HiddenMysteries: KKKristians: Can't live with them, and the world certainly can't live with them!

Nothing but a bunch of pious lying immoral hypocrites.. whose self-importance to the world is bestowed by themselves upon themselves....No wonder Jesus cursed them.. Whited Sepulchres full of dead men's bones (and little boys too)- filthy unwashed cups of crap, parading as holy humans..

Where Is the Vatican's Outrage About Child Molestation?

In a world much out of joint, to molest a child must remain a crime, an inviolate taboo, an unforgivable sin.

Chester the Molester

http://hiddenmysteries.com/xcart/product.php?productid=19464

So, where is the Vatican's outrage at the worldwide epidemic of sexual abuse of children perpetrated by its own clergy -- a sin of the very first order, given the defenselessness of the victims and the power and trust invested in the molesting men of God?

The world -- and the molested -- have been waiting, waiting for the Catholic Church's hierarchy to do the right thing in these months of crisis. Sadly, the wait will be longer.

Rather than coming to a ringing and instantaneous defense of defiled children, the Vatican went instantaneously to self-defense -- of itself as an institution -- first asking forgiveness for an unforgivable sin, then shifting blame for clerical sinning to the secular world for its sexual permissiveness, and then, after a barrage of bad press internationally, making itself out as a victim of media bias.

What blasphemy: Only the tightest, most fearful of defensive crouches could cause a putatively moral institution to lose sight of the real victim in this never ending tragedy -- the thousands upon thousands of children, now grown painfully to adults, who had their childhoods desecrated by, of all people, their confessors. In defensive mode, the Vatican has expressed to the molested en masse little in the way of sorrow or even empathy.

And now, finally summoning itself to action, the church in Rome misfires -- badly. Earlier last month Pope Benedict called for the "re-evangelization" of the secular world, establishing a Pontifical Council for just this purpose -- pointing the finger, yet again, away from the church's own internal problems. This, after his promising admission only weeks earlier that the abuse crisis was "truly terrifying" and that the problem was "from sin that exists inside the church."

Then, two weeks ago, adding insult to misogyny and creating a massive diversion from the main point -- the defense of the child -- the Vatican, in an ostensible response to the abuse scandal, made the out-from-nowhere ruling that the ordination of women priests equates to the same "canonical crime" as pedophilia. (As if that overreach against women clergy weren't enough, the medieval sins of apostasy, heresy, and schism were cited too.) As to action on pedophilia -- or less abstractly, child rape -- the Vatican failed to adopt America's zero-tolerance policy, legacy of the scandal here in the '90s.

Astonishingly, this is the Vatican's response after months and months of prayerful meditation over the molestation crisis raging outside its doors?

Or, is it proof that the Catholic Church is covering up for a universe of guilt -- of priests, bishops, popes---and that it has lost its moral compass, the foundational raison d'etre of any church? And that, unable or unwilling to issue a mea culpa, it is now caught in sclerotic bends of its own making? A mea culpa from Benedict for lax oversight -- his and that of his predecessor John Paul -- could go far to heal the abused and the church itself, but the confessors will not confess. Pity; a mea culpa would seem natural to a moral institution.

Not that the secular world is in great moral shape. Some critics, the neo-atheists in
particular, see a zero-sum game in play, claiming that the faltering of the Catholic Church proves the superiority of the secular world. But that's false either-or thinking. Both the Church and the secular world are in moral disarray. For while the secular world has produced many advances -- the emancipation of women being a big one, including, notably, the frocking of women in some Protestant denominations -- the secular world has also blurred the moral line in the culture, the line that gives meaning and value to life, and in so doing has produced... junkier results: the mainstreaming of pornography, for one example.

And for another example, and of bearing here: the sexualization of childhood -- which, at base, is molestation of another kind.

And compounding tragedy upon tragedy: To combat this sexualization of childhood by the secular world, the Catholic Church -- theoretically a powerful moral counterforce -- has, by its own sins, destroyed its own moral authority to do battle, silenced its own voice to speak out, rendered lame its own sword arm.

Meaning: In both worlds -- secular and even in the religious -- the child is left undefended. And the world is left even more out of joint.

The most depressing aspect of this crisis, apart from the pain of the molested, is the fact that, in diocese after diocese after diocese, and the hallowed Vatican itself, the alarm bell failed time after time to go off, a primal revulsion was stifled again and again, in favor of transferring the problem priest or bishop elsewhere. If ever there are grounds to go operatically ballistic, it's the molestation of a child -- think about it, picture it, it is a crime and should be prosecuted as a crime -- and when thousands are violated... the silence is damning. Even from a strictly institutional point of view, it's mystifying how the hierarchy fails to comprehend the institution-destroying threat of that silence, not to mention the impact of criminal trials, as increasing numbers of victims file lawsuits.

Taken together, it's hard not to conclude that another Reformation may be needed in the Catholic Church -- because, as many have observed by now, the defilement of children by clergy is infinitely more significant than the selling of indulgences in exchange for access to God, the proximate cause that moved Martin Luther to protest in the 16th century, leading to the first Reformation and the Protestant breakaway.

Is there another Martin Luther in the ranks?

Certainly the seeds of, if not Reformation, then reform are seen in many quarters. The contents of the highly-regarded National Catholic Reporter, and the lengthy comments threads by clergy and laity, reflect voices pained and angry over the abuse crisis. Its July editorial, "A hierarchy deeply damaged from within," pulls no punches. One can feel true sympathy for the legions of good priests and nuns who over their lifetimes can be said to have done God's good work, the value of which is being undermined by their "damaged" hierarchy. (New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof defends the good clergy here and here.)

And, certainly, in the pews there are legions of the faithful who are appalled and pained
by the abuse crisis, to judge from the anecdotal evidence of polls, church study groups, letters to the editor, and remarks of friends and acquaintances. Since the abuse scandal began its worldwide course here in the U.S. more than a decade ago, that pain is now long-term.

But, feeling pain is not necessarily action. Perhaps action -- to insist on accountability, to
seek justice for the victims -- must fall to the abused themselves. Several victims' groups have already organized for this purpose, including SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). (Bishopaccountability.org tracks abuse cases worldwide.)

And -- signaling a stab at another Reformation -- Time reported in a June cover story that "plans are afoot for thousands of abuse victims and their loved ones to travel to Rome in October for a 'Reformation Day' to pressure the Vatican to act." This march on Rome is envisioned by its prime organizer, a former abuse victim, as a massive democracy movement to transform Rome: "It's the people's church. We have to take it back... This is way bigger than Martin Luther." (If so, an official website needs to be set up; a Google search yields nothing.)

Yet, given the Vatican's stonewalling to date, what chances are there, really, that this march on Rome will penetrate the doors, much less the ears and hearts, of the Vatican? And, truly, why should the victims have to bleed and "share" the awful specifics of their histories in public yet another time and, moreover, to no result?

They need allies. The victims of these heinous crimes need their sympathetic clergy and fellow parishioners as allies, to stand shoulder to shoulder with them -- everywhere -- in their righteous pursuit of justice, both in the church and in the courts.

Rise up, rise up, all ye Soldiers of the Cross!

[Disclosure about the writer: I am not a Catholic but a lapsed Protestant, a Presbyterian, who, though outside the church, believe the moral life is the most important of the lives we lead. As such, I want moral institutions, most especially churches, to do the right and moral thing. Had my church been a fighting church in such tests as the Vietnam War, the rights of women and minorities, the Iraq War, and torture, I might still be a member.]

Carla Seaquist, a playwright, is working on a play titled "Prodigal" and authored "Who Cares?: The Washington-Sarajevo Talks." Her book, "Manufacturing Hope: Post-9/11 Notes on Politics, Culture, Torture, and the American Character," a collection of op-eds, essays, and dialogues, is now out (http://www.carlaseaquist.com).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Rome Fiddles, We Burn

By MAUREEN DOWD

If the Vatican is trying to restore the impression that its moral sense is intact, issuing a document that equates pedophilia with the ordination of women doesn’t really do that.

The Catholic Church continued to heap insult upon injury when it revealed its long-awaited new rules on clergy sex abuse, rules that the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said signaled a commitment to grasp the nettle with “rigor and transparency.”

The church still believes in its own intrinsic holiness despite all evidence to the contrary. It thinks it’s making huge concessions on the unstoppable abuse scandal when it’s taking baby steps.

The casuistic document did not issue a zero-tolerance policy to defrock priests after they are found guilty of pedophilia; it did not order bishops to report every instance of abuse to the police; it did not set up sanctions on bishops who sweep abuse under the rectory rug; it did not eliminate the statute of limitations for abused children; it did not tell bishops to stop lobbying legislatures to prevent child-abuse laws from being toughened.

There is no moral awakening here. The cruelty and indecency of child abuse once more inspires tactical contrition. All the penitence of the church is grudging and reactive. Church leaders are merely as penitent as they need to be to protect the institution.

Can you imagine such a scene in the confessional?

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I am as sorry as my job or school requires me to be.”

“But my daughter, that is not true penitence. That’s situational penitence.”

After the Belgian police bracingly conducted raids on the church hierarchy, inspired in part by the horrifying case of a boy molested for years by his uncle, the bishop of Bruges, a case that the church ignored and covered up for 25 years, the pope did not applaud the more aggressive tack. He condemned it.

In a remarkable Times story recently, Laurie Goodstein and David Halbfinger debunked the spin that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been one of the more alert officials on the issue of sexual abuse:

“The future pope, it is now clear, was also part of a culture of nonresponsibility, denial, legalistic foot-dragging and outright obstruction. More than any top Vatican official other than John Paul, it was Cardinal Ratzinger who might have taken decisive action in the 1990s to prevent the scandal from metastasizing in country after country, growing to such proportions that it now threatens to consume his own papacy.”

If Roman Polanski were a priest, he’d still be working here.

Stupefyingly, the new Vatican document also links raping children with ordaining women as priests, deeming both “graviora delicta,” or grave offenses. Clerics who attempt to ordain women can now be defrocked.

On Beliefnet, Mark Silk, a professor of religion at Connecticut’s Trinity College, suggested that the stronger threat against women’s ordination is not “a maladroit add-on” but the medieval Vatican’s “main business.”

After the Vatican launched two inquisitions of American nuns, it didn’t seem possible that the archconservative Il Papa and his paternalistic redoubt could get more unenlightened, but they have somehow managed it.

Letting women be priests — which should be seen as a way to help cleanse the church and move it beyond its infantilized and defensive state — is now on the list of awful sins right next to pedophilia, heresy, apostasy and schism.

Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, the chairman of the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, asserted, “The Catholic Church, through its long and constant teaching, holds that ordination has been, from the beginning, reserved to men, a fact which cannot be changed despite changing times.”

But if it was reserved to celibate men centuries ago simply as a way for the church to keep land, why can’t it be changed? If a society makes strides in not subordinating women, why can’t the church reflect that? If men prove that all-male hierarchies can get shamefully warped, why can’t they embrace the normality of equality? The Vatican’s insistence on male prerogative is misogynistic poppycock — enhancing American Catholics’ disenchantment with Rome.

In The New Republic, Garry Wills wrote about his struggle to come to terms with the sins of his church: Jesus “is the one who said, ‘Whatever you did to any of my brothers, even the lowliest, you did to me.’ That means that the priests abusing the vulnerable young were doing that to Jesus, raping Jesus. Any clerical functionary who shows more sympathy for the predator priests than for their victims instantly disqualified himself as a follower of Jesus. The cardinals said they must care for their own, going to jail if necessary to protect a priest. We say the same thing, but the ‘our own’ we care for are the victimized, the poor, the violated. They are Jesus.”

http://www.nytimes.com

KKKristians: Can't live with them, and the world certainly can't live with them!

Tuesday, July 27 2010 @ 09:16 PM CDT