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Yes, Timmy, the Roman Catholics and their priests have a lot to answer for. I've quite recently bought and read the book by Andrew Madden "Altar boy" about his abuse by a priest and his subsequent life. To my surprise I also heard him on the radio speaking about his struggle with the church - the news item was about another similar scandal.
I was surprised to hear him because it is so long since the book was published. I think he has been fighting for compensation for eight or ten years.
I don't think that the requirement for a priest to be celibate is sensible. It calls for superhuman behaviour - at least from those priests who have normal (sic - this includes gay!) sexual urges. And the consequence is what you would expect - that they fail to be superhuman (or should I say sub-human?) and do themselves and many other people immense harm.
But I sometimes wonder if those priests who succeed in suppressing their humanity don't do themselves and the rest of us worse harm, because they then succeed in their aim of belittling and devaluing human sexual responses.
Am I off on a limb with this or does anyone else agree?
Love,
Anthony
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Well, bully for Oscar Wilde! I am sure that he is delighted with this news - except, of course, that it is quite immaterial to him right now, seeing as he has been dead for 104 years now. But any way, his rehabilitation was speedier than that of Joan of Arc (15th century) who only became St Joan in the 1920's.
What I don't understand is why does the Roman Catholic Church imagine that this means anything to anybody. Oscar Wilde has earned his place in literary history and will be remembered, loved, read and performed long after Benedict the something-or-other has passed into blessed oblivion.
I also do not understand how a vow of celibacy means that sex with a woman is forbidden but sex with a child can be "condoned". If a RC cleric is going to be naughty it would be better to be naughty with a woman (if that is his preference) or with an adult man (if that is his preference). Of course, I am not sure any more whether condemning clerics for their peccata is politically correct. If not, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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Hi JFR. I'm a lifelong Roman Catholic and there was even a time when I actually signed up for seminary to be a priest. Like any human or any human institution, there is both good and bad in the roman church. There is much to condemn in this church, and I am really happy when its crimes are aired publicly. I believe that the people really direct the institution. The hierarchy serve as a drag on change, so as to weed out flippant, spur of the moment change, and thus frustrate and test any movement for change from its membership. But if the people hold out long enough, the change will come. But the change that comes from fallible people isn't always right either. As to celibacy, it came about as a change to the original priesthood. The first pope, a Jewish guy named Peter, is rumored to have been married, since his mother in law is mentioned somewhere in the christian scriptures. When celibacy started it was limited to Bishops because of the extensive workload and travel of such an official would lead to familial neglect. I don't know how the decision was reached for celibacy for priests, but I have to agree with you and Timmy that celibacy is a crock of crap that harms not only the priests, but the membership who get the idea that natural sexual desires are somehow wrong. They go from that to the nonsense of birth control being sinful. Hell, a youth's jacking off rather than copulating can be considered birth control, so even that is considered sinful. The fact that women can't be priests is also a crock, in my opinion. I feel that they would make far better priests than the guys.
As time goes by, when and if these wrongs are cleared up by change, I am sure that new wrongs will appear. That's just human. Some of the proper things that the church now espouses might even be declared wrong later. As to saints; they are officially set up as examples of good lives that Catholics should try to immitate. But the church even goes back on this. St. Christopher was de-sainted because he was discovered to have never lived but to have been a legendary. Sts Saints Sergius and Bacchus were a gay couple...but the church does not talk much about them. In ancient times there was even an official church service for the joining of 2 men in partnership. If you ever bring things like that up, you get platitudes and flimsy excuses. I am a catholic because of tradition I guess. All my relatives always have been. Call it nostalgia. I can't defend the church for anything. It just has lots of screwball traditions, like any institution that has been around for thousands of years and tried to accomodate all of the cultures that have come and gone in that time. I mean no insult when I say, in my opinion, I think it's just silly that strict Jews think it is wrong to eat a cheeseburger or open the refrigerator door on the Sabbath (It's silly to me, but I respect others' traditions.) A lot of stuff in the Catholic Church is just silly too. But I can't disown it any more than I could disown my Mother.
[Updated on: Sun, 19 July 2009 17:11]
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Macky wrote:
I think it's just silly that strict Jews think it is wrong to eat a cheeseburger or open the refrigerator door on the Sabbath ... A lot of stuff in the Catholic Church is just silly too.
Macky, I can easily understand your incredulity about the cheeseburgers and the refrigerator: there are even many Jews who think that it is nonsense. But surely you are aware that there is a gaping chasm between the two examples you gave and the issue of priests and altar boys. If a Jew refrains from eating a cheeseburger no one else gets hurt and its his private business. I am sure that you will agree that that is not the case regarding clerical pedophilia.
Apart from that, I agree with what you wrote.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Not all priests abused altar boys. In the Irish institutions run by the church for the state many priests and staff inserted their penises into girls as well. They also beat the children violently and often indiscriminately.
It is a huge scandal and obviously sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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JFR,
Yes, the abuse of children by priests and the cover up of the same is inexcusable. I believe the church is facing up to its sins in this matter and will get past this. The first part of getting better for an institution is publicly admitting that it did something bad. Unfortunately child abuse seems to have occurred in other religious institutions. I sometimes wonder if the RC church appears to be an extraordinary perpetrator just because of this public confession at the highest levels of the church. Surely you have heard about the scandals involving the mikvah and yeshiva in the Williamsburg Hasidic community in Brooklyn http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99913807.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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The Roman Catholic Church has been forced to start to admit in a small way the living hell they put many thousands of children through in Ireland. Forced.
There has been a compensation board set up where the fact of physical or sexual abuse or both is assumed and serious compensation is paid to the many individuals who suffered at the hands of those who treated rape and molestation as a production line.
This was brutal organised paedophilia on an industrial scale. This was beating of children on an industrial scale. There are very few scandals that are in the same league as the black deeds performed by priests, nuns and others on Irish Roman Catholic Holy orders.
Unpleasant as the Brooklyn incidents were they are not in the same league.
The Roman Catholic Church in those dark state institutions in Ireland were the Irish Holocaust.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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The church at large never sanctioned the despicable acts of certain corrupt priests, as you claim. But to a certain extent you are right. It is well documented that bishops moved perpetrators around and that more children were hurt because they failed to get rid of these guys. The RC church was done a great service by the victims and the media, who made all of this public so that it could be seen in the light of day and eradicated. I shudder to think how many centuries this stuff might have been going on.
In my early 20s, I had a young friend who told me about a priest he went to see to talk about his homosexuality. The priest took the lad to bed. I brought this up to the priest in a face to face meeting. Of course he vehemently denied it. Yet the guy had his office in his bedroom and I found that it all matched the description of the place that my friend had given me. I feel guilty about that. I should have outed him then and there. Perhaps I could have saved a kid from his abuse. But there was my young friend to consider...he would have had to been outed too in any investigation that followed. And, yes, I was not too keen to be out myself to nail this dude. Also, in Pa., the 17 year old was of consenting age. Fortunately some brave victim came forward during the media uproar a few years back and this priest has been removed and prosecuted for his crimes. So I feel guilty about the issue. Not only the hierarchy is guilty here, but bishops and many individual catholics as well. Those who did not come forward to report the abuse. Call it a sin of omission.
It is good that you brought this issue up Timmy. However, I would caution you not to become too self-righteous in pointing out the sins of others, because no one has made the right decision 100% of the time and you certainly do not want to find yourself among the "moral majority".
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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I am glad to agree that the Brooklyn incidents do not seem to be in the same league as those in the Roman church. Heaven forbid that there should be another sect that abused so terribly.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I can never be in the moral majority. I write gay teenage erotic stories. That is obviously reprehensible.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Macky wrote:
Surely you have heard about the scandals involving the mikvah and yeshiva in the Williamsburg Hasidic community in Brooklyn
No, I had not. But nothing would surprise me about that lot!
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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The church HAD to have sanctioned it because the church FACILITATED it and concealed it. Official or unofficial the sanction was present.
The victims have gone through their own personal hell in order to reveal this set of enormous and industrial strength scandals. Can you imagine how hard it is to testify against the representative of their god?
And the community is so close that any whisper of denouncing a priest caused the denouncer to be shunned.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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and not all child abuse is sexual. Here in Israel, at this present time, we have two cases before the courts involving ultra-religious mothers. In one case the mother was convicted yesterday of mistreating her children through a period of more than a decade. The community - sect, rather - is so closed that it was very difficult for social workers to get to the bottom of this case. The mother was found guilty of locking her children out of the house all night for minor misdemeanours, of stubbing out cigarette butts on their bare skin, of hitting them with rolling pins ... well you get the picture. Apparently, some of the older children were so bereft of love that they were driven to incestuous acts. Sentence has yet to be passed. Her older children are begging the court for mercy on their mother.
Another case, also from an ultra-religious sect, that has just come to the fore is of a mother who has starved her 3 year old child. The authorities suspect a Münchhausen syndrome, but the woman refuses psychiatric analysis (of course). The child is now in hospital: divorced from his mother he has already regained 20% of his weight.
I think it was Macky who said that sexual repression leads to sexual and or physical abuse. Any society that forbids normal sexual relations to its members is asking for trouble - and it will be the innocent and the unprotected who will suffer the most.
I don't know why I have written all this. It just seemed right to do so.
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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Macky
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
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JFR, Strangely enough, before the Williamsburg scandal errupted into public view, I was talking to one of their members on a philosophical forum. He told me about what was going on. THe young man was agonizing about leaving the sect. He had no education, no friends on the outside, and would be cut off from anyone who had ever loved him. He procured marijuana to try to calm his conscience. As far as I know, he never broke free. People seem to be held captive in these types of sects. THat , in itself, is probably abuse.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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