Posted on 08/14/2018 1:24:14 PM PDT by Enlightened1
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The long-awaited state grand jury report into sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses, including Pittsburgh and Greensburg, has finally been released.
The 884-page document, two years in the making, shines a light into the dark corners of these dioceses going back seven decades, exposing the predators and the efforts of their bishops to protect them.
“Today, the most comprehensive report on child sexual abuse within the church ever produced in our country was released,” Attorney General Josh Shapiro said. “Pennsylvanians can finally learn the extent of sexual abuse in these dioceses. For the first time, we can all begin to understand the systematic cover up by church leaders that followed. The abuse scarred every diocese. The cover up was sophisticated. The church protected the institution at all costs.”
The report begins with the following statement:
“We, the members of this grand jury, need you to hear this. We know some of you have head some of it before. There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale. For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere.”
The report cites 301 priests, clergy and lay teachers with credible allegations against them. There are 99 in the Diocese of Pittsburgh alone.
Of those 99, a group of four groomed and violently sexually assaulted young boys, said Shapiro.
“One boy was forced to stand on a bed in a rectory, strip naked and pose as Christ on the cross for the priests. They took photos of their victim, adding them to a collection of child pornography which they produced and shared on church grounds,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro said the priests would mark their victims by giving them gifts.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburgh.cbslocal.com ...
This is just sick, sick, sick. Standing on the bed was especially sickening to me.
These perverted, sick individuals have destroyed lives forever.....
It is perhaps time to truly examine the depths of our sworn oath…
“All enemies foreign and domestic”
The Church must be cleansed of unfit servants.
“The church and Joe Pa looked the other way.”
Organized Religion and College Football, both businesses that should be shut down.
Agreed. This is a Catholic problem.
“The RC church is a few centuries behind with its “celibate” clergy thing. Ending that outdated requirement and allowing normal married men into its ranks would go a long way toward ending its intractable pederasty problem.”
Totally agree. Maybe some heterosexual married men can temper their homosexual practices.
My three brothers and I went to Catholic school from First Grade through High school. The same goes for my three sons.We were all altar boys. We met a bunch of great guys who were very dedicated priests and none of us ever had any sort of problem.
My heart aches for kids and young men who were abused. I have nothing but disdain for those priests and bishops who did or enabled abuse. I would hang them from the nearest lamp post on their church grounds until the birds picked them clean.
A good lady friend of mine is a very devout Catholic. She takes her children to mass at least once a week like clockwork. A few years ago, I asked her what she thought about the Priest scandals. I really expected her to defend the Church. Instead, she gave me a very intense and wild look (an expression I’ve never seen on her before or since) and said flatly that she assumes that all priests are pervs. And she won’t let her boys do anything where they are alone with a priest. I found that kind of shocking at the time, but perhaps she was right on target.
Only Catholics require their nuns/ priests to be celibate. Consequently, many are gay. Why not? It's a perfect way to live a gay lifestyle with full approval and even admiration for their career choice.
When I think of all the mothers that proudly sent their sons to be alter boys, having no idea what was going on, it makes me want to vomit.
I am not Catholic and I know this happens in other churches, too, but never on this scale and never with the protection of the higher ups.
The enormous exodus of heterosexual men who left the priesthood to marry in the 1960s and 1970s created an imbalance.
I had an uncle who was a priest. Towards the end of his life he would not wear his Roman collar in public. He said he noticed people would herd their children away from him if he did.
I had a great-aunt who was a nun. She was pretty elderly when the first wave of this hit the news in the 70’s. She was inconsolable. She was totally crushed that the Church she loved and spend her whole life serving had allowed this to go on.
It didn’t help the Episcopalians or Anglicans, they had married clergy for centuries and now put openly married gay clergy in as bishops. But I hear you. What I don’t understand is that the most pro-homosexual agenda Catholics invariably want the discipline of celibacy ended.
Freegards
It is tragic and of epidemic proportions.
The PA report does not cover all the dioceses of PA.
It does not cover all the children who were sexually abused by perverted priests.
It is just one state, in one country.
It is worldwide.
And the homosexual perversion is also in the Vatican, where drug-fueled homosex parties are known to the Pope, but nothing is done. It is accepted.
Those other Christian churches learned the hard way that a cleric with family obligations wasn't going to put up much of a fight when things got rough for him.
You wouldn’t have to close the church.....just rid the church of the problem.
I think there is more that enough punishment to go around. The individual priests are most certainly guilty, however tit is the institution that allows this corruption to go on.
Priests, guilty as hell, are allowed to move from parish to parish with impunity. These things have been covered up forever.
If it were not the fact that this institution is the “Holy” Roman Church, this organization would have been prosecuted under the RICO act, and rightly so.
Organized religion? Guaranteed in the constitution.
College Football? I could care less.
The perverted scoutmasters, teachers, ministers, politicians, coaches, and movie producers should be hanging right next to them.
Both Wolsey and More were married, though I am not sure More was ever formally ordained into the clergy. Nearly a century later, Cardinal Richelieu was also married and was particularly notorious for spreading his seed around, not a trait that either More or Wolsey shared.
So possibly the celibate clergy thing was a reaction to Richelieu?
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