Cardinal Pell:Do The Decent Thing

An Inquiry into the sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church is long overdue in Australia.

The stress and heartbreak that the victims of sexual abuse, and their families, go through is horrendous. I do not believe that the Catholic Church even comes close to understanding this. If it did, would the Vatican have allowed this abuse to go on for centuries? Perhaps it’s not a question of understanding and empathy. It’s most likely all about power, wealth and status. I believe that the number of reported abuses is just the tip of the iceberg, because research has shown that is the tendency with all forms of sexual abuse. It can take half of a victim’s lifetime, or more, to just gain the strength to talk about the abuse. To quote Chrissie Foster: “It takes 40 or 50 years for children to talk about what has happened to them, and it just never stops”.

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Chrissie & Anthony Foster

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It one such case, two of Chrissie and Anthony Fosters’ daughters were raped by a Catholic Priest. In an article about the Fosters in Catholica, March 2011, the writer refers to the abuser as “A Holy Roman Catholic Priest”.  I think this is indicative of the mentality of the Catholic hierarchy, in that they choose this highly inflated title to describe a paedophile. It sends a message that this rapist continues to be treated with respect by his peers and the Vatican!

Chrissie and Anthony Foster are the parents of three daughters, two of whom were raped as little girls by a paedophile priest, Kevin O’Donnell. One of the daughters eventually took her own life in despair after a long period of self harm. The second daughter who was raped, after a similarly long period of self harm, walked in front of a speeding car while intoxicated and today requires round the clock nursing care that will continue for the rest of her life.

Mrs Foster has written a book ‘Hell on the Way to Heaven‘ in which she cites six bishops who failed to take decisive action following several parents’ complaints regarding Kevin O’Donnell. It is difficult to comprehend why Cardinal Pell is still in Office given what has been presented in Mrs Foster’s book. “Cardinal Pell has more front than Myers Department Store and it will probably wash over him like water off a duck’s back”.  Read Mrs Foster’s book and judge for yourself, the failure of these six bishops to protect children from sexual abuse by Kevin O’Donnell.  Cardinal Pell appears to bury his head in the sand over this issue, and still there has been no effective inquiry.

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The Fosters are driving the push for an inquiry into sexual abuse by clergy in Victoria.  As quoted in the Waverley Leader September 13, “Two signatures stand between an inquiry into the alleged sexual abuse of two Oakleigh girls, and other alleged victims by Victorian clergy”.  Labour MP, Anne Barker handed the proposed terms of reference for an inquiry to Attorney-General Robert Clark, recently. If Mr Clark and Premier Ted Baillieu, sign  the four page document, a Royal Commission of Inquiry will be launched.  The Terms of Reference state that: “Since 1993, more than 65 clergy who have served in Victoria, have been convicted of abuse”. These figures are staggering. But the Catholic hierarchy have stipulated that they will not deviate from its ‘Melbourne Response Programme’ which was implemented 15 years ago. However, going on past experience of the way the Catholic Church has protected its paedophile priests, we must have nothing less than a Royal Commission of Inquiry, which would be  totally outside the influence of the Vatican. Mr Foster believes A  Royal Commission is the only way to expose the secretive behaviour of the Church, and bring it under full scrutiny. A decision is pending. Let’s hope that in the event of a Royal Commission of Inquiry in Victoria, other states will follow suit.

See  previous posts:  Clerical Paedophilia         /    Irish PM Blasts Vatican

Banished Babies

The book ‘Banished Babies’ by Mike Milotte, is about babies born in Ireland to unmarried mothers.   But we now know, banished babies were also born to illegitimate mothers in  New Zealand, Australia, America and England. More countries where this practise took place may yet come to light.  Australian Banished Babies want an apology. You might say “But this happened last Century”.  The thing is, the wounds left in these heartbreaking cases, never heal.

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See Adoption: The Open Wound That Never Heals

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‘Banished Babies’ were those babies taken from their unmarried mothers at birth.  I believe that the word ‘taken’ in this instance is a misnomer. It should read ‘ripped’, because that’s how it felt to the young mothers. I know this personally from my own mother’s case. This ‘baby snatching’ as others call it, was not for altruistic purposes; rather it was following Catholic dogma issued by the Vatican’s Office of the Congregation For the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly Office of the Holy Inquisition).   It was certainly not for the welfare of the infants, or their mothers.  No.  It was to remove these babies from their mothers who were seen by the Catholic Church as sinners who had to be punished. In the nuns’ minds, indoctrinated by the Church, the babies themselves were being saved from the clutches of satan and were ‘sold’, mostly to wealthy American couples, who, it was stipulated, had to be of the Catholic Faith.  It was strictly enforced by the Church, that neither mother or infant would ever be able to trace each other, and this caused even more heartbreak decades later.   (See my post about Philomena Lee). Large sums of money were exchanged for the privilege of ‘buying a newborn’, donation being the euphemism used. Ironic, isn’t it?  So much of that wealth the Church received, is now being paid out to even more victims of the Catholic Church; in the form of compensation  to  thousands of families whose children were sexually abused by paedophile priests.

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For all the mothers and babies who never found each other

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Between the end of WWII and 1965 more than 2,200 Irish infants were adopted out of the country, mostly by hopeful parents in the U.S. All the adoptive parents were, by mandate of the church in Ireland, Catholic. Until the late 1990′s and the work of Irish journalist Michael Milotte this was a fact known to few in Ireland and fewer in the U.S. In Ireland Milotte’s work, emphasising both the emotional and physical brutalisation of the birth mothers and the country’s loss of vital human capital, led to a great furor.

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In 2001, the Washington Post reported:

Milotte, a senior reporter for the Irish television network RTE, says life was particularly hard for the mothers in these convents, which were largely self-sustaining thanks to the women’s labour but also received public funding. In some cases, he says, the priests and nuns received money from the adoptive parents, who paid “confinement and medical costs” associated with their child’s birth.

“Where did the money go?” he wonders. “It sustained the people who ran the institutions in a manner they wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed.”  But money likely wasn’t the primary motivator, he says. Rather, there was a demand for children, and many of the nuns believed they were doing God’s work by sending some of Ireland‘s social outcasts to a better life in the land of opportunity.

“They thought they were doing good,” says Milotte in a phone interview from Dublin. “The fact that people might have rights didn’t enter into their thinking. They thought they knew best. If, in doing the best thing, there was an opportunity to make money, that was all the better.”  In those postwar days, it was not uncommon for Irish children to be adopted by U.S. military and government employees living abroad, Milotte says.

The birth mothers of these children spent their pregnancies and post-natal, pre-adoption lives in varioushomes, often convents, for girls and women who were seen by the conservative Catholic culture as shame-worthy moral degenerates. The horrific conditions that these women underwent was recently dramatized in the movie the Magdelene Sisters.

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Milotte spoke with NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling upon release of his book Banished Babies in May of 1998:

Many of these women were seen as the next thing to prostitutes, and were very often told that when their identities became known. Even when girls got pregnant, very often they didn’t get married even if — because there was the stigma attached to having had sex before marriage. So even where a relationship endured, the child would be given up for adoption. And it was all done in secret.

I am one of those kids given up for adoption. It was in that interview in May of 1998, two days after I returned to Chicago following my mother’s funeral, that I learned of the controversy. I have always known that I was adopted, that I was a ‘true Irishman’, and I had always been proud and honored by the distinction. In the days immediately following my mom’s death I told my Dad that I had never for a second doubted who my ‘real’ parents were, that he and my mom were the only ones who can lay claim to me. I feel no different today.

None-the-less, as the NPR story continued I found myself getting information that I’m sure even they didn’t have.

ZWERDLING:  Here’s one of the most curious aspects of this story.It’s hard enough for most women to give up a baby for adoption during the first few hours or weeks of its life. But church officials forced the young mothers to stay in their convents and raise their own infants for at least one year or more before adoptive families could come and get them.Reporter Mike Milotte says he’s turned up cases where young women changed their minds after their babies were born and tried to leave the convents. (This also happened to my mother in New Zealand). But the nuns sent guards to capture the women and bring them back.For her part, Mary O’Connor says, she knew she’d have to give her baby away. She felt she literally had no choice. But by the time the nuns came to take her son, she’d been raising him for 17 months. Then one evening, O’Connor says, a nun told her, “Get him ready. We’re giving him away in the morning.”

O’CONNOR: So she just carried it over to the convent. There was two parts, like there was a hospital part where the children were kept and then there was the convent part. And the child was brought over to the convent part. And there was three steps up. You went in the side door and there were three steps up. And they went to the top of the steps and they said, “Just say goodbye now. That’s it.”

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For more about my mother’s lost children & the heartlessness of the Catholic Church:

  ‘Whatever Happened to Ishtar? – A Passionate Quest to Find Answers for Generations of Defeated Mothers’.

Ireland’s PM Blasts Vatican’s Response To Sexual Abuse

Pope Benedict XVI’s letter relating to the Cloyne Report has infuriated Ireland’s Prime Minister and the Irish victims of paedophile priests.  People from several countries have been hoping for constructive comments in the letter from the Vatican regarding sex abuse scandals, but they will once again be disappointed.

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Pope Benedict XVI

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Vatican-approved cover-ups of the sexual abuse of children at the hands of priests, have been going on for centuries in parishes and schools.  My own great-grandmother, then 14 years old, was raped by a Catholic priest in Rome in the 19^th Century.  She was sent off to London to have the resultant baby while the priest’s name was protected. I’d hate to imagine how many other girls might have suffered the same fate because the Vatican turned a blind eye.   The Vatican has never put children’s welfare first in these horrendous scandals.  Foremost in the Vatican’s responses to thousands of allegations of abuse, is to protect the Catholic Church at all costs, then the abusing priests.  Some see the present Pope’s position as difficult because he was formerly the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Once The Holy Office of the Holy Inquisition), which makes, and enforces, doctrinal laws.

See previous post:  The Case of the Pope; From a legal perspective.

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It is sickening to me, to see and hear the pope expressing love for ‘God’s children’ while allowing their  torture and rape to continue.  I use the word ‘allowing’ deliberately, because that is what the present Pope is doing, and what his predecessors have done;  the Vatican’s secrecy and  inaction have ensured the abuse continues.  The scandals that first emerged in Canada and Australia in the 1980s, followed by Ireland in the 1990s, the United States this decade and, in recent months, Benedict’s German homeland, are but the tip of the iceberg.  And no-one has even begun to examine accusations coming out of Africa where many paedophile priests are sent for their protection from Western countries’ legal systems.

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Comments regarding the Pope’s letter and the Cloyne Report:

Maeve Lewis, head of  ONE IN FOUR victims’ group, stated that the Pope “passed up a glorious opportunity to address the core issue in the scandal; the deliberate policy of the Catholic Church, at the highest levels, to protect sex offenders, thereby endangering children”.

“The Pope speaks only of failures in the Irish church and neglects the role of the Vatican. If the church cannot acknowledge this fundamental truth, it is still in denial”.  She said she was “astounded” at the Pope’s previous assertion that  ‘the roots of clerical sexual abuse lie in the secularization of Irish society, the falling off of religious devotion, and failures to adhere to canon law.’ “This shows a complete misunderstanding of the dynamics of sexual violence and creates little hope that the church will ever respond effectively to the problem.”

Author and survivor Andrew Madden said issues highlighted by him and others in a letter to the Pope had been ignored.  He said there had been no responsibility taken by the Catholic Church, regarding the sexual abuse of so many children, and its protection  of paedophile priests.   Mr Madden  goes on to say that Pope Benedict has repeated his apology for the hurt caused to those abused but then states that the Church’s only  role has been its failure to ‘deal with criminal and sinful acts’.  According to Mr Madden, the Catholic Church didn’t fail to act; it acted very clearly to protect itself and left the abused children to fend for themselves.

Another survivor, Marie Collins said she welcomed the order that church leaders should co-operate with police, but she said there had been no mention of the Vatican’s role in the cover-ups which allowed the abuse to continue.  [In fact it is not an 'order' but a 'guideline'].

Alan Shatter, Justice Minister in the Irish parliament also lashed out at the Pope, saying:  “We should never again tolerate a foreign state issuing directives to members of the hierarchy and other clerics in this state to violate Irish law by concealing reports of child sexual abuse and not reporting such allegations. Nor should we ever again tolerate a foreign state requiring that an oath of any nature be taken by an adult or child to maintain a veil of secrecy over incidents of sexual abuse.”

The latter was a reference to a case involving current Cardinal Sean Brady, who in 1975 swore two young children to an oath not to reveal their abuse.

The Cloyne report into Catholic clerical child abuse in Ireland released on Wednesday 20^th July, will identify 19 Catholic priests who allegedly sexually assaulted children in the 1990s. The report into abuse allegations in the Catholic diocese of Cloyne, has been approved for publication by the Irish government.

The report, known officially as the Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, will be published by Ireland’s minister for justice, Alan Shatter, and the minister for children, Frances Fitzgerald.

The last Irish government agreed to extend the Murphy commission’s remit to include Cloyne, as well as the Dublin archdiocese. The commission’s Dublin report found widespread clerical abuse and cover-up in the Irish capital which was devastating for the Catholic Church. It also found child protection practices in the Dublin diocese to be ‘inadequate and in some respects dangerous’.

The commission was later asked to investigate the handling of sex abuse allegations in Cloyne by church and state authorities between 1 January 1996 – when the church’s first-published guidelines, its Framework Document, came into play – and 1 February 2009.

Minister Alan Shatter said the report’s findings were unambiguous. “We cannot correct past wrongs perpetrated on our children, but we can take action to prevent, insofar as is possible, the wrongs of the past being perpetrated on our children in the future,” he said.  “We cannot depend on the undertakings of others to correct failings and introduce robust and effective structures of protection. The Cloyne Report  irrefutably confirms that some who, in the past, gave such undertakings, acted in bad faith,” the Minister told Parliament.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has launched an unprecedented attack on the Catholic Church,  saying the relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again following the Cloyne report. The Vatican chose to focus on the interests of the Church rather than the children abused by its clergy and shielded by its leaders.

The Catholic News Service reports Mr Kenny accused the Vatican of adopting a “calculated, withering position” on abuse.   He said that “the Irish people, including the very many faithful Catholics who – like me – have been shocked and dismayed by the repeated failings of Church authorities to face up to what is required; deserve and require confirmation from the Vatican that they do accept, endorse and require compliance by all Church authorities herewith, the obligations to report all cases of suspected abuse, whether current or historical, to the state’s authorities.”

“The revelations of the Cloyne report have brought the Government, Irish Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture. It’s fair to say that after the Ryan and Murphy reports Ireland is, perhaps, unshockable when it comes to the abuse of children. But Cloyne has proved to be of a different order. Because for the first time in Ireland, a report into child sexual-abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See, to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic . . . as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. And in doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism . . . the narcissism . . . that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day.”

PM Kenny said the Cloyne report told “a tale of a frankly brazen disregard for protecting children”. He said although the report had shown the need for the Vatican “to get its house in order”, it also revealed how the State had failed victims too.  “For too long Ireland has neglected its children,” he said.  “This is not Rome. This is the Republic of Ireland 2011, a republic of laws,” Mr Kenny said.

The Prime Minister was speaking during a Government motion on the report that “deplores the Vatican’s intervention which contributed to the undermining of the child protection frameworks and guidelines of the Irish State and the Irish bishops”. It expresses “dismay at the disturbing findings of the report and at the inadequate and inappropriate response, particularly of the Church authorities in Cloyne, to complaints and allegations of child sexual abuse.”

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Italy, another predominantly Catholic country, has a similar tale to tell.

See Post:  Paedophilia in Italy

Most recent post: 

Clerical Paedophilia; Centuries Old Time Bomb

President Benigno Aquino III Is A Hero

Philippines’ President Benigno Aquino III, still widely popular, is supporting artificial birth control even if it means risking excommunication from the dominant Roman Catholic church.  But beware, Mr Aquino, the opposition is out to get you so don’t follow in the footsteps of other disgraced male political leaders.  You are not smear proof and your country needs you.

The wide-ranging and acrimonious debate over government-funded access to contraceptives in the Philippines has entered the country’s Congress.   The issue is creating deeper rifts between the powerful and conservative Catholic establishment, which says contraceptives are as sinful as abortions,  and reformers, who want more openness about condoms and other birth control in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation to slow population growth and help prevent disease.

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Pope says NO

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The Reproductive Health Bill introduced  into the House of Representatives would require the government to provide information on family planning methods, make contraceptives available free of charge and introduce reproductive health and sexuality classes in schools.  Perfectly reasonable and sensible I would have thought.

Supporters believe the measures will slow the Philippines’ rapid population growth that surely contributes to the country’s crushing poverty.  Influential bishops [surprise!] have blocked family planning bills in the past by arguing that they would erode moral values, encourage promiscuity and early pregnancies.   But would they prevent child sex abuse by paedophile priests, I wonder?

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See   Female Sex Workers Recognised By The Pope

&   Catholic Condom Confusion

The Vatican Advises On Sexual Abuse

The Vatican has advised bishops around the world  of the importance of co-operating with police if complaints have been laid about specific priests raping and molesting children. Bishops were asked to develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse by May 2012.

How can Bishops prevent sex abuse by following ‘guidelines’ unless the priest under suspicion is reported to police immediately and is barred from performing official duties while under investigation?  Neither of these necessary actions have been insisted on by the Vatican.

The communique from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly Office of the Holy Inquisition) made no provision to ensure the bishops actually follow any guidelines, and victims groups immediately denounced the recommendations as “dangerously flawed” because they stress the exclusive authority of bishops to determine the credibility of abuse allegations.  And we all know where that has led.  It seems that this is another release from the Pope to lull the faithful into a false sense of security regarding their children in the hands of priests, while nothing has changed!

“There’s nothing that will make a child safer today or tomorrow or next month or next year,” said Barbara Dorris, outreach director for the main U.S. victims group Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests.

The sexual abuse of children continues:

The communique is being issued at a time when the sex abuse guidelines of the U.S. bishops have been put into question after a Philadelphia grand jury earlier this year indicted a high-ranking church official on child endangerment charges for allegedly transferring predator priests. Four co-defendants — two priests, an ex-priest and a former Catholic school teacher — are charged with raping children.

The grand jury found “substantial evidence of abuse” committed by at least 37 other priests who remained in active ministry at the time of the report. Philadelphia’s archbishop, Cardinal Justin Rigali, initially insisted that no archdiocesan priests in ministry had an “admitted or established allegation” against them. But he later suspended two dozen of the 37 priests. The archdiocese says many of the 37 were accused not of actual molestation but of so-called “boundary issues,” including inappropriate touching or sharing porn with minors — the latter a canonical crime in and of itself.  These are mere “boundary issues”??

How about this for a pathetic excuse: It was explained by a spokesman that the Vatican didn’t make reporting abuse cases to police mandatory because different countries have different laws which bishops must abide by. The Vatican states such a binding  rule would be problematic for priests working in countries with repressive regimes.  Who would the leaders of repressive regimes be more harmful to, the abusive priests or the abused children?

If this is the Vatican’s idea of a ‘transparency drive’, perhaps the Vatican hierarchy needs to look up the meaning of transparency in the dictionary, that’s if they possess one.  The newly published guidelines also outline the different ways that abusive priests can be disciplined by the church’s internal courts [my emphasis]. In “very grave cases”, (aren’t they all grave?) the pope may issue a decree dismissing a priest from the clerical state.   You mean the ‘E’ word?  But this has never yet happened, has it?

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The Vatican Speaks

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The following statement has to be the most idiotic the Vatican has ever released in relation to paedophile priests:

The pope’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone risked new controversy by claiming that paedophilia was linked to homosexuality. “Many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown that there is no link between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have shown, I have recently been told, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia,” he told a news conference in Santiago.   Can we please have the names of these many psychiatric experts, and are they all Catholic?  What about the thousands of ‘celibate’ priests who have raped hundreds of thousands of girls and boys?  Still more questions than answers.

Perhaps The Church’s fantastical teachings has made it easy for priests to delude themselves into believing that they weren’t really having sex with their victims.  It was women, those evil temptresses they had to avoid, as I write in  Catholic Dichotomy of Females.  I cannot believe that the problem is solely down to paedophilia or homosexuality.  It is much more psychologically complicated than that.

More…Vatican, Is It The Gay Men’s Club?

&   Celibacy and Sexual Abuse

&    Paedophilia In Italy

&    Kiss Of Betrayal

Vatican – Is It The Gay Men’s Club?

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The cover of Panorama: “The Skilled  Gay Priests Of  The Nights”.

Is it any wonder that the Vatican, in light of its failure to immediately report sexual abuse by Catholic clergy to criminal investigators, is known as ‘The Gay Men’s Club?
Apparently, Cardinal Sean O’Malley has a list of suspected paedophile priests in Boston which he refuses to release. The unreleased list, possibly 40 names of  offending priests, is included in a record of the minutes from a March 2010 meeting of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council. How can the Vatican  therefore, allow these men to continue working around vulnerable children in  positions of trust?   It also means these men are not receiving help for their predilections.

Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, called the number of undisclosed priests “staggering.” She accused O’Malley of purposely delaying to protect church officials responsible for monitoring the priests.  And also, if past actions by Bishops are anything to go by, so the accused can be sent on safely to another parish in Africa somewhere.  The church has said compiling the list is a complex task. It cited concerns about due process for accused priests.  What I would like to know is:  what about the children?

Many gay priests have been exposed by Panorama magazine frequenting gay clubs and actually having sex with gay partners.  Being gay is not the issue here.  It is the hypocrisy of supposed men of God, claiming they are celibate.  If there is so much opportunity around for gay sex, one has to wonder why these men have joined the priesthood.  It may be that the Catholic religion allows them to believe that if they are not having sex with women, then they are not having sex.  Perhaps it is as simple or as psychologically complicated as that.

Panorama magazine is owned by Catholic Prime Minister and media baron, Silvio Berlusconi.  Its reporters have film of priests attending gay clubs and having gay sex.  One of the priests  is later filmed saying Mass!

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See previous posts:

Celibacy and Sexual Abuse

Last Judgment and Babies

Paedophilia in Italy

Kiss of Betrayal

Shame on you, Mr Berlusconi!

Silvio Berlusconi - Fake Tan, Fake Hair, Fake Man

Thousands of Italian women are protesting in the streets at Silvio Berlusconi’s sexual antics.  Banners read: “Berlusconi illuminate us – set yourself on fire!” “We are neither virgins nor whores”  “You old pig! Take your hands off her!”

I would have thought even Berlusconi would have shown more self-control and discretion in light of the paedophile priests scandal going on within the Catholic Church.   Berlusconi’s latest scandal involves a 17-year-old prostitute, ‘Ruby’  to whom he gave almost $10,000, a diamond necklace and a new car.  He says he was helping out a friend’s grand-daughter who was having financial difficulties.  Why?  Weren’t the other politicians paying her enough?  The friend whose grand-daughter Ruby was supposed to be?  None other than that Pharoah himself, Mr Hosni Mubarak.  It so happens Ruby is nothing of the sort.  It gets worse.  Not only did Berlusconi  pay the girl for her services, but he rang the police station himself, when he heard that Ruby was being held in prison for theft.  He told the police to let her go.  He says he did this to prevent a diplomatic incident!  When has Berlusconi ever been concerned about diplomacy.  We know the man has always acted as a buffoon on the world stage.

I find it interesting that these two elderly men have jet black hair – nary a grey hair between them (Berlusconi was almost bald not that long ago.  Not sure about Mubarak).  Saddam Hussein, I noticed, also had jet black hair when he was a tyrant and flaunting himself via his state controlled media.  When he was found hiding in an underground bunker, he was completely grey.  The thing I don’t get is that these fascists don’t think they are ever going to die!  Reminds me of the powerful heads of most giant corporations and banks who caused the latest GFC.

The orgies held at Berlusconi’s home are legendary.  You would think that a 74-year-old man would have better things to do with his life given that he can’t have too many years left.  He must spend a fortune on Viagra pills.  He has five children and I wonder what damage all this has done to them.  It seems that his gluttonous life has finally caught up with him and the people of Italy want him out!  Berlusconi controls Italian media and it reflects his gaudy, debauched appetites.  Berlusconi is emulating the very worst of the Roman Emperors; believes he has power over judges, he owns Italy’s media, Cinema and owns a  large stake in Associazione Calcio Milan or A C Milan.

See Post Dark Heart of Italy

Pope Benedict has suggested that politicians should take the example of St Joan of Arc and die for their faith.  I nearly died laughing when I read that.  To top that off, it may be that Joan was mistaken for another woman!

See post Joan of Arc & the Pope

Article below By Marianne Arens and Peter Schwarz:

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is notorious for the fact that he flouts elementary democratic principles and unscrupulously uses his power to defend his own personal interests.

On a number of occasions he has modified laws in order that both he and his relatives could evade legal proceedings and to keep control of his media empire. He has used his influence over both private and public television channels in order to suppress criticism, and to agitate against those judges who are investigating big business corruption and criminality. His authoritarian behaviour has now reached a new pinnacle with his amendment of election law six months before parliamentary elections are due in order to prevent the looming victory of the opposition.

Berlusconi’s total abuse of the right to vote follows an international trend: Five years ago, George W. Bush stole the US election without achieving a real majority, and in Germany, leading politicians are about to form a grand coalition following neo-liberal policies, openly ignoring the wishes of the electorate.

It is fitting that female judges will hear Berlusconi’s trial.  Italy is a country in which misogyny reigns supreme.  Tobias Jones, the author of  “The Dark Heart of Italy”, dubbed Italy as “the land that feminism forgot,” ranked 74th out of 134 countries in a World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index, behind Malawi and Kazakhstan. With the exception of Malta, Italy has the lowest ratio of working women in the European Union, 46 per cent.

Nuns: An Endangered Species?

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The Abbess was of noble blood

Catholic Sisters of Mercy; four biological sisters.The nun on the right was the closest I came to a mother figure; her face is the one I remember as an infant in a Catholic Orphanage nursery. (see 'Whatever Happened To Ishtar?')

But early took the veil and hood

Ere upon life she cast a look

Or knew the world that she forsook

Fair too she was, and kind had been

As she was fair, but ne’er had seen

For her a timid lover sigh

Nor knew the influence of her eye

Love, to her ear, was but a name

Combined with vanity and shame

Her hopes, her fears, her joys, were all

Bounded within the cloister wall:

The deadliest sin her mind could reach

Was of monastic rule the breach;

And her ambition’s highest aim

To emulate St Hilda’s fame

For this she gave her ample dower,

To raise the convent’s eastern tower;

For this, with carving rare and quaint,

She decked the chapel of the saint,

And gave the relic-shrine of cost,

With ivories and gems embost.

The poor her convent’s bounty blest,

The pilgrim in its halls found rest.

Black was her garb, her rigid rule

Reformed on Benedictine school;

Her cheek was pale, her form was spare;

Vigils, and penitence austere,

Had early quenched the life of youth,

But gentle was the dame in Sooth

From: Sir Walter Scott, ‘Marmion’, The Immolation of Constance De Beverley

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My mother was a defeated nun and a defeated mother. She entered a convent to escape the inescapable: LIFE.  (See ‘My Mother Was  A Catholic Nun‘)

For hundreds of years, young women and girls have been entering convents for various reasons.  Fathers and other patriarchs sent unmarriageable or unmanageable daughters into a cloistered life. Daughters whose mothers had died were also sentenced to life imprisonment, with or without their consent.

"A Drama of Science, Faith and Love"

Even Galileo, that illustrious 17th Century  scientist, and devout Catholic, confined his eldest daughter from the age of thirteen (1616)  to San Matteo convent in Arcetri.  His daughter, Virgina was deemed unmarriageable because her father had never married her mother, the beautiful Marina Gamba of Venice. Virginia (Sister Maria Celeste) lived out her life in poverty and seclusion in the convent (Order of St Clare) , as did her younger sister, Livia. Unlike Virginia, very little is heard from, or about, the “silent and strange” Livia.   Virginia  lost all her teeth by age 27  because of her lack of a nutritious diet.  It is worth reading  ‘Galileo’s Daughter’ by Dava Sobel, a gifted author, for more on these remarkable lives.  We know so much about Galileo and Virginia because of the correspondence between the two.  Ms Sobel also covers the horror of Galileo’s life and his banishment to house arrest in Ravenna, at the hands of the Holy Inquisition headed by Pope Paul V.

The Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, was exiled from his beloved Florence in the early 14th Century by Pope Boniface Vlll (Cardinal Caetani), with support from the French.  Dante’s only daughter, Antonia, was confined to a convent in Ravenna where he was living at the time in 1320.  Antonia took the name Sister Beatrice, the name of Dante’s beloved.

In this day and age, the numbers of young Catholic women wishing to give up their freedom “for God” is dwindling.

What is worrying is that sexual harassment and abuse from priests and bishops continues, particularly in third world countries.  Rape is common because the clergy believe these nuns to be free from aids, unlike prostitutes. If the nuns’ abuse is uncovered, or they become pregnant, they are the ones to be thrown out onto the roads.

(See previous post  ‘Kiss of Betrayal’)

In an extreme case of double standards, always rife in the catholic Church, a nun at a Catholic hospital in Arizona was excommunicated because she approved an emergency abortion last year to save the life of a critically ill young patient.  Imagine the hundreds of  sexually abused girls and boys who could have been spared lives of misery, if paedophile priests had been excommunicated and reported to police, instead of being shifted around from parish to parish?

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From the pen of  The Ethical Nag:  The Vatican has now launched an “apostolic visitation,” or investigation, of every one of America’s 60,000 religious sisters, accused with having what Vatican spokesman Cardinal Franc Rodé calls “a feminist spirit” and “a secular mentality”. At a time when the male leadership can be blamed for bringing the church to a state of global crisis, even the modest roles accorded to female clerics have come under attack from these men.

Not surprisingly, the appeal of joining a Catholic religious order as a career choice is plummeting. Fewer than 4% of North American Catholic women have even considered becoming a nun, according to 2008 data from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. And that’s less than half the number compared to just five years earlier.

And no wonder. Dr. Tina Beattie, who teaches Catholic Studies at Roehampton University in the U.K., gives far more disturbing examples of how the Vatican treats its nuns.  For example:

“In 2001, senior leaders of women’s religious orders presented evidence to Rome of the widespread rape and abuse of nuns by priests and bishops, with a particular problem in Africa which has no cultural tradition of celibacy, and where the threat of HIV and Aids means that priests are more likely to prefer sex with nuns than with prostitutes. The Vatican acknowledged the problem and there was a brief flurry of media interest, but this is a scandal which has disappeared without a trace.”

I don’t know whether any Mercy nuns were sexually abused by Catholic clergy when I was a child  in their care, but I well remember the awe and deference the nuns exhibited in the presence of priests, bishops, and cardinals.  Once I understood the hypocrisy and double standard encouraged by the Church’s teachings, I found these displays sickening.

Joan of Arc & Pope Benedict

Mercy: St Bartholomew's Day, Paris, 1572. 'Ill-fated love affair between a Catholic & a Protestant'. John Everett Millais 1829-96. This is the day thousands of Protestants were slaughtered by Catholics.

Has Pope Benedict gone completely mad? He recently stated via a Catholic publication that politicians should behave like Joan Of Arc!   “With her deep prayer life and total devotion to serving God and the good of her fellow citizens, St. Joan of Arc is a wonderful model for Christian politicians”, Pope Benedict XVI said. “Hers is a beautiful example of holiness for lay people involved in politics, especially in difficult situations. Faith is the light that guided all her choices,” the pope said Jan. 26 during his weekly general audience.  What a load of b…….  This is just another Church smokescreen to hide its vast problems.

Joan of Arc’s real name Jeanne d’Arc, The Maid of  Orléans, France. Clad in a white suit of armour, and carrying her own standard, Jeanne was leading an array of loyal French fighters to battle against the English, who were trying to take possession of her beloved Orléans.  Jeanne and her followers won that battle but on the way to relieve Compiégne, she was captured and sold to the English by John of Luxembourg, and they handed her over to The Catholic Holy Inquisition.  It seems to me,  Jeanne was burnt at the stake because she was leading a French army against the British. It was politics not religion, but a smokescreen was desperately needed.  Easier to torture and murder a young woman if she was found guilty of heresy and sorcery; less public sympathy.  The British didn’t want the blood of a  heroine on their historical hands.

But, and here’s the rub: Recent historical evidence has challenged the traditional account of Jeanne d’Arc. The contention is that Jeanne d’Arc has been confused with Jehanne, the illegitimate daughter of Queen Isabeau of France and Louis, duc d’Orléans, brother of the King. Now, how is Pope Benedict going to fix this problem given the Church’s teachings on the grave ‘sin’ of sex outside marriage, not to mention illegitimate births and the spectre of purgatory?

The Catholic Church ‘forgave’ Jeanne and made her a saint in 1920.  Perhaps the Church has canonised the wrong woman?  Now wouldn’t that cause ructions at the Holy See?

But let’s get back to what the Pope is actually saying in the 21st Century: “Christian politicians should not worry about doing the best for their country, but rather spend their time praying and fighting for their religion,  ie  Catholicism”.  There have been enough religious wars over millennia, and they’re still going on!

Shouldn’t the Pope and the Vatican be spending their time bringing paedophile priests to justice and helping their abused victims instead of pontificating about a brutal and savage murder committed by the Catholic hierarchy in the 15th Century?  I believe that the reason priests have been brutalising children for centuries is that they have never been brought to justice for their crimes.  Instead the Church has “forgiven them their sins” and allowed them to continue to prey on innocents.   These evil priests have been “indulged” by the Catholic Church.

Quote from The Ethical Nag’s Blog:

John Swales was only 10 years old back in 1969 when he and later his two younger brothers as well were first assaulted by

Father Barry Glendinning at a summer camp for low-income kids in Ontario. He told Maclean’s magazine in its December 7, 2009 issue:

“The real failing here is the institutional response to these deviants. Every culture, every occupation, has these issues of sexual abuse. But few have the ability to conceal sexual abuse of children like the Catholic church does.”

In Catholic theology, an indulgence is the full or partial remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven. The indulgence is granted by the Catholic Church after the sinner has confessed and received absolution. The belief is that indulgences draw “House of Merit” accumulated by Christ’s  superabundantly meritorious sacrifice on the cross (what?!) and the virtues and penance of the saints. They are granted for specific good works, prayers,  and what the Church will not openly admit, money.  Lots of it.  We all know amny priests come from wealthy Catholic families.  No wonder deviant priests re-offend time and again!

Indulgences replaced the severe penances of the early Church. More exactly, they replaced the shortening of those penances that was allowed at the intercession of those imprisoned and those awaiting martyrdom for the faith.

Abuses in selling and granting indulgences were a major point of contention when Martin Luther  initiated the Protestant Reformation. (1517).

Celibacy and Sexual Abuse

Adam & Eve. A detail from Michelangelo's painting in Sistine Chapel in the Vatican

Because of the thousands of cases of sexual abuse perpetrated by paedophile Catholic priests, questions are being asked about the correlation between priestly celibacy and sexual abuse.The Vatican secretary of state,  insists there is no cause-and-effect link between priestly celibacy and the child abuse scandal rocking the Roman Catholic Church.  But how would he know that for sure when there has never been extensive research about this issue?  And, this very issue has not only been swept under the carpet for centuries, but in some cases has been condoned by Bishops.

To quote the secretary of state: “It has been amply demonstrated that celibacy, when faithfully observed, is of great value to their vocation and in helping the people of God…..there is no direct link between celibacy and the deviant behaviour of certain priests,” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, told the Spanish newspaper Vanguardia.  “On the contrary, it is precisely the failure to remain celibate that gradually degrades the life of a priest, until he ceases to be an example, a gift, a spiritual guide for others”.  This is so Catholic!   SIN is the problem!   That awful blemish we are all born with because Eve tempted Adam.   That means that the only actions  that will save the offending priests’ souls are prayers and penance.  But what about the victims: those poor innocent  children who have been robbed of their childhoods and in most cases, a peaceful adulthood.  I don’t see anywhere, the Vatican’s sorrow for the children so abused.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of two bishops implicated in the revelations of paedophile abuse by Catholic priests that have swept Europe and the Americas since November.

In Belgium Roger Vangheluwe, the first bishop directly implicated in the affair, resigned after admitting to abusing a minor several years ago.

Bishop James Moriarty, for his part, became the fourth bishop to resign since two major sex abuse scandals hit the Irish Catholic Church.  Revelations of large-scale paedophilia spanning decades have rocked the Catholic Church in countries including Ireland, Austria, the United States and the pope’s native Germany.  Bishops and cardinals were accused of protecting guilty clergy by moving them to other parishes  instead of handing them over to police for prosecution.   The priests were protected but not the children in those other parishes the paedophiles were sent to.

One alleged victim of a priest accused of molesting up to 200 boys at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin sued the Vatican and the Pope on Thursday in a bid to access secret files on investigations into sex abuse in the Church.   As I have stated in a previous post, there is little chance of any court being allowed access to Vatican files.  All archives are closely guarded by the Office of the Inquisition renamed the Congregation For The Doctrine of the Faith.

See post & book by Geoffrey Robertson QC, a must-read for all Catholics:   The Case of the Pope; Sexual Abuse & The Vatican.

Latest News release relating to the above:

THE Vatican is asking a US  judge to reject an attempt to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath in a sex abuse lawsuit on the grounds that there has been no evidence of a link to church officials in Rome.

The arguments filed on Thursday in the US District Court in Kentucky also say that forcing Benedict, a head of state, to give a deposition would violate international law. The US considers the Vatican to be a sovereign nation. The lawsuit accuses the Vatican, referred to in papers as the Holy See, of orchestrating a cover-up of priests sexually abusing children throughout the US. Louisville attorney William McMurry asked to depose Benedict and other Vatican officials in a motion in March, and the filing on Thursday was a response. Mr McMurry has also asked that the Vatican turn over administrative documents and respond to questions related to the abuse scandal in the US.

Lawyers for the Vatican argue that thousands of documents provided in a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville several years ago have turned up no connection to Rome. The Louisville archdiocese reached a settlement in 2003 with more than 240 abuse victims represented by Mr McMurry for $US25 million ($A28.87 million). Mr McMurry will have an opportunity to reply to the Vatican’s latest arguments in a response to the court.  While US dioceses have been sued over abuse by priests, the Kentucky lawsuit is the first US case to make it to the stage of determining whether victims have a negligence claim against the Vatican.  Filed in 2004 by three men abused by priests in the Louisville diocese, it argues in part that US bishops should be considered employees or officials of the Holy See.