Sex abuse in church

[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.

[wombat2u2004]

An interesting clause...........
"Across three decades, Ratzinger was key to the appointment of bishops whose overriding commitment was the protection of pope-centered clerical authority. Terrified of acting on their own, they had one eye eternally on Rome. “Scandal’’ was their nightmare. Between an abused child and a predator priest, their choice was always simple: protecting the power structure meant protecting the priest."

[kokopup]

"Across three decades, Ratzinger was key to the appointment of bishops whose overriding commitment was the protection of pope-centered clerical authority. Terrified of acting on their own, they had one eye eternally on Rome. “Scandal’’ was their nightmare. Between an abused child and a predator priest, their choice was always simple: protecting the power structure meant protecting the priest.

If you read the link that I put in Post 101 it details how Ratzinger used "Vatican 2" to create the culture of secrecy that has spawned the churches present problems. While his intention may have been good the end results have turned into a disaster that even he, based on his recent declarations, must realize was a mistake. It is time for Vatican 3 to undo the Problems created by the Vatican 2 fundamentalist. The man now going by "Pope Benedict the 16th" was the leader of that group. He just about has to step aside for the present problems to be resolved.

http://www.weirdload.com/ratzi-responsible.pdf

[wombat2u2004]

The man now going by "Pope Benedict the 16th" was the leader of that group. He just about has to step aside for the present problems to be resolved.

Good. The guilty and their protectors must be punished by law. (And I don't mean Canon Law)

[lizbud]

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.

I wondered what happened to the great changes that Vatican II was
supposed to bring. I enjoyed Carroll's article. I don't know enough about
the "politics" of the church in Rome. Thanks for the link which I shall share.

[RICHARD]

LOLOLOLOL,

I refuse to read PDF documents with little numbers at the end of sentences.

Loved the Monty Python reference, but got lost when he started to 'pontificate' on all the stuff we already know, suspect and will never find out about the church.

Let's talk Baltimore Catechism instead?

---------

I still think Maureen Dowd needs to change the daguerreotype she uses in the headers of her columns, She hasn't aged well. She can still photoshop anything new she decides to go with.


LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL,

Casual Friday was the cause for child abuse in the church. They were hoping to burn out the Catholic School Girl fantasies that most of us guys that went to private school still have.

I remember looking up a plaid skirt or two wondering why the nuns were measuring the difference between the hem and top of the knee....