Posted on 05/22/2011 4:16:53 PM PDT by SkyPilot
AMSTERDAM (AP) - The Dutch Catholic Church and the Salesian order are investigating revelations that a Salesian priest served on the board of a group that promotes pedophilia with the full knowledge of his boss.
The order's top official in the Netherlands, Delegate Herman Spronck, confirmed in a statement that the priest - identified by RTL Nieuws as 73-year-old "Father Van B." - served on the board of "Martijn," a group that campaigns to end the Dutch ban on adult-child sex.
The group is widely reviled but not outlawed.
"Of course we reject this and distance ourselves from this personal initiative" on the part of the priest, Spronck said in a statement. "Membership in such organizations does not fit with the ethos of the Salesian order."
However, Spronck's own superior in Belgium said he will investigate both Spronck and Van B., after both men were quoted by RTL Nieuws as saying such relationships aren't always harmful.
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"Society thinks these relationships are harmful. I disagree," RTL quoted Van B. as saying. He served on Martijn's board from 2008 until 2010, when its founder was arrested for alleged possession of child pornography, a case that is ongoing...
In a second interview, RTL quoted Spronck as saying he was aware of Van B.'s pedophilia and membership in Martijn, and even of two instances where the priest had been fined by police for exposing himself in public. But he said he didn't think that was sufficient reason to ban him from the order.
"Removing someone from the order is something you would only do in the case of grave moral transgression, such as rape. There was never any question of that," Spronck was quoted as saying.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
I can't improve on anything than what you said. Amen.
Thank you. Honestly, I’m just stunned. Worlds’ gone crazy.
Thank you. Honestly, I’m just stunned. Worlds’ gone crazy.
He doesn't use the power of the Papacy to involve himself in local matters. That is what the Bishops are for, and when a Bishop isn't doing the job, he can replace him, which has been done in many cases, but it has to be for an extremely serious reason.
I’ve incurred enough ire from Catholics recently with my condemnation of those priests who molest children and the inaction of the Church hierarchy in addressing the issue to last me a lifetime.
I wasn’t particularly trying to bring it down to the level of an academic debate but rather was trying to use as much decorum as possible.
Thank you for your outrage. It is (very sadly) refreshing to hear from a Catholic. It shouldn’t be unusual, but notice that this thread is posted in News/Activism where it can be seen and there is a decided lack of outrage at the moment from the vast majority of the FRoman Catholic contingent. Instead you get posts like post 60, which twist the whole thing around and attack the person who condemns this priest’s stand claiming that it’s about bigotry against the Catholic church.
Since when did calling sin, *sin* become *bigotry*???
I hate to say it, but it does seem like the gates of hell are prevailing against the Catholic church. The infiltration by homosexuals WILL destroy it from within if not dealt with and that doesn’t seem to be happening rapidly enough to forestall the inevitable.
Which he has done, in the past few years. He doesn’t ‘fire’ them, so much as simply replace them.
And covering up for molesting priests doesn't qualify??????? Or making a statement like this of endorsing pedophilia?
Just what WOULD you consider a serious enough reason for the pope to exercise his authority if this isn't enough? How much worse can it get?
They need firing.
Replacing them isn’t being effective enough, obviously, or it wouldn’t have gotten to this point.
So defrock them already, and jail those involved in sexual crimes and bring in fresh blood.
How the Catholic church can consider a priest who takes a position like this to be a priest unto God is beyond me. God isn’t the one he’s being a priest to with that kind of lifestyle.
The Catholic church needs to clean house and clean it now if it’s to survive. There is no choice any more. The situation is becoming too desperate and the longer the church waits, the less the chance of salvaging it. Don’t be in denial about the seriousness of what’s going on.
We can see it but it seems that most of the Catholics can’t.
I feel like we’re warning someone walking on train tracks that they’re about to get hit by a runaway locomotive and they think we’re being mean and trying to ruin their fun of walking on the tracks.
The Church has been 'doing something about it' for the past 20 years. That's why the overwhelming majority of the cases of abuse that have come to light occurred from 25-40 years ago. When it became clear to the Bishops that the treatment recommended by the psychiatrists for the abusive priests didn't work, many began to work on getting those priests out of the parishes. Some were slower to do so than others, but changes were made to reduce the opportunities for abuse.
Most Dioceses had already put safeguards in place, even before the abuse scandal broke out in Boston.
You and your cohorts are simply using one incident from Belgium to bash the Catholic Church and trash the Pope and throw in a bunch of shots at Catholic theology to boot. Otherwise why the many off-topic comments attacking the Catholic Church in general on this thread?
It's no secret what you're doing.
Your poorly concealed bigotry is disgraceful, shameful, and sinful.
Compassion for the victim in this case is laudable. Righteous anger at the seemingly unrepentant(!) priest and superior is absolutely called-for.
But gleefully using this incident as part of an anti-Catholic smear campaign is absolutely disgusting and anti-Christ-ian.
No, they aren't.
The infiltration by homosexuals WILL destroy it from within if not dealt with and that doesn’t seem to be happening rapidly enough to forestall the inevitable.
Near the end of his Papacy, John Paul II recognized the problem of liberalism in the Seminaries, which gave rise to the allowance of homosexuals into the priesthood. He actually set down rules that homosexuals were not suitable to be priests. Many Bishops in the US ignored him. As the Bishops who had been influenced by liberalism and feminism aged, he began appointing Bishops who were more orthodox, and who began to follow those rules.
Pope Benedict has continued that practice. He realized the problems when he was head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and worked with Pope John Paul II, to effect the changes that needed to be made to fight the progressivism that was permeating the Catholic Church in the US. We are seeing the fruits of those changes each day.
The reason it has come to light it because many of the victims finally went to secular authorities. It became public knowledge and the Church HAD to do something about it.
Otherwise, why did they cover it up for decades instead of dealing with it then? They can’t have just realized for the first time that it was sin only 20 years ago when they had been getting reports of this sort of stuff longer than that.
Hosea 8:7 For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.
This is the reaping of what the church has allowed to be sown. If this were indeed just ONE man, a complete aberration, that would be a different matter. You would have a point. Rather this man’s position is just the natural outcome of the failure of the church to nip the molesting priest issue in the bud.
It’s really too bad that condemnation of sin is perceived by so many Catholics as bigotry against the Catholic church. It implies a fair degree of delusion on the part of Catholics that they just don’t seem to get the seriousness of the problem.
So, where’s your outrage directed? At the priest advocating pedophilia or those condemning him? It speaks volumes by where it’s directed.
This is about the Catholic church in Europe, not the US, and this is the fruit.
One more time for the record.
The solution that I see as best for the Catholic church is to allow, again, as in the past, a married priesthood. It is only partly for the reason of control of sexual desires.
The main benefit is that it would open up a vast pool or men who would be qualified to be priests so that the homosexual/pederast ones could all be eliminated and have someone to replace them with. It would be the least disruptive, although I realize it would be a real stretch for many Catholics to adjust to a married clergy, kind of like the reaction when the mass went from Latin to English and they turned the altar around.
I have a relative who left the priesthood to become married. No doubt, if he had been allowed to be married as a priest, he would have stayed one. And he’s not the only one I’ve ever heard of. I’m sure that there would be many committed Catholic men who’d like that as an option.
Well ‘’metmom’’ thanks, I’m not the most perfect of Catholics. None of us are. Since I’ve come back to the church and going back to Mass over some ten years now I’ve never heard a sermon denouncing illegal immigration, abortion or homosexuality. All seems to be a lot of sappy stuff I don’t really understand. The strongest admonishment Christ ever gave , in fact other than chasing the money lenders from the temple, the only time you might say HE got angry was in warning those who would harm children. “Better to tie a mill stone around thy neck and drown thyself in the sea than to lead a child into sin’’. I thought it was Islam that had it for kids. Catholic priests in Belgium are now saying the same thing as Islam does. And one of them was on the ‘’board of directors’’ for some pedophilia group? A freakin’ board of directors for pedophiles. Madame, I’m just staggered. I’ve been able to get my head around a lot of crazy things in this world, but this? This is beyond belief.
It seems that the majority of Catholics don’t see this whole issue with their priests as seriously as the rest of us do.
Maybe it’s because of looking at it from the inside. Maybe it’s because of too much of a trusting spirit towards the hierarchy of the church that they are addressing the matter.
I don’t know, but what I do see is that the Catholic church is in imminent danger. It appears that the rate of deterioration is proceeding faster than the rate at which it’s being dealt with. If Catholics wish to see their church saved from imploding, something needs to be done far more quickly than it is now.
If it has to get to this point before someone finally takes notice and merely *investigates*, it’s out of control.
The Catholic church’s opposition to homosexuality and abortion is admirable, but its credibility takes a real beating when stuff like this isn’t dealt with appropriately.
I feel for you. It’s very unsettling to watch what you considered the last bastion of sanity and morality throw it by the wayside.
FReeper Dr. Brian Kopp has also been very outspoken about the problems in the Catholic church. You are not alone.
Well thank you dear. Alas it seems that the Catholic church that I knew as a child has been completely undermined and infected with the political correctness bug and the disease of moral relativism. Nothing seems to be a sin anymore. Unless you bring up that fact and then as you’ve seen and experienced you become the ‘’sinner’’.
We take it quite seriously, hence the strong screening that is there for seminaries.
Our issue is really that we see people bringing up these 4% and using it as "proof" for doctrinal attacks or using it over and over and over again to attack the other 96% of good priests. It is tiring and no, 3.5% of older priests is not "out of control".
For someone like me who grew up in the 80s and 90s and since the late 90s has spent most of my time outside the US, I do see a lot of not only clean-up, but places where there has always been stringent control.
The majority of Catholics know the problem amongs the older gen of priests and are actively working against those negligent bishops. The newer priests and bishops are a lot more stringent and stricter.
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