Posted on 05/20/2009 9:26:48 AM PDT by nuconvert
DUBLIN – A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland's Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
Nine years in the making, Wednesday's 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.
It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders' pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Not to deny anything like this happened, but, as I said on a parallel thread, anyone who thinks governmental bodies that are on a vendetta against any Christian institution aren’t going to try to slant this to their advantage aren’t being intellectually honest.
well now we know what happened to bill maher.
I’m not saying this didn’t happen, but “thousands, beaten and raped”?
I think the “according to documents uncovered in the Vatican” kind of takes out the doubt element
I have no idea if the Irish gov’t or its “bodies” have a “vendetta against any Christian institution”
I don’t believe it. Not a word. Or maybe one or two words.
Christ had nothing good to say about those who caused the “little ones” to lose faith in Him. And it was the ones who caused the loss of faith who were to blame, not those whose faith were destroyed by those who did those terrible things in His name.
The article made it sound as though the report covers a period of about 60yrs.
“The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.”
Ping of interest.
What is it about the Catholic church with all the perverts being protected BY THE CHURCH for decades?
This happens again and again, the world over.
Church of perverts ping, Alex.
“Church of perverts ping, Alex.”
*sigh*
...It’s true. I was in catholic school in 58-64. Humiliation and beatings, in private, in the classroom, and in the church were almost daily, by nuns and lay teachers. Not by all, as you say. Not a blanket vendetta against the church...
I have a very close family member that endured this type of abuse at a Catholic orphanage in the 50’s. It is good that those individuals who did her harm are long gone as I would relentlessly hunt them down at their nursing homes and strangle them with their own oxygen line. And I would be going easy on them compared to the pain and suffering they inflicted on small children.
I believe that some abuses did take place. I am also convinced the church did hide some of it.
I am not convinced of the magnitude.
Vague comments are made that seem to mix in possible physical abuse (and who knows what minor infractions today constitute that), with abuse of a sexual nature. The result is that the charges sound much more sinister and widespread then they actually are.
I do believe the media and even the government has an agenda that is served by tearing down respect for Churches and thereby Christianity.
I will say, that anyone who can be proven to have done things that are legitimately wrong to these kids, should spend the rest of their lives in prison, if the charges are serious enough. It take an extremely dim view of people who abuse children who have been placed in their custody, as a refuge from abuse at home.
Sounds like Notre Dame scum school.
You might want to reread the articvle the last institutions closed in the early 90’s so this isn’t anything new just another story rehashed. As per the article the abuse was also from “older inmates”.
If the truth be told, all state run orphanages had these problem whether they were religious or not. Our own fostercare system still has the same problem. People who enjoy hurting children gravitate towards working in areas where they can do what they please.
If you have a large enough number of people, there will always be at least a few bad apples.
We’ve all heard about the priest pedophile scandal here in the US. Actually, it was a priest homosexual scandal (but the media didn’t want to say that.)
And most of it happened during the glorious 70s, when the sexual revolution was in full swing and “sexual freedom” was being broadcast everywhere.
I’m not excusing the bishops and those who covered it up. But similar crimes in the public schools—and in Protestant ministries—were several times larger, and nothing said.
Ireland has been sadly secularized, and this is nothing more or less than a secular attack on the Church. They want to destroy the Church and bring in the modern social goodies like free sex and abortion. Will there be fewer kids abused when that happens? Of course not. It will be far worse for the kids in Ireland. Far worse.
Wouldn’t there be criminal prosecutions for state employees that hid the evidence collected over the years for such abuses?
When the Vatican keeps a running tab on each abuser in power (not the kids hurting kids), keeps them in their position, and keeps it silent, this is grotesquely criminal.
...It was after mass, confession, penance, that you got absolution...
Yes, over a period of 80 years reviewed.
The headlines miscast the report to sound current and like all of the abuse is sexual.
From the thread Kneeling Before The World [Catholic Caucus]...
What are they all so afraid of? The truth, it seems. [Faithful Departed author Philip] Lawler points out that while less than five percent of American priests have been accused of sexual abuse, some two-thirds of our bishops were apparently complicit in cover-ups. The real scandal isn't the sick excesses of a few dozen pedophiles, or even the hundreds of priests who had affairs with teenage boys -- the bulk of abuse cases. No, according to Lawler, it is the malfeasance of wealthy, powerful, and evidently worldly men who fill the thrones -- but not the shoes -- of the apostles. In case after case, we read in their correspondence, in the records of their soulless, bureaucratic responses to victims of psychic torture and spiritual betrayal, these bishops' prime concern was to save the infrastructure, the bricks and mortar and mortgages. Ironically, their lack of a supernatural concern for souls is precisely what cost them so much money in the end.
The Left plays this as an issue to trash the institution of the Church. There is sexual abuse among public school teachers as well. And cover ups. And Planned Parenthood covers up child abuse too.
And then there are the Boy Scouts, who try to limit the access of homosexual men to young boys on overnight stays and are penalized by the State for exercising such caution.
Over a 60 year period.
American public schools can do 1000’s beaten and raped in a weekend.
This cover up wasn’t just a local thing, Cicero. It went all the way back to the Vatican, which kept a running total.
That sort of international conspiracy takes this to a completely new level of perversion, which includes all in Vatican City that helped the raping of children to continue.
And this is different from American public schools how?
With public schools, it doesn’t cross into the national or international level.
It takes the Catholic church to do that.
Certain jobs attract certain types of people.
Arsonists like fire, they become firemen.
Militaria whackos are rejected by the military and the police, so they become postal workers — they get to wear a uniform.
Wearing robes and pretending to be celebit, and receiving trust from children and parents implicitly . . . .
And then there is the dreaded cable guy.
No because the ones that have come to light over the years were out of the time limits on bringing such abuses to light and were the major reason that time limits were changed in many juristrictions but you can’t retroactive laws. You seem to want to attack Catholics an awful lot should we also sensationalize any of the different denominations of Christians that come to light with abuses as a mark againt Christian churches? IIRC the actual numbers of childhood sexual abuses are higher among those churches than in the Catholic church but they don’t seem to get the press that an attack on the Vatican garners.
One of the more damning things to hear about the Catholic church hierarchy.
Ironically, the typical Catholic church bishop was more than 30X more corrupt than were the local priests.
By the way, the link to the Caucus thread takes us back to this thread.
Because it’s the evil Catholics.
>>One of the more damning things to hear about the Catholic church hierarchy.<<
And a really misleading headline.
YOU SAID:
“Wouldn’t there be criminal prosecutions for state employees that hid the evidence collected over the years for such abuses?”
I answered what you asked. And you are getting upset over something YOU asked. I was not legitimizing anything but I find your continual attacks against the Catholic church as mean and really quite out of place.
I agree - especially the part about pervs gravitating to where the children are. I don't think the homos wanted to just teach the little boy scouts how to start camp fires.
Did Obama reform go to Ireland first?
My mistake. Here's the URL:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2130419/posts
Kneeling Before the World
I said two things in that post. One was about state employees being liable for hiding this information as being criminal, which would indeed happen as long as the statute of limitations had not passed on their crime.
The other was on the Vatican and bishops keeping this same information silent on what happened in their schools. Ironically, you are silent on any responsibility from the Vatican or bishops, as I assume you believe they had no responsibility of cleaning their own house?
In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children..."
Yikes!
I take it that you just hate the Catholic Church a feel an urgent need to bash it.
There is always going to be some evil in any orgainization. But it would be better to be raised up by nuns in Ireland than by social workers in the U.S.
And what does “international” have to do with the fact that there are many more cases of sexual abuse in the public schools, and that that abuse is getting worse, whereas in the Church things have gotten far better since the rotten 70s.
Oh, the poor, shamed religious expressing their shame that such things went on.
From the article:
“But its findings will not be used for criminal prosecutions — in part because the Christian Brothers 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.”
Yep, the RCC knows how to appear to be doing penance, but they know even better how to circle the legal wagons as effectively as any profit-making corporation.
The report covers more than 50 years and tens of thousands of children. I believe it.
For a realistic but sickening taste of what was involved watch this Irish movie.
I’m not even Catholic, hell I’m agnostic, but painting the entire Catholic church as you have done (some 1.1+ billion people) on the basis of what a teeny minority has done is hardly the product of a conservative mind.
“..The commission dismissed as implausible a central defense of the religious orders — that, in bygone days, people did not recognize the sexual abuse of a child as a criminal offense, but rather as a sin that required repentance.
In their testimony, religious orders typically cited this as the principal reason why sex-predator priests and brothers were sheltered within the system and moved to new posts where they could still maintain daily contact with children...”
Defend the Catholic church on those words.
Exactly! It gets tiresome when someone seems to make it their mission in life to continually attack the Catholic church. I do relize that many Christian churches fill their members full of nonsense about what we do in the church but many grow up and finally find out that that is exactly what it was utter nonsense.I am not excusing anything. Most of this happened in the 1950’s and 1960’s while I was a child in that church. I never saw any of that and no one I knew who grew up in the church had anything like that happen.
It appears that 66% of US Catholic bishops covering this up makes it the overwhelming majority of the highest leadership being responsible.
Read post #23. The working link to that is in post #38.
Well, I believe many of the people who attend the Catholic church are decent people.
I believe the vast majority of priests are fine people, but the hierarchy above them is grotesquely corrupt.
Note all the bishops and others in the highest places in the Cathoilc church that have sought to hide illegal, immoral, sick abuses for decades.
The Catholic Caucus thread Alex quotes in post #23 and #38, and the disgusting legal stance taken by the Catholic church, as mentioned in post #40 (from this article) should help you understand that it isn’t necessarily the local people, but the leaders that are truly the problem.
LOL! Yep that seems like what happend everytime anyone tries to discuss the issue. I have to tell you, a guy Dh works with recently converted because his wife and kids are Catholic. He’s been amazed at how the Christian church he was raised in complely distorted the chuch. He basically said they outright lied about it and did make us into “evil Catholic”. He’s pretty mad about it all.
So I’m guessing films like “The Magdalene Sisters”,”Heaven Help Us”, and others weren’t just made up out of whole cloth?
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.