Show notes::Atheists on Air: Beyond the Trailer Park Ep. 164: “Fight the real enemy"

It must be acknowledged what was done to us so we can forgive and be free. If the truth remains hidden then the brutality under which I grew up will continue for thousands of Irish children. And I must by any means necessary WITHOUT the use of violence prevent that happening because I am a Christian.

The Catholic Church have controlled us by controlling education. Through their teachings on sexuality, marriage, birth control and abortion. And most spectacularly through the lies they taught us with their history books.

That was penned by Sinead O'Connor back in Oct of 92 concerning her appearance on SNL in which she tore a picture of JPII. As I noted in the show description, she took much flack. Since, O’Connor has endured her fair share of ups and downs. She has struggled with her mental health, often very publicly, and has had every facet of her life closely scrutinized.

She has also been dismissed time and time again as a “crazy bitch”.

Now, after the Boston debacle and the light shining brightly on PA, it’s clear that she was simply aheadof her time and sharing truths that the world was neither ready toaccept nor acknowledge.

And by the looks of it, people still aren't ready to accept,

When asked about Father Crowley at the church this past week, parishioner after parishioner struggled to respond. A man leaned on the railing of the church steps and cried as he remembered how Father Crowley had baptized his children. Women confided that they had been tossing and turning every night, unable to sleep. After long silences, many insisted the allegations just had to be false.

So the other day I posted concerning California's move to declare conversion therapy fraudulent. A comment then brought to my attention a recent Liberty Counsel (Matt Staver) press release concerning "new" research that shows CT to be effective and not harmful. As I noted to RH's comment, the so-called report is from the Catholic Medical Association which isn't saying much as they hold to the teachings of the RCC above everything else. Hemant notes one of the authors worked for Joseph Nicolosi, the father of gay conversion therapy AND (I just saw this) not a random survey but current/former clients,,, Just from a brief skim of Hemant's write-up he hit all the "good" points as far as criticism.

So I did a bit of digging and perused the comments and found this little nugget.

"If gay conversion therapy works and is not harmful to anyone then I am sure the Catholic Medical Association would like to put all of the catholic priests through it so that no child stands a chance of being molested ever again. They could do this and guarantee it just to prove how right they are to the world."

Further discussion, when I found this,

'Servants of the Holy Paraclete' which was founded in 1948. It was basically an organization, within the Church proper, created for the sole purpose of 'curing' pedophile priests. At one point it was intent on purchasing an island so as to isolate them from the general population.

The founder of this organization, a father Gerald Fitzgerald, suggested keeping these priests in monasteries as he soon realized they could not be 'cured'. In fact, he even wrote the Vatican saying as such. I suggest the documentary 'Mea Maxima Culpa', it was through it I came to know about this.

(Documentary is available)

This goes to a point made clear by my partner in crime,

We've known that the Catholic Church is the largest and oldest organized child sex ring known to history for some time now. The events of Spotlight, which exposed the problem both nationally and globally, happened 17 years ago.

Anyone giving money to them in the last decade (being generous here) is directly supporting the sexual abuse of children. There's just no way around it.

Oh and if you think equivocating on terminology like "pedophile vs hebephile" and such is a valid response to such criticism, you're probably part of the problem.

The Church has had centuries of chances to clean their shit up. The time for patience and mercy has long since passed. It's time to take responsibility for their actions and pay for their crimes.

IOWs pedo priests is nothing new and the apologetic being used to justify are disgusting. (See my H&C post concerning Bill Donohue, Taylor Marshall, and Cardinal Burke.)

There is much to unpack concerning the debacle in PA as I foresee other states following suit. But

a "report" does not solve the issue. Now throw in the issue of CT and that complicates things.

So with this in mind I decided to check out this information concerning Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete as well as the mentioned documentary Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God. I don't want to go too deep as I also want to get to the Donohue, Marshall, and Burke statements as well.

For our purposes the Wiki entry will do ATM.

The Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete is a Latin Rite, Catholic religious congregation of men dedicated to ministry to priests and Brothers with personal difficulties. The congregation was founded in 1947 by Father Gerald Fitzgerald in New Mexico; they are named for the Paraclete - a representation of the Holy Spirit interpreted as an advocate or helper.

Although Fitzgerald started the Servants of the Paraclete to assist priests who were struggling with alcohol and substance abuse problems, he soon began receiving priests who had sexually abused minors. Initially, Fitzgerald attempted to treat such priests using the same spiritual methods that he used with others. By 1948, Fitzgerald had set a policy whereby he refused to take priests who were sexually attracted to young people.

Over the next two decades, Fitzgerald wrote regularly to bishops in the United States and to Vatican officials, including the pope, of his opinion that many sexual abusers in the priesthood could not be cured and should be laicized immediately.

As Wiki notes, many of Fitzgerald'sletters can be found at Bishop Accountability.  Bishops also have a vast store of other documents relating.

Also mentioned, AW Richard Sipe. Who BTW just recently passed, 

“This is my thesis and I am going to hold to it because I think it has proved out — the problem is at the top. If you have people at the top who are sexually active and they are in charge of people who are acting out, you can’t afford to expose that, lest you be exposed.”

So to my surprise this Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete did actually exist and there was controversy surrounding such. Being that I generally do not follow the Pedo Priest issue within the RCC (too big for one person in regards to civil actions), I was really taken aback by this information. Not surprised, but the enormity and the length of time involved is huge.

And I will state this again as I have before the diddling priest issue is not just a RCC problem. From my perspective I believe that due to the RCCs physical size, the number of parishioners, and money is what makes this a headline grabber. The fact that so many of the hierarchy is involved adds to that. While the actions are beyond appalling it happens in EVERY religion, (Mormons and JWs currently are facing their own scandals.)

As I have also noted pedophilia is also not just a problem within religion. It occurs in the secular world, and BTTP is well aware of that point. What makes this so egregious goes back to a point Deb made in her posting,

Anyone giving money to them in the last decade (being generous here) is directly supporting the sexual abuse of children. There's just no way around it.

That's ignoring the whole higher standard of morality crap. And we will come back to that point as Deb is have an interesting discussion on her wall ATM.

The point of this little side trip is this, 

Fitzgerald's convictions appear to significantly contradict the claims of contemporary bishops that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served.

It is clear, too, in letters between Fitzgerald and a range of bishops, among bishops themselves, and between Fitzgerald and the Vatican, that the hierarchy was aware of the problem and its implications well before the problem surfaced as a national story in the mid-1980s.

That brings us to Mea Maxima Culpa, 2012 documentary film directed by Alex Gibney. The film details the first known protest against clerical sex abuse in the United States by four deaf men.

Gibney examines the abuse of power in the Catholic Church system through the story of four deaf men — Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Pat Kuehn and Arthur Budzinski — who set out to expose the priest who abused them during the mid-1960s at St. John's School for the Deaf. Each of the men brought forth the first known case of public protest against clerical sex abuse, which later led to the sex scandal case known as the Lawrence Murphy case. Through their case the film follows a cover-up that winds its way from the row houses of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, through Ireland's churches, all the way to the highest office of the Vatican.

The documentary also serves as a detailed and wide-ranging look at systemic clericalabuse, examining cases in the US, Ireland and Italy. It narrates the Church’s knowledge and handling of child abuse throughout the 20th century, the explosion of attention following the Boston Globe stories in 2002, and the ramifications of the scandal over the next ten years. 

Interview with Gibney. The film deals with a

Milwaukee priest named Lawrence Murphy who abused 200 deaf children,,, It also happened to be the patient-zero case of modern clerical sexual abuse: so far as we have been able to determine, the leafletting of the Milwaukee Cathedral by three young deaf men in 1974 is the first public protest over clerical sex abuse in the United States.

So, at minimum - ignoring the Servants of the Paraclete - this shit has been known for 44 yrs. One man abused 200 children but yet nothing was done to change a damn thing.

One thing that needs to be mentioned, we are only touching the surface here on BTTP. It would be a massive understatement to say this issue is huge. What complicates it further for a lay person to track, The Catholic Church responds to these scandals at three levels: the diocesan level, the episcopal conference level and the Vatican. Responses to the scandal proceeded at all three levels in parallel with the higher levels becoming progressively more involved as the gravity of the problem became more apparent. So while individual diocese may deal with each individual accusation, it's not until the accusations have gotten out of hand until the real hierarchy gets involved. Their response have not been so good.

40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury REPORT::Interim--Redacted

In his post titled “Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report Debunked,” Donohue desperately tries to minimize the findings and in so doing reveals the profound poverty of both his intellect and his character. Here are 3 examples.

1] Myth: The priests “raped” their victims.

Attempting to justify his assertion that the claim that “the priests raped their victims” is a “myth,” Donohue writes:

Fact: This is an obscene lie. Most of the alleged victims were not raped: they were groped or otherwise abused, but not penetrated, which is what the word “rape” means.

2] Myth: The report was warranted because of the on-going crisis in the Catholic Church.

Fact: There is no on-going crisis—it's a total myth. In fact, there is no institution, private or public, that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors today than the Catholic Church.

As already discussed, this has been an ongoing issue since at least the late 1940s. An issue the RCC was well aware of

3] Myth: The abusive priests were pedophiles.

Fact: This is the greatest lie of them all, repeated non-stop by the media, and late-night talk TV hosts.

There have been two scandals related to the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church. Scandal I involves the enabling bishops who covered it up. Scandal II involves the media cover-up of the role played by gay molesters.

Nothing he writes is based in reality. As Joe.My.God notes, 

Donohue goes on to denounce the media for using the term “pedophilia” to describe the incidents when, Donohue claims, most of the victims were “postpubescent.” 

And, as he always does, Donohue rants that the media is providing cover for the LGBT movement by not describing the assailants as “gay priests” and by sensationalizing the “minority” of cases involving preteen girls.

Dr. Taylor Marshal,a Catholic theologian, who has presented a list of three reasons sex scandals occur in the Church:

If these are the excuses given a smart Catholic, the Church is so screwed.  Point one is so absurd nothing needs to be said.  Point two, homosexuality is not pedophilia; it’s not about sexual orientation, it’s about power and access. Point three, abuse also occurs in smaller churches where victims have no one in a position of authority to talk to or trust.

So it seems Cardinal Burke has added his appalling two-cents stating,

It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men. There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this. Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root. It is of course a tendency that is disordered. 

Sound familiar?

What's worse, Burke thinks that the RCC has done more than enough to address the issue,

There is no need to develop new procedures. All of the procedures exist in the Church’s discipline, and they have existed throughout the centuries. What is needed is an honest investigation into the alleged situations of grave immorality followed by effective action to sanction those responsible and to be vigilant to prevent that similar situations arise again.

So IOWs the RCC is going to do nothing!!

And finally we have the PR Popes reaction – fasting and prayer.  Now bear with me as I am still digesting it. To borrow from Friendly Atheist,

This morning, in a letter directed to Catholics around the world, Pope Francis said the Church must “condemn these atrocities.” He acknowledged how the Church “showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.”

That’s all well and good — he expressed deep remorse for the victims — but the real questions are what the Vatican plans to do to prevent future crimes and how they’ll punish those responsible for committing and covering up the abuse. Instead of actually offering any solutions, though, the pope called for fasting and prayer.

… penance and prayer will help us to open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in general, to combatting all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the abuse of conscience.

Pope Francis said there were efforts underway to do something but they haven’t been implemented just yet.

I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future.

The RCC has had 70+ years to implement something, anything but have done nothing. As Hemant notes, “The pope’s letter is a distraction. A way to pretend the Vatican cares without detailing how they will actually protect victims over priests. It’s another victory for the PR Pope but there’s absolutely nothing in here that should encourage doubting Catholics that everything will work out.”

And this brings me to a recent discussion the Deb was involved in, I will be making a separate posting concerning said discussion but it is too good not to mention.

This past Thursday deb posted, 

We've known that the Catholic Church is the largest and oldest organized child sex ring known to history for some time now. The events of Spotlight, which exposed the problem both nationally and globally, happened 17 years ago. Anyone giving money to them in the last decade (being generous here) is directly supporting the sexual abuse of children. There's just no way around it. Oh and if you think equivocating on terminology like "pedophile vs hebephile" and such is a valid response to such criticism, you're probably part of the problem. The Church has had centuries of chances to clean their shit up. The time for patience and mercy has long since passed. It's time to take responsibility for their actions and pay for their crimes.

Well Deb knows how to attract the crazy and she got a dousey with this, 

Stop blaming bad apples on the tree assholes. 99% of Catholic clergy have nothing to do with pedophilia. Your stupid statements go to show your only interested in degrading religious belief. 

It devolves from there, to which Deb makes this response, 

Catholics KNOW that the church uses their money to cover up and thus perpetuate abuse. So YES they are complicit. What I find offensive is the sexual abuse of children, full stop. If Catholics are truly mostly good people as you say, then they wouldn't still be Catholics.

Instead, they have put the institution and its reputation ahead of the safety of thousands of children. THAT is unacceptable and BEYOND offensive.

To which TW responds, 

Bullshit. Every organized religion has pedaphiles stop blaming the CHURCH itself. It has a higher authority than man and it teaches that the wolves in sheep clothing are completely evil. 

Deb re-iterates, as TW doesn't seem to get it,

I don't think you seem to grasp the difference between an institution that HAS sex abusers in it and one that PROTECTS the sex abusers in it. You're the one making excuses for the church and what it's been doing.

The clincher for me is TWs response,

,,,your so full of crap it's alarming. The Church is not just an organized group of humans it is an infallible authority instituted by God. Who the fuck are you to judge every Catholic as if they are partaking in pedophilia. Many Catholics were killed by the Nazis dumbass and they willing became martyrs for the sake of their Jewish brethren. Respecting life at all it's stages and encouraging strength through suffering is not a bad thing. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Medical miracles happen all the time. Giving up on life or your baby because you think your in control of your life is just hypocritical stupidity. Catholicism changed the world for the better. We could all be nazis or muslins now if it wasn't for Catholics and Catholic soldiers.

That last bit, if you have been following the apologia spewing forth from the hierarchy, tells me he has absorbed everything the church tells him.

This right here goes back to the articleI mentioned in the beginning,

After long silences, many insisted the allegations just had to be false.

One thing that should be said, there is going to be an over abundance of information coming forth. Part of the reason I was hesitant to even broach the topic on a personal level but things just sorts came together into a blog posting and diverged from there. I urge you to read the AGs report. It's long, 1400 pages long. I urge you to read every nugget and listen to every media report you can get your hands on. If you're not convinced that this is real, nothing I say nor what Deb has said will make a damn bit of difference.

It will not change the fact that you are complicit in the sexual abuse of children.