A Pennsylvania grand jury has released its findings accusing 300 Catholic priests of sexually assaulting more than a thousand children over 70 years.
The report was released yesterday and follows a two-year investigation.
The report contained evidence from victims as well as forensic examination of files held by the Church in six dioceses around Pennsylvania. The archived material was reluctantly handed over by the dioceses under subpoena.
Among the long litany of abuse, the grand jury report contained shocking evidence of four priests from Pittsburgh who allegedly preyed upon a group of young boys in a pedophile and child pornography ring.
The priests used whips, violence and sadism while repeatedly raping their victims in a rectory.
The Pennsylvania grand jury described the behaviour of the dioceses as “a playbook for concealing the truth.” It is an experience that mirrors our own in Australia.
Full column here.
Adorable. And a campaigner who really made a difference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBbyglq37E
That incredible voice, gone: https://youtu.be/7Ifw8JhDBvs
Aretha Franklin…died Thursday
This was her last performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8lVpMiNcQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diwF1-xJwZM
and You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman sang in front of the President (Carol King who wrote the song emotional) Shit no wonder they call her the 1st (and last?) lady of SOUL
From Barack Obama: “Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.”
Best thing he ever said
Jack, I thought the following insight by the Austrian-Israeli born philosopher/theologian Martin Buber (8 Feb 1878 – 3 June 1965) has relevance to the topic du jour.
“Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? . . . . I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them.”
Buber’s insight was included, as part of a larger article in 1992, in a US Freedom From Religion Foundation. The link below has the article in full, for those interested.
The Scandal of Pedophilia in the Church – Freedom From Religion …
https://ffrf.org › Frequently Asked Questions › RSS & Podcasting FAQ › Back Issues
Jack, thought you’d like this:
Liberal Democrats senator David Leyonhjelm said people dealing the tobacco, known as chop chop, were simply avoiding unreasonable taxes. He believes the government is only getting away with the new measures because of little public sympathy for smokers, labelling tobacco excise levels as “highway robbery”, AAP reports.
What has happened is the avoidance of excise has become a black market exercise providing easy money for organised crime.
And you’ve seen that US Congressional report on the connections to terror.
Nice “come in spinner” header to this.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/11/richard-dawkins-religious-education-crucial-british-schoolchildren/
Best news of today – Rake returns to the ABC on Sunday. Loved the review in today’s Age
“Having proved himself corrupt, licentious, dishonest and a tiny bit criminal, what’s a middle-aged white guy to do?Become a member of federal parliament of course .
Should be delicious – Cleaver as a Senator.
I like the show too Boa. 🐬
Ooops. Desali got me. That was me with the Hollingsworth comment. (Yesterday I got Dwight’s details)
I’m reading these messages and have logged out of admin and tried to see the problems for myself but no cigar. These issues tend to arise when I update plug-ins. One particular one, an anti-bot/spam plug-in may be causing the issue. Bear with me.
Just don’t stalk me online, TV.
JB: Hey you need to brush up on your arithmetic. One ton over the gate and then transferred to the shed is actually shifting two tons. It took 4 hrs. Tell you what, I know a good few guys, and I’ll include my children too, and the pastor next door, who wouldn’t even consider attempting that !
PS: Desali is back JTI
Well, a sensible person might think to carry the logs through the gateway. That’s what gates are for. And no, you are not shifting two tons, it is still one ton. Post a description of the “logs” and I will be glad to impart lots of clever ideas to help. You need it. Check your friends for the vital signs, some of them have probably carked it.
1×2 = 2.
Gate is below waist height.
1) no offstreet in this little village of heritage homes hence sidewalk dump.
The idea was to just get the big pile of logs off the sidewalk ASAP. I had not intended to do the whole road to shed in one day, but got into the groove.
2) Pick up log and toss it across gate.
3) take each log up the side of the house to woodshed at the back.
Actually JB, the morning involved a fair big of walking too!
I’ll give you a call next time. You can come and help and say gidday to the pastor.
3) Take each log up the side of the house? So how big are these “logs? ”
If you end up with a ton of logs in your woodshed, then you have shifted one ton of logs.
What was your previous occupation? You may have picked up some bad habits in your invoicing.
Shifted two, landed up with one.
They call it creative accounting, JB 😉
You pose the question in your full column, Mr. Insider and I quote: “Do pedophile’s become priests on the understanding they will have access to children or does the process of becoming a priest enhance its possibility? ”
The answer to that I do not know, but surely having to be Celibate goes 100% against the grain of Human Behaviour, imho so possibly they feel unable to approach the Adults in their Congregations and so take their sexual desires out on the innocent, the Kids?
That’s the only answer I can think of, and of course, is inexcusable to the core.
I reckon celibacy is a bit of a red herring. If a priest breached his vow of celibacy with a consenting adult, very few people would be concerned.
Quite true, Jack. Sex with a consenting adult of either sex, whilst against the priests vow of celibacy, is a different mentality to physically, mentally and sexually abusing children.
One of your articles refers to a priest, an horrific paedophile, who was found pissed, in a car in St Kilda, with a prostitute. As you have recorded that too went nowhere. It would seem that that environment provided a toxic feeling of invulnerability; above the law, and so it continued, unabated.
On why the catholic church was a magnet and outlet for child sex offenders, I don’t know, so can only guess. Of course the RC’s were not the only organisation in which these crimes manifested, yet in their institutions they were pervasive. Why?
I’ve often found it interesting how like minded people meet up. I still find it hard to meet up with like minded people (not in a perverse way!). Certainly the internet has made that easier for a lot of people. But how, in a time when homosexuals faced the law and/or worse, did paedophiles make contact with each other? How did people interested in bondage, shit eating, and other removes from the ”norm” connect; not sure, but I’m confident they did. And I’m only guessing that the takes one to know one, along with travel and conferences, and confidences, and an essentially isolated, immune (and in those days looked up to, or respected, role) life, nurtured a cabal of deviants.
As a RC i am as repulsed as anyone at these atrocities. I’ve long considered myself Christian, rather than aligned to an organisation, but my soul is with the RC’s. My heart goes out to those whose life has been irreparably damaged by their disgusting, disgraceful abusers.
Milton, I don’t know what the answers are, but it seems to me that the sexual abuse of children is still ‘tolerated’ by the RC Church. There may be a reckoning for all the abusers, then again, there may not. I believe the real percentage of offending priests around the world will never be known & thousands of little boys will continue to be harmed by these untouchable predators.
Until the church takes on the crimes that are committed by their own, the UN should outlaw the entire organisation. That’ll change things.
No money from generous deluded parishioners will also force a fire-sale of the untold riches stored in the gold vaults of the Vatican whilst millions starve to death in poverty.
The sum total of human misery, hopelessness & deaths caused by all religions in this world is far greater than the small spiritual comfort they’re supposed to provide.
I do hope this comes through from Bella, as this week I’ve also been JackSprat (who I delete).
Not that there’s anything wrong with JS. 😜
I did write a reply to your post, Bella but it seems to have taken a wrong turn.
cheers.
Considering that the Hollingsworth issue is being raised again, celibacy may not be the full story .
He was found by the Royal Commission to have failed to report and if my memory is any good as Archbishop of Brisbane he in fact promoted an individual of which credible claims of child sex offending had been made. The offender was ultimately pulled up in the NT education system and received a long jail sentence. In QLD the offence of failing to report comes with a maximum 12 months’ imprisonment.
Archbishop? Even if it turns out he’s charged & found guilty, somehow it all goes away for them.
The problem was how priests were recruited and trained in the 50s 60s and 70s. Young adolescent males were dragooned into the priesthood, placed in a celibate boot camp and their sexuality was frozen in early adolescence and could only find an outlet in children of the same age or younger.
If you left the seminary school you were deemed to be a failure, and let us not forget the quaint Irish catholic view that each family should “give” on child to the church…
Had the church only accepted mature men for the priesthood, the level of abuse would be some much lower.
What about women priests? Do you think women priests would have allowed this to go on? I very much doubt it. Nuns, a little different, in that they are lower in the hierarchy and obedience is among their many vows.
I agree, it is a rare priest that is celibate.
I am going back many years now but an anonymous survey of priests was carried out in Italy an just on 70% of Catholic priests said they enjoyed an active sex life. And good luck to them!
Let them marry, Penny that will put an end to their sex life.
And here I was thinking celibacy was a part of their vows to their God. Guilty of hypocrisy also.
You have good points Henry. I say of priests, knacker the lot of them.
If they are genuine in their reasons for entering the priesthood it shouldn’t be an issue. Committed to celibacy and God? Goodoh, prove it. God will give you your goolies back for eternity when you get to heaven.
That might keep some of the evil ones out in the open where we can see them.
I really don’t see the atavistic superstitious church withering on the vine as a consequence, and if it does? Shucks.
Give ’em heaps.
Any withering suggestions for dealing with all those potential CSA perps outside the church but working in similar environments JB?