Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
Posted on 10/16/2007 3:07:31 AM PDT by Argentine-Firecracker
Cardinals at the Vatican have chosen the first non-Italian Pope for more than 400 years.
Catholics around the world have been astonished by the choice of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the Archbishop of Krakow.
Few people had suggested him as a possible successor to John Paul I, who died last month after just 33 days in office. He is barely known outside his native Poland.
After two days and eight votes, the result of the final, conclusive vote giving a two-thirds majority plus one to the Polish bishop was signalled with a plume of white smoke above the roof of the Sistine Chapel, in accordance with ancient tradition.
The new Pope, who will be known as John Paul II, is also the youngest this century, at 58 years old.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
I feel so old!
JPII was awesome! I miss knowing that he’s on the planet!
Please remember JPII did nothing apparent to save thousands of Children from the Homosexual Predator Priests
in all his time as Pope.
He was human. We will have to be satisfied with him saving millions from Marxism, along with Ronald Reagan. Together, that team changed the world forever.
Isn’t it amazing the way God provides what and whom we need, when we need them.
You are apparently unaware that in 2002, the U.S. Catholic bishops adopted the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People which commissioned a study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice on the nature and scope of the sex abuse crisis. The study reviewed all incidents between 1950 and 2002. The study’s results were released in February 2004.
The history indicates that there was an increase of these incidents in the 1960s with an upward spike around 1970, followed by a precipitous decline in the early 1980s. Seventy-five percent of the events were alleged to have occurred between 1960 and 1984. Along the same lines, the majority of priests accused were ordained between the 1950s and 1970s.
Of those priests with substantiated allegation(s) (80 percent of those originally accused), slightly over half were either dead or out of active ministry at the time of the allegation, or were voluntarily or forcibly removed.
In a letter to the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2004, the principal investigator of the John Jay study, Karen Terry, and its administrative coordinator, James P. Levine, wrote: “It is clear that transferring priests [among dioceses] with allegations of child sexual abuse was not a general response to the problem, and was limited to a finite number of cases.”
In other words, Karol Wojtyla was still Bishop of Krakow at the height of the problem, and it was ending as his pontificate as John Paul II began. And, the popular notion that the Church was engaged in a widespread cover-up by moving priests from diocese to diocese is false.
By the way, the US Bishops have commissioned a second study that is currently under way to research what happened in the 60s and 70s that lead to this.
So, you see, the aspersions you have attempted to cast on John Paul the Great have no foundation.
Catholic Ping
Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list
29 years ago a loving God was kind enough to grace us with the precious gift of JP2.......Praise God!
And now He has blessed us with Benedict XVI, dismissed by so many in the secular media as an "interim" pope. Both JPII and Benedict XVI are saintly men who have carried on the work of Jesus Christ in our contemporary society. In a world run amuk, it is such a great consolation to have these two beacons of light, to guide us to the Truth.
** In a world run amuk, it is such a great consolation to have these two beacons of light, to guide us to the Truth.**
Amen!
Pope John Paul and Ronald Reagan were the two people that I so much wanted to meet — shake their hands and say hello. We’ll all be able to do that later. :-) From one Polish Catholic to another: GOD BLESS!
I forget if it was here at FR or on another blog where someone suggested that if God wills that Pope Benedict XVI remain for awhile longer and that if he continues as he has been, we may someday be speaking of JPII as the "interim" pope.
Viva Il Papa!
He repeatedly told us: America: DEFEND LIFE!!
The Dark Horse is on the horizon.....
BE NOT AFRAID!!!!!!
You’re Nuts.
You are just another apologist for the thousands of Homosexual Priests and their enablers.
JPII knew all about it ,just as Card. Ratzinger (Bene XVI) when he was in charge of the congregation of the Faith.
Any idea how many Priests were dismissed from the clerical state during John Paul II's Papacy?
If you want to make the argument that Pope John Paul II didn’t do enough about priest abusers, you’re welcome to try.
But to say he did nothing is to say that the problem declined by 90% during his pontificate - and he had nothing to do with it.
Because the facts are that abuse peaked in the early ‘80s, a few years into John Paul’s reign, and fell precipitously over the next ten years.
sitetest
You may contact the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and obtain a copy of the report yourself and read their conclusions.
It is doubtful that you will take this step, however, because it seems apparent that you want to have certain conclusions about the John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI, and to educate yourself on the matter will mean taking a wrecking ball to your worldview.
So let it be noted that you choose ignorance over truth.
Seek Post 7.
PJP II inherited a priesthood that had been infiltrated by homosexuals particularly in the US thanks to decisions by the church in the 60s to let homosexuals in as long as they weren’t practicing. This was a horrible decision that lead directly to the abuse and other scandals that still harm the church to this day. However to say that PJPII Did nothing about this is patently false.
No, but over 4000 Priests were verified to have abused over 11000 children.
Read Father Cozzens and in his book he states between 30 to 50% of current priests in the Catholic Church are Homosexuals.
There are hundreds and hundreds of priests have been removed during JPII’s Papacy.
Hundreds if not thousands more would have served prison sentences if the Hierarchy hadn’t kept their dirty secrets from the Autorities until the Statutes of Limitations had passed.
Which doesn’t inhibit the Church authorities from throwing these predators out of the church.
A great many of the predator Priests were left in their Jobs.
The hierarchy did nothing.
Read Jason Berry’s book on the secrets of the vatican including the Pope.
Contact Father Thomas Doyle who supported the victims of the predator Priests, when the total Hierarchy were ducking and dodging and Obfuscating the law to protect these perverts.
The arrogance of your statements are Breathtaking and I have read most of the documents in this holocaust since this crisis went public.
It took Since 1978 for Carfd Ratzinger to respond to documented sexual anuse charges against Father Maciel Degollado the leader of the Legionaries of Christ.
He was charged by 9 Seminarians under his care most of whom
are now professional.
Only recently was Degollado required to step down.
He was treated as a personal friend and traveling companion of JPII.
Try looking up this info on your computer.
h Put as much effort into some research as you put into your accusations, shame on you.
Excuse me but this whole mess would still be a major secret in the Catholic Church if the Boston Globe and The Boston Herald didn’t go to court to get the information on the sick sorry story.
BTW, I don’t read the Globe.
Look at the punishment meted out to Cardinal Law and tell me these guys including JPII were using good Judgement.
He is still living in splendorin Rome and getting over $12,000.00 per month as a stipend for his “Service”.
Law deserved a Millstone around his neck by JPII.
Please re-read what I wrote:
“If you want to make the argument that Pope John Paul II didn’t do enough about priest abusers, you’re welcome to try.
“But to say he did nothing is to say that the problem declined by 90% during his pontificate - and he had nothing to do with it[emphasis added]."
On the way to getting a handle on this problem, and actually resolving it, many folks made many errors in judgments, mistakes, and wrong turns, including most of the American bishops and many of the folks in the Vatican, including, perhaps, Pope John Paul II.
However, they WERE working at taking care of the problem, and they ACTUALLY SUCCEEDED. The scandals that erupted in 2002 were about mistakes made mostly in the 1980s and 1990s about priests who mostly committed their crimes before the mid-1990s.
If you wish to criticize the mistakes and errors in judgment of folks, have at it. There are plenty of cases from which to choose. But this statement is demonstrably false:
“Please remember JPII did nothing...”
He did a whole lot that resulted in the reduction of abuse by priests by over 90% by the mid-1990s. Your assertion is a falsehood and a slander.
sitetest
The Boston Diocese has been completely overrun by homosexuals, they’ve been protecting their own and running everyone else out for decades... I won’t say the Vatican shouldn’t be running these perverts out, however to claim that PJPII is the reason for it is just nonsense.
Your comments are at best Naive.
Your view that these events were , “many errors in judgments, mistakes, and wrong”, were in effect Criminal Acts with no thought to the Victims whose loves were destroyed.
Perpetrated by so called educated Men dedicated to God and who were and are the Judges of millions of People and their Sins.
Get real and do some more reading, prior to sendind out your specious charges.
He was part of the Problem not part of the cure.
In the U.S. Navy no matter what happens on the ship, the Captain is the responsible person and he will be charged for whatever goes wrong.
We still haven’t had a formal public accounting of the audits and reviews regarding all the Semenaries across the United States. and According to Father Cozzens 30 to 60% of the current Priests in The U.S. are Homosexuals.
The navy is the Military, the church is not. I don’t see the Commander in chief in jail because some schmuck private did something in Iraq... Be serious.
You obviously have an axe to grind against the church, and rationality is out the window.
I’ll be the first to admit that the US church has been, particularly in certain diocese, has been overrun by sodomites. This however was the result of a decision made in the 60s where the church foolishly decided a “non practicing” homosexual can enter the priesthood.
However to say that JPJII is the reason for this? Please...
“Your comments are at best Naive.”
No, I think that my comments better reflect the reality of the time.
“Your view that these events were , ‘many errors in judgments, mistakes, and wrong’, were in effect Criminal Acts with no thought to the Victims whose loves were destroyed.”
The criminality of some of this stuff, going back some years, is a complicated issue. Laws were changing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as these problems were peaking. Attitudes changed more slowly, and not merely on the part of Church hierarchs.
I remember being in graduate school in 1980 or so, studying clinical psychology, and discussing laws concerning mandatory reporting of child abuse. It was quite controversial, the idea that therapists would be required by law to report child abuse to the authorities when revealed by patients and clients in therapy. I remember some of my professors argued vigorously against this.
Part of this reluctance stemmed from the widely-held, but false belief that folks who committed these crimes could be fairly readily “treated” and “cured,” and ruining their lives via prosecution, jail, etc., was counter-productive. The pendulum had swung pretty far to the “therapeutic approach” to things back then. This wasn’t an attitude just among Church hierarchs. It was widely held by folks in the fields of psychotherapy, by many police, prosecutors, judges, etc. Today, the pendulum seems to have swung just as far in the other direction, with things like the criminalization of sex acts between teenagers, sometimes leading to permanent sex offender registration for young persons essentially engaged in illicit activities with their girlfriends. Yikes.
As well, it was the belief of many that revealing these incidents and making them public would cause further harm to the VICTIM. It was thought by most folks that minimizing incidents of abuse would promote healing. Again, this wasn’t just the view of Church hierarchs, but of other folks in positions of authority in society who had to deal with this.
In hindsight, it’s easy to assign the worst motives towards all these people (and not just priests and bishops, but police, prosecutors and judges who were often aware of what was happening, and often just wished to off-load the problem back to the Church). In some cases, I’m sure that motives were, indeed, the worst. But in many cases, folks were mistakenly doing what they thought best.
You seem to minimize the phrase “errors in judgment.” Frankly, the errors in judgment to which I refer are when bishops and hierarchs chose to handle these abusive priests via the ways of the world, discarding Catholic teaching and moral theology. Sorry, in my book, that repudiation of Catholic teaching is worse in my view than any criminal acts they may or may not have committed in any “cover-ups.”
The world sold them a bunch of baloney, and they bought. The men who bought this garbage failed as Catholic bishops and hierarchs.
But what about the world that sold the baloney? Where is the accountability for the psychologists and psychiatrists who peddled this nonsense to bishops and hierarchs, and to law enforcement authorities? And where is the outcry against the thousands of police officers, prosecutors, and judges who went along with these actions, who often PUSHED AWAY these cases back to the bishops?
Let me make clear - there were plenty of cases where Catholic bishops hid these incidents from local authorities. But there were also many cases where local authorities ACTIVELY SOUGHT to keep these incidents within the boundaries of the Church.
As for the involvement of Pope John Paul II, you misapprehend the nature of the Petrine Office and that of the episcopacy by blaming him for the individual failures of individual bishops at various places and times during the past century (and yes, the problem easily traces back to the first part of the 20th century, although it didn’t start to explode until the 1960s, peaking in the early 1980s).
We don’t know precisely what he did or didn’t do. We don’t know whether he could have done things better. What we DO know is that the problem had been growing dramatically for 20 years BEFORE he became pope, peaked in the early years of his pontificate, and declined by 90% by the middle of his pontificate.
If you’d like to assert that he could have done better, have at it.
If you continue to assert that he did nothing, then that is falsehood and slander.
“Get real and do some more reading, prior to sendind out your specious charges.”
One could read that as something of a personal attack. Check the rules of the Religion Forum. In any event, I’ve read plenty on this subject, and more to the point, I have actual experience in the field that informs me just what folks were thinking in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, when they were taking the actions that they were taking.
sitetest
I love the Catholic Church ,but this whole criminal mess was kept secret by the complete hierarchy up to and including the vatican, stop the usless allegations and do some reading.
This mess could have never become so widespread and systemic without the denial and enabling of the hierarchy.
It is not over yet, go look at the “abuse tracker” on the National Catholic Reporter.
Every day new stories or updates on old stories are Are posted.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.