generalspeaking

Societal Dysfunction

"Almost to a body, the [surviving] women described them [Magdalene Laundries] as 'Dickensian'."
"Everything was taken away that was a reminder of a possession of identity. [The institutions based on the notion of contagious] moral pollution."
"They're told that they are bad, they're shameful, they're sluts, that they have done something really wrong. The state has imprisoned them and the Church has imprisoned them, and their families have abandoned them."
"The language that's used to describe them is shameful -- you need to clean, you need to clean, you need to clean, you need to be penitent. You are not worthy of your old name. You may not mention  your former life. This is a stripping-away, through ideology and words, that creates a stigma that becomes internalized and believed -- believed as fact."
"It broke their resistance to other more immediate and explicit forms of violence in their lives."
"The state was working with the church, and families were, too."
"[Women were seen as] solely responsible for any sexual transgression that's happening in society."
"The very system of incarceration that was supposed to reform them, became a significant factor in shaping their lifelong inequality. Those who the church and state targeted for saving were simultaneously treated as bad, dirty and unsalvageable."
Rie Croll, associate professor of social cultural studies, Memorial University, Newfoundland

Relatives of victims of the Magdalene Laundries hold a candle lit vigil in solidarity with Justice for Magdalene Survivors and their families outside Leinster House in Dublin, Ireland, on Feb. 19, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Peter Morrison

"Those poor women. They staggered on to the street [at the 1996 closure of the last Magdalene laundry in Dublin]."
"He said [Irish politician] they didn't even know how to cross a busy, modern street."
"They were so institutionalized. It was heartbreaking."

These were Catholic institutions for wayward girls and women. They were called the Magdalene Laundries, meant to provide asylum to "fallen" women; unwed mothers, former prostitutes, young girls who ran away from home.... Women and girls as young as 12 or 13 were institutionalized in these places to live out their lives as labourers, boiling and stirring, rinsing and wringing and hanging out laundry in service to wealthy, respectable members of society.

They were given the opportunity to redeem themselves by this labour, living in isolation from decent society for they were indecent by implication.

While the laundries infamously began in Ireland, they also turned up in the U.K. Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada. In Canada the Sisters of the Good Shepherd operated over a dozen of these institutions for girls and women; from the Maritimes, to Ottawa, to Vancouver. These 19th Century institutions were a plague posing as a rescue mission for naughty girls and women where they would learn a respectable trade and be useful to society.

The last to remain in operation was in Toronto. The St. Mary's Training School was finally shuttered in 1973.

Few records survive. There is no data on how many Canadian women were incarcerated or how many now survive. Survivors and their families shamed into silence. In these institutions, at dawn the nuns clapped their hands to awaken the women who leaped out of bed, dropped to their knees and prayed. They were dressed in long cotton dresses and aprons. Dressing was performed under their nightgowns for no one, not even those among whom they lived, must see their naked bodies.

A Magdalene Laundry in England in the early Twentieth Century, from Frances Finnegan, Do Penance or Perish, Congrave Press, 2001.Wikimedia Common

Quietly washing, silence reigned throughout as they filed into the dining hall for their meals, and then in equal silence into the laundry workroom. Where they were to spend the day, boiling, scrubbing, rinsing, squeezing, hanging laundry to dry, then ironing it. An hour before bedtime a break would be announced when they would make rosaries for sale to the public. Their ordinary street clothing had been confiscated, hair and nails cut short. Their given names were abandoned as they were re-named, forbidden to use their own.

They might remain in the laundries on an indefinite basis, or their length of time extended at will; their sins were to have become involved in sex work, or having been pregnant out of marriage; others "defiant", "incorrigible", or "wayward", others yet "lipping off to their parents, smoking cigarettes, stuff that in those days would have been shocking", explained Rie Croll who had interviewed as many of the former inmates as she could find. One of whom had been declared "unmanageable", sentenced in 1961 to a reformatory for sneaking away from her abusive parents in preference to spending evenings with friends.

One of the interviewed had been born in a Good Shepherd Laundry in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1934, her mother a 13-year-old Indigenous girl, impregnated through gang rape. Mother and daughter worked side-by-side from the time the girl reached eight years of age until she finally managed to escape over a fence, at age 18. The institutes were used to shield society's violence and dysfunction within families where adolescent girls, victims of incest ended up; little wonder families felt no urgency in reclaiming them.

Labels: Catholic Church, Imprisonment, Magdalene Laundry

posted by Pieface @ Friday, June 14, 2019

Fading Faith

Pope Francis will attend the summit. Photograph: Luca Zennaro/EPA

"The holy people of God looks to us and expects from us not simple and predictable condemnations, but concrete and effective measures to be undertaken."
"Hear the cry of the little ones who plead for justice."
"May the Virgin Mary enlighten us as we seek to heal the grave wounds that the scandal of pedophilia has caused [in both children and believers]."
Pope Francis,Vatican City

"You are the physicians of the soul and yet, with rare exceptions, you have been transformed into murderers of the soul."
"What a terrible contradiction."
Victim of predatory priests statement

"The first thing they did was to treat me as a liar, turn their backs and tell me that I, and others, were enemies of the church."
"This pattern exists not only in Chile. It exists all over the world, and this must end."
Victim of predatory priests statement

Victims of clergy abuse representing several countries from the Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) organization demonstrate in Rome on Friday. (Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

"The competence of the state authorities should be respected. [Abuse] is also a crime in all civil jurisdictions."
"[When allegations are received they should be investigated] with the help of experts."
"The competence of the state authorities should be respected."
"Reporting laws should be followed carefully. And a spirit of collaboration will benefit both the church and society in general."
Archbishop Charles Sciciuna, Malta, Vatican sex crimes investigator

Close to two hundred bishops, cardinals and heads of religious orders in the Holy Catholic Church are attending a four-day meeting representing a gathering of the world's leading bishops for the purpose of discussing the Catholic Church's problem with clergy abusing parishioners, betraying the trust of children and their families, raping young believers, in effect blind-siding their respect by victimizing them and blemishing their futures. Women among the faithful, including nuns, trusting and vulnerable just as the children, exploited and raped.

A story as old and familiar as the church itself. Whispered and retold endlessly. The good priests and the bad, and how to tell them apart, how to know that a priest who had earned community respect and trust had corrupted that trust and the faith placed in him? Rumours spread and the community feels helpless. If complaints are laid, the complainant is made to feel guilty for smearing the church with unfounded claims. If the priest's predations are too obvious and frequent, he is merely moved elsewhere.

The church closes in to protect its own. A parish listens to a sermon about the evils of bearing false witness. There is shame to spare and furtive despair. On occasion the situation is turned into a bleak comedy of black humour and discreet warning whom to avoid, whose presence to never tolerate, but never, ever expose oneself to ridicule and shame. Until, finally, the chorus of plaintive calls for an end to the emotional and physical carnage could no longer be ignored.

Until, finally, public authorities dared to become involved and the justice that claims to be there for everyone decides to honour its claim. And the church is astonished and defiant that any outside authority might have the unmitigated gall to question its capacity to regulate itself, to hold to account any within who might bring infamy to an institution that does only good in the world, caring for the world community as a father would a child. A father ensnaring his children in incestuous relations.

Pope Francis issued a list of "reflection points" to be considered by the assembled on the first day of the summit meant to respond to sex abuse scandals around the world, by those within the Catholic Church. The conference, the first of its kind, places a spotlight on the Vatican. But the faithful are by now so weary and wary they give it short shrift. The church's decades-long effort to curb the abuse it could no longer ignore has wrought damage everywhere within its sacred confines, extending to the Pope himself.

Secure in the expectation that scandals will erupt in areas of the world where none have yet publicly surfaced, the Pope has urged bishops from every corner of the globe to examine the issue, to commit to its eradication, denials no longer feasible. Of 21 points Pope Francis assembled, the first speaks for drawing up "a practical handbook indicating the steps to be taken by authorities at key moments when a case emerges".

"A handbook like this was drawn up in Canada back in 1992. So after twenty-five years, this is not new. These seem to be platitudes", remarked Bernadette Howell, an abuse victim originally from Ireland, now resident in Canada. "It's too vague, What counts would be zero tolerance, written into Church law", commented Peter Isely, the head of survivors' group Ending Clergy Abuse.

Then, another suggestion from Pope Francis, that "priests and bishops guilty of sexual abuse of minors leave public ministry". A nostrum. A reaction and remedy that should logically have been in effect since the very beginning of public ministry. Instead of the shrug and the wink that was the church's ready response to all such instances of failure to act with honour and probity.

The Vatican has sought to downplay expectations over the four-day meeting, which begins on Thursday. Photograph: Gerald Herbert/AP

Labels: Catholic Church, Pope Francis, Sexual Predation, Vatican

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, February 23, 2019

Basic Flaws

"[Its] basic flaw ... has always exempted the bishops [from independent oversight. The fundamental need is to answer the question as to how Archbishop McCarrick and others rose in their ecclesiastical careers when troubling facts regarding sexual abuse were known by the hierarchy which promoted them."
"We asked how many trials have you done on the accused priests. Scicluna said he was getting empty files from bishops. They didn't want to release information to the Holy See because they feared subpoena power [from lawyers representing victims]. Bob [Bennett] told Scichluna to tell them to send the files, they'll get a subpoena anyway."
"Where are we today? At the same place. We know what we suspected then, but it's now affirmed: we cannot trust the hierarchy of the Catholic Church."
Judge Anne Burke, Chicago, Illinois Supreme Court Justice

"What he's [Pope Francis] got to be seen to be doing is pushing for a very rigorous policy. Can he do that if he himself has not been as diligent, to say the least, as he should be?"
"It's too early to say, but just looking at the case, it looks very bad. It seems like a violation -- is he the guy [Cardinal Daniel DiNardo] who should be leading at this point?"
David Gibson, director, Center on Religion and Culture, Catholic university Fordham

"We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States -- how the Body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse. He listened very deeply from the heart."
". . . It was a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange."
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, Galveston-Houston, president, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Pope Francis meets with officials representing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at the Vatican Sept. 13. Pictured from left are Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, vice president of the conference, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of conference, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, and Msgr. J. Brian Bransfield, general secretary of the conference. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)

Cardinal DiNaro stands accused of mishandling the case of the Reverend Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, arrested in Conroe, Texas earlier in September on four counts of indecency with a child. According to police, La Rosa-Lopez fondled two teens while a priest at a Conroe church. He was engaged at another church in Richmond Texas, as their priest, at the time of his arrest. So much for the church cleansing itself of its habit of overlooking the priestly-celibate-behaviour of its clerics in their abuse of parishioners.

The meeting with Pope Francis to discuss the crisis of sexual abuse with the leaders of American Catholics was a friendly affair, smiles and graciousness all around. That Cardinal DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was accused of yet again covering up actions of an abusing priest in his archdiocese was simply business as usual. Yet there were some among the lower-echelon clerics who impudently asked whether, under those circumstances, DiNardo was the right man to head such reforms.

The summer of 2018 saw one cardinal resign and another stating he might just do the same. Yet another bishop was removed by Pope Francis from ministry; Michael J. Bransfield of West Virginia now faces a church investigation on charges of sexual harassment. While the meeting between Pope Francis and the bishops who met with him was cordiality personified, the business of actually discussing plans of reform appear to have been overlooked.

Even as Cardinal DiNardo was preparing for that meeting, a woman came forward to claim she informed him of an abusive priest in his Texas archdiocese.  All well and good, but nothing was done, DiNardo took no action to remove that priest from ministry. Until finally it was taken out of his hands when the offending priest was arrested on charges of child abuse some time later. All this, following on the Pennsylvania grand jury report of the month before detailing allegations of abuse by over 300 priests in that state alone.

A shocking set of revelations that set off similar investigations to take place in Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York. Of course there were credible and verifiable reports that Pope Francis himself had indulged in protecting and covering up for those of  his esteemed colleagues who had themselves done the same for their underlings, loathe to submit the venerable church to public scrutiny and the offensive effect of legal authorities taking priests into custody. So who will be investigating the Pope?

Labels: Catholic Church, Investigaton, Pope Fancis, Scandal, Sexual Predation

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, September 29, 2018

Questioning Pope Francis

"With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesiastical community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives."
"We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them."
"If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present and future history."
"It is essential that we, as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others."
Pope Francis, letter to "the People of God"

The Pope's letter addressed the "heart-wrenching pain" of abuse victims in Pennsylvania after the report was released 20 August 2018

"Holy Father, I don’t know if you know Cardinal McCarrick, but if you ask the Congregation of Bishops, there is a dossier this thick about him. He corrupted generations of seminarians and priests, and Pope Benedict ordered him to withdraw to a life of prayer and penance."
“Now that the corruption has reached the very top of the church’s hierarchy, my conscience dictates that I reveal those truths regarding the heart-breaking case of the archbishop emeritus of Washington.”
Letter to the Pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano

The Pope, the earthly messenger of god, has condemned in shame and sorrow and no uncertain words, the sacrilegious assault on children by men of the cloth, and in so doing has brought censure to the Roman Catholic Church. The revelations that seem never to stop, of the Church hierarchy being aware of the predation of priests on children and mature parishioners and simply carrying on as though nothing untoward had occurred left those abused and traumatized survivors of sexual abuse to fend on their own, while assigning the priests to similar duty elsewhere to continue their abuse.

The moral authority of Pope Francis might never be questioned; after all, he was a refreshing new personality as the leader of over one billion Catholics worldwide, the representation on Earth of God Almighty. And then Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, formerly papal ambassador to Washington, revealed in a letter that not only were senior churchmen aware that former cardinal Theodore McCarrick molested young men, but so too was the pope. And the pope before him, leading Benedict to remove him from active duty "putting him out to pasture", but refraining from calling police.

When Pope Francis assumed his duties he saw fit, it seems, to recall McCarrick from obscurity and bring him into his personal fold more latterly, as a close and esteemed adviser. From his retreat to a life of "prayer and penance", to a return to the high echelons of the Church. The National Catholic Reporter in 2014 described Archbishop McCarrick as enjoying a "renaissance" as a papal adviser. "The bad ones, they never die!", Pope Francis is said to have jocularly remarked.

According to Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the Pope had full knowledge of the corrupt nature of McCarrick yet "covered for him to the bitter end". That end arrived when McCarrick was exposed only a few weeks earlier when Pope Francis had little alternative but to order McCarrick into the dark tower of "prayer and penance", in order "to save his image in the media", according to Vigano, who appears to have a personal vendetta against Pope Francis whom he seems to identify as a hypocrite of outstanding sanctimony.

"If you're nice to Francis, Francis is nice to you", remarked one unnamed resident of the Vatican of a Pope militant in defence of a Chilean bishop accused by victims of child abuse of covering up the actions of an abusing priest whom Francis was shamed into apologizing for his defence of the bishop. As a judge of character, the Pope's choice of nine cardinals appointed to his advisory team, seem in retrospect ill-advised, since three stand accused of failing to handle the crisis of abuse adequately; another charged with mismanaging finances.

Pope Francis speaks with the media onboard a plane during his flight back from a trip in Dublin, Ireland August 26, 2018. (Gregorio Borgia/Reuters)

"I hope Francis will do that [answer to Vigano's charges]. I hope Vigano is proved wrong. If not, the word "resignation" will be put about, thanks to Benedict XVI, there is now precedent. If Francis is tarnished and does not quit, it will be what a priest describes to me as "a virtual resignation": a Pope in office, but without authority. And this, surely, will shake my own faith, will it not?"
Tim Stanley, The Daily Telegraph

"I read the statement this morning, and I must tell you sincerely that, I must say this, to you and all those who are interested: Read the statement carefully and make your own judgment. I will not say a single word on this."
"[I believe in the] journalistic capacity to draw your own conclusions [as an] act of faith."
"When some time passes and you have drawn your conclusions, I may speak. But I would like your professional maturity to do the work for you. It will be good for you [members of the press]."
Pope Francis, Catholic News Agency

Labels: Catholic Church, Child Abuse, Pope Francis

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 30, 2018

The Roman Catholic Church Besmirching Itself

"The coverup was so sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the coverup. These documents, from the dioceses' own 'Secret Archives', formed the backbone of this investigation."
"Church officials routinely and purposefully described the abuse as horseplay and wrestling and inappropriate conduct. It was none of those things. It was child sexual abuse, including rape."
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announces the Grand Jury report Matt Rourke/AP

"We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished and uncompensated."

"We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands."

"Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted."

"As a consequence of the coverup, almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted."

"There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere."

Pennsylvania Grand Jury statement

"The report of the Pennsylvania grand jury again illustrates the pain of those who have been victims of the crime of sexual abuse by individual members of our clergy, and by those who shielded abusers and so facilitated an evil that continued for years or even decades."

"As a body of bishops, we are shamed by and sorry for the sins and omissions by Catholic priests and Catholic bishops."

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

Bishop Timothy L. Doherty, chair, bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People

Pope Francis had little option but to strip 88-year-old Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of his title. The elderly McCarrick was ordered to a lifetime (!) of prayer and penance as his penalty for sexual abuse of boys, along with forcing his sexual predation on young adult seminarians. He had held the position of bishop of Pittsburgh. Cardinal Donald Wuerl , formerly bishop of Pittsburgh had taken that post as Cardinal McCarrick moved on in the Church. And Cardinal Wuerl now stands charged by the grand jury of concealing clergy sexual abuse.

Cardinal Wuerl is now one of the highest-echelon cardinals in the United States, and he released a statement in response to the charges against him, that he had acted always in good faith, that he had "acted with diligence, with concern for the victims and to prevent future acts of abuse". Abuse allegations in Pennsylvania dioceses ministering to over half the 3.2 million Catholics in the state were scrutinized by the grand jury, its statement released yesterday, condemning 300 priests for their sexual crimes against over a thousand children.

That this widespread atrocious sexual abuse by clergy and the fact that church officials concealed all evidence is now revealed as a matter of public shame and contrition merely reflects what the Church has been doing undetected for generations, and in the process ruining the lives of countless of the faithful whose trust in the clergy who molested them shattered their sense of self, rendering them emotionally wounded, impacting their lives and leaving them with no recourse to justice.

A succession of Catholic bishops, in a long-honoured tradition in the Church, along with other diocesan leaders made no effort to help the victims, but did extend themselves to sheltering the reputation of the Church, while shielding the clerics from publicity and the Church from financial liability through their enabling coverups, their failure to report those who had abused their authority and trust to law enforcement, while discouraging the victims from reporting the crimes that victimized them.

Most of the priests identified as abusers and perpetrators of sexual crimes are now dead, or will be able to avoid arrest since the crimes they committed are considered to be too stale under state law for prosecution. Cardinal Wuerl is now taking the brunt of outraged criticism for his claims of surprise and insistence that he had no knowledge of allegations that his predecessor molested and harassed young seminarians. When McCarrick vacated the post of Washington archbishop, McCarrick followed him in 2006 to take up that senior, prestigious post.

According to the bishop of the Pittsburgh diocese, a few of the priests the report names remain in ministry resulting from the diocese's determination that allegations lodged against them were unsubstantiated. 

• In the Greensburg diocese, a priest impregnated a 17-year-old, forged a pastor's signature on a marriage certificate and divorced the girl months later. According to the grand jury, the priest was allowed to stay in ministry by finding a "benevolent bishop."

• Another priest in Greensburg groomed middle-school students for sex, according to the grand jury, by telling them that Mary had to "bite off the cord" and "lick" Jesus clean after the Nativity.

• In Harrisburg, a priest abused five sisters from the same family and collected samples of their urine, pubic hair and menstrual blood.

• Also in Harrisburg, a priest raped a 7-year-old girl who was in the hospital after her tonsils were removed, according to the report.

• In Pittsburgh, church officials said that a 15-year-old boy "pursued" and "literally seduced" a priest. A church report later acknowledged that the priest had admitted to "sado-masochistic" activities with several boys.

• In the Allentown diocese, a priest admitted sexually molesting a boy and pleaded for help, according to documents, but was left in ministry for several more years.

• Also in Allentown, a priest who had abused several boys, according to the grand jury, was given a recommendation to work at Disney World.

• In Scranton, a priest who later served prison time for abusing children was found to have been HIV-positive for years

Labels: Catholic Church, Child Abuse, Priests, Sexual Predators, United States

posted by Pieface @ Thursday, August 16, 2018

With All Due Respect...

"With all possible respect for the pastor of souls, instead of helping Africa's poor come to Europe, my duty in the government is to first think of the millions of Italian poor."
"Am I wrong?"
"[Undocumented immigrants represent a] tide of delinquents [to be sent packing]." 
"I am the least of the good Christians. But I don't think I deserve as much. I am reassured by the fact I receive on a daily basis the support of so many [Italian citizens] women and men of the church."
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini

"If there are Christians that feel an ease in saying no to reception, the church must ask itself a question."
"This means we have spoken about Jesus -- performed ceremonies and done liturgies -- but we surely haven't created a mentality according to the gospel."
Bishop Nunzio Galantino, secretary general, Italian Bishops' Conference

"[There is a need to] save our own humanity from vulgarity and barbarization [by saving lives], beginning with the most exposed, humiliated and trampled upon."
Statement, Italian Bishops' Conference

"It's really unprecedented that the official voices of the Catholic Church are so squarely opposed."
"That hasn't happened before. The Catholic Church is the opposition, basically."
Massimo Faggioli, Villanova University professor of Catholicism and European politics

Pope Francis waves to pilgrims gathered in St Peter's square during his Sunday Angelus prayer

There was a time when fascism swept Italy in the first quarter of the 20th Century. It was a nationalism supported by the Catholic Church. A Catholic Church that in its holiness deigned not to remonstrate with Benito Mussolini or with his collegial partnership with Nazi Germany. Mussolini may not have been a Nazi, but he certainly was a fascist. And the Catholic Church of the day made no overt effort to publicly distance itself from either Mussolini or to denounce Hitler's vicious anti-Semitism, nor to protest the deadly victimization of Jews.

In a new world order with a new situation where refugees are suddenly embraced and not spurned while their status as refugees is questionable as it has been observed that most are really economic migrants, their search is not for rescue from certain mass death in a genocidal plan to finally rid the world of Jews, political opponents, homosexuals, Roma, and those with physical and mental disabilities, but for opportunities to advance their economic futures as much as to escape oppressive governments and constant tribal conflicts.

There must compassion be directed without hesitation or stint. That the cost is great in the sense that there is a sacrifice of sovereignty and often public security, that there are few expectations the incoming hordes will shed their faith in a religion that holds them responsible for the imperative to jihad -- in missionary work for Islam, and incites them to decry other religions and reject any law but Sharia, bringing with them a culture inimical to integration and to equality among the genders is but a detail to the Vatican.

Its singular and separate state of comfortable isolation will be unchallenged by the influx of 'those in need' of succour. Italy's new stance on rejecting further absorption of migrants and haven-seekers has the opprobrium of parish priests who insist that anti-migrants "cannot call themselves Christian", that the "Italy First" movement is a rejection of Christian values.

In reality, welcoming incalculable hordes of Muslims in very fact is a rejection of Christian values, for the haven claimants do so, and as their numbers increase the fallout will soon be visible and visibly felt in their spurning and contempt for "Christian values".

The anti-immigrant sentiment building across Europe, saturated beyond a hellish nightmare by those claiming haven and drowning the continent in a heritage and culture bred of tribalism and Islamic sectarian violence and a rejection of humanistic values of equality and tolerance and pluralism has offended Pope Francis whose papacy speaks of the humanity and rights of migrants. The reverse appears to be of no concern to this shepherd of god's word, but that the developed world must be prepared to sacrifice its rights and humanity to that of those opposing them.

The move by Catholic countries aside from Italy; Poland and Austria, to no longer open their arms to alien migrants who share little in cultural commonality with their values has jolted the Church into action. Francis asks nations to "decisively and immediately" act in prevention of the "tragedy" of deaths at sea of migrants who decisively and resolutely and immoderately set out to place themselves in situations of potential lethal harm while seeking the level of social services and human welfare absent in their countries of birth.

The resolute action of the Western world in opposing those same conditions ushering in a new world order for themselves is too much to expect of those from Africa and the Middle East.

Italy has seen over 650,000 foreigners arrive at its shores since 2014, uninvited and unappreciated past the first wave of welcome. Viewing Italy's plight its neighbours had no wish to share the burden to process asylum claims. Germany and Austria, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands opened their hearts and the borders and the swell of burgeoning migrants inevitably overwhelmed the welcome, in the process transforming the welcoming countries in the short view, but nothing as opposed to what will occur in the long run.

But they performed their Christian obligations in fine form.

Pope Francis (C) delivers his speech next to Ecumenic Patriarch of the Orthodox Church Bartolomeo I (C-L), Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros (Theodoros) II (C-R) and other religous leaders after their meeting at the Pontifical Basilica of St Nicholas in Bari, in the Apulia region in southern Italy, on July 7, 2018. Pope Francis, during the five years of his papacy, has spoken about the humanity and rights of migrants, cautioning about the anti-immigrant sentiment taking hold in parts of the developed world. Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP

Labels: Catholic Church, Europe, Migrants, Pope Francis, Refugees, Vatican

posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 30, 2018

The Cranky Pope

Hard on the heels of the explosive and exploding incidences of women revealing for the first time the identities of their sexual abusers, a phenomenon of unveiling a dark hidden secret of many men in positions of power and influence using their positions to prey on women whose careers they are capable of advancing or retarding, a public figure of immense authority has stepped into the fray, and in all likelihood not by intention but through a momentary irascible backlash flash of irritation.

"The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I'll speak."
"There is not one shred of proof against him. It's all calumny. Is that clear?"
Pope Francis, Santiago, Chile

Pope Francis has accused victims of Chile’s most notorious paedophile of slander, in an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic church its credibility in the country. The Guardian

"As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all."
"These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty."
Juan Carlos Cruz, accuser

"[It is] sad and wrong [for the Pope to discredit the victims since] the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims -- and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed."
"He has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis. Who knows how many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?"
Anne Barrett Doyle, online database BishopAccountability.org

Pope Francis, pressed for a comment by a Chilean journalist with respect to the status of Bishop Juan Barros whom he had named bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno in Chile at a time when victims of Barros's superior, the Rev.Fernando Karadima were accusing him of rampant sexual crimes, snapped back with the response that made it quite clear he failed to believe the accusations of the victims that Bishop Barros knew, and had even witnessed that abuse.

In one fell swoop not only turning asunder his main thrust of address in travelling to Chile with the purpose of apologizing for the horrendous misdeeds of the Catholic Church when its priests pledged to celibacy chose to pursue other avenues of satisfying their sexual desires by targeting children and parishioners for abuse. It was always widely recognized that these events took place, and that superiors within the Church sought to keep the scandal within the church, never admitting it took place, simply transferring the offending priest to another parish to repeat his sins anew.

In effect, this is what the Pontiff himself has done, irrespective of his sincere apology on behalf of the Catholic Church. Loyal Catholics who had been abused had attempted for years to apprise the church hierarchy of what was occurring only to hit a blank wall of indifference and disbelief. Sexual abuse and the cover up of the church is legendary. The Archbishop of Santiago eventually apologized for refusing to believe victims once they spread their stories at large and they became news of shocking importance.

Yet knowing that the victims' stories had been substantiated, Pope Francis still chose to believe that the man he named as Bishop, a former Karadima protege, could honourable and in good faith be accepted by the Osorno community as their church authority, in so doing repeating the very routine the church always engaged in when confronted by such abuse. As far as the Osorno controversy was concerned where people refused to consider Bishop Barros as their bishop, Pope Francis spoke of the controversy as "stupid".

This, from a man claiming himself to be dedicated to serving the people, not the classical indulgences of the church hierarchy. "Isn't the pastoral problem that we're living (in Osorno) enough to get rid of him?" asked Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman for a group of Osorno lay Catholics whose three-year campaign against Barros no doubt added to the Pope's rejection of the claims by parishioners that they could not respect an insider who had stood by and done nothing to help stop the abuse.

This is the church establishment which has vowed to do penance for the past, for having accused victims of slandering and attacking the church with unsubstantiated claims. And which Pope Francis set out to reverse, assuring Catholics that the church had much to apologize for and he was the man to assuage the wounds. Instead, he has chosen to open a new wound by the expedience of reverting to the former stance of the church, accusing the accusers.

A "tremendous error" in judgement by the Pope, according to to German Silva, political scientist at Universidad Mayor in Santiago, that will reverberate in Chile and beyond.

Labels: Catholic Church, Chile, Controversy, Pope Francis, Sexual Predation

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, January 20, 2018