Catholic Church shamed by Irish abuse report

[Tabiti]

DUBLIN – After a nine-year investigation, a commission published a damning report Wednesday on decades of rapes, humiliation and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.

The 2,600-page report painted the most detailed and damning portrait yet of church-administered abuse in a country grown weary of revelations about child molestation by priests.

The investigation of the tax-supported schools uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.

Wednesday's five-volume report on the probe — which was resisted by Catholic religious orders — concluded that church officials shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse concluded.

Victims of the abuse, who are now in their 50s to 80s, lobbied long and hard for an official investigation. They say that for all its incredible detail, the report doesn't nail down what really matters — the names of their abusers.

"I do genuinely believe that it would have been a further step towards our healing if our abusers had been named and shamed," said Christine Buckley, 62, who spent the first 18 years of her life in a Dublin orphanage where children were forced to manufacture rosaries — and were humiliated, beaten and raped whether they achieved their quota or not.

The Catholic religious orders that ran more than 50 workhouse-style reform schools from the late 19th century until the mid-1990s offered public words of apology, shame and regret Wednesday. But when questioned, their leaders indicated they would continue to protect the identities of clergy accused of abuse — men and women who were never reported to police, and were instead permitted to change jobs and keep harming children.

The Christian Brothers, which ran several boys' institutions deemed to have harbored serial child molesters and sadists on their staff, insisted it had cooperated fully with the probe. The order successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of all of its members, dead or alive, unnamed in the report. No real names, whether of victims or perpetrators, appear in the final document.

The Christian Brothers' leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names secret because "perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations."

"But on the other hand, I'd have to say that at this stage, we have no interest in protecting people who were perpetrators of abuse," Mullan said, vowing to "cooperate fully with any investigation or any civil authority seeking to explore those matters."

Buckley, who said she was abused at an orphanage run by the Sisters of Mercy, which ran several refuges for girls where the report documented chronic brutality, said the religious orders for years branded the victims as money-seeking liars — and were incapable of admitting their guilt today.

She criticized Mullan for suggesting that "today, having read the report, he doesn't mind if the abusers are named and shamed. Isn't that a little bit late for us?"

The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys' facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. ... Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."

Ireland's myriad religious orders, much like their mother church, have been devastated by 15 years of scandals involving past cover-ups of abusers in their ranks.

The Christian Brothers have withdrawn from running several schools that still bear their name and the order has had few recruits in Ireland in the past two decades. Other orders are down to a handful of members, and their bases are closer to nursing homes than active missions.

"Most of these orders will literally die out in Ireland within the next generation or so," said Michael Kelly, editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper in Dublin. "Many of them are already in wind-up mode. They lack the confidence even to seek new vocations (recruits), due to the stigma associated with their members' shocking, scandalous behavior."

The Irish government, which in 1999 apologized for its role in permitting decades of abuse and established the commission to nail down the full truth of the matter, has tried to use money to bring closure to the victims.

A government-appointed panel has paid 12,000 survivors of the schools, orphanages and other church-run residences an average of $90,000 each — on condition they surrender their right to sue either the church or state. About 2,000 more claims are pending. Irish Catholic leaders cut a controversial deal with the government in 2001 that capped the church's contribution at $175 million — a fraction of the final cost.

Some victims emphasized, even as they began thumbing through the report, that nothing — not even criminal convictions of their long-ago tormentors — will ever put right their psychological wounds and make their nightmares go away.

Tom Sweeney, who spent five years in two Christian Brothers-run institutions where he was placed for truancy, says he suffered sexual abuse and beatings. He also has bitter memories about more everyday humiliations — such as being forced to wrap his urine-stained sheets around his neck and parade in front of other children when he'd wet his bed.

"It's something you'll never forget, the way you lived in these industrial schools," he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/...catholic_abuse

[Jamt]

There are the same history in Salvation Army orphanages in Sweden and a lot of abuse happening in modern day non religious foster care towards children. It is good that it gets exposed and stopped but I hate it when used as a tool for culture Marxism to deconstruct the West.

The Catholic Church and pope Ratzinger is a bulwark against the collapse of Europe. Much more than my own Protestantism and modern secularism.

[Osweo]

Two words: unmarried priesthood. What the hell do they expect? My great grandmother in Ireland often commented on the absurdity that many good men were kept out of the Church by this rule. You don't hear of this so much in the Orthodox world. There's even a conventional insistence on priests being married - how else can they empaathise with their flock?

[Óttar]

You don't hear of this so much in the Orthodox world. There's even a conventional insistence on priests being married - how else can they empaathise with their flock?

There wasn't any need for a Protestant reformation. Everybody should've come into conformity with the Greek church, like the Venetians were thinking of doing. The Albanians could've done the same.

[Lenny]

Two words: unmarried priesthood.

Yeah, that about nails it. Nothing more can be said on this issue, really.
What a strange doctrine. The Pope who cooked that one up was not thinking properly.

There wasn't any need for a Protestant reformation. Everybody should've come into conformity with the Greek church.

The Reformation represented the establishment of a germanic branch of Christianity. Romanism remained the Latin branch, and the East-Slavs had coopted the Orthodox (following the death of the Byzantines), and from 1517 the Germanic world and its allies were within the Protestant sphere. (Though you could count the Wyclifites, Hussites, Waldensians, Albigensians, Eckhartites, and numerous others and give much earlier dates for the origins of this branch of Christianity). Whichever branch you/your-people belonged to was a huge sign of your cultural loyalties and plenty else (see below). That's why the religious conflicts in Europe mattered so much.


Examples:
- The French religious wars are a fascinating study as - in a sense -the germanic, old-celtic, and "nordic" elements of the French People rose up against the then-dominant latin thread and its Romanism. Despite impressive gains, the ruling latin-mediterranean element finally won out and stamped out this revival; coincidentally France began its long and slow decline not long afterwards.

- One of the primary reasons Poles and Russians have mutual hatred is that Russians consider the Polish-Slavs to be cultural traitors to Slavdom; one of the clearest manifestations thereof being that Poles do not follow "the Slavic branch of Christianity" and instead side with the Latins. The Poles think themselves the most western Slavs and don't want to hitch their wagon to the Russian-led branch of Christianity, drawing ire.

- How else do you explain ex-Yugoslavia of the 1990s (Catholic vs Orthodox vs Muslim), except through this Religion-as-cultural-loyalty concept? Being that they were all largely-secular and all close kin anyway? It seems really obvious in this case.

- The 30-Years-War in Germany is another clear case. That war was so bitter because it represented a struggle for the soul of the Germans along the above lines: What would future Germans be: romanized Germans loyal to the Latin-sphere, or "germanic-Germans" commanding their own destiny? This is the exact same conflict that had been playing out since even long before the days of Arminius himself; but Arminius' victory [2,000 years ago this fall] was one of the great flashpoints in this ongoing civil war, and probably the greatest single win for the pro-"germanic-German" side. (See here: The Eternal Shouting Match Between Arminius and Flavus ).

[Lenny]

The Catholic Church and pope Ratzinger is a bulwark against the collapse of Europe

You've got to be kidding!

The Church of Rome is as self-serving as it ever was, and cares not one ounce for something as trivial as a race of people. It cares about its own survival. It would have no problem at all if the people of Europe were brown, if they were all "loyal Papists". Note that the great majority of the world's 1,200-million Catholics are quite dark even today.

Don't believe the bloviations of deluded Catholic-nationalists about how The Pope Will Save the World in a deus-ex-machina (Papa-ex-machina?) fashion.

[Electronic God-Man]

A priest does not marry because the church and his congregation are his family. The priest needs to be there at any moment for the needs of his congregation and he would not be able to perform his duties as a husband and father AND as a father of the entire congregation all at the same time.

That was more or less the explanation I was given.

[SwordoftheVistula]

What a strange doctrine. The Pope who cooked that one up was not thinking properly.

The idea was that lands would stay in church hands and not pass along hereditary lines.

A good summary of the Catholic Church's dealings with marriage:

http://www.magnificatmealmovement.co...%20Priests.htm

It is surprising at first, to discover that the notion of a celibate or unmarried priesthood is something that gradually came into being. For the first 1200 years of church history, priests, bishops and popes were able to marry. In fact, research tells us that 39 popes were married and some popes were the sons of popes.



“Three popes (Anastasius 1, Saint Hormidas and Sergius 111 produced pope sons of their own, two of whom went on to be declared saints (Saint Innocents 1 and Saint Silverius .)” (Ref: History of Married Priesthood)



The sons of popes becoming popes seems somewhat alien to us in this day and age and yet in the time of Yashua, priests were married and their sons became priests. Since Yashua plainly said I come to complete the law not change it, then we need to consider what happened. (See the 'In the News' item of this newsletter for interesting reports on this issue)



The following passage is taken from: “Storia di tutti i concili” of Battaglini, Vol 1 Pg 19.



According to tradition, in this first council formed by 120 believers, including Mary the Mother of Jesus, eighty canons were formulated to be the rule of the hierarchy and ecclesiastical discipline.



Pope Gelasio in the Roman council of the year 494 didn’t give a good reception to these eighty apostolic canons, and condemned thirty of them as apocryphal according to the Christian protologia; but he recognised fifty of them and made them part of the Faith.



These are therefore the fifty authentic canons of the Apostles, faithfully reported in the Greek language by Dionigi Esiguo. This is fully documented in the ecclesiastical writings and is additionally confirmed in the constitution of St Clement pope, in the year 102, as reported by the great historian, cardinal Baronio. This we inherit not only from some ancient tradition of the primitive Church; but we find them quoted in the writings of the Saints’ Fathers, columns of church, like: St Gregorio, St Basilio and numerous others, as well as in the four ecumenical councils of Nicea, Constantinopalis, Ephesus, and Calcendonia.



Among the legitimate ones, accredited by the Holy See, we report here those related to the morality and marriage of the Catholic Clergy:



Canon 27 D: It is permitted to clergymen, choristers or readers, after the clerical training, to get married.



Canon 5D: The priest should never abandon his wife; but hold her, and with her live long in peace.



Canon 48: Dammed be the cleric that dismisses his own wife to join with another woman.



From the substance of such fundamental precepts, is therefore clear that the Apostles, instructed by the great Teacher, the founder and legislator of Christianity, they never intended to reject from the ecclesiastical circle the married men, and so much less than to interdict or to hinder in some way the marriage to the unmarried priests, well knowing that they would have violated a divine law.”



Reference: Collana “HOC FACITF” Preti e Vescovi Sponsati: Venti anni de fuoco” by Paolo Camellini. Page 31. Transcribed by Umberto P. Lenzi



1 Timothy 3: 1-7



Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer /a bishop, he desires a noble task. Now the bishop overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?) He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil.

He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's trap.





From the article and scripture above it is clear that the early church supported a married priesthood and yet by 1139 and the Second Lateran Council celibacy was made the rule for the Roman Church priesthood. The Roman Church is the only Christian church that enforces celibacy on its priests. All other denominations have a choice including those in the orthodox and eastern catholic churches.



So why the split. What caused the Roman Church to go against the early Apostolic Canons?



Many believe the first documented evidence of the immerging thought that the priesthood should be celibate Canon 33 of the council of Elvira in Spain in 306AD. Canon 33 stipulates that married clergy were not to engage in sexual relations with their wives or the procreation of children. Why? It seems this is because sexual activity was seen at the time as somehow dishonourable in that culture.



St. Ambrose (340-397) wrote, “The ministerial office must be kept pure and unspoiled and must not be defiled by coitus.” How strange then that the creator must have made a mistake in the view of those socalled saints, in creating the joy of sexuality and children. Or was it that it was too much distraction and expense.



St Augustine’s who’s early life was that of aimless passion and he once wrote “that nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman.” It is believed that with this perception in mind Augustine once converted, bought to the church the concept that sexuality was tainted and bad due to his own unbalance.



Pope Gregory "the Great"AD590-604) stated: "All sexual desire is sinful in itself.



Power, Money and Real Estate

This concept of sexual relations being unholy, impure and sinful remained with the church for centuries but ultimately this was only one reason for the promotion of celibacy. The other was power, money and real estate. You see the early church was legalized and made the official religion of the roman empire in AD 313 by Emperor Constantine. The small persecuted catacomb church of Yashua suddenly hit the world stage as the official religion of a world power. Bishops were given privileges and civil authority over areas and the hierarchy and power that we see today in the Roman Empire Church was born. The Roman Empire Church became extremely powerful and wealthy. The problem was that the priests were often given property by nobleman and women grateful for there service. These married priests had children and this wealth was being handed down to the children and out of the hands of the church.



“During this time, the wealth of the church was also increasing, a development not lost on Rome. Many priests were leaving church lands to their heirs, and others handed down land of their own through primogeniture. The Holy See saw that a return to the celibacy rule would result in a real-estate bonanza, and in about 1018 Pope Benedict VIII put teeth in the Elvira decree by forbidding descendents of priests to inherit property. Later, in the 11th century, Pope Gregory VII, who had assumed vast power by declaring himself the supreme authority over all souls, went even further by proscribing married priests from saying mass; he also forbid parishioners from attending masses said by them. Scholars believe that the first written law forbidding the clergy to marry was finally handed down at the Second Lateran Council in 1139.” (Ref: A Brief History of Celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church Metroland - July 11, 2002 Glenn Weiser)





Actually, the MAIN REASON Celibacy was introduced by the First Lateran Council (1123 AD) was STRICTLY FINANCIAL.

With more Decentralized Power at that time, Priests and Bishops were acquiring great PERSONAL WEALTH (from those trying to buy their way into Heaven), and the Churchmen were then passing on this wealth through Inheritance to their Heirs. The Church felt it was being deprived of great Resources, and therefore Outlawed Priestly Inheritance, AND MARRIAGE !!!!!



As Proof of the Total Irrelevance of Celibacy to Dedicated Religious Leaders, one has only to look to the Protestant, and Jewish Religions, who have NOT suffered because of married Priests or Rabbis, but have THRIVED. (Ref: The Annotico Report by Richard Annotico, August 30, 2007)





Synod of Pavia AD 1022: Canon 4 – Children of priests shall be sold into slavery.



Synod of Rome AD 1049: Wives of priests in Rome shall be taken as slaves of the Lateran Palace. (Woman at the time were seen as part of the husband’s property.)



Synod of Nelfi AD 1089: Wives of priests shall be sold as slaves.



Decree of AD 1095 by Pope Urban II: Married priests who ignore the celibacy laws should be imprisoned for the good of their souls, and their wives and children to be sold into slavery and the money go to the church coffers.



Second Lateran Council AD 1139: Celibacy shall be the rule for all priests in the Western Rite of the Roman Catholic Church.



So what we see today took shape over more than a millennium and came about for less than divinely inspired reasons. Many people falsely believe that the concept of a celibate priesthood came from Christ. The truth is that this is far from the case.

"See My Spirit in action in this land, B My Spirit moving in the darkness 2 bring the light of action truth n unity n joy 2 all. My Spirit flows where it will." (yd)

The Church of Rome is as self-serving as it ever was, and cares not one ounce for something as trivial as a race of people. It cares about its own survival. It would have no problem at all if the people of Europe were brown

Exactly, that is why they are going all-out to encourage and facilitate hispanic immigration to the US, including open support of illegal aliens.

[Tabiti]

BTW, I've watched a good movie showing that problem. Think it is based on true events.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318411/

[Loki]

Report Details Abuses in Irish Reformatories

By SARAH LYALL
Published: May 20, 2009

LONDON — Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.

The 2,600-page report paints a picture of institutions run more like Dickensian orphanages than 20th-century schools, characterized by privation and cruelty that could be both casual and choreographed.

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions,” the report says. In the boys’ schools, it says, sexual abuse was “endemic.”

The report, by a state-appointed commission, took nine years to produce and was meant to help Ireland face and move on from one of the ugliest aspects of its recent history. But it has infuriated many victims’ groups because it does not name any of the hundreds of individuals accused of abuse and thus cannot be used as a basis for prosecutions.

It was delayed because of a lawsuit brought by the Christian Brothers, the religious order that ran many of the boys’ schools and that fought, ultimately successfully, to have the abusers’ names omitted. In 2003, the commission’s first chairwoman resigned, saying that Ireland’s Department of Education had refused to release crucial documents. The report covers a period from the 1930s to the 1990s, when the last of the institutions closed.

It exposes for the first time the scope of the problem in Ireland, as well as how the government and the church colluded in perpetuating an abusive system. The revelations have also had the effect of stripping the Catholic Church, which once set the agenda in Ireland, of much of its moral authority and political power.

The report singles out Ireland’s Department of Education, meant to regulate the schools, for running “toothless” inspections that overlooked glaring problems and deferred to church authority.

The report is based in part on old church records of unreported abuse cases and in part on the anonymous testimony of 1,060 former students from a variety of 216 mostly church-run institutions, including reformatories and so-called industrial schools, set up to tend to neglected, orphaned or abandoned children.

Most of the former students are now 50 to 80 years old.

Some 30,000 children were sent to such places over six decades, the report says, often against their families’ wishes and because of pressure from powerful local priests. They were sent because their families could not afford to care for them, because their mothers had committed adultery or given birth out of wedlock, or because one or both of their parents was ill, drunken or abusive. They were also sent because of petty crime, like stealing food, or because they had missed school.

Many of the former students said that they had not learned their own identities until decades later. They also said that their parents had unsuccessfully tried to reclaim them from the state.

In a litany that sounds as if it comes from the records of a P.O.W. camp, the report chronicles some of the forms of physical abuse suffered in the boys’ schools:

“Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”

Some of the schools operated essentially as workhouses. In one school, Goldenbridge, girls as young as 7 spent hours a day making rosaries by stringing beads onto lengths of wire. They were given quotas: 600 beads on weekdays and 900 on Sundays.

Girls were routinely sexually abused, often by more than one person at a time, the report said, in “dormitories, schools, motor vehicles, bathrooms, staff bedrooms, churches, sacristies, fields, parlors, the residences of clergy, holiday locations and while with godparents and employers.”

The Vatican had no response. But leaders of various religious orders — who often argued during the investigations that the abuse was a relic of another time, reflecting past societal standards — issued abject apologies on Wednesday, taking care to frame the problem as something that is now behind them.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic primate of All Ireland, said in a statement that he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed,” adding, “I hope the publication of today’s report will help heal the hurts of victims and address the wrongs of the past.”

David Clohessy, director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a group based in St. Louis, said that while the report had failed in its duty to bring the perpetrators to justice, it had been clear about the failings of the church.

“While horrific, widespread reports of abuse and cover-up are sadly quite common, the significance here is that a government panel is conclusively saying that the finger-pointing and blame-shifting and excuse-making of the church hierarchy is bogus,” he said in an interview.

The commission was formed in 2000, after an explosive series of radio programs and documentaries in the 1990s began exposing a terrible secret that had been kept by an entire society: the details of what went on in the children’s homes. In 1999, Bertie Ahern, then the prime minister, issued a blanket apology to the victims of the abuse.

Since then, the accusations and the question of justice have been a preoccupation across Ireland and among Irish emigrants around the world. In 2002, the Catholic Church in Ireland agreed to pay $175 million to compensate victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy. A separate group has paid out some $1.5 billion so far to more than 10,000 people who have claimed they were abused in state and church-run institutions.

Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, an American group that maintains an Internet archive of material related to Catholic abuse, said that the report had failed by not going far enough.

“The report is significant in that it provides a detailed anatomy of how the abuse occurred and the institutions in which it occurred,” he said in an interview. “The problem is that you spend almost 10 years and who knows how much money, and you never get to the point of saying who was responsible.”