Ongoing religious scandals

smacl

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

There is a later story in the Sun that says that two of his accusers are from his time in Gonzaga

Is it just me or is it a bit scary that we're looking to the Sun for a more complete picture of the news than is available in the IT?

ohnonotgmail

smacl wrote: »

Is it just me or is it a bit scary that we're looking to the Sun for a more complete picture of the news than is available in the IT?

Im not looking to the Sun for anything. I put no stock in the honesty of their reporting.

smacl

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Im not looking to the Sun for anything. I put no stock in the honesty of their reporting.

I didn't say you, I said we.

I see the Phoenix are reporting it as a media blackout with the exception of the Sun, https://www.thephoenix.ie/article/gonzaga-blackout/ Paywalled and not a subscribed so can't say much more than that.

Peregrinus

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

There is a later story in the Sun that says that two of his accusers are from his time in Gonzaga

Fair enough. But the Irish Times story makes no mention of this, and yet it's Gonzaga that gets the opening paragraphs, and the headline.

Which is even odder. Did the IT journalist know of the Gonzaga allegations? If yes, why did he not mention them in the story? If no, why the focus on Gonzaga?

Maybe I'm making too much of this. Poor journalism is bad, but it's not as bad as the sexual abuse of minors. It's just, I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe the attitude that, regardless of the facts, it's the Gonzaga boys that really matter isn't a thousand miles removed from the kind of assumed entitlement on one side, and deferential compliance on the other, that allowed the sexual abuse problem to fester for so long.

Bannasidhe

Peregrinus wrote: »

Fair enough. But the Irish Times story makes no mention of this, and yet it's Gonzaga that gets the opening paragraphs, and the headline.

Which is even odder. Did the IT journalist know of the Gonzaga allegations? If yes, why did he not mention them in the story? If no, why the focus on Gonzaga?

Maybe I'm making too much of this. Poor journalism is bad, but it's not as bad as the sexual abuse of minors. It's just, I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe the attitude that, regardless of the facts, it's the Gonzaga boys that really matter isn't a thousand miles removed from the kind of assumed entitlement on one side, and deferential compliance on the other, that allowed the sexual abuse problem to fester for so long.

Funnily enough I was talking to a friend, an academic who has been very vocal for many years as an advocate of survivors of the Madelene Laundries about some very bizarre editorial decisions by the Irish Times recently.
There's been quite a few "are you reading this the way I'm reading this?!?!" moments.

This opinion piece by Pat Leahy (political editor) https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/greens-will-find-it-hard-to-keep-their-clear-eyed-focus-on-goals-as-events-intrude-1.4395612

particularly irked her, to such an extent she took to the twitter machine and described it as

Leahy is blithely tone deaf to central emotive justice issue: that people have been illegally denied personal information including their identity. He rejoices in a power of sweeping condescension that I imagine provided him with fun while writing but makes for a wincing read.

.
This not a woman who is prone to ranting nor does she tend to take to the twitter to voice displeasure. That particular article was afaik the 3rd by Leahy that was tone deaf.

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

It's just, I can't quite put my finger on it, but maybe the attitude that, regardless of the facts, it's the Gonzaga boys that really matter isn't a thousand miles removed from the kind of assumed entitlement on one side, and deferential compliance on the other, that allowed the sexual abuse problem to fester for so long.

It's also seems at least plausible that Gonzaga was mentioned because it's a much more well-known school than Greendale Community School, and because Gonzaga is where Potts was headmaster, rather than vice-head, as he was at Greendale. Much as we might wish otherwise, a headline noting abuse by the headmaster of a well-known school will unfortunately attract more attention than a headline about the vice-principle at a less well-known one.

It's also a little difficult to dispel completely the notion that the headline might have mentioned Gonzaga because the copywriter suspected that schadenfreude against the well-to-do also grabs attention.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/catholic-church-s-record-on-clerical-child-sexual-abuse-censured-1.4405726

Two reports published on Tuesday, one by the Vatican and another in the UK, have further undermined the Catholic Church’s credibility in its handling of clerical child-sexual abuse allegations.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in the Catholic Church of England and Wales found that the church “prioritised its own reputation over the welfare of vulnerable children for decades”.

The church’s “moral purpose has been betrayed by those who sexually abused children, as well as those who turned a blind eye and failed to take action against perpetrators”, it said.

In Rome a Vatican report into how former cardinal and archbishop of Washington Theodore McCarrick (90) was elevated by Pope John Paul in 2000, despite credible abuse allegations against him, found the decision followed a letter to the late pope from McCarrick denying all allegations.

The report also found that bishops, cardinals as well as Pope John Paul II and Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI downplayed or dismissed reports that McCarrick had slept with seminarians. Where Pope Francis was concerned, it found he had continued a similar approach to McCarrick until a former altar boy alleged abuse.

In 2018, based on the latter credible allegations, Pope Francis removed McCarrick from public ministry and he resigned from the College of Cardinals in July of that year. In February of last year McCarrick was removed from the Catholic priesthood after being found guilty of abuse by a church inquiry.

The IICSA report in the UK found that between 1970 and 2015, the Catholic Church received more than 900 complaints involving more than 3,000 instances of child-sexual abuse in England and Wales. Since 2016, there have been more than 100 reported allegations each year.

The true scale of abuse in the church in both countries over the last 50 years “is likely to have been far higher”, it said.

The church “repeatedly failed to support victims and survivors, while taking positive action to protect alleged perpetrators”, it said. Its “senior leaders have been resistant to external oversight and have only partially implemented the recommendations” of previous independent reviews.

The report was particularly critical of Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic leader in England and Wales. He had failed to “acknowledge any personal responsibility or show compassion for victims in the recent cases we examined”, it said.

The cardinal “has shown he cares more about the impact of child sexual abuse on the Catholic Church’s reputation than on victims and survivors”, the report stated.

Where Rome was concerned, and as with statutory abuse inquiries in Ireland, the IICSA report noted “the Holy See and the Apostolic Nuncio, its ambassador to the UK, did not provide a witness statement to this Inquiry despite repeated requests”.

The report stated that it could not understand this “lack of co-operation” and concluded it stood “in direct contrast with Pope Francis’s public statement on child sexual abuse in 2019, calling for ‘concrete and effective actions that involve everyone in the Church’ ”.

robindch

Catholic Church forgives the Catholic Church for child abuse

https://newsthump.com/2015/08/19/catholic-church-forgives-the-catholic-church-for-child-abuse/

NewsThump wrote:

The Catholic Church has announced its forgiveness of the Catholic Church for child sex abuse carried out by the Catholic Church, according to Vatican sources. The Vatican hopes the move will be a major step in restoring faith in a religious organisation despondent at the continued surfacing of cases of sexual abuse against children.

Priest, Patrick McShattery, said the news filled him with a holy sense of peace. “Forgiveness is at the heart of Catholicism, along with the absolving of sin based on a private confession that never needs to reach the planet’s newspapers. So now that we’ve admitted it in private, to ourselves, and said we’re very sorry about it, we can forgive ourselves and everyone can move on with their lives.”

However, not all priests have welcomed the swift forgiveness of their organisation by itself.

“This whole sexual abuse revelation has ruined the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people,” said one unnamed priest. “We’ve got these poor priests being uprooted from parishes where they had plenty of altar boys to prey on and often they get placed in areas where there’s barely any altar boys to even look at. That is cruel and unusual punishment in my book, and reeks of the Old Testament God we’re trying to pretend isn’t important any more.”

A Vatican spokesman, who wished to remain nameless, hoped the move would provide the victims with closure. They said, “Forgiveness is divine, so, you know, move on, because this is the end of the matter as far as our lawyers are concerned.”

ohnonotgmail

robindch wrote: »

Catholic Church forgives the Catholic Church for child abuse

https://newsthump.com/2015/08/19/catholic-church-forgives-the-catholic-church-for-child-abuse/

I wasn't sure that was sarcasm until i looked at other stories on that site.

Bannasidhe

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

I wasn't sure that was sarcasm until i looked at other stories on that site.

It reminded me of the time, in my innocence, I stood up in class (convent school, early 70s, I was 7) and said " so... we know the Pope is infallible because the Pope tells us he is infallible? Seriously? Anyone else seeing the problem??"

The Fall Out was EPIC.

That was my very last day in a religious school.

Hotblack Desiato

Polish bishops ask Rome to investigate former papal secretary

Poland’s Catholic Church has asked the Vatican to investigate allegations that the personal secretary to Pope St John Paul II chose not to act on clerical sexual abuse claims.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz has denied several allegations made in a television documentary, including that he took payments for access to the Polish pope and to suppress investigations into sexual abuse.

Polish clerical sources say any investigation into the former pope’s private secretary would raise to at least 16 the number of clerics undergoing or facing canonical investigations in Rome, mostly over sexual abuse claims or their alleged cover-up.

The claims against the Polish cardinal come as a report this week condemned the Catholic Church in England and Wales for having “prioritised its own reputation over the welfare of vulnerable children for decades”.

A second report into disgraced former cleric Theodore McCarrick found that, despite allegations against him, he was promoted to cardinal by Pope St John Paul II after a personal intervention denying the claims.

In the 82-minute Polish documentary, Don Stanislaw: The other face of Cardinal Dziwisz, shown on private station TVN24, an abuse victim of McCarrick recalls accompanying him to Rome.

He told the filmmakers how the former cardinal took envelopes marked with the numbers 1, 5 and 10 with him – signifying the thousands of dollars inside – into his meetings with Dziwisz, and that the papal secretary was given the largest sum.

The Polish cardinal also denies claims that he knew that Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican-born founder of the Legionaries of Christ organisation and a generous donor to the Holy See before his death in 2008, was a serial abuser of seminarians.

“I have heard that in this matter the blame lies on John Paul II or me,” said Cardinal Dziwisz, “but while I was in the Vatican, I never heard about it.”

Hotblack Desiato

Bannasidhe wrote: »

That was my very last day in a religious school.

Lucky you!

robindch

In a break with tradition, Pope Frank like'd a picture of scantily-clad, bursting-with-everything Brazilian instagram model, Natalia Garibotto:

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-investigating-racy-instagram-like-by-papal-account-56590

The official investigation will no doubt focus on why somebody in the Vatican is interested in somebody who's a) female and b) 27-years old.

Hotblack Desiato

Greengrocer's apostrophe, robindch? Standards are slipping! :eek:

I was just about to post that, wasn't sure though if it was Scandals, Funnies or Hazards!

robindch

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Greengrocer's apostrophe, robindch?

Greengrocers' apostrophe, puh-leeze!

There's an ongoing debate as to how one should distinguish in print/online text the real-world activity of "liking" something from the social-media world of clicking a "like" button. As a global society, we're certainly some past putting double- or single-quotation marks around the verb, but not yet quite at the stage of having the verb appear unadorned, and therefore, ambiguously.

In the specific context of a situation where this distinction is vital to the story, it seems appropriate at least to hat-tip in its general direction - in this case, the intrusion of the minimalist quotation mark - for which heathen usage, I naturally apologize, but only a little bit.

ohnonotgmail

robindch wrote: »

Greengrocers' apostrophe, puh-leeze!

There's an ongoing debate as to how one should distinguish in print/online text the real-world activity of "liking" something from the social-media world of clicking a "like" button. As a global society, we're certainly some past putting double- or single-quotation marks around the verb, but not yet quite at the stage of having the verb appear unadorned, and therefore, ambiguously.

In the specific context of a situation where this distinction is vital to the story, it seems appropriate at least to hat-tip in its general direction - in this case, the intrusion of the minimalist quotation mark - for which heathen usage, I naturally apologize, but only a little bit.

It isn't even a greengrocers apostrophe. That only applies to an apostrophe inserted before the final S in a plural noun.

Hotblack Desiato

Oops. Better break out the cilice for a self-chastisement session

nozzferrahhtoo

Put some pineapple's on your own pizza's

Seth Brundle

robindch wrote: »

In a break with tradition, Pope Frank like'd a picture of scantily-clad, bursting-with-everything Brazilian instagram model, Natalia Garibotto:

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-investigating-racy-instagram-like-by-papal-account-56590

The official investigation will no doubt focus on why somebody in the Vatican is interested in somebody who's a) female and b) 27-years old.

I assume that the person responsible for the like will be moved to a different office where it is assumed they obviously won't reoffend

ohnonotgmail

Seth Brundle wrote: »

I assume that the person responsible for the like will be moved to a different office where it is assumed they obviously won't reoffend

the people responsible for the popes social media are civilians so they might actually be sacked.

Hotblack Desiato

Catholic church in Germany under pressure on abuse reports

Cologne and Aachen are two of Germany’s most influential Catholic dioceses, but diverging approaches of their respective bishops to clerical sexual abuse has seen survivors praise one and demand the other’s resignation.

In the latter case, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki is archbishop of Cologne and one of Germany’s most senior clerics and heads the world’s wealthiest Catholic diocese.

That church tax is a right little earner :rolleyes:

For eight months, though, the 64-year-old has been sitting on a time bomb with a tick familiar to Irish ears: a 350-page report into decades of clerical sexual abuse and its systematic institutional cover-up.

Explosive claims in the report have leaked, including a damning assessment of today’s archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Hesse. During his 11 years as a senior figure in Cologne until 2017, he is accused of showing a “lack of awareness of the problem – towards cases of sexual abuse of minors by clerics”.

Archbishop Hesse threatened to sue if the unflattering report was published, claiming it is damaging to his reputation. And so the report – complete with claims of abusing priests moved by bishops – has vanished into a drawer with a new report in the works.

Similar to the Cologne report, investigators found that Aachen bishops moved abusing priests abroad, or into other dioceses, without intervening or informing anyone of the priest’s past.

In one case, a chaplain who was found guilty of abusing 14 boys in the 1950s begged his bishop to be removed from youth work – a plea the bishop ignored, prompting the priest to abuse again.

The Aachen report’s authors said abuse victims “barely figured” in the minds of local bishops and, when they did, “then not because of the pain caused to them, but because they were seen as a threat to the dioceses and the institutional church”.

robindch

Gardaí give ‘last warning’ to parish priest over ‘open-door’ Mass

Fr PJ Hughes says Level 5 restrictions banning public Mass like ‘living in a police state’

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/garda%C3%AD-give-last-warning-to-parish-priest-over-open-door-mass-1.4414096

Irish Times wrote:

A parish priest has been given a “last warning” by gardaí, who told him he was in breach of Covid-19 regulations after he continued to leave his church doors open while saying Mass. Fr PJ Hughes, the parish priest in Mullahoran, Co Cavan, said he could not close his church doors as it would be “an insult to the people”, but he has undertaken to say Mass at times other than his regular Mass times to ensure people will not attend.

The priest proceeded to say Mass last Sunday morning despite getting a visit beforehand from two gardaí who he said told him he would be breaking the law if there were people present in the Church. He said he had told the gardaí that the people were there because of their faith and he was not going to tell them to go home. Fr Hughes has described Level 5 restrictions, which mean public Masses cannot be said, as akin to “living in a police state” .

In an interview with Shannonside radio on Thursday he said that after he went ahead with last Sunday’s Mass, a Garda sergeant had arrived at his door with a colleague and told him he had broken the law . He said he had told the gardaí he did not realise there was a “a law against people practicing their religion” as he thought that was “safe under the Constitution”.

Fr Hughes confirmed that the gardaí had told him this was his last warning and if he was caught celebrating Mass again with people in the church, a file would be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and he would be prosecuted. He said gardaí had told him the penalty was a fine of up to €2,500 or six months in jail.

Fr Hughes told the Joe Finnegan Show that Bishop Francis Duffy of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise had contacted him last week after receiving an anonymous complaint that the priest was saying Mass with parishioners present in the church. The Bishop had told him he was in “dangerous territory”, and if he continued to say Mass with the church open, a complaint would probably be made to the Garda. “I listened to him. I did not say yes or no,” the priest recalled. He added that people mattered more to him and God mattered more to him than anything else.

Fr Hughes said he felt very sad for the people of his parish who wanted to attend Mass and receive Holy Communion, and he said if God was the creator of heaven and earth, “surely he knows how to deal with the virus better than any scientist or HSE CEO”. Stressing that he did not “normally break the rules” he said he believed that churches were safe places and that people were well able to socially distance in churches like his, because of their size.

He said he had written to the bishops appealing for them to make the case for churches to be allowed reopen as closing them even though the congregation can socially distance was “an insult to people’s faith and an insult to God”. He said he believed people were very angry about this as they feel their faith was being challenged and controlled. In a statement, Bishop Duffy said the Government plan would continue to evaluate progress in reopening society and it was important that the Church was “ready to respond to any change”.

“As clergy we have reflected deeply – and responsibly – on our wish to celebrate Mass publicly in the context of the overall public health situation,” he added. “The Catholic Church is prioritising public health measures for the sake of the common good,” Bishop Duffy said. Quoting Pope Francis’s plea for the Church to respect the prescriptions given to safeguard the health of people, Bishop Duffy added: “So it is important to be patient and to cautiously prepare towards reopening for public worship and, in the meantime, no parish should have a public Mass.”

The Nal

robindch wrote: »

Gardaí give ‘last warning’ to parish priest over ‘open-door’ Mass

He was on the Clare Byrne show during the week claiming God can cure any disease.

Hes a complete moron. Most people have had enough of the Catholic church at this stage. A dangerous brainwashed cretin putting peoples lives at risk.

Hotblack Desiato

Well looks like he's talked himself down off that high horse

https://www.rte.ie/news/ulster/2020/1121/1179654-mass-cavan/

The Catholic Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise has been assured by Fr PJ Hughes that public mass will not be held in his Co Cavan parish today.

It comes after it emerged that gardaí were called to Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Mullahoran last Sunday, where around 50 people had gathered for a mass by Fr Hughes.

You'd think the number of super-spreader religious events in other countries would give these guys pause? If their god exists, he must be having a good laugh to himself at their expense.

robindch

Germany: Catholic officials ask reporters for 'silence' on child abuse report

Reporters walked out of a press event in Cologne after church officials asked them to sign a confidentiality agreement. The officials were due to discuss issues around a key report on child abuse.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-catholic-officials-ask-reporters-for-silence-on-child-abuse-report/a-56138440

Hotblack Desiato

Seriously?!???!? :rolleyes:

Peregrinus

The backstory to this sh!tstorm seems to be this: Woelki, the Archbishop of Köln, commissioned an external law firm to do a report into the handling of of sex abuse within the diocese. The same law firm has been commissioned by other German dioceses to prepare reports for them, and the terms of reference for the reports are similar.

The report has been completed but Woelki has announced that he will not be publishing it. His reason is that "its methodology was flawed" and he suggests there are are legal obstacles to publishing it, or legal risks in doing so. (E.g. people criticised in the report might sue the diocese for defamation if it publishes the report, arguing that the allegations against them were unfounded, that they did not have a chance to rebut them, that the diocese is publishing rumour as fact, etc. Woelki hasn't said that this is the problem, but this is the kind of thing people are talking about.) Woelki says that the report will be made available "within the legally possible framework" to victim-survivors and journalists - meaning, he'll show it to them to extent that doing so doesn't result in a legal liablity for the diocese.

Unsurprisingly, his decision not to publish the report has caused uproar. The Archbishop of Munich, who has commissioned a similar report from the same law firm, says he absolutely will be publishing that report when it is presented, and Woelki should too.

The Press Conference That Never Happened seems to be Woelki's attempt to follow through on his promise to work within "the legally possible framework". The idea seems to have been that he would show journalists some of the stuff that's in the report, and explain the legal risks attendant on publishing this kind of stuff - but, of course, he could only do that if they undertook in advance not to publish the stuff that mustn't be published.

Woelki's press advisor, who is believed to favour publication in full, resigned some weeks ago. It's not clear whether he resigned because this "press conference" was being planned, he could see exactly how it would work out, and he didn't want to be associated with it, or whether the idea to conduct a press conference on these terms was only cooked up after he left, because there was then nobody in the diocesan offices who could foresee exactly how it would work out.

robindch

Peregrinus wrote: »

The idea seems to have been that he would show journalists some of the stuff that's in the report, and explain the legal risks attendant on publishing this kind of stuff - but, of course, he could only do that if they undertook in advance not to publish the stuff that mustn't be published.

You could well be right, though I have to say that the quality of senior church officials seems to have declined sharply in recent years - this kind of unforced error wouldn't have happened 50 years ago (probably because there wouldn't have been a report in the first place).

Anyhow, there's nothing stopping the bishop inviting the reporters in to show, in the full light of day, a report with names and locations redacted or changed, and neither, to my knowledge, is there anything stopping the bishop releasing the full text, with names and locations redacted or changed or otherwise rendered unguessable.

Hotblack Desiato

Wouldn't the obvious thing to do be to publish a redacted version, as an interim measure at least?

Oops, posted before I read your reply robindch

Peregrinus

You're both right, of course. This is the church making a bad situation worse by being (on the most charitable interpretation) monstrously incompetent and cloth-eared and (on a less charitable interpretation) less than candid about the full reasons they don't want to publish.

On edit: And of course it could be both; they could be incompetent and dishonest