A few novel excuses for priestly child abuse

[Christa]

The Catholic Church is getting desperate. All this evidence is turning up of priests physically and sexually abusing young people in their care, and of the church administration being more concerned with protecting pedophile priests and the reputation of their organization than protecting children, so someone has to be blamed. How about the damn dirty hippies and those pesky reporters?

"The so-called sexual revolution, in which some especially progressive moral critics supported the legalisation of sexual contact between adults and children, is certainly not innocent," he said, adding that the media was also at fault.

That was the excuse of a Catholic bishop to the ongoing discovery of a history of child abuse in Germany. The similar pattern of child abuse in Ireland prompted the Pope to dig up some excuses…in this case, because priests weren't devout enough.

The pontiff also noted "the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church," the statement said, adding Pope Benedict "also pointed to the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church and he linked that to the lack of respect for the human person and how the weakening of faith has been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors".

Who knew the whole Catholic church was infested with free-lovin' hippies and godless agnostics and atheists?

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/a_few_novel_excuses_for_priest.php

[TheDebbieDee]

1. Poppycock! The Catholic church has been ignoring and/or

child sexual abuse by priests and nuns for centuries. You don't think priests and nuns got "hot" for kids in just the last few decades do you?

For hundreds of years, well-to-do families have been consigning their young adult children to the church to be priests or nuns because they suspected or knew that the young person in question was "kinky." These families thought the church could "fix" them.

For centuries, the Catholic church has taken money from these well-to-do families to ease these potential priests and nuns into their religious culture.

Don't get me wrong, every religion, Pagan or Christian, has kinky people. But, so far, only the Catholic church has been proven to have taken extraordinary measures over the centuries to protect pedophiles.

[CoffeeCat]

2. The biggest friend of pedophiles! SILENCE...

Silence is the biggest friend to a pedophile. Pedophiles terrorize their victims into silence--to hide
their secrets. The victims are to afraid to speak out, so they remain silent. Society doesn't want to
hear about these ugly crimes and the statistics (that one in four girls and one in seven boys is sexually
abused before the age of 18), so the victim is once again silenced.

Silence helps the predators.

The Catholic Church was the biggest proponent of silence in human history, when it came to child sexual predators. For
decades, they knowingly put child sexual predators in front of new victims, who were traumatized. The Church colluded
with local law enforcement and with the families of these victims---to keep silent.

This went on until the victims broke the silence. It would have gone on longer, if this evil institution had its way.

It is revolting and disgusting--that after everything the catholic church has done to humanity--that they would try and
blame this on "the sexual revolution". Oh please, they're saying that because some pedophiles tried to advocate for
child-adult sexual relationships--that this caused more abuse within the church?? Pedophiles are the most hated people in society. Anyone
advocating such laws is bastardized and shunned. Pedophiles are the most powerless in society, because the simple act of discussing
the subject of child-adult sex is attacked and vilified--as it should be. Pedophiles had no influence over the 99.9 percent
of the population that is repelled by the mere suggestion of adult-child sex.

The catholic church, once again--tries to rationalize their own evil. The catholic church should be nuked from orbit
and they should start from scratch. Frankly, i find it insulting and disgusting that an institution, which purports to
stand for morals and spirituality--can continue to make excuses for their decade-long crime spree against children.

Horrible. Just horrible--because their excuses show a total lack of remorse.

[CountAllVotes]

3. thanks for the wonderful topic on Ash Wednesday

What do you plan to accomplish by posting this on a day that is holy to Catholics throughout the world?

Keep stirring that pot of hatred. Thanks for nothing and welcome to my ignore list. :P

[Christa]

4. Oh puleeze

What do I know about Ash Wednesday?


Go do your holy day of the Church who is well known for the excessive abuse of children by priests.

[CountAllVotes]

5. take your hatred elsewhere

:puke:

[Christa]

6. Oops-a-daisy

don't puke on me, remember it is your holy day.



:rofl: :rofl:

And here I thought I was on your ignore list

:rofl: :rofl:

[Tailormyst]

10. Sorry, my hate is still fresh and scabbing over.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that I am betting none of your male relatives were raped by priests.

[Christa]

12. Or maybe the opposite

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

[Tailormyst]

15. I probably shouldnt even post on the topic

It just gets me so pissed to see it defended.

[Christa]

17. Get it out

get rid of the anger, Tailormyst.

We have kept quiet and bottled everything up for far too long! It is our time now. I refuse to keep quiet about the abuse of religions any more. I will speak out until my last breath.

[CoffeeCat]

7. Boy, this is rich and self serving....

Don't spoil our special day with all your talk about the evil we've inflicted on the world,
and on innocent children! Your hate is ruining our ability to celebrate our
special day and we just can't have that!

The victims never get a day off. You just might want to think about that for a nanosecond!

[Tailormyst]

9. Oh well, it must suck to have reality spashed in your face!

This isn't ancient history, this is THIS pope, with a major player in the molestation cover-up sitting in a position of power in HIS HOUSE.

It's your church. You own it. Good and bad, it's yours.

[laconicsax]

14. So to you, a holiday is more important than child rape?

Interesting priorities.

Maybe we shouldn't talk about anything negative on a holiday. Don't anyone dare bring up torture at Gitmo on a National holiday! Your username brings up the sensitive subject of election fraud. It's best if you don't post anything at all on or around a National holiday either. Someone who loves the democracy this country represents might take offense at seeing your username.

[DeSwiss]

19. If I'm not already on it.....

...put me on it too!

[Tailormyst]

8. The church should really stop defending this shit

Benedict is an asshole and the vatican can kiss my ass for giving Cardinal Law a prestigious position in Rome instead of firing his pathetic ass. The Diosese of Boston and the Vatican are BOTH to blame for a great deal of harm coming to members (yes, multiple) of my family. Harm that will last for generations.

[Christa]

11. I am so sorry, Tailormyst

I know so many people who were personally affected and hurt by priests. I personally know of little graveyards behind monasteries where new born babies were buried. The best we can do is speak out about it.

[Tailormyst]

16. Thanks Christa, the whole thing sucks

[laconicsax]

13. Can we stop calling it "child abuse" and start calling it what it really is?

Child rape.

Abuse could mean anything pretty much anything on broad spectrum of offenses. Kind of like how domestic "abuse" covers beatings, rape, and murder alike.

What these priests did was child rape. I refuse to beat around the bush and give it the generic "abuse" label.

[Christa]

18. Exactly!

If it was anyone else BUT the priests not even the members of the RCC would tolerate it.

[DeSwiss]

20. K&R

One more little note from the piece at Pharyngula:

By the way, in an interesting side issue, the papal nuncio was asked to appear before an Irish committee on foreign affairs to talk about this problem. He haughtily replied that it was "not the practice of the Holy See that Apostolic Nuncios appear before Parliamentary Commissions", which is rather interesting. The Vatican has a rather interesting status as a sovereign, independent state with membership in the UN, and pretends to be a participating nation in the world community of states. But apparently they also feel that they are not bound by secular obligations.

So they seek respect from us for their so-called "religious authority," while simultaneously ignoring the secular law and authority that makes it even possible for them to exist within those same nations they are now ignoring? One can only conclude that they believe that they are ABOVE the law and can choose to accept or ignore it as it pleases their leader. As far as I'm concerned, I believe that they need to lose their seat in the UN if they're not going to bind themselves to the laws of nations and think they can ignore requests by countries for an accounting of their employees deeds and heinous violations of the law.

- I think that the Vatican realizes that it's much worse than anyone expects and they're trying to shield themselves from exposure like any other criminal organization. Because it is likely to bring the whole damned thing to the ground.....