Sex abuse in church

[RICHARD]

Richard if I may. Your question on why children who are abused do not speak up at the time. I can answer that easily. Fear, shame, gulit.
My cousins were sexually abused by their father. Since my one cousin is two months my senior her and I were very very close. I knew all about the abuse. We were between 12 and 14 when this was going on.
I wanted her to tell, she was terrified. My dad was a cop at the time. I never said a word. She knew my aunt her mother would not believe her and still worst she was afraid her mother would do nothing to stop it for fear of losing her home. I tried for years to have her tell, she told me over and over again if I did tell she would kill herself. That is a heavy burden and I could not risk that. So at 13 I did nothing.
The truth finally came out when her father was chasing her through the house and she climbed on the roof to get away from him and my younger aunt showed up and said "what the hell are you doing on the roof".
He was brought to court but my cousins were too terrified and ashamed to testify. Their lives were ruined be this.

The priests have 'god' on their sides.

I took a sex ed class and we touched on kid abuse. I have no children, but I dated a gal who was molested as a child and saw the "death" of parts of her soul.

People who abuse kids need to be exposed as soon as possible-but there are times that the system can work against the innocent.

One thing that is very sketchy about reinforcing the "If someone bad touches you in your special place" mantra is that we empower kids with the idea that they have a voice should they be abused, but, it can also be used as a 'weapon' against any adult they may have a difference with.

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My sis hit my niece in the arse with a shoe. Because my niece had never pushed my sis to the point of corporal punishment? My niece was devastated, confided with a friend that "MOM beat me with a shoe" and the school, cops and social services had to be called in to make sure that no kid was hurt in the writing of this post!!!

Embarrassing? Yeah, but at the cost of keeping a child safe? I have to say that erring on the side of caution is good, but, we have to take time to really look at what may have transpired in each case.

I know that the topic was the church and child abuse and apologize for taking it out-of-bounds. C.A. is a real problem and not JUST a church problem. It's a problem that need to be exposed for what it is, A crime against children.

But, we also have to empower-I really hate that term-our children to use that knowledge with common sense.

[Marigold2]

The priets have god on their side? What god allows sex abuse of a child to continue, be hidden and not stopped?
Bit confused here. Hard to tell if you are joking or not.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt because it is hard to tell when one is writing words. I cannot see you smile, frown, laugh or raise your eyebrows. And luckly you can't see me sitting here in my PJ's. LOL

[wombat2u2004]

So, you find me distasteful?

I would put myself near anyone's lips.

Careful mate. There's a member or two here that may well view it as child abuse if you get too close to their lips.

[wombat2u2004]

The priets have god on their side? What god allows sex abuse of a child to continue, be hidden and not stopped?

God on their side ???? Surely God would not condone such crimes against children.
I think it would be more like....the church and the pope is on their side.

[RICHARD]

The priets have god on their side? What god allows sex abuse of a child to continue, be hidden and not stopped?
Bit confused here. Hard to tell if you are joking or not.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt because it is hard to tell when one is writing words. I cannot see you smile, frown, laugh or raise your eyebrows. And luckly you can't see me sitting here in my PJ's. LOL

My comment was meant to be sarcastic.

Remember that the RCC goes by the 'confess and your sins will be absolved'.

So, how many times would priests play life like a video game? Just hit the RESET button and carry on?

NO god would allow a child to be hurt that way.

None that I know of.

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WOM,

My cut-off is 30 years old. I can't even look at the Playboy centerfolds w/o feeling dirty.

[wombat2u2004]

WOM,
My cut-off is 30 years old. I can't even look at the Playboy centerfolds w/o feeling dirty.

Me to Maturity has a way of speaking for itself....eh ???

[pomtzu]

Do what I do mate, shove em on ignore, and then you don't have to read the junk mail.

LOL
Maybe I'll do that - right after I sweep up some crumbs.

[lizbud]

Heh, well it really is all about you, isn’t it, John?

Marigold, apologies. I'm not being a particularly good friend here! Promise I’ll smirk to myself only at the beastie after this post.

Haha, you have a go at the Catholic Church all you want, my friend, for you see it singles you out for the person you are - racist, homophobic, a little sexist, and when it comes down to the boil, against anything or anyone who might call you on something.

You made a habit of picking on a young girl the first time around you were here.

You were nasty for the mere reason that she disagreed with you a few times.

You are unlike any others on the forum here, who at least have the decency to drop or at least quieten their discrepancies with each other over time. Well, try it on with me all you like, matie, I frankly do not give a toss.

I had the mis/fortune of stumbling across a few Youtube comments you made some time after your PT departure, and evidently you can’t contain your exuberance to irk people there either. Tsk tsk, you should choose a less unique username, says I.

And I have no doubt that I will be flamed for this, or that this post will be deleted, and that few will choose to publicly back me. I’ll take a defeat, or a slap, should it come, so long as others know I‘m prepared to stand in the firing line. At least I don’t depend on the ignore button to shut out the words I don’t want to hear.

And, silly man, were you not so self-righteous in that respect, you would have seen me agreeing with you in some threads, against people whom I sure as hell prefer and respect over you. I’m able to move on. Ask Blue, the pair of us have had quite the gripes! Can’t say I blame him if he’s not all that fond of me. But in this thread, he’s right, IMO, and I support his words. It’s called being respectful.

The comment I made was not particularly about your posts, since if they seem to contain too many consecutive exclamation marks and other various punctuation symbols, I don’t often read them. It was directed at the people I know can ‘hear’ me in this thread, why on earth should I address it to you?

You and I - chalk and cheese. You say I’m evil and angry, I say you’re pathetic and laughable. We ain’t never gonna be happy until one of us has gone. And I hold out that, if it’s not me that this time sends you storming off, it’ll be someone else. And if I have to be got shut of before that happens, well, that’ll be a shame for me, since I care a lot about many people here. I’ll only have my snappiness and sense of justice to blame for that, but my gawd do I hold it dear. I won’t be changing that anytime soon.

I would be grateful if someone not on the naughty list could quote me so that I can correspond with this gentleman. It is all I wish to say to him.

I’ll expect the arrival of the cavalry, that’s cool. My gripes are not with you.

Hi Zara,

I love the way the English put things. "Chalk & Cheese" LOL

[Lady's Human]

Maybe its time to lock this.

The cheerleading squad is back.

[wombat2u2004]

Cheese" LOL

Cheese ??? Did you mention cheese ???
I'll have some of that with my water crackers and gin

[Grace]

From the NY Times - I don't always read Maureen Dowd, but this one caught my eye. She is saying much the same as the leader of my Bible Study group - who was once a nun.

April 7, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
The Church’s Judas Moment
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

I’m a Catholic woman who makes a living being adversarial. We have a pope who has instructed Catholic women not to be adversarial.

It’s a conundrum.

I’ve been wondering, given the vitriolic reaction of the New York archbishop to my column defending nuns and the dismissive reaction of the Vatican to my column denouncing the church’s response to the pedophilia scandal, if they are able to take a woman’s voice seriously. Some, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, seem to think women are trying to undermine the church because of abortion and women’s ordination.

I thought they might respond better to a male Dowd.

My brother Kevin is conservative and devout — his hobby is collecting crèches — and has raised three good Catholic sons. When I asked him to share his thoughts on the scandal, I learned, shockingly, that we agreed on some things. He wrote the following:

“In pedophilia, the church has unleashed upon itself a plague that threatens its very future, and yet it remains in a curious state of denial. The church I grew up in was black and white, no grays. That’s why my father, an Irish immigrant, liked it so much. The chaplain of the Police and Fire departments told me once ‘Your father was a fierce Catholic, very fierce.’

My brothers and I were sleepily at his side for the monthly 8 a.m. Holy Name Mass and the guarding of the Eucharist in the middle of the night during the 40-hour ritual at Easter. Once during a record snowstorm in 1958, we were marched single-file to church for Mass only to find out the priests next door couldn’t get out of the rectory.

The priest was always a revered figure, the embodiment of Christ changing water into wine. (Older parishioners took it literally.) The altar boys would drink the dregs.

When I was in the 7th grade, one of the new priests took four of us to the drive-in restaurant and suggested a game of ‘pink belly’ on the way back; we pulled up a boy’s shirt and slapped his belly until it was pink. When the new priest joined in, it seemed like more groping than slapping. But we thought it was inadvertent. And my parents never would have believed a priest did anything inappropriate anyway. A boy in my class told me much later that the same priest climbed into bed with him in 1958 at a rectory sleepover, but my friend threw him to the floor. The priest protested he was sleepwalking. Three days later, the archbishop sent the priest to a rehab place in New Mexico; he ended up as a Notre Dame professor.

Vatican II made me wince. The church declared casual Friday. All the once-rigid rules left to the whim of the flock. The Mass was said in English (rendering useless my carefully learned Latin prayers). Holy days of obligation were optional. There were laypeople on the heretofore sacred ground of the altar — performing the sacraments and worse, handling the Host. The powerful symbolism of the priest turning the Host into the body of Christ cracked like an egg.

In his book, ‘Goodbye! Good Men,’ author Michael Rose writes that the liberalized rules set up a takeover of seminaries by homosexuals.

Vatican II liberalized rules but left the most outdated one: celibacy. That vow was put in place originally because the church did not want heirs making claims on money and land. But it ended up shrinking the priest pool and producing the wrong kind of candidates — drawing men confused about their sexuality who put our children in harm’s way.

The church is dying from a thousand cuts. Its cover-up has cost a fortune and been a betrayal worthy of Judas. The money spent came from social programs, Catholic schools and the poor. This should be a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. I asked a friend of mine recently what he would do if his child was molested after the church knew. ‘I would probably kill someone,’ he replied.

We must reassess. Married priests and laypeople giving the sacraments are not going to destroy the church. Based on what we have seen the last 10 years, they would be a bargain. It is time to go back to the disciplines that the church was founded on and remind our seminaries and universities what they are. (Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols on stage to get President Obama to speak was not exactly fierce.)

The storm within the church strikes at what every Catholic fears most. We take our religion on faith. How can we maintain that faith when our leaders are unworthy of it?”

source

[pomtzu]

From the NY Times - I don't always read Maureen Dowd, but this one caught my eye. She is saying much the same as the leader of my Bible Study group - who was once a nun.



source

Thanks for this post, Gretchen. I found it interesting and enlightening - especially since your bible study leader is much in agreement with what was written.

[wombat2u2004]

From the NY Times - I don't always read Maureen Dowd, but this one caught my eye. She is saying much the same as the leader of my Bible Study group - who was once a nun.



source

An excellent read Gretchen.
Thankyou for posting that.

[lizbud]

From the NY Times - I don't always read Maureen Dowd, but this one caught my eye. She is saying much the same as the leader of my Bible Study group - who was once a nun.



source

She had a excellent article on the church & this whole mess, in Easter
Sunday's paper. Might like that one as well.

[Grace]

She had a excellent article on the church & this whole mess, in Easter
Sunday's paper. Might like that one as well.

I did read that one. Another good opinion writer is James Carroll for the Boston Globe. He was once a priest, and writes about many subjects, including this current mess within the Church. His latest is here.