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.
My Mafia comment was on another thread.
I hate to dredge it all up again but your contention was that the practice of abusing children had been going on for 1000 years and that it was part of the religion.
I don’t see how it could have been anyone else’s post since I simply hit “post reply”.
..
Thank you, I had forgotten what I had posted.
Yes, I and cited Rev.2:20.
Well said.
That is wishful thinking. The RCC draws a distinction between homosexuality and homosexual acts --- only the latter being sinful. So your magisterium regularly ordains non-practicing homosexuals as priests and sees no problem with it.
But his retirement is mandatory on his 80th birthday, whether the Pope likes it or not.
No, it was my post.
when a post gets deleted it must get erased from one's ping list and I had forgotten what I had posted.
The former is an “impediment” to the priesthood (i.e., a disqualifier). Yes, too many have been admitted, but it was in direct disobedience to explicit directives of the Church.
You really should study scripture and stop using it to further your prejudice against the church. Jer. 16:1-4 Jeremiah is told not to take a wife and have children. 1 Cor 7:8 St. Paul was celebate for the sake of the kingdom Mt 19:12 Celebacy is praised by Jesus. Therefore, celebacy is not for everyone but for those who forsake marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God.
Oh, maybe that's why-because it was scriptural!
What version is that, the NKJV?
it was on the bible that came up on crosswalk.com
I think it was NIV
Owww, my eyes!
LOL!
Gimmeabreak. :>)
Um, I do believe that the $650 per hour lawyer fee was what the church was paying to keep this sordid affair in the dark. The lawyers who were bringing this to light were on contingencies.
Looks like their lawyer lost.
At $650 an hour, you’ve gotta wonder what the church’s legal fees were over the course of this to add on top of their 100+ million separate payouts + this $666 million payout.
I’ll bet they’ve got a BILLION DOLLARS of offering plate money, property, savings, and investments from their members absolutely wasted. Might as well just flushed it down the commode.
And did their members even get any change for all this money. Nope. Not a bit. They left the same crew in charge.
It’s mind boggling. The pope’s have had their heads up their posterior anteriors.
It's nice to see that the LA RCC is getting screwed at both ends since they seem to have been doing that to their parishioners for so many years
“I think the biggest difference between a $650 per hour lawyer and a $200 per hour lawyer...”
$450 per hour. If they are insurance defense lawyers then the rate is probably closer to $200.00. I did some defense work on products liability cases and finally told the insurance company to look elsewhere. It was costing me money to defend them.
By the way, I understand there is a confidentiality agreement attached to the settlement. The plaintiffs can’t talk about the cases or their experiences and the Diocese does not have to produce any information. That is probably worth more than the money settlement to the Diocese.
"The things said in secret should be proclaimed openly...."
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