Posted on 07/18/2007 1:48:09 PM PDT by topcat54
Cardinal Roger Mahony has announced that the Church will pay out $660 million to more than 500 victims of sexual abuse by priests. It’s the Catholic Church’s failure to act swiftly and decisively on the matter that has disillusioned and enraged church members and victims. No one likes a cover-up, especially religious devotees who believe the church is a means of salvation and priests are mediators between the people and God. But there remains a more sinister cover-up.
The Church must come to grips with reality and admit that the priesthood is so dominated by homosexuals that Paul Wilkes, who studied 600 parishes for his book Excellent Catholic Parishes: A Guide to Best Places and Practices, makes this telling observation, “If we drove all the gay priests out of the priesthood, our Masses would be on videotape.”1
I find it interesting that all the sexual abuse is done exclusively by pedophiles, seemingly a heterosexual malady. Are we to believe that not one case of sexual misconduct can be attributed to a single homosexual priest? There are anywhere from 8,000 to 22,000 homosexual priests. If the priesthood is made up of such a high percentage of homosexuals, then it stands to reason that at least a high percentage of the church’s so-called pedophile problem is really a homosexual problem.
The church’s unbiblical, illogical, and irrational policy that priests must not marry and remain celibate is being blamed for the sexual scandal. Such an argument is off the mark. Has anyone noticed that the priests aren’t, in 95 percent of reported cases, having sex with teenage girls? The male priests are having sex with young male parishioners. The problem of sex abuse is not because of celibacy; it’s homosexuality. Homosexual men are becoming priests because that’s where young, impressionable, and vulnerable boys are found. Of course, the idea that priests should remain unmarried is a religious fiction given that priests in the Old Testament were married and had children (Ex. 6:23), and Peter, the supposed first pope, was also married (Matt. 8:14; 1 Cor. 9:5; cf. 1 Tim. 3:4–5).
The Roman Catholic Church has had a difficult time recruiting men to the priesthood. Homosexuals see this as an opportunity. Why not go where there’s an almost unlimited supply of young boys whose parents consider priests to be god-like? Are we surprised that the Boy Scouts have also become a target of homosexuals? Once again, it’s where boys can be found for recruitment purposes. Liberals attack the Scouts for not opening its leadership ranks to admitted homosexuals, while these same critics attack the Catholic Church for giving “pedophile priests” easy access to children of the same age.
Catholics are taught that priests and nuns are spiritually special and set apart for God’s work. I can still remember sitting in my fifth grade class at St. Germaine’s Catholic School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when Father Hugo would enter the class. Sister Mary Josephine would always ask, “Who wants to be a priest when he grows up?” Only one boy, my best friend at the time, Salvatore LaMarca, refused to raise his hand. Of course we wanted to be a priest. Being a priest was a one-way ticket to heaven. It was like getting a “Get out of Hell Free” card.
Devout families—and predator priests frequently chose their victims from the most ardent parishioners—had been taught for generations to exalt, respect and trust priests. Who could imagine dear Father Tim—who came to dinner, played with the kids, counseled mom, acted like a dad—would do something so sinful? Doubting the priest would cost you your spiritual security.2
It’s no accident that early Hollywood designated the priest as the most trusted of film characters. Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, and Pat O’Brien made their careers with movies like Angels with Dirty Faces, Boys Town, Going My Way, and The Bells of St. Mary’s. Every parish dreamed of having a Father Flanagan for its priest or a priest who just looked like Pat O’Brien. Notice that almost in every case the priest was a friend and confidant to young boys. It came with the territory. Parents always knew their children were safe with a priest.
Film-making in the early years was nearly dominated by Jews, as Neal Gabler describes in his highly informative book An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. Even so, Catholic clergy were almost universally depicted as decent and caring spiritual leaders. Louis B. Mayer “was a close friend and a great admirer of New York’s Cardinal Spellman, with whom he dined every time he visited New York, and a large portrait of Spellman in his red vestments was the first sight that greeted visitors to Mayer’s library.”3 It was the church’s “respectability” that impressed Mayer. “If a character appeared on screen wearing a clerical collar it served as a sure sign that the audience was supposed to like him.”4
Toby Westerman reports, “A gay culture is growing among clergy of the American Catholic Church that receives support from members of the hierarchy as well as from those directly involved in the training of priests, according to a Catholic priest-theologian.”5 The Vatican has found it nearly impossible to police its seminaries. Much of the problem is a lack of will and fear of a backlash from an already depleted clergy.
There has been a redirection of focus from a discussion of homosexuality to pedophilia, a nearly universally despised predatory behavior. The charge of pedophilia is being used as a smoke screen by homosexuals to fly under the sexual radar. While the general public excoriates the pedophiles among us, the homosexuals go merrily along debauching young men in the name of sexual tolerance.
In the April 1, 2002 issue of U.S. News & World Report, homosexuality was mentioned only once in the eight-page article on the Catholic sex crisis. Rev. Joel Garner, pastor of a Catholic church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is quick to point out in the article that “the pedophilia problem has nothing to do with celibacy or homosexuality.”6 Throughout the article, the sex scandal is called a “sex-abuse scandal,” “youth-sex-abuse,” “sexual misconduct,” “predatory sexual behavior,” but never a homosexual problem. Author Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, confuses the readers of U.S. News even more (on purpose?) when she reports, “Despite the common image of a priest sodomizing a 9-year-old altar boy, most of the priest abusers are technically ‘ephebophiles’—that is, they abuse adolescents rather than children.”7 In any other dictionary, the description of an ephebophile would be a practicing predatory homosexual.
The article begs the question. It’s not just “adolescents” who the priests are abusing, it’s adolescent boys. If pedophilia is the problem, then why aren’t the priests having sex with young girls in the church? The church is covering up its crisis to save its reputation, and it’s no less true that thesereporters are covering up for the homosexual rights movement. John Leo, an editorial writer for U.S. News, touches on the real issue when he writes that true pedophiles are rare, and the super majority of the priests involved in this sex crisis are not pedophiles. “But the church is reluctant to mention the distinction,” Leo writes, “most likely because opening up the issue of sexually active gay priests is itself explosive, even apart from charges of abuse.”
The homosexual lobby is so powerful and intimidating that almost no one wants to suffer from its unbridled wrath. So for cover, the priests are charged with pedophilia in order to hide the fact that homosexuality is the real culprit.
2. Johanna McGeary, “Can the Church Be Saved?,” Time (April 1, 2002), 31.
3. Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (New York: Crown Publishers, 1988), 285.
4. Michael Medved, Hollywood VS. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 51. Roman Catholic and Episcopalian clergymen (e.g., Life with Father and The Bisho’s Wife) were most often chosen to represent the church because they were easily identified because of their clerical garb, most specifically a special collar. Most Protestant clergymen wear no special attire. They generally look like businessmen.
5. Toby Westerman, “Suffer the Children: ‘Gay’ culture in Catholic Church grows Priest says scandal really about homosexuality, not pedophilia,” World Net Daily (March 24, 2002).
6. Angie Cannon and Jeffery L. Sheler, “Catholicsin Crisis,” U.S. News & World Report (April 1, 2002), 57.
7. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, AChastity and lust: Is there a psychological link between sexuality, celibacy, and predation?,” 55.
8. John Leo, “Of rage and revolution,” 12.
This scandal is a boon to trial lawyers,who probably adore cardinal Mahony as well as the other bishops who lied,obfuscated and brought scandal to Christ and His Church.
The price for getting out of purgatory just went up!
Oops!!!!
I listened to one of the plaintiff's lawyers yesterday who implied that the $1.3 million cash payout to each victim would be in addition to lawyers' fees which he pegged at over $650 per hour for the past five years (imagine the number of lawyers and billable hours during that time.)
If that's the case, the $660 million agreed to on Monday, coupled with the previously agreed to $114 million in L.A. brings the total payout by the RCC to $774 million PLUS legal fees.
ping
ping to 45
That is one of the most hateful things I have ever read on this forum.
We are talking about child abuse in the RCC and you think my post is hateful?
Give me a break.
Is that why it was yanked, because you complained about it?
If I knew that my offering to God was going for this, I'd stop giving. That is the quickest way to replace Mahoney or any other anti-bishop. And in these cases, make no mistake. The bishops are enablers to such a degree that they become advocates.
Put Mahoney on the stand, and we'll finally understand the beliefs behind the enabling actions.
I’m glad you don’t, Salvation. I suspect that not too many Americans are hyper-denominationalistic at all, even though many at the highest reaches of their hierarchy are radical hyper-denominationalists.
Not so. The independent denominations would immediately fire them. In all but a few (Episcopal, United CoC) they would be immediately removed from the pulpit, probably never to return.
There are some very large, very wealthy denominations out there. If there were practices of hiding homosexual abusers in the ministry, you can bet your bottom dollar that trial lawyers would have been after those millions.
They have not been able to do so. That gives us some indication of the difference in how these homosexual pedophiles are either aided or abetted in other denominations. I could be wrong, but is the complicity of these bishops that has made the RCC vulnerable, not individual acts by individual priests. The RCC's exposure wouldn't have been anywhere close to this level if it had been individuals who were not then secretly harbored and repositioned by the bishops.
Lawyers don't go after anyone who doesn't have "deep pockets."
As I said, there are some extremely rich denominations out there.
What 'lie' did I tell about them that would make them worse then they are?
ftD, please send me a copy of your post via freepmail.
Are you sure it was my post that got yanked and you are not confusing me with someone else?
“in addition to lawyers’ fees which he pegged at over $650 per hour for the past five years (imagine the number of lawyers and billable hours during that time.)”
It’s a dirty job that no one wanted. Some one had to step up and do it. Would any one begrudge these high minded lawyers their measly $650 an hour for for bringing so sordid an era to light?
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