World's Second Largest Cult Permits Abuse Of Child

[iris89]

World's Second Largest Cult Permits Abuse Of Children

Irish Church accused of abuse cover-up, Four archbishops turned a blind eye to child abuse, [source - BBC retrieved from news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8381119.stm on 11/26/2009]

A d**ning report into child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese has criticized the Catholic Church hierarchy for covering up the abuse.

The report investigated how Church and state authorities handled allegations of child abuse against 46 priests.

It found that the Church placed its own reputation above the protection of children in its care.

It also said that state authorities facilitated the cover-up by allowing the Church to operate outside the law.

Reacting to the report, the current Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin said "no words of apology would ever be sufficient" and offered "to each and every survivor, my apology, my sorrow and my shame for what happened to them".

He added that the "many good priests of the archdiocese" shared his sense of shame.

The "Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin" covered a period from 1975 to 2004.

It has laid bare a culture of concealment where church leaders prioritised the protection of their own institution above that of vulnerable children in their care.

Victims

The report said the avoidance of public outrage, which would inevitably follow high-profile prosecutions, appeared more important than preventing abusers from repeating their crimes.

Victim Marie Collins: "This is the end of a very long road"

Instead of reporting the allegations to civic authorities, those accused of horrific crimes were systematically shuffled from parish to parish where they could prey on new, unsuspecting victims.

The report stated: "The Dublin archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets."

It also said that the archdiocese "did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state".

It found that four archbishops - John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell - did not hand over information on abusers.

The report said that authorities in the Dublin archdiocese who were dealing with complaints of child sexual abuse "were all very well educated people".

It added that, considering many of them had qualifications in canon law, and in some cases civil law, their claims of ignorance were "very difficult to accept".

Above the law

Civic authorities in Ireland, especially the police, were also criticised for their cosy relationship with the Church.

Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern: "Persons who committed these dreadful crimes...will continue to be pursued"

The report states that senior members of the force regarded priests as being outside their remit and it claims some police officers reported abuse complaints to Church authorities instead of carrying out their own investigation.

The commissioner of the Irish police, Fachtna Murphy, said it made for "difficult and disturbing reading, detailing as it does many instances of sexual abuse and failure on the part of both Church and State authorities to protect victims".

He added: "The commission has found that in some cases, because of acts or omissions, individuals who sought assistance did not always receive the level of response or protection which any citizen in trouble is entitled to expect from An Garda Síochána (the Irish police).

He said he was "deeply sorry" for the failures.

Cardinal Sean Brady said he was 'deeply ashamed'

The Irish Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern, whose department commissioned the report, called it a "scandal on an astonishing scale" where the "welfare of children counted for nothing".

He vowed to bring those who had carried out the abuse to justice, regardless of the amount of time which had passed.

The Commission's work concentrated on a "representative sample" of complaints made by 320 children against 46 priests, 11 of whom were convicted of sexual assaults on children.

The number of complaints of abuse made by boys was more than double those submitted by girls.

The Commission said it was satisfied that "effective structures and procedures currently in operation" and that all complaints of clerical child sexual abuse are now reported to police.

Thursday's report comes six months after the publication of the Ryan report in May, which took submissions from 2,000 people who said they had suffered physical and sexual abuse while in the care of Catholic-run institutions.

The Ryan report, also known as the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, found church leaders knew that sexual abuse was "endemic" in boys' institutions.

[iris89]

Cult Characteristics:

Cults are characterized by a charismatic leader(s) who claim infallibility either on the basis of direct communication with a deity, for example, Almighty God (YHWH) or on the basis of ex Cathedra, absolute direction by a deity. Often they have many other features such as strangeness, weirdness, dangerousness, etc. But these are NOT defining features of a cult, but only relative features often associated with cults such as the Charles Manson group, the Brian David Mitchell group, the Osama bin Laden group, etc.

First strangeness and weirdness are only relative terms and not absolute since what appears strange to one individual may not appear strange to another and the same goes for weirdness. There is an animistic group in Africa that worships mushrooms where the whole congregation when they find a mushroom gets down and worships it, this is very strange and weird to most in the USA; however, many of our religious practices would seem very strange to them. Therefore, since strangeness and weirdness are relative terms and/or features, they can in no way be defining terms.

However, having a charismatic leader(s) who claim infallibility either on the basis of direct communication with a deity or on the basis of ex Cathedra is a defining none relative feature of all cults. Without this claim of infallibility, a group can NOT be a cult even if they are strange, weird, dangerous, etc. which are relative terms often fitting a cult in one specific context. To reemphasis, to be a cult a group of any kind must claim infallibility for its leader(s); if it does not it is something else other than a cult. This was brought out by one reporter as follows:

Bin Laden fits the definition of a cult leader, experts say
Cleveland Plain Dealer/October 28, 2001

Michael Sangiacomo
Independence -- Osama bin Laden is a religious leader who claims his authority comes directly from God and who wants to destroy people and countries that do not share his rigid religious beliefs.

That points to him being a cult leader, concluded speakers at this weekend's Leo J. Ryan Education Foundation national conference, held at the Hilton Cleveland South Hotel in Independence. The conference ends this morning.

He can dress his sect up any way he wants, but bin Laden is just one more apocalyptic cult figurehead who cites his inside track to the almighty as justification for abhorrent acts, the speakers said.

Second, In our modern world of the new millennium, the word "cult" has become largely overused and is now a catch-all for any group, religion or lifestyle which someone doesn't understand, or with which they happen to disagree. This is a dangerous trend, as many of the organizations labeled a cult by dissidents are truly legitimate groups. Once the taint of the term "cult" is applied to a particular group, it is often difficult to change that image to the public.

At this reporter stressed, "the word "cult" has become largely overused and is now a catch-all for any group, religion or lifestyle which someone doesn't understand, or with which they happen to disagree. This is a dangerous trend, as many of the organizations labeled a cult by dissidents are truly legitimate groups. Once the taint of the term "cult" is applied to a particular group, it is often difficult to change that image to the public."

Therefore, to separate what is really a cult from those groups falsely labeled cults by bigots that do not like them for one reason or another, it is necessary to determine if their leader(s) claim infallibility or not. If they do NOT claim infallibility, they are NOT a cult. If someone claims the leader(s) o***roup claim infallibility, then they should show proof of this or otherwise STOP MAKING FALSE ACCUSATIONS! If they continue to make false accusations, they are false accusers and liars, prima face.


To learn more, check out the following:

[1] religioustruths.proboards59.com/ An Educational Referral Forum

[2] www.network54.com/Forum/403209 A Forum Devoted to Exposing The False Religion of Islam

[3] jude3.proboards92.com/ A Free-Speech Forum For All

[4] www.freewebs.com/iris_the_preacher My web site.

Your Friend in Christ Iris89

[iris89]

Says it all - False Religion:
Pope apology disappoints, victims seek accountability, By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor – 2 hrs 40 mins ago [source – retrieved from news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100321/ts_nm/us_pope_abuse on 3/21/2010]
PARIS (Reuters) – Pope Benedict's apology to Ireland went further than any other papal statement on child sex abuse by priests, but still fell far too short for many victims of the scandals shaking the Roman Catholic Church across Europe.
Contrasting it with the past, bishops in several countries praised the letter as courageous for condemning abusive clerics. Victims measured it against what they hope to see in future -- sanctions for bishops they say helped hush up the problem.
The gap separating these views is the arena for the bitter public fight over clerical child abuse. Every new revelation gives the victims fresh ammunition and puts more pressure on the Church to undertake painful reforms it clearly wants to avoid.
"They still don't see this isn't just about individual cases, but about an overall structural problem (in the Church)," said Christian Weisner of the German lay movement We Are Church. "This letter still does not amount to a big breakthrough."
What the critics want is transparency and accountability, from full disclose of abuse to removal of complicit bishops.
Benedict's letter partly met their demands, expressing "shame and remorse" for the "sinful and criminal acts" Irish victims suffered. He stressed bishops could not hide abuse cases from police and ordered an inquiry into some Irish dioceses.
Beyond that, he made no mention of scandals shaking Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands nor hinted any bishops had to step down for leadership failures he sharply criticized.
"There is nothing in this letter to suggest that any new vision of leadership in the Catholic Church exists," said Maeve Lewis of the Irish victims' group One in Four.
PRESSURE ON PRELATES
Several European prelates seemed to indirectly confirm the Church had a structural problem by describing the pope's letter to Ireland as a warning to them and their churches as well.
"The sexual abuse scandal is not just an Irish problem. It's a Church scandal in many places and it is a Church scandal in Germany," Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops' Conference, told journalists on Saturday.
But he shied away from blaming this on a culture of secrecy among clerics concerned to hush up scandals, as victims do.
Zollitsch's meeting with journalists was especially awkward because he had to confirm reports he had failed to turn in an abuse suspect in the early 1990s. "I should have been more forceful in searching for witnesses and victims," he said.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the Irish primate, has heard bitter calls for his resignation after admitting he had two victims sign a secrecy agreement in 1975 while he was assistant to a bishop dealing with a notorious abuser, Rev Brendan Smyth.
Scathing Irish commentators have accused him of using "the Nuremberg defense" -- a reference to Nazi war criminals who claimed they were only following orders -- or being "a man of the cloth now recast as little more than a pen-pushing jobsworth."
One Irish bishop has resigned after being accused in an official report of covering up abuse cases. Three others cited there have handed in resignation letters but the Vatican has not accepted them, while a fifth has refused to offer to step down.
CHURCH VULNERABLE TO FUTURE SCANDALS
Some commentators have speculated that Benedict could not retire bishops who covered up abuse cases because his own stint as Munich archbishop from 1977 to 1982 was marred by the case of a reassigned predator priest who often worked with youths.
Church officials say the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had no part in that reassignment. In any case, Benedict is such a traditional churchman that his letter would probably not have been different even without the tenuous link to Munich.
But by avoiding bolder measures, the letter has left the defensive Church vulnerable to further buffeting from scandals that have not yet come to light but will.
"If a company had crisis management like this and was just as shy about replacing its managers, it would go broke," the Vienna daily Die Presse commented.
(Editing by Myra MacDonald)

[iris89]

Sinead O'Connor: 'There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope' [source - retrieved from www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/....0,5122266.story on 3/25/2010]

Years after her controversial 'Saturday Night Live' appearance, the Irish singer is still at odds with the Catholic Church, saying it must come clean about sexual-abuse allegations.
Reporting from Bray, Ireland - She shot to fame 20 years ago with her shaved head, chiseled cheeks and haunting rendition of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U." Then she gained notoriety when she tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II on American TV, calling him "the enemy" and urging people to fight child abuse.

Sinead O'Connor is still singing. And she's still speaking out against abuse -- only now her 1992 stunt on "Saturday Night Live" almost seems prescient as the Roman Catholic Church faces a growing catalog of complaints about child sexual and physical assault by priests in her Irish homeland and across Europe.

Such mistreatment was rampant here in Ireland, going back decades. By 1987, the Irish church was alarmed enough that it took out an insurance policy against future lawsuits and claims for compensation stemming from sexual-abuse allegations.

This past weekend, Pope Benedict XVI issued a "pastoral letter" apologizing to the flock in Ireland for the church's past failures. He did not outline any disciplinary action against the bishops who many here say covered up priestly misdeeds, though on Wednesday he accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee, who had been accused of failing to report suspected pedophile priests to police. The pope also pinned no blame on the Vatican itself for a culture of secrecy that critics say it deliberately fostered.

O'Connor, now 43 and a mother of four, spoke to The Times on Tuesday at her seaside home in Bray, south of Dublin, about the abuse scandal.

Do you feel the pope's letter was enough?

It's a study in the fine art of lying and actually betraying your own people. . . . He starts by saying that he's writing with great concern for the people of Ireland. If he was that concerned, why has it taken him 23 years to write a letter, and why did he or the last pope never get on an airplane and come to meet the victims in any of these countries and apologize?

The letter sells the Irish [church] hierarchy downriver by stating again and again that the Irish hierarchy has somehow acted independently of the Vatican. . . . The documents are there to prove that that's a lie. . . .

If you were the boss of a company and some of the employees of your company were known to sexually abuse children, you would fire them instantly. You would also go instantly to meet the people who had been abused and profusely apologize and offer your help in any way whatsoever to deal with this. . . . That has never happened.

As a cardinal, the pope wrote an order in 2001 demanding that abuse cases be dealt with in secret. But doesn't the directive also mention cooperating with civil authorities?

That document stated that all matters of abuse were to be sent to him in Rome, where he would decide whether they would be dealt with by Rome or locally by the bishops. They were to be dealt with exclusively by the church, and they were subject to pontifical secret, which means you can be excommunicated if you breach the secret. . . .

[It's true that] it's the first time ever that any document coming from the Vatican actually does say to the clergy that they should cooperate with civil authorities. . . . What I object to here is, the first time they said that was 2001. They knew back in 1987 at least that this was an issue. . . . They knew so much that they took out an insurance policy.

So what should the pope do?

There should be a full criminal investigation of the Catholic hierarchy of any country in which this has been an issue. There should be a full criminal investigation of the Vatican.

There should be a full criminal investigation of the pope. The pope should stand down for the fact that he did not act in a Christian fashion to protect children, and for the fact that his organization acted to preserve their business interests decade after decade rather than be concerned about the interests of children, and for showing so much disrespect for Christ, God, the victims, the rest of us, their own clergy. . . .

The Vatican and the pope need to get on their knees and confess the full truth in the same language they make us use in Mass. . . . They need to get on their knees, open everything up, be transparent, tell the truth, ask the people for forgiveness and prayers.

That confession is their only hope of survival into the 21st century. It's a rickety bridge, but it is a bridge. And personally, I would be willing to bring them across that little bridge into the 21st century and help them. . . .

If they don't do that, they will not survive. . . . I hope they do survive, because there's a lot that's really beautiful about Catholicism. Even though there are those of us who are fighting it like you would fight an abusive parent, you love the parent still and you want it to be healed.

What about the abuse victims?

He [the pope] says his concern is "to bring healing to the victims." But he's denying them the one thing which might actually bring them healing, which is a full confession from the Vatican. . . .

You're talking about some very broken people. . . . Life is very difficult for them. They can't hold down jobs, can't hold down relationships. . . . Life is difficult. Therapy costs a lot of money. These people don't make much money; hardly any of them are actually fit to work. They need the Vatican to cough up some of its billions [to] pay for these people to be able to live their lives.

Should Irish bishops resign, as a few have offered?

Resignation gets them off the hook. They should be criminally prosecuted. . . . If you or I covered up crimes like that, we'd be slap-bang in jail in five minutes, and rightly so. There's a double standard. . . .

What should the Irish people do?

It's the good-hearted, sweet Catholic people who go to Mass still despite all of this -- they are the people who have the power in their hands to get the Vatican on its knees and confess. . . . How these people can do that is by refusing to go to Mass, boycott them until they actually come to their knees and confess. . . .

The way we are at the moment, we're in a very dysfunctional relationship with an organization that's actually abusing us. And we can't see what's being done to us. We have the mentality of a battered wife who thinks it's her fault. If we had a friend in a similar relationship, we would beg him or her to walk away.

Yet you still consider yourself a Catholic?

I'm a Catholic, and I love God. . . . That's why I object to what these people are doing to the religion that I was born into. . . .

I'm passionately in love and always have been with what I call the Holy Spirit, which I believe the Catholic Church have held hostage and still do hold hostage. I think God needs to be rescued from them. They are not representing Christian values and Christian attitudes. If they were truly Christian, they would've confessed ages ago, and we wouldn't be having to batter the door down and try to get blood from a stone.

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Courtesy of Your Friend in Christ Iris89


To learn more, check out the following:

[1] religioustruths.proboards59.com/ An Educational Referral Forum

[2] www.network54.com/Forum/403209 A Forum Devoted to Exposing The False Religion of Islam

[3] jude3.proboards92.com/ A Free-Speech Forum For All

[4] www.freewebs.com/iris_the_preacher My web site.

Your Friend in Christ Iris89

[iris89]

Catholic abuse scandal edges closer to pope
The problem is no longer an American aberration, and Catholics want to know what Pope Benedict knew when he was archbishop of Munich.

Benedict in 1987, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (Giulio Broglio, Associated Press / March 16, 1987)
By Mitchell Landsberg and Henry Chu, March 27, 2010 [source - retrieved from www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-priests27-2010mar27,0,7530677.story?track=ntothtml on 3/27/2010]
Reporting from Los Angeles and London - First, it was an American problem. Then, an Irish problem. But as the scandal of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests has rocked continental Europe in recent weeks, observers inside and outside the church have begun to recognize that it is now very much a Vatican problem, one that is creeping ever closer to Pope Benedict XVI.

"The focus now is on Benedict," the U.S.-based National Catholic Reporter wrote Friday in a strongly worded editorial on the scandal. "What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?"

Revelations of abuse in Germany, particularly in the Munich archdiocese while Benedict was the archbishop, have seemingly put a lid on the argument by some in the Roman Catholic Church that sexually abusive priests were an American aberration, the result of lax morals and overblown news coverage in the United States.

They also have brought the crisis to Benedict's doorstep, with the news that, as archbishop of Munich, he approved the transfer of an abusive priest from another jurisdiction, and that later, as the church's top doctrinal official, he was in a position to know about a Wisconsin case in which the church failed to defrock a child-molesting priest.

The Vatican has responded sharply to new developments, defending Benedict against any implication that he failed to act against abusive priests.

A Vatican spokesman reacted swiftly Friday when the New York Times reported that Benedict, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had been copied on a memo notifying him that Father Peter Hullermann was being reassigned to pastoral work even as Hullermann was undergoing therapy for pedophilia. Hullermann was later convicted of molesting boys.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, dismissed the article as "mere speculation," and referred reporters to a statement by the Munich archdiocese saying Ratzinger had not been aware that the priest had returned to pastoral work.

The Vatican also reacted sharply to an earlier New York Times article, which said Ratzinger, as the church's top doctrinal official in the 1990s, had failed to act against the Wisconsin priest, who was believed to have abused as many as 200 deaf boys from the 1950s to the 1970s.

In that instance, as with the Munich case, church officials said the matter had been handled by a subordinate, not by Ratzinger.

Benedict has accepted the resignation of one of five Irish bishops who offered to quit over the scandal in their country, and he apologized to Irish Catholics in his pastoral letter sent to the church in Ireland last week. But he has yet to publicly demand any resignations or to comment on the scandals roiling his native Germany, much to the consternation of some Catholics there.

"If the pope wants to solve the problem himself by writing letters to every country where there's a crisis, he will never be finished,"said Christian Weisner, a spokesman in Munich for the We Are Church reform movement.

From 1981 until his election as pope in 2005, Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he was responsible for upholding doctrinal purity in the church. In 1985, the first rumblings of the sexual abuse crisis occurred in the United States when a Louisiana priest pleaded guilty to 11 counts of molestation. As more cases came to light through the 1990s and 2000s, the Vatican attitude was clear: Something was wrong with America.

In 1993 Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls spoke out about the crisis in the United States. "One would have to ask if the real culprit is not a society that is irresponsibly permissive, hyper-inflated with sexuality [and] capable of creating circumstances that induce even people who have received a solid moral formation to commit grave moral acts," he said

No one is singling out the United States that way now. And the pope's statements suggest that he sees the gravity of the situation. His expressions of deep remorse go well beyond anything said by his predecessor, John Paul II.

The pope "is seen as one 'who gets it' when it comes to the horror of clergy sexual abuse," Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York wrote in a blog this week. "Who can forget his forthright references to this scourge at least half a dozen times in his visit to our country nearly two years ago, and his moving meeting with victim-survivors? And now we have his blunt, realistic pastoral letter to Ireland on the crises there. He must be asking, as we all do, 'When will it all end?' "

Father Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest who is a senior research fellow at Georgetown University, said of the pope:

"If you look at some of his early quotes, it's clear that he didn't quite get it, nor did anyone else in the church at that time. But he did grow. . . . He learned and came to understand the seriousness of this problem a lot faster than a lot of other people in the Vatican, including Pope John Paul II. And he's been a lot better on this than John Paul II."

But Benedict has yet to satisfy many European and American Catholics, who are demanding greater transparency and stronger action against those in the hierarchy whom they accuse of coddling abusive priests and covering up the problem.

The stakes are high, the National Catholic Reporter suggested in its editorial.

"We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history," the independent Catholic newspaper said. "How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come."

David Quinn, former editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper and a religious affairs columnist in Dublin, Ireland, said, "There really is a bush fire raging and it's gone beyond his capacity to put it out. The thing is just cascading at an incredible rate."

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[iris89]

Catholic abuse scandal edges closer to pope
The problem is no longer an American aberration, and Catholics want to know what Pope Benedict knew when he was archbishop of Munich.

Benedict in 1987, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. (Giulio Broglio, Associated Press / March 16, 1987)
By Mitchell Landsberg and Henry Chu, March 27, 2010 [source - retrieved from www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-priests27-2010mar27,0,7530677.story?track=ntothtml on 3/27/2010]
Reporting from Los Angeles and London - First, it was an American problem. Then, an Irish problem. But as the scandal of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests has rocked continental Europe in recent weeks, observers inside and outside the church have begun to recognize that it is now very much a Vatican problem, one that is creeping ever closer to Pope Benedict XVI.

"The focus now is on Benedict," the U.S.-based National Catholic Reporter wrote Friday in a strongly worded editorial on the scandal. "What did he know? When did he know it? How did he act once he knew?"

Revelations of abuse in Germany, particularly in the Munich archdiocese while Benedict was the archbishop, have seemingly put a lid on the argument by some in the Roman Catholic Church that sexually abusive priests were an American aberration, the result of lax morals and overblown news coverage in the United States.

They also have brought the crisis to Benedict's doorstep, with the news that, as archbishop of Munich, he approved the transfer of an abusive priest from another jurisdiction, and that later, as the church's top doctrinal official, he was in a position to know about a Wisconsin case in which the church failed to defrock a child-molesting priest.

The Vatican has responded sharply to new developments, defending Benedict against any implication that he failed to act against abusive priests.

A Vatican spokesman reacted swiftly Friday when the New York Times reported that Benedict, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had been copied on a memo notifying him that Father Peter Hullermann was being reassigned to pastoral work even as Hullermann was undergoing therapy for pedophilia. Hullermann was later convicted of molesting boys.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, dismissed the article as "mere speculation," and referred reporters to a statement by the Munich archdiocese saying Ratzinger had not been aware that the priest had returned to pastoral work.

The Vatican also reacted sharply to an earlier New York Times article, which said Ratzinger, as the church's top doctrinal official in the 1990s, had failed to act against the Wisconsin priest, who was believed to have abused as many as 200 deaf boys from the 1950s to the 1970s.

In that instance, as with the Munich case, church officials said the matter had been handled by a subordinate, not by Ratzinger.

Benedict has accepted the resignation of one of five Irish bishops who offered to quit over the scandal in their country, and he apologized to Irish Catholics in his pastoral letter sent to the church in Ireland last week. But he has yet to publicly demand any resignations or to comment on the scandals roiling his native Germany, much to the consternation of some Catholics there.

"If the pope wants to solve the problem himself by writing letters to every country where there's a crisis, he will never be finished,"said Christian Weisner, a spokesman in Munich for the We Are Church reform movement.

From 1981 until his election as pope in 2005, Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he was responsible for upholding doctrinal purity in the church. In 1985, the first rumblings of the sexual abuse crisis occurred in the United States when a Louisiana priest pleaded guilty to 11 counts of molestation. As more cases came to light through the 1990s and 2000s, the Vatican attitude was clear: Something was wrong with America.

In 1993 Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls spoke out about the crisis in the United States. "One would have to ask if the real culprit is not a society that is irresponsibly permissive, hyper-inflated with sexuality [and] capable of creating circumstances that induce even people who have received a solid moral formation to commit grave moral acts," he said

No one is singling out the United States that way now. And the pope's statements suggest that he sees the gravity of the situation. His expressions of deep remorse go well beyond anything said by his predecessor, John Paul II.

The pope "is seen as one 'who gets it' when it comes to the horror of clergy sexual abuse," Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York wrote in a blog this week. "Who can forget his forthright references to this scourge at least half a dozen times in his visit to our country nearly two years ago, and his moving meeting with victim-survivors? And now we have his blunt, realistic pastoral letter to Ireland on the crises there. He must be asking, as we all do, 'When will it all end?' "

Father Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest who is a senior research fellow at Georgetown University, said of the pope:

"If you look at some of his early quotes, it's clear that he didn't quite get it, nor did anyone else in the church at that time. But he did grow. . . . He learned and came to understand the seriousness of this problem a lot faster than a lot of other people in the Vatican, including Pope John Paul II. And he's been a lot better on this than John Paul II."

But Benedict has yet to satisfy many European and American Catholics, who are demanding greater transparency and stronger action against those in the hierarchy whom they accuse of coddling abusive priests and covering up the problem.

The stakes are high, the National Catholic Reporter suggested in its editorial.

"We now face the largest institutional crisis in centuries, possibly in church history," the independent Catholic newspaper said. "How this crisis is handled by Benedict, what he says and does, how he responds and what remedies he seeks, will likely determine the future health of our church for decades, if not centuries, to come."

David Quinn, former editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper and a religious affairs columnist in Dublin, Ireland, said, "There really is a bush fire raging and it's gone beyond his capacity to put it out. The thing is just cascading at an incredible rate."

[e-mail]

[iris89]

Future Pope Ignores Pedophile Priest Problem:

While of course it is impossible for any religion and/or group to prevent penetration by evil pedophiles, when they are discovered the victims should be instructed to report the pedophiles to the police; however, the future Pope neither took action against them and/or advised victims to report their evil action to the police. Now to see how two different groups handled this evil that had penetrated their groups, go to:

[go] Child Sexual Molestation's - Two Religious Groups Different Take On The Problem: at,

religioustruths.proboards59.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=immoralty&thread=1166094192

See news article below, also!

AP EXCLUSIVE: Future pope stalled pedophile case, By GILLIAN FLACCUS, Associated Press Writer Gillian Flaccus, Associated Press Writer – 22 mins ago [source - retrieved from news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_pope_church_abuse on 4/9/2010]

LOS ANGELES – The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican's insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog office.

The letter, signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was typed in Latin and is part of years of correspondence between the Diocese of Oakland and the Vatican about the proposed defrocking of the Rev. Stephen Kiesle.
The Vatican refused to comment on the contents of the letter Friday, but a spokesman confirmed it bore Ratzinger's signature.

"The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," the Rev. Federico Lombardi said. "It is not strange that there are single documents which have Cardinal Ratzinger's signature."

The diocese recommended removing Kiesle (KEEZ'-lee) from the priesthood in 1981, the year Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican office that shared responsibility for disciplining abusive priests.
The case then languished for four years at the Vatican before Ratzinger finally wrote to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. It was two more years before Kiesle was removed; during that time he continued to do volunteer work with children through the church.

In the November 1985 letter, Ratzinger says the arguments for removing Kiesle are of "grave significance" but added that such actions required very careful review and more time. He also urged the bishop to provide Kiesle with "as much paternal care as possible" while awaiting the decision, according to a translation for AP by Professor Thomas Habinek, chairman of the University of Southern California Classics Department.

But the future pope also noted that any decision to defrock Kiesle must take into account the "good of the universal church" and the "detriment that granting the dispensation can provoke within the community of Christ's faithful, particularly considering the young age." Kiesle was 38 at the time.
Kiesle had been sentenced in 1978 to three years' probation after pleading no contest to misdemeanor charges of lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two young boys in a San Francisco Bay area church rectory.
As his probation ended in 1981, Kiesle asked to leave the priesthood and the diocese submitted papers to Rome to defrock him.

In his earliest letter to Ratzinger, Cummins warned that returning Kiesle to ministry would cause more of a scandal than stripping him of his priestly powers.

"It is my conviction that there would be no scandal if this petition were granted and that as a matter of fact, given the nature of the case, there might be greater scandal to the community if Father Kiesle were allowed to return to the active ministry," Cummins wrote in 1982.

While papers obtained by the AP include only one letter with Ratzinger's signature, correspondence and internal memos from the diocese refer to a letter dated Nov. 17, 1981, from the then-cardinal to the bishop. Ratzinger was appointed to head the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a week later.

California church officials wrote to Ratzinger at least three times to check on the status of Kiesle's case. At one point, a Vatican official wrote to say the file may have been lost and suggested resubmitting materials.
Diocese officials considered writing Ratzinger again after they received his 1985 response to impress upon him that leaving Kiesle in the ministry would harm the church, Rev. George Mockel wrote in a memo to the Oakland bishop.
"My own reading of this letter is that basically they are going to sit on it until Steve gets quite a bit older," the memo said. "Despite his young age, the particular and unique circumstances of this case would seem to make it a greater scandal if he were not laicized."

As Kiesle's fate was being weighed in Rome, the priest returned to suburban Pinole to volunteer as a youth minister at St. Joseph Church, where he had served as associate pastor from 1972 to 1975.
Kiesle was ultimately stripped of his priestly powers in 1987, though the documents do not indicate when, how or why. They also don't indicate what role — if any — Ratzinger had in the decision.

Kiesle continued to volunteer with children, according to Maurine Behrend, who worked in the Oakland diocese's youth ministry office in the 1980s. After learning of his history, Behrend complained to church officials. When nothing was done she wrote a letter, which she showed to the AP.

"Obviously nothing has been done after EIGHT months of repeated notifications," she wrote. "How are we supposed to have confidence in the system when nothing is done? A simple phone call to the pastor from the bishop is all it would take."
She eventually confronted Cummins at a confirmation and Kiesle was gone a short time later, Behrend said.

Kiesle was arrested and charged in 2002 with 13 counts of child molestation from the 1970s. All but two were thrown out after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a California law extending the statute of limitations.
He pleaded no contest in 2004 to a felony for molesting a young girl in his Truckee home in 1995 and was sentenced to six years in state prison.
Kiesle, now 63 and a registered sex offender, lives in a Walnut Creek gated community, according to his address listed on the Megan's Law sex registry. An AP reporter was turned away when attempting to reach him for comment.
William Gagen, an attorney who represented Kiesle in 2002, did not return a call for comment.

More than a half-dozen victims reached a settlement in 2005 with the Oakland diocese alleging Kiesle had molested them as young children.
"He admitted molesting many children and bragged that he was the Pied Piper and said he tried to molest every child that sat on his lap," said Lewis VanBlois, an attorney for six Kiesle victims who interviewed the former priest in prison. "When asked how many children he had molested over the years, he said 'tons.'"
Cummins, the now-retired bishop, told the AP during an interview at his Oakland home that he "didn't really care for" Kiesle, but he didn't recall writing to Ratzinger concerning the case.

"I wish I did write to Cardinal Ratzinger. I don't think I was that smart," Cummins, now 82, told AP.

Documents obtained by the AP last week revealed similar instances of Vatican stalling in cases involving two Arizona clergy.
In one case, the future pope took over the abuse case of the Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.
In the second, the bishop called Msgr. Robert Trupia a "major risk factor" in a letter to Ratzinger. There is no indication in those files that Ratzinger responded.

The Vatican has called the accusations "absolutely groundless" and said the facts were being misrepresented.
___
Associated Press writers Brooke Donald in Oakland, Eric Gorski in Denver, John Mone in San Diego, Raquel Maria Dillon in Los Angeles and Victor L. Simpson in Rome contributed to this report.

Courtesy of Your Friend in Christ Iris89

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[iris89]

Belgian bishop quits over abuse
Roger Vangheluwe, Belgium's longest serving bishop, has stepped down after admitting to sexually abusing a young boy about 25 years ago. (Peter Maenhoudt, Associated Press / February 15, 2007)
[source – retrieved from www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-fg-belgium-bishop-wire-20100424,0,4530096.story on 4/26/2010]
BRUSSELS
Belgium's longest serving bishop resigned Friday, saying he was "enormously sorry" for having sexually abused a young boy about 25 years ago.

The resignation of Roger Vangheluwe, 73, the Bishop of Bruges since 1984, was the first from Belgium since a child abuse scandal began testing the Catholic Church several months ago in Europe and the United States.

Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard of Belgium read a statement in which Vangheluwe announced his resignation and admitted to sexual abuse.

"When I was not yet a bishop, and some time later, I abused a boy," Vangheluwe said in the statement. He did not attend the news conference, but said Pope Benedict XVI had accepted his resignation.

"This has marked the victim forever. The wound does not heal. Neither in me nor the victim," Vangheluwe's statement said, adding that he repeatedly has asked the victim and his family for forgiveness.

"I am enormously sorry," he said. Vangheluwe had been due to retire next year.

Leonard called Vangheluwe a "great brother and dynamic bishop," but said that his transgression would shock many.

"We are aware of the crisis of confidence his resignation will set in motion," Leonard said. But he stressed the Catholic Church in Belgium was determined to "turn over a leaf from a not very distant past."

Leonard became Belgium's archbishop this year.

In his Easter homily, he addressed the pedophilia scandals that have surfaced in the Catholic Church, saying that in the past "the reputation of church leaders was given a higher priority than that of abused children."

As elsewhere, the Catholic Church in Belgium has a weak record of cracking down on sexual abusers in its ranks.

In 2000 it created a panel to look into abuse complaints that quickly clashed with the church leadership. The panel has accused the church of tardiness in compensating victims.

Hundreds of people have come forward in recent months, including in Pope Benedict's native Germany, accusing priests of raping and abusing them while bishops and other church higher-ups turned a blind eye.

This week, the Vatican has said it would do everything in its power to bring justice to abusive priests and implement "effective measures" to protect children.

It recently published guidelines instructing bishops to report abuse to police when civil laws require it. The Vatican insists that has long been church policy, though it was never before explicitly written.

[iris89]

Belgium Police suspect Catholic Church hiding criminal activity:

“Vatican astonished at Belgian police raid, By ALESSANDRA RIZZO, Associated Press Writer Alessandra Rizzo, Associated Press Writer – [source – retrieved from news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100625/ap_on_re_eu/eu_vatican_belgium on 6/25/2010]
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican said Friday it was astonished and outraged that Belgian police investigating priestly sex abuse had conducted raids that also targeted the graves of two archbishops.
The Vatican summoned the Belgian ambassador to the Holy See to convey its anger over the raids, which also included the home and offices of the retired archbishop of Belgium. The ambassador was called in for a meeting with the Vatican's foreign minister.
In a statement, the Vatican said any sinful and criminal abuse of minors from members of the church must be condemned and repeated that there is a need for justice and amends.
But it added, "The Secretariat of State also expresses astonishment at the way in which the search took place." It expressed "outrage over the violation of the tombs."
On Thursday, police raided the home and former office of former Archbishop Godfried Danneels, taking documents and Danneels' personal computer. Police and prosecutors did not say if Danneels was suspected of abuse himself or simply had records pertaining to allegations against another person. He was not questioned.
Investigators also opened the graves of archbishops in the St. Rombouts Cathedral in Mechlin, north of Brussels, looking for possibly incriminating documents, said Jean-Marc Meilleur, spokesman for the Brussels public prosecutor.
Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, Belgium's current archbishop, condemned the search of the cathedral, saying that is stuff for "crime novels and 'The Da Vinci Code.'"
Separately, police seized the records of an independent panel investigating sexual abuse by priests, some 500 cases in all. The victims are mostly men now in their 60s and 70s.
This also drew the condemnation of the Vatican, which said it regretted the violation of the confidentiality due the victims of child abuse.
The Brussels prosecutor's office said the raids followed recent statements to police related to the sexual abuse of children within the church.
It was the latest development in a sex abuse scandal that has shaken the Roman Catholic Church in Europe and beyond for months.
Reports of rape and other sexual abuse of minors in seminars, schools and other church-run institutions have piled up. Victims have come forward accusing priests of abuse and bishops of covering up crimes in order to safeguard the church's name.
Pope Benedict XVI has begged forgiveness from victims and promised to "do everything possible" to protect children.
News of the Belgian raid was welcomed by the U.S. victims group SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which urged police and prosecutors across the world to use their full powers to gain access to church records. By contrast, the group criticized the Vatican's reaction.
"Vatican officials who criticize the Belgian police raid of the Brussels church hierarchy should be ashamed of themselves," Joelle Casteix of SNAP said in a statement Friday. "While Roman church officials talk about stopping abuse, Belgian police officials take action to stop abuse."’