Welcome to The Catholic Cover Up
Saturday, September 04 2010 @ 09:31 PM EST

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Are people afraid to talk about sexual abuse of children?

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Glori Meldrum, founder of Little Warriors, thinks so. This energetic, no-nonsense, survivor of abuse during her childhood is convinced that society won’t tackle the issue seriously because so many people in power may be hiding their own or a family member’s involvement.
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Disclosure and Betrayal

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I get a lot of emails and letters from abuse survivors who are stunned by the response of family, friends, and clergy when they disclosed their experiences of abuse.

No matter how much these people may have failed them in the past; they still somehow believed that once the abuse is exposed, they will find support, acceptance, and compassion. Instead, they found the same old toxic dynamics, the same dysfunction, and the same sick system that harbors secrets and covers up abuse.

In many ways, this kind of response is almost equal to the betrayal and trauma brought on by the original abuse.
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A Pox on Both Their Houses

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Tom Roberts at the National Catholic Reporter reflects on the failure of the hierarchy:
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The Catholic church is guilty of crimes against humanity

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Rational people will, when given the facts, reject it for its past

Padraig Reidy lays out his humanist credentials before expressing his nervousness at the more extreme end of the anti-Catholic movement ("I'm an atheist but this anti-Catholic rhetoric is making me nervous", Comment).
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Good news

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On 10 August 2010 Lina asked if it is true that Monsignor Robert Borne has to pay his own legal defence fees. I told her I would find out.

Father Peter Proulx handles all queries regarding clerical sex abuse for the Diocese of Pembroke. I emailed the following questions to Father Proulx on 11 August 2010:
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Pope could learn from his bishop

Blogs and Discussionflag_ireland Tag: ireland

One of the most able religious leaders to come to prominence of late is the archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin.

The head of one of Ireland's larger Catholic dioceses, he has taken a strong reformist line, advocating that the church has to change for the sake of its youth.
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Why is healing from male child sexual abuse important?

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Child sexual abuse is one of the most important issues facing America today. While the sexual abuse of girls has gained some valuable attention, the sexual abuse of boys has, for the most part, remained a hidden epidemic until the recent news coverage of clergy abuse by priests in the Catholic Church of the abuse of both girls and boys.

Alas, the attention drawn to the prevalence of the sexual abuse of boys is finally receiving received needed attention…but not enough.
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Did Belgium get it right?

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flag_belgium Tag: belgium

When Belgium authorities moved in on the offices of the Roman Catholic church to obtain documents did they do the correct thing? The world press recorded the operation on June 26: In an unprecedented move, Belgian police authorities raided the offices, private residences, and the graves of Belgian Catholic church officials who may be linked to the ongoing sexual abuse scandal.
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'Clergy sex abuse not just an American problem'

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By NCR Staff
Accountability

Joelle Casteix, Southwest regional director of the U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, attaches pictures to a wall before of a news conference in Rome June 8.

(CNS/Reuters)About 300 survivors of sexual abuse and their supporters met this weekend in Chicago for a national conference sponsored by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). NCR contributor Heidi Schlumpf was at the conference and filed a series of stories to the NCR Today blog.
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The inner workings of a hierarchy with a sex offender mentality

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Vatican Tag: vatican

Analysis

The Vatican announcement that the attempted ordination of women is a “grave crime” to be dealt with according to the same procedures as the sexual abuse of minors exposes the way those running our church actually think.

In attempting to explain revised norms to church canons, they reveal the legalistic inner workings of their minds, and affirm unsettling psychological patterns of thought.
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Child sex abuse never a matter to laugh about

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The Diocese of Norwich objects to the cartoon published July 26 on the editorial page. It appears the cartoon was in response to the new norms announced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith that addressed women and ordination as well as child-protection policies.

Those of us who serve in the Catholic Church do not believe the implied subject of child abuse is ever a subject to make fun of. We in the church, and specifically the diocese, regard this subject seriously.
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Law enforcement needs to know about abuse by clergy

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The Youngstown Diocese announced that the Rev. Thomas Crum has been defrocked because of credible allegations of sexually abusing a minor (“Former local pastor defrocked,” July 20). The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) asks anyone who has knowledge of his misdeeds or who has been harmed by Crum to please contact law enforcement.

Victims worry where Crum is located, if he is being watched and if he is being kept away from children.
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Speaking Publicly

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A justice on the Illinois State Supreme Court is speaking out about the hierarchy's intransigence. The Honorable Anne M. Burke is a Dame of Malta, was on the USCCB's lay review board back when the sexual abuse crisis was exposed in the US, and seems to be more moderate-minded compared to a lot of the outright liberalism you see from the more radical voices for reform.

Now, I cannot agree with her specific proposal:

Anne Burke, a justice on the Illinois State Supreme Court and former head of the review board of lay people established by the U.S. bishops to oversee their new policies, says Benedict should ditch the shoes, the fur, and all the other trappings of papal regalia and swap his hallmark white cassock for a simple black one for the remainder of his papacy as a powerful sign of penance for the scandal of the sexual abuse of children by clergy.
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St. Louis Female Priest Responds to Vatican Equating Women Reverends with Pedophiles

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By now you've probably heard how the Vatican unveiled sweeping changes last week regarding its policies on sexual abuse and sexuality within the Catholic church.
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A Catholic mom on Vatican's strategy to address abuse

Blogs and DiscussionBy Tracy Grant

The Catholic Church has shown that it has a lot in common with your typical 6-year-old.

In announcing its latest attempt to deal with the decades-old priest sex abuse scandal, the Vatican wheedled when it could have healed, deflected when it could have taken a punch squarely and ultimately, failed to put behind it the greatest calamity to face the church in centuries.
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More women = less sex abuse

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By Bryan Cones

It is becoming common wisdom that the exclusion of women from decision-making positions in most areas of church life is at least one element in the onging sexual abuse crisis.

Without the presence of women, the argument goes, the hierarchy becomes a boys club, one made up of a uniquely odd demographic: unmarried men, many of whom "grew up," beginning in puberty even, as clerics, and who have few professional or even personal relationships with women.
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No Case to Answer for Child Abuse by Catholic Clergy

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In the past couple of weeks has come the welcome news that the entire board of the NSW branch of the St Vincent De Paul Society has been sacked, a direct flow-on of systemic bullying within that organisation. And here, in this story from yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, is a description of a legal technicality that readers in liberal democracies outside of Australia might find difficult to understand.

That is, that in NSW (NSW being Australia’s most populous state, with in excess of seven million people), the Catholic Church cannot be called to account for any child abuse perpetrated by priests or other clergy before 1986. This stems from the totally flawed decision in the matter of Ellis v Pell [2006] NSWSC 109 (3 March 2006), which was summarised in the Herald story like so:
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Church to respect local law on abuse

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The Catholic Church must respect local laws when handling child abuse cases, the Vatican's chief spokesman said on Saturday, two days after the Holy See issued new rules against pedophile priests.

The new rules "represent an indispensable guide for a large community, like the Catholic Church, which must have common standards autonomous of those of the countries in which its is present", Federico Lombardi was quoted as saying by ANSA news agency.
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Vatican Nonsense Continues

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Have you seen yesterday's New York Times? Rachel Donadio's article, "Vatican Revises Sexual Abuse Process But Causes Stir," begins on the front page. She reports an announcement from the Vatican that it has revised laws to discipline sex-abuser priests, but also that ordaining women as priests is as grave an offense as pedophilia...

WHAT??... I know that systems tend to accomodate to their least functional members, but this is horrifying, and continues to leave children at risk.
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Child Predators and their Champion: the Catholic Church

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In a recent article I discovered online with Dalje.com, a Croatian site, I came across the following quote[1].

But is the Catholic church being unfairly targeted, and, if so, why? Are atheists innocent of child abuse, or Protestants, or Jews? While it is true that the Catholic church represents the largest single religious entity in the world, and wields great influence, should it therefore be held to a higher standard by the media? It doesn’t seem quite fair.

After all, does a child suffer less agony, physical and emotional, from the illicit touch of an atheist, a rabbi, or a Protestant minister than that of a Catholic? Of course not. And should a pastor or a rabbi or an atheist be spared humiliation, disgrace, and public reprobation in the media and his community because he belongs to a smaller, non-Catholic religious denomination?
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Reporting on a church in denial is no easy task

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Stephanie Salter The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — The first thing almost anyone noticed upon meeting the Rev. Martin Greenlaw was his toupee. It was not a good one, dark brown and anchored atop his own lighter brown hair.

Even parishioners at St. Paul’s Church who liked their pastor wondered why a Catholic priest needed a toupee; behind his back they referred to it as “road kill.”
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Police question Belgian cardinal over child abuse; SNAP responds

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Statement by Barbara Blaine, president and founder of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (312-399-4747)

We're grateful that Danneels is being questioned. It should have happened long ago.

It's time for Catholic officials to stop griping about the police raid and start helping to unearth the truth about long-hidden clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Had the church hierarchy acted responsibly, there would have been no need for the raid, of course.
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Families of church sex abuse victims suffer wounds, too

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COVINGTON, Ky. - Sue was deeply into a peaceful sleep one night, when all of a sudden her eyes popped open and a wave of fear instantly washed over her entire body.

Her husband, Bill, hovered overhead in a trance, one of his arms fully extended and the hand tightly clenched into a fist.

"It did scare me," she said. "It was somebody in his dream that he was going to hit, but I was going to be the one to get punched."
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Raiding The Child Rapists In Belgium

Blogs and Discussionglobal Tag: global

There was certainly no waffling in Belgium when law enforcement officials raided a Catholic Bishop’s meeting to pursue tawdry allegations of sexual abuse by pedophile priests.

When Pope Benedict XVI heard about the operation, he put down his incense and announced he was incensed that police actually did their jobs to protect minors from major abuses.

He called the police action “surprising and deplorable”, which more accurately might describe the way Rome has handled the child rape crisis.
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Pope stifles abuse discussions; Clergy sex abuse victims respond

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Vatican Tag: vatican

Statement by David Clohessy, executive director of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314-566-9790 cell, 314-645-5915 home)

(Today, the Pope issued what the AP calls a "remarkable" statement admonishing a high profile Cardinal who had publicly questioned a top Vatican official's handling of child sexual abuse.)

The Pope should be encouraging, not forbidding, more open conversation about cover ups of clergy sex crimes by bishops, not less. Frankly, the church desperately needs it. Kids are safer when honest dialogue about misdeeds is encouraged, not forbidden.
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Church, celibacy and child exploitation

Blogs and Discussion

By Virag Pachpore

It is puzzling to find out that the Church which is supposed to protect, guide and turn people into better citizens is the very one committing such atrocities. Does the Church have a moral and spiritual right to reprimand the sinners?
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It is time the for the Catholic Church to be held to account

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We may not be seeing the Pope in handcuffs any time soon but by common consent the Catholic Church is facing perhaps its greatest crisis of the modern age. Just ask the Catholics.

The attempt to have the Pope indicted may be being fronted by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the world’s most prominent atheists. But the campaign to hold the church to account for systemic child abuse and the persistent cover-ups is being driven by Catholics themselves.
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The Abuse & Cover Up–What Would Jesus Say?

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The Abuse & Cover-up Crisis (from, A Conversation with the Nazarene)
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Stop sex abuse; don't make empty promises

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Once again we see the pope apologizing and promising to take action regarding the sexual abuse of children during the celebration of the Year of the Priest in the Vatican.

How long is it going to take to get real action?
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David Clohessy Responds to the Pope’s Latest Apology

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by Kristi

The following is an article by David Clohessy, Executive Director of SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), published on the CNN Belief Blog on June 14, 2010. In the article, Clohessy responds to the Pope’s most recent apology about the clergy sex abuse scandal and offers suggestions for action and reform.

As Clohessy writes, “When it comes to the safety of children, only actions matter.” I think that abuse victims of all ages would agree that actions speak a whole lot louder than words.
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At Long Last the Catholic Church Must Be Destroyed

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By Gregory Paul

As the Nathan character said in The Searchers, that tears it. The last shred of the Catholic claim to being an ethical institution has been eliminated by the cruel perfidy of its clerics.

It is time for all decent people to demand that the institution no longer exist as an organized entity, and for all upright people who belong to the body to leave in disgust. It is not just the pedophile scandal. It is because core Catholic doctrine is outright evil. Here's why.
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Abuse survivors outrage at Vatican probe into Irish church sex abuse

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By CAHIR O'DOHERTY

Survivors of clerical abuse and their representatives are hitting out at reports that the Vatican-ordered investigation of Ireland’s Catholic Church will do much more than examine how the decades long clerical sex abuse crisis occurred.
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Are you a Catholic priest who's raped a child? Click here to learn about conscience

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Another week, another revelation of abuse and cover ups in the Catholic Church. This week's Guardian Weekend magazine ran the account of a woman raped at age 13 by the priest living in her house, whose own mother chose to see her as the sinner.

It takes a pretty big leap of faith to go for a perception quite that twisted, but if anyone can, a Catholic can.
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Irish church is now badly in need of a wake-up call

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BREDA O'BRIEN

The Catholic church will die, and deserve to die, unless it finds a way of really being “good news”

ABOUT 15 years ago, the Washington Post had a truly daft piece about Irish faces. It was triggered by a visit by Gerry Adams. And what kind of Irish face, according to the Post, did Gerry Adams have? “The face of a tough, smart priest, the youngest priest ever to be closest to the cardinal, who, in turn, is afraid of him and doesn’t know why.”
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Former priest found guilty of child abuse; clergy sex abuse victims respond

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Statement by Peter Isely, SNAP Midwestern Director 414-429-7259

We’re grateful that it’s now clear that Barnes is a child molester. We hope this court action will prod others who saw, suspected or suffered his crimes to come forward and get help.

We strongly suspect there are others Barnes has assaulted who are suffering in shame, silence and self blame. We hope they’ll find the courage and strength to speak up and call police, so he might be charged with and convicted for other crimes, resulting in a longer sentence.
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Will the Cardinal Be Indicted?

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By Philip Shenon

“By any measure, he has earned—and looks forward to—his retirement in his hometown among friends and family,” Mahony’s chief spokesman, Tod Tamberg, told The Daily Beast. “It is beautiful here—the most beautiful place on earth. Why live anywhere else? Seriously.”

Hennigan, the cardinal’s lawyer, said he had been informed by federal investigators that Mahony was not a “target” of the investigation, a term used by the Justice Department for suspects likely to be indicted.
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Church's bizarre anti-life dogma

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STOCKBRIDGE

I was listening to NPR driving home from store, half-listening to the news when I heard the words: "Sister Margaret McBride has been excommunicated." Suddenly, the radio had my full attention, and what I heard made me want to pull over, stop the car, raise my fists to the sky and rail against all the craziness and injustice in the world.
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No institution can police itself, so we must look outside the church hierarchy for solutions to crisis

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Statement by Barbara Dorris, Outreach Director 314 862 7688

It is hard to have any faith whatsoever that top Catholic officials can dramatically improve how the Irish church deals with child sex abuse and cover up cases. What’s needed is for secular authorities to step up and reign in the nearly limitless power of bishops and reform archaic, predator-friendly laws that enable bishops to ignore or conceal child sex crimes.
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POTUS sides with Pope on immunity for pedophile state

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By Tracy R Twyman

The mafia state and tax haven known as the Vatican, which controls the banks that launder the money for the pedophile and child prostitution ring known as the Catholic church, now has an ally in President of the foreign-owned corporate police state known as USA.

You see, whenever it’s convenient, they like to pretend that their political “state” is somehow separate from their “priesthood.” Then when it’s convenient, they like to say that it’s the other way around: priests are merely ambassadors of the Vatican, and each church, each diocese an extension of the international Catholic state.

This from the AFP:
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You are here: Home / General Articles / 819 / Child & Sexual Abuse by Catholic Church/Should the Catholic Church Call itself Ch

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By valeri

Recently, many articles in US newspapers & media talked about how the Catholic Church in Ireland covered up child abuse.

Making such an investigation public knowledge is a welcome step! And as far as a governmental apology is concerned, better late than never! However, an apology only has as much force as the action that follows it. May we look forward to a new wind blowing in the area of public service? Too bad past wrongs have not been compensated. Wouldn’t that show seriousness of intent?
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The World Needs a New Vatican Council

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The Roman Catholic Church is having a mental breakdown. Much of this is due, of course, to the child abuse cases and the hierarchy's arrogant and immoral handling of these cases. But there's more.
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'Breeding ground' for sex offenders

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I know this is a bald accusation but it can not, nor should not, be sanitised in any way:

The Catholic Church has been the safe haven and breeding ground for child sex offenders for decades. Probably a hundred years.

And if it were not a religious organisation, shrouded in secrecy and protection, it would be ostracised and targeted by law enforcement agencies around the globe.
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Is The Catholic Church Outdated?

Blogs and DiscussionVatican Tag: vatican

Tom Craven Reports:

A growing trend of Western Secularism as well as a sudden rise in militant Atheism has recently left religious folk constantly on the defence against attacks on their faith. One Church in particular seems to attract more criticism than any other;this is of course the Catholic Church.

The Church has been charged with everything from being sexist, intellectually repressive, homophobic, spreading AIDS, sexually abusive, greedy, racist, starting the crusades, burning witches and murdering millions in the Inquisitions of Europe. These charges can make decent arguments in proving religions and the Catholic Church evil, but these charges are more than often mistaken.
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Yes, church about God

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"The church has so little to do with God."

That was one person’s comment on a story last week about the Diocese of Antigonish liquidating parish assets to pay for sex abuse lawsuits involving priests.

The reader joined others in denouncing the Roman Catholic Church for hanging on to its corporate wealth while asking individual parishioners to sacrifice the property they had accumulated in the name of the church over decades of hard work.
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Cardinal Schönborn is no longer a viable “papabile” candidate

Blogs and DiscussionVatican Tag: vatican

These past few weeks Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has the Vatican and “conservative” Catholics, whatever that term means anymore, wondering whether he’s helping his friend, the pope, given the independent-minded streak Schönborn has shown amid the ongoing clergy sexual abuse crisis.

In March, Schönborn set off alarm bells in Rome when he said that mandatory celibacy — the longstanding rule that priests must not marry — should be included in an “unflinching examination” of the scandal’s causes.
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What's Really Behind the Catholic Church's Sexual Abuse Problem?

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Why has the Church been plagued by so much pedophilia – predominantly homosexual? And why has a scandal regarding this situation erupted only now?

The global Catholic Church is confronting an extraordinary crisis not faced since the Reformation, which began with sharp criticisms of the Church and ended with a schism out of which emerged the establishment of a separate Protestant Church.
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The Brady crunch

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by Andrew Brown

The Catholic church in Ireland has been ruthlessly criticised by one of its own leaders, while the other refuses to resign

What is going on in the scandal-battered Irish Catholic Church? It has two primates, Cardinal Sean Brady in Armagh, and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, in Dublin, who was parachuted in from the Vatican to sort out the catastrophic consequences of the child abuse scandals.
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Vatican defence in US abuse case draws angry response

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AFP - The Vatican will argue that bishops cannot be considered their employees in its defence of a US priest sex abuse case, their lawyer said, drawing an angry response from a victims group.

"This lawsuit is trying to say that the bishop in Louisville is an employee of the pope," Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's US attorney told AFP in a telephone interview Monday.
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archbishop diarmuid martin's infernal machine

Blogs and Discussionflag_ireland Tag: ireland

The battle continues.
It is nothing less than a battle for the soul of the Catholic Church in Ireland.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin is making his play for total power.

In order to succeed, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin must ruin a generation of Bishops and a saintly Cardinal.

He must terrorise the rest of us into silence.

But his prime target is the Bishops.
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Italian trust in Catholic church plunges as Vatican makes strongest defence against U.S. child molestation claims yet

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flag_italy Tag: italy

By Nick Pisa


Trust in Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church has plummeted In Italy following a series of sex abuse scandals, it was revealed yesterday.

The Catholic church has been rocked by paedophile priest cases in Ireland, America, Austria and Germany over the last few months.