Ongoing religious scandals

SebBerkovich

Reading about another pious areshole and it's looking like another weekend is gonna begin with inconsolable rage.

Banbh

Apologise for what. Apologise for providing a service?

I wonder did anyone offer this defence at Nuremberg.

MrPudding

Banbh wrote: »

I wonder did anyone offer this defence at Nuremberg.

Actually, her words could easily have been said there.

MrP

Nodin

The BBC has seen evidence that bishops in the Catholic Church in Scotland knew of 20 allegations of child sex abuse by priests between 1985 and 1995.
Another alleged victim of abuse says his life has been ruined.
An academic who compiled a report for the Church on how to deal with abuse says not enough was done.

The letters seen by the BBC suggest some priests were reported to police and removed from parishes, while others were not.
Now more alleged victims are coming forward after Cardinal Keith O'Brien admitted sexual misconduct after resigning as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh following allegations by other priests.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21715473

All too familiar.

Hotblack Desiato

These quotes are even worse, if anything. The disconnect from reality, the arrogance, the lack of compassion, disgraceful.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0308/1224330912784.html

Laundry nun says manual work 'slavery'

A nun who managed a Magdalene laundry has said that “any manual work, particularly at that time, could be considered slavery”.

If you disregard that the work is not involuntary and is paid, yes...

She was responding to a question about whether what took place at the 10 laundries in this State, the last one of which closed in 1996, was slave labour.

She continued: “Picking potatoes was slavery, cutting hedges was slavery, building walls was slavery, breaking stones was slavery. The women who work in our sex industry today in Ireland’s towns and villages, that’s slavery. Doing stuff you don’t want to do under duress.”

“Sister A” is one of two nuns who managed Magdalene laundries and who gave interviews which are being broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1’s The God Slot programme at 10 o’clock tonight. Neither is identified.

Sister A said she was glad the McAleese report was written, “because it kind of takes the lid off an era of Irish society that anybody under 60 years of age hasn’t a clue about.”

As to where money made in the launderies went, Sister B said, “Some of the Magdalene homes were housing up to 100 women – the money went into feeding them.”

Yet commercial laundries were run at a profit while providing a wage to their employees who housed and fed themselves out of that wage.

Asked about compensation for the women, Sister A said: “I don’t know, they did get their keep. I think the emancipation I would search for, is for society to acknowledge that I was hard done by, that I shouldn’t have been locked up.” She felt talk of “€200,000 each is excessive. Do I need €200,000 at 70 or 80 years of age and what would it do for me? It is generally accepted that people who got redress, where the average reward was around €70,000, they wasted it. So what does redress and money do?”

So the nuns retained the profits instead of paying wages, because otherwise they'd have wasted the money. Right.

“Sister B” said: “The popular perception is that we look as if we have wealth and that we made it on the back of the laundries and the media have whipped up an anti-Catholic forum for women. They are building castles in the air – it’s irresponsible journalism that is out there about the Magdalene laundries.”

Words fail me.

Asked about the Taoiseach’s Dáil apology following the McAleese report, Sister A said it was “very important to remember that he didn’t just apologise for the State but he also apologised for the society. Because even if a woman did escape and jump the walls, she still wasn’t free from the stigma because the stigma was in society.”

Society only permitted this to happen because the Roman Catholic Church insisted that they knew best.

[-0-]

Survivors of sexual abuse have reacted angrily to comments by a Roman Catholic cardinal that paedophilia is an illness and not a criminal condition.
Archbishop of Durban in South Africa Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier made the remarks in a BBC interview.
The cardinal took part in the election of Pope Francis.
He was asked what the new pontiff could do to repair damage to the Catholic Church's reputation caused by the way it dealt with sexual abuse by priests.
He said paedophilia was an illness, not a criminal condition, and questioned whether someone with such a psychological defect automatically deserved to be punished.
The cardinal spoke of two priests he knew who were abused as children and went on to become paedophiles.
He told the BBC: "Don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that."
The Rape Crisis Network Ireland has said it finds the comments of Cardinal Fox Napier unhelpful and a strategy to avoid the fact that this is a crime.
Spokesperson Cliona Saidlear said it noticed that categorisations of paedophilia come into discussion when there is a way to deflect conversation about responsibility.
She also said it would question why this is being raised at this point by the cardinal.
Ms Saidler added that the psychiatric grouping of the perpetrator does not add anything to the discourse.

Source: http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0316/376997-cardinal-claims-paedophilia-is-a-disease/

I find this baffling. I acknowledge that paedophilia is a paraphilia; a disorder that is characterized by recurrent intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies generally involving: nonhuman objects; the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner (not merely simulated); or animals, children, or other nonconsenting persons -- but to say it should not be punishable by law is ridiculous.

GLaDOS

Peadophilia itself isn't against the law. Child abuse, possession of child pornography etc however is, and obviously should be punished.

[-0-]

Right, and he's basically saying if someone acts on it they shouldn't be punished.

It's sickening.

Dades

From the people who brought you "it's not a sin to be gay, just to act on it".

If he's referring to not prosecuting actual offenders then he's just an idiot who's deluded himself at to what to think in an effort to justify the actions of his organisation.

(Also moving this to "Scandals").

MrPudding

[-0-] wrote: »

Right, and he's basically saying if someone acts on it they shouldn't be punished.

It's sickening.

My understanding is that under Cannon law being a paedophile is a defence to child rape. I expect this is where he is coming from on this.

And just teasing this out a bit... We already have the "mad not bad" concept in law. If someone is insane they will be acquitted, there are various other mental states that give full or partial defences to various crimes. I am just wondering, from an intellectual exercise perspective, if there is any justification for what this cardinal said...

Personally I think that there may be grounds for being a paedophile to be taken into account, but I must disagree with them that there should be no criminal sanction. It should be, at best a partial defence, and even then, I think that public opinion would be such that a government could not conceivably pass such legislation. The church, in this respect, is lucky, they don't give a rats ass about public opinion. They also don't take into account that there is a victim and one of the reasons for having a criminal law is to give some measure of revenge.

MrP

recedite

Dades wrote: »

From the people who brought you "it's not a sin to be gay, just to act on it".

Yes this is exactly the Canon Law position on it. They have the same attitude to homosexuals as they have to paedophiles.
From the perspective of a modern secular western society, this makes them look excessively conservative in their attitude to gays, and excessively liberal towards paedophiles.

PopePalpatine

I wonder what t'udder forum would make of this cardinal's quote.

I'm betting that they'll say "ZOMG LIBERAL MEDIA BIAS!!!"

Hotblack Desiato

I'm amazed how little attention this has got, not only here but in the media.

You can only begin to equate homosexuality and paedophilia if you completely ignore the issue of consent. But that sort of thing has never really been the RCC's strong point.

MrPudding

ninja900 wrote: »

But that sort of thing has never really been the RCC's strong point.

What? Consent? Quite agree.

MrP

Bannasidhe

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, formerly Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric and a man renowned for railing against homosexuality, was in a “longstanding physical relationship” with one of the men whose recent allegations brought about his downfall, it has been claimed.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cardinal-keith-obrien-was-in-longterm-gay-relationship-claims-partner-8544536.html?fb_action_ids=10200280301662763%2C10151340780540222&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%2210200280301662763%22%3A234075770069446%2C%2210151340780540222%22%3A622562951092386%7D&action_type_map=%7B%2210200280301662763%22%3A%22news.reads%22%2C%2210151340780540222%22%3A%22news.reads%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

Nodin

A bit more on the above....

In the six months building up to him being forced to stand down last month, the cardinal had been under some pressure from priests to tone down the rhetoric.
However, his statements, such as describing homosexuality as a "moral degradation", were a tipping point for those previously close to him.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/cardinal-was-in-physical-relationship-with-accuser.20550591

This would evidently be an ecumenical matter.....

The first complainant alleged an assault in the Vatican on the day Cardinal O'Brien was made a cardinal. He is living outside Scotland, having taken temporary leave from the church. He was given leave of absence from the Diocese of Aberdeen and is understood to be in a relationship with an Anglican churchman.

Banbh

An 'Anglican' churchman?
That's really taking a walk on the wild side.

Nodin

Banbh wrote: »

An 'Anglican' churchman?
That's really taking a walk on the wild side.

The love that dare not speak its name.....

bnt

Fortyniner wrote: »

The secret catholic court system rumbles along..

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/secret-court-to-rule-on-priests-defrocking-over-sex-abuse-219946.html

'A judgment is expected in the coming weeks on whether a Cork priest is to be defrocked by a secret ecclesiastical court because of sex abuse in the Diocese of Cloyne.

There's news on that case, here:

A spokesman for the Diocese of Cloyne has confirmed that it has removed one of its priests from office.

Removed, eh? In the past that meant "moved to another parish where no-one has heard of the scandal". Let's see whether they've learned anything from how well that worked out.

Hotblack Desiato

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/religion-and-beliefs/dublin-catholic-archdiocese-sees-improvement-in-finances-1.1362214

Between June 30th 2011 and June 30th last the archdiocese took in €59.610 million and spent €57.873 million.

Meawhile three female administrative employees are to take a case against the archdiocese to the Employment Appeals Tribunal following cuts to their pay last year. They have already won a case before a Rights Commissioner, who also ruled that the archdiocese would not have to pay due to its financial position.

Priests in Dublin, she said,”have had three cuts to their income over the past three years - of 6 per cent, (Nov '10) 9 per cent (Nov '11) and 5 per cent (Nov '12).”

Preists don't have familes to support though.. at least, not usually...

Sulla Felix

I think this could go in the Ongoing Government Bureaucracy Fsckup scandals thread too. We have one of them right?

Nolars

The power of prayer.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Faith-Healing-Parents-Schaibles-Child-Death-203782041.html

MrPudding

Nolars wrote: »

The power of prayer.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Faith-Healing-Parents-Schaibles-Child-Death-203782041.html

So they will be going to prison then. Good. At least something positive will come from the second child's death.

MrP

Nodin

Retired bishop of Clogher Joseph Duffy consistently missed opportunities to
prevent clergy from sexually abusing children, according to the Catholic
Church's watchdog.

The National Board for Safeguarding Children has published audits of several dioceses.

It states that in one particular case in Clogher, there was an unacceptable delay in taking action against a priest and removing him from all ministry following receipt of a credible allegation.

However they trot out the same crap that whatever PR crowd told them to yet again....

The bishop said it had taken so long for this to happen because of the
learning curve involved in understanding the problem of abuse.


He said very little was known about child abuse until the late 1980s and
early 1990s and that understanding perpetrators and the effects of abuse took time.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0424/385333-audit-of-galway-diocese-released/

i remember the church in the 1980's - it was more sex obsessed than a 15 year old lad whose just found out theres porn on the internet, but not in a good way. The notion that sex between a priest and a child, or an adult and a prepubescent child would somehow not have set off alarm bells is laughable.

SebBerkovich

That excuse if just plain offence, not just to the victims of the abuse but to the intelligence of the Irish public.

Bannasidhe

SebBerkovich wrote: »

That excuse if just plain offence, not just to the victims of the abuse but to the intelligence of the Irish public.

The Church of Rome - insulting the intelligence of the Irish public since Patrick.

Cork Boy

Nodin wrote: »

However they trot out the same crap that whatever PR crowd told them to yet again....


http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/0424/385333-audit-of-galway-diocese-released/

i remember the church in the 1980's - it was more sex obsessed than a 15 year old lad whose just found out theres porn on the internet, but not in a good way. The notion that sex between a priest and a child, or an adult and a prepubescent child would somehow not have set off alarm bells is laughable.

Ah now, maybe it was one of them "friendships that had gone too far"?

robindch

Joseph Duffy wrote:

[...] said very little was known about child abuse until the late 1980s [...]

Clearly enough was known about it to want to hide it.

robindch

Hard to know how to interpret this -- either the state isn't prosecuting priests accused of child abuse, or else, prosecutions are going to court and the cases are failing (or something else).

http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/catholic-child-abuse-187-allegations-against-98-priests-have-led-to-zero-convictions-883536-Apr2013/

Penn

robindch wrote: »

Hard to know how to interpret this -- either the state isn't prosecuting priests accused of child abuse, or else, prosecutions are going to court and the cases are failing (or something else).

http://www.thejournal.ie/readme/catholic-child-abuse-187-allegations-against-98-priests-have-led-to-zero-convictions-883536-Apr2013/

I thought that in a lot of the cases, the priest had died which meant no charges could be brought against him.