Posted on 05/25/2002 1:00:44 PM PDT by EggsAckley
16 Priests Have Committed Suicide CLEVELAND (AP) - At least 16 Catholic priests accused of sexually abusing children, including 12 priests in the United States, have killed themselves since 1986, a newspaper reported Saturday.
The numbers were found in an investigation by the Plain Dealer after the suicide April 4 of the Rev. Don Rooney, a priest in the Cleveland Roman Catholic Diocese who faced allegations that he sexually abused a child.
Suicide is rare among priests and is considered a sin by the church, though in modern times, the church has expressed more understanding for mental distress.
The Rev. Stephen J. Rossetti, director of the St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., a treatment center for abusive priests, recently sent an e-mail to every U.S. bishop urging care in investigations involving priests and saying he feared more priests would kill themselves as additional accusations were made.
After the e-mail was sent, a priest accused of molesting two boys in Connecticut hanged himself at the center, where he was being treated. It was the first suicide at the institution in its 25-year-history.
``Imagine you're a priest,'' said Kalman Kaplan, a psychology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies suicide. ``People see you as a teacher, an educator, someone carrying on the moral tradition from one generation to the next. Now it's being publicly exposed that you have abused children.
``Where do you go from here? Your whole identity is shattered. The shame can be overwhelming, the options few.''
After Rooney killed himself, Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla preached a message of forgiveness at Rooney's funeral Mass.
``The meaning of Father Rooney's death is hidden from our eyes,'' Pilla said. ``Yet, we cannot conclude that his life and death had no meaning or were rejected by God.''
I heartily support Catholics...all Christians for that matter during this crisis.
I have applauded the attention this scandal has received simply because while the "body" continues to be outraged by these fiends and the media happily complies by running TV excerts on it daily, the problem will continue to be addressed and the beast who have perpetuated this upon innocents will have no peace and not be able to hide.
These monsters must be purged from the ranks of Christianity. There is no place for people who use the responsibility of the pulpit to hurt the people and prey upon their children. Many Catholics agree with me. While attention is focused upon these perverts, they won't be able to continue to molest and rape innocent children.
This scandal will turn out to be one of the better things that has happened to the Catholic Church in many a long year. In the end, the concern of the people will be so strong and so focused to weed out the Gay/Pedophile Priests who have infiltrated the ranks of the church to prey upon the innocents within the "body", they will not be able to hide.
The media, in their hatred all of things of God and Christianity have gleefully embraced this scandal and pounded the Church with a ruthless media assault. They are useful fools, all of them. The people, the "body" knows where the issue lies. It is the mass infection of perversion from the Homosexual militants who have infiltrated the ranks of the Church for years in order to errode and destroy the Church from within. From the alter they feel they can "diminish" the evils of homosexuality/pedophilia in the eyes of the people and slowly blur the line between good and evil. In the best tradition of pure evil they continue to try to deceive the body. The problem for the media is that they can't attack this issue without the people being able to figure out the truth of the situation.
In the end, the Church will realize there is no "middle ground" with sin and that you can't make deals nor compromise with Evil. The complacency that infected the leadership will be brought to an end and newer, worthier leadership will take over. In the end, as always, God will be triumphant.
Actually, it's not a scandal, a'tall.
It's simple, generic, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian-grade pro-(fill in the blank) spun-up propaganda.
Courtesy of our ol' American *clarion* of journalism...the shameless Associated Press -- that's all.
This one's even been done in the repulsive, manipultative, all-too-familiar Clintigulan mold, at that.
Familiar, & so typical of the shit we had to endure for 8 years as spewed from the imps, harpies & flyin monkeys handling The Great Liar's *business*.
Those very same warped, corrupt sycophants never went away after Clintigula left office, y'know.
"...did the house of cards tumble under it's own weight, or is there another agenda?"
~Cute.
Why?
...is there another *kind* of Homosexuality we're not aware of? ;^)
Taking a wild guess: neither you, your siblings nor your offspring have been sexually abused as children.
Wow, how'd I know?
No Catholic is excommunicated for not tithing.
I know two men who were, as boys. Even they aren't wishing for the damnation of their abuser.
Ditto. I'm not surprised this too was covered up. If it wasn't covered up, we wouldn't just be hearing about it NOW.
Though some cannot find it in their hearts to forgive what they deem to be unforgivable, it is not quite the same as "dancing" on their graves....
And anyway, no amount of praying for , OR damning of the departed will sway final Judgement either way.
God is not confined to the parameters of time, as we are.
A prayer or sacrifice for someone now will be known to an eternal God when that person for whom the prayer is offered comes before Him for judgement.
It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead. Your prayer for a suicide could be the intercession that caused a last second conversion, or that influenced the eternal God to grant salvation. After all, no greater love does one have than the love one shows in giving his life, his love, his prayers, for his fellow man.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy"....
I would agree that it is "holy and wholesome" to pray to God for someone -- however while they are still alive that they may find strength through that prayer in the belief of redemption through Christ. Salvation must be earned before a mortal death.
In other words, if Christ's gift of redemption had not been accepted during this lifetime, no amount of "intercession" and "influence" on behalf of an unbelieving soul will apply in our next "life."
This is one thing I hold in question, though. You see, I don't see this as a humiliation of the Church. My view is that the good name of the Church has been corrupted by a small group of radicals who have two purposes, and not necessarily both at once. 1) Homosexuals have infiltrated the ranks of Church leadership to preach their agenbda from the pulpit upon innocents in direct contrast to the word of God in his own house 2) A group of "predators" have placed themselves in positions of power over those whom they would prey upon. It's the same group of people with two evil purposes.
However, I do not view the leadership of the Catholic Church as being the Catholic Church. I'm not a Catholic. My view of the Catholic Church is of the "body", the people. I have had the good fortune to be able to say that those Catholics that I have encountered both the most wonderful people I have met on the planet and the clearest manifestation of the will of God thriving with his children. Mother Theresa was not a Druid. She was Catholic. There are so many exmples, but to say the least I and singularly impressed with the "products" of the Catholic Church.
I know these people didn't do this. It was an evil that was perpetrated upon them. These people were taken advantage of by people in whom they should be able to have faith in. If anything, it is a failure of the leadership, but it is not a failure of what I consider to be the real representative of Catholicism on earth, the Catholics themselves.
In the end, the Church is just four walls with a ceiling. Christian faith is as strong as ever within it's believers. This whole thing will pass and the Church as a whole will be stronger in the end. That's why I think this whole scandal is a good thing. In this case the price of freedom from "evil" will be eternal vigilence in the future. If anything, the longer the attention is kept on this situtation, the more vigilant people will be.
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