Victims disappointed by Pope abuse letter

ab ^ | 1 hour 33 minutes ago

[JoeProBono]

Irish victims of clerical child sexual abuse are deeply disappointed by Pope Benedict's letter of apology as it fails to address the role of senior church leaders, a group representing victims said.

"My first response was deep disappointment in the letter," said Maeve Lewis, executive director of victims group One in Four.

"We feel the letter falls far short of addressing the concerns of the victims."

She said the Pope's letter focused too narrowly on lower-rank Irish priests without recognising the responsibility of the Vatican and senior Irish clerics for protecting offenders and dealing with victims.

"There is nothing in this letter to suggest that any new vision of leadership in the Catholic church exists," she said.

The letter also does not refer to the resignation of the head of the church in Ireland, Cardinal Sean Brady, which victims groups have demanded, she said.

Pope Benedict expressed his "shame and remorse" for episodes of child sex abuse, saying "serious mistakes" were made by Irish bishops in responding to allegations.

"You have suffered grievously and I am truly sorry," the Pope said in the letter signed on Friday.

He said priests and religious workers guilty of child abuse "must answer" for their crimes "before properly constituted tribunals".

"Openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God's mercy," he said, addressing himself to offenders.

The Pope announced a mission to Irish dioceses rocked by sex scandals to assist "the local church on her path to renewal" and said he was ready to meet again with victims of child abuse.

Predominantly Catholic Ireland has been shocked by three judicial reports in the past five years that revealed ill-treatment, abuse and cruelty by clerics and a cover-up of their activities by church authorities.

New abuse scandals have also come to light in the Pope's native Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

[Natural Law]

"The last refuge is to make a personal attack."

Quite the contrary. Sexual abuse by clergy is not an exclusively Catholic phenomenon. All churches have been compromised and victimized by it. The Church is well out in front of other churches in recognizing and dealing with the problem. Where is has acted others as epitomized by you, remain in denial and an abuse rate five to ten times higher continues.

So now is the time for you to take the first of your twelve steps and admit your denomination has a problem and root it out. You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem.

[Natural Law]

"Christ doesn’t need a church..."

Then you know nothing of about me, the Catholic Church, or Christ.

[Natural Law]

"What a sick cult it has become."

What a sick joke that story has become. Are you so desperate to disparage the Church that you will resort to quoting the Guardian and repeating lies? The letter you are referring to was written in 1922 and was re-issued in English in 1962. Your summary of the contents is fallacious.

[3722535r]

Christ needs the body of Christ, not a church.....And I do know the Catholic Church prays to Mary and the Saints, and esteems the Pope (who is just another sinner saved by grace)......And I know Christ is my Savior and “No One Cometh To The Father But By Me”.....”I Am The Way The Truth And The Life”......He never instructed anyone to pray to Mary.....”Call No One Father On The Earth, For You Have But One Father Which Is In Heaven”.....Considering the Pope is calling for a new world order also, I wonder if he even believes in the mark of the beast (666).....He should read the book of Revelation to refresh his memory......

[Natural Law]

oh, and lay off the Dan Brown novels before bedtime.

[3722535r]

God Bless....I pray The Lord reveals himself to you in such a way that HE becomes the focus of your life and not a false doctrine.....

[count-your-change]

And next to the last refuge is the cliche’.

[Natural Law]

"God Bless....I pray The Lord reveals himself to you in such a way that HE becomes the focus of your life and not a false doctrine....."

Christ is my personal Savior and I have turned away from the false doctrines of Calvin Zwingli, and Luther.

[Natural Law]

"And next to the last refuge is the cliche"

Isn't that a cliche’? Talk about low hanging fruit and the pot calling the kettle black.....

[Clemenza]

Is anyone surprised that the greatest institution for good in the history of the world

(Biting my tongue)

"In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --- Thomas Jefferson

[Natural Law]

""In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --- Thomas Jefferson"

You are so wrapped up in your anti-Catholic fervor that you have lost the objectivity necessary to fully comprehend Jefferson's point. He contemptuously referred to all clergy as priests. In an 1820 letter to William Short, Jefferson wrote: "the serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous." Upon the disestablishment of religion in Massachusetts, he wrote to John Adams, "I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character."

Jefferson's hatred of Calvinism was intense. He never ceased to denounce the "blasphemous absurdity of the five points of Calvin." Three years before his death he writes John Adams: "His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin".

To Dr. Cooper, November 2, 1822, Jefferson writes: "I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation".

Now go research what Jefferson wrote about "Natural Law".

[Dr. Eckleburg]

the Catholic Church has been extremely proactive in dealing with this problem as compared to all other similar institutions. All published data clearly shows that sexual abuse by Protestant clergy is five to ten times higher than among Catholic clergy.

Alex Murphy has kindly provided evidence proving that idiotic statistic is backwards. Actually, our own lying eyes line up with the real statistics found here...

ALEX MURPHY'S POST 1,046

"... The John Jay Study (see threads here, here, and outside coverage here) - commissioned by the U.S. Catholic Bishops' National Review Board itself - found that the number of Catholic priest abusers equalled four percent of the entire Catholic priest population. The John Jay study's findings are more than conclusive - they're exhaustive of the entire US population of Catholic priests. Now by comparison, every study I've been shown of "Protestant" abuse included volunteers and laypersons, something the John Jay Study did not cover among Catholic parishes; if we exclude them from the "Protestant" studies (to create a "pastor vs priest" apple-to-apple comparison), we arrive at a roughly 1% abuse rate for all "Protestant" pastors, or (in other words) at least a four times greater likelihood that any given Catholic priest will be a sexual predator as compared to any given "Protestant" pastor. And that's according to the numbers and studies that Catholics keep telling me about.

In short, any raw numbers (i.e. "x number of claims filed per year") are meaningless. What's more telling is the percentage of the abusers out of the whole, and in that regard, the Catholic Church is far sicker than the "Protestant" Church. In that regard, the John Jay Study is positively damning.

The bottom line is that the Roman Catholic church is littered with pedophile priests, and apparently, that suits Rome just fine. If it didn't, Ratzinger (who before he was pope, was in charge of the Office of the Inquisition from 1981 to 2005, tasked with covering up the sex abuse scandals) would have done something substantial to rid the church of these criminals who destroy children, families, communities and churches.

But he didn't. Instead he reiterated the threat of excommunication for anyone who went outside the church to a lawyer, a police officer, a parent or a teacher with these accusations.

Ratzinger was accused in court of an illegal cover-up and the only way he stayed out of jail was to plead diplomatic immunity.

Ratzinger a victim? lol. Only in Oz.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL

[rbmillerjr]

“You are so wrapped up in your anti-Catholic fervor that you have lost the objectivity necessary to fully comprehend Jefferson’s point. He contemptuously referred to all clergy as priests.”

Don’t forget, some of our brothers are at different capacities to read. Their fervor for hate blinds them to their own ignorance and limitations.

[count-your-change]

“....the Catholic Church has been extremely proactive in dealing with this problem as compared to all other similar institutions.”

But that's just the point. The Catholic Church asserts that there are no similar institutions. It sees its self as “the mystical body of Christ”, “the one true Church” passed from Peter down through the years til today, whose priests and under priests are called by God to their vocation. The Protestant churches are therefore heretical and others schismatic or “cults”.

So saying, “Well, we're no worse than they are when it comes to sexual abuse of minors, etc.” sounds like immorality is just a matter of body counts.

Jesus gave us a principle concerning responsibility at Luke 12:48,
“But he that knew not and did things worthy of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes. And unto whomsoever much is given, of him much shall be required: and to whom they have committed much, of him they will demand the more”.

Is that such a difficult concept? Imagine the faithless steward defending himself by saying he's not as bad as the other stewards and how that would be taken by the master.

[JoeProBono]

[Marysecretary]

Words mean nothing. His actions need to speak louder than his words.

[Marysecretary]

That’s a lie...

[Marysecretary]

Let’s face it, they like living in denial. If they had to admit that the church is filled with error and rot, they’d have nothing to hold on to. The Church is their anchor, certainly not Christ. VERY SAD.

[Marysecretary]

HAHA! Very good...