom could be a little nasty, a couple of whom were truly wonderful teachers and people. None (!) could be said to be sadistic or excessively cruel or hurtful. Moreover, there were a couple of nuns in graduate school with me who were very good, kind, concerned women who had done missionary work in Central America and seemed genuinely to be living the gospel.

I've heard stories about abusive nuns, of course. But they do not include sexual assaults. In the main, it seems that, if a nun was abusive to a child, it was physically and psychologically. Not exculpatory, of course. In fact god damn their hard hearts for frightening and emotionally savaging children they were supposed to nurture and protect. But they'll go to a shallower place in hell -- would there were one! -- than these sodomizing priests.

Final shot: I believe that if women were priests, there'd be a damned lot fewer sodomizing priests continuing their perverted careers without being called out and publicly accused, arrested, tried, and jailed. I suspect that that is at least one of the reasons why women are not permitted ordination.

[BigmanPigman]

21. That's pretty much what I figured too.

I don't have any personal experience but it seems like that is a realistic assessment.

[mopinko]

22. i agree w you, and do not doubt your conclusion.

but stories like the magdeline laundries show how evil some nuns can be.
agreed, not sexual so much, but sadistic? oh hell yes.

i suspect if the church does the right thing, and runs these predators out, both ordaining women and allowing married priests is the only way there will EVER fill those empty slots.
the church is slowly dying.

[saidsimplesimon]

9. Pope Francis, you had your chance,

you chose dereliction of duty. May your soul rot in the labyrinth beneath your beloved Vatican. (I have no fear of religious retribution from any human or imaginary deity.)

[RVN VET71]

20. Im on the verge of sharing your condemnation,

but I'll give him a little more time before I do so.

It's not impossible that he will, at last, understand the depth and degree of evil in the church and order a complete reorganization, permitting women into the priesthood, marriage of priests, and inviting state agencies around the world to join in the investigation of pedophilia and the exposing, arresting, and incarcerating of any priest found to have raped a child or to have abetted the raping of a child. He might open the Vatican files to law enforcement and let justice take over -- but he might also add on top of it all the dismissal of any and all priests or other religious who, though free because of insufficient evidence, nevertheless appear clearly to have looked the other way. Of course, this would leave him with a very small number of priests.

His attitude should be, simply, "if every priest must go to jail leaving me, alone, as an ordained minister of the Church. so be it."

But what are the odds?