Posted on 04/14/2011 10:54:02 PM PDT by Cardhu
Former Belgian bishop Roger Vangheluwe has gone live on TV to talk about how he sexually abused two boys but does not see himself as a paedophile.
Emerging from hiding, he revealed he had molested two of his nephews, and not one, as he confessed last year before resigning as bishop of Bruges.
He does not face prosecution because the abuse occurred decades ago.
"It had nothing to do with sexuality," he said, in comments that caused indignation among politicians.
Justice Minister Stefaan De Clercq said in a statement the Church authorities "had to take measures to stop the irresponsible behaviour of the former bishop".
"It is a slap in the face of his victims and all victims," the justice minister added.
The 74-year-old is believed to be living outside Belgium since being ordered to leave the country by the Vatican, which has yet to decide on his future.
A decision will be made "naturally taking into account the various aspects of this issue, starting with the suffering of the victims and the requirements of the justice system", Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told AFP news agency earlier this week.
[snip]
"He described the 13 years of sexual abuse to which he had subjected one nephew from the age of five as no more than "a little piece of intimacy".
"How did it begin?" he said.
"As with all families. When they came to visit, the nephews slept with me. It began as a game with the boys. It was never a question of rape."
"I don't have the impression at all that I am a paedophile," he said. "It was really just a small relationship. I did not have the feeling that my nephew was against it, quite the contrary. It was not brutal sex."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Poor guy only had one bed in the Bishop's Palace, that is the real scandal.
“Speaking in Vatican City, Fr Lombardi said Roger Vangheluwe had been ordered to leave Belgium and undergo spiritual and psychological treatment.
The disgraced cleric has not been defrocked but the Vatican spokesman added that it was “obvious” he would not be allowed to practise as a priest while he was undergoing treatment.”
But what AFTER the “treatment” was finished? Supervising altar boys?
Shoot the bastard and have done with it.
Now toss him in prison with the worst, brutal, gay prisoners and throw away the key.
This Catholic and all others call curses on him and we know that Satan will be keeping the hottest fires of hell ready for this son of a bachelor -- all of thse 0.5% of pastors who are molesters have the hottest fires of hell waiting for them
With the end of this scum, the liberals trying to take over Christianity ends
Now we have good, orthodox, honest bishops who Head of Belgian Catholic Church hit with pies for views on abortion, homosexuality
BRUSSELS, Belgium, April 7, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard of Brussels was hit in the face with custard pies Tuesday by homosexual activists who oppose what the head of the Belgian Catholic Church has said about homosexuality.
The archbishop, widely recognized to have been installed in Belgium by Pope Benedict XVI to reform the liberal Belgian Church, which has been riddled with covered-up homosexual abuse scandals, has been verbally and physically attacked, and ostracized for his staunch orthodox Catholicism.
This week, a well-known Belgian prankster, known as “The Glooper,” who has targeted French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Microsoft founder Bill Gates in the past, posted videos of the pie attacks on YouTube.
At least four pie attacks took place before and during the archbishop’s speaking presentation at the renowned liberal Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve near Brussels.
This is the second time that Archbishop Leonard has been attacked with pies by homosexual activists. In December 2010, a man ran up to the archbishop during a service at the Brussels cathedral and shoved a cherry pie in his face, apparently in connection with his statements on homosexuality.
All the incidents stem from comments Leonard made in a book released last October, in which he said that AIDS is a consequence of risky sexual behavior, including homosexual sexual activity. “AIDS at the beginning multiplied through sexual behaviour with all sorts of partners or else through anal rather than vaginal sexual rapports,” said Leonard.
“When you mistreat the environment it ends up mistreating us in turn,” he continued. “And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance … All I’m saying is that sometimes there are consequences linked to our actions. I believe this is a totally decent, honourable and respectable stance.”
In December, Leonard was targeted by homosexualist groups, condemned by the country’s prime minister, and distanced by his fellow bishops. A lawyer, acting on behalf of a homosexualist lobby group, filed a formal complaint against Leonard for “homophobic statements” and “violating an anti-discrimination law.” Academics at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, where his talk took place earlier this week, circulated a petition at the time calling for Leonard’s resignation from his post as the university’s chancellor.
Leonard, however, remained unswerving. In a December letter he clarified that while he did not mean to imply homosexuals themselves were “abnormal” and denied any implication that AIDS was divine or human punishment, he did maintain that AIDS’s emergence was the consequence of risky sexual activity.
“There is in the homosexual tendency and practice an orientation that is not coherent with the objective logic of sexuality,” he wrote at the time.
Archbishop Leonard has also been attacked for his views on abortion. A key speaker at last year’s March for Life in Belgium, Leonard has been an enthusiastic supporter of the pro-life initiative.
The activists who attacked the archbishop with pies said it was precisely for such views that they were targeting Leonard. One of them reportedly told Belgian media, “for all those homosexuals who daren’t tell their parents they are gay, for all those young girls who want to have an abortion, he absolutely deserved it.”
A Jesuit Writes from Gallipoli, 1915On the southern end of the Peninsula of Gallipoli, for some weeks now, Mass has been said nearly every day by the small band of Catholic Chaplains. The altars are constructed variously— of ammunition boxes, a board on trestles, a packing case, a shelf cut in the wall of a cliff. The place is sometimes picturesque, more often merely inconvenient, the men being huddled together behind some screen, so that the existence of a shell-worthy group may not be revealed to the enemy. Men march or ride, or motorcycle past, and glance with wonder— if they are without the fold— at the bright green vestment and outstretched hands of the priest; with regret— if they are children of the household— that they cannot join the kneeling throng, and take part in the great mystery wherein Jesus Christ again offers up His dear life to the Father for the sake of men in dusty khaki breeches and torn shirts, whose own lives of body and of soul are hourly in jeopardy.And week from week, by the altars, the Bread of Life is distributed “to a great multitude” on whom Jesus has had compassion. It is of that multitude that I would speak, for it is a mixed company, where Knights of our Lady, who have ever kept their shields stainless, kneel side by side with many a forgiven traitor, who in days gone by, denied his Lord and sold for less than thirty pieces of silver the Master at whose feet he kneels now, pure as on the morning of his First Communion.
yet the perspective that only 0.53% of priests have been convicted, that only 2-3% have even been accused is forgotten. yes, 2-3% being accused is too high, yes, 0.53% convicted is too high, but why blame the 99.47% of all priests for the sins of these few?
Also, I note that the majority of cases were in the liberal hellholes -- hellholes for sham-priests too it seems.
Curses on the false priests but pity and sympathy for the truly holy priests maligned by all for the sins of 0.53%
The Priest who Converted his Enemy
Mgr O’Flaherty’s duel with the Gestapo leader in Rome is legendary. What happened next was even more amazing In Rome during the Second World War a plain white line was painted along the streets that ran by the Vatican. In 1944, during the early days of the German occupation, it marked the point where the Holy See’s authority ended and Nazi rule began. It had been painted on the instructions of Oberstrumbannführer Herbert Kappler, the head of the Gestapo in Rome, who ruled the city with fear.Kappler’s street painting was a physical attempt to remind Romans who was in charge but it may also have been directed at one man – his rival Mgr Hugh O’Flaherty. The two men were engaged in a a deadly game of “hide and seek” as the charismatic Kerry priest was running an escape operation for Allied servicemen and Jewish civilians from the confines of his Vatican office. After Mgr O’Flaherty hid the escapees it was Kappler’s job to find them
It is with the events of March 1944, however, that the Gestapo chief will forever be associated. After the Resistance killed 33 German soldiers in a bomb attack Hitler was enraged and demanded a revenge attack to “make the world tremble”. Kappler drew up the plans to do so. Then Kappler and his men killed 335 people in the Ardeatine Caves, a labyrinth of tunnels outside the city. It was one of the worst atrocities committed on Italian soil during the Second World War.
Kappler was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre and was told he would never be freed. Within months Italy’s most famous prisoner wrote to his old rival. He invited Mgr O’Flaherty to visit him and, within days, the Kerry priest arrived to meet and talk with his former foe. Their meetings became regular affairs and, according to Mgr O’Flaherty’s friends, they discussed religion and literature.
..A nephew of the monsignor, the former Irish supreme court judge who is also called Hugh O’Flaherty, says his uncle urged Kappler to delay his conversion until the trial was concluded. “My uncle advised him that it would be construed as if he was trying to curry favour,” he says. Kappler waited until he was sentenced and then called on the monsignor to visit him. The two men prayed together and then Mgr O’Flaherty received Kappler into the Catholic Church. In a matter of minutes, Italy’s most notorious Nazi was welcomed into the faith by the very man he had tried to kill.
So where had this new-found faith come from? Had Kappler turned to God simply because he was facing a life sentence and it was convenient to pretend he was remorseful and wanted to seek public sympathy? Or was there an influence in his life which made him genuinely think in a way that he had never done before?
What is known is that Mgr O’Flaherty always had a relaxed view towards those who did not share his Catholic faith. Allied servicemen who worked with him in the Escape Line who were non-Catholic or of no religion often remarked that he never attempted to preach to them or lecture them. British Army Major Sam Derry, who worked with Mgr O’Flaherty in Rome, recalled: “I lived under his care and he never once tried to sell religion to me.”
So where are these percentages coming from? Are they from an exhaustive set, scientific poll or investigation of the whole church......or are those off the top of someone’s head, a good guess-timate?
“....liberal Belgian church...”, “...riddled with homosexual abuse scandals...”? If it such a tiny fraction of offenders why does the Belgian church need “reform” by Benedict?
Or is that Pope Martin Luther Benedict being spoken of?
Agreed! A wonderful story! So too the story of the nation of Israel from Christ's day until its destruction furnishes a story, wonderful in another sense of the term, and even has a lesson attached pertinent to our own times.
Would you care to opine on what lesson we today can draw from their example?
Because it's a detailed fault that if not cleaned out will rot the core. The majority of Belgian priests are good and not these scum. However the seminaries in many cases are riddled with liberal teachers, kind of like what we have with university profs in secular universities in the US.
Reform is something the Church does internally ever so often -- the last before Luther was done by St. Francis and his Franciscan monks.
The Jesuits were also a burning force to clear out the human corruption as God does not fail His Church but clears it from within as was done earlier in Judaic times in Josiah.
Or is that Pope Martin Luther Benedict being spoken of? -- strangely enough, if the Pope at Luther's time had been like the Pope at St. Francis' time and cleared out the secular corruption that Luther initially spoke of, we may well have had the young Luther before his later ideas which I think were wrong as Pope.
If you read Luther's career, a lot of his later actions were moved one after the other and my own personal opinion is that he was carried along by forces and didn't like it -- hence his diatribes against Zwingli and other innovators. He realised the floodgates had been loosened by his own innocuous questions.
I, personally, as a Catholic, have a good opinion of Luther as he started out, and I do see him as later being used by political forces and by Calvinism beyond his control. His initial motives were good, unlike Calvin who really wanted revenge and Zwingli whose aim was personal gain.
The Nation of Israel -- strong even under the judges, but beseiged by enemies. It is incredibly strong when it is united under a humble central steward (David, Solomon).
When it breaks apart, the part that breaks away also splits and resplits (multiple dynasties) and finally is destroyed utterly, while the part that is still strong holds
Now it comes back together and we see a coming back together of all of the house of Christ -- with the Anglicans coming and the renewal of fellowship with the Orthodox and Orientals.
Were (past tense) there faults on both sides -- of course, and the centralised house of Judea had foolish stewards, who only exacerbated the divide. But that is the past, this is now.
Which is why I point out this thread
Pro-homosexuality foundation pours millions into Catholic and mainline Protestant dissident groupsThese guys are systematically attacking every Christian group. They won in the ECUSA, are trying hard in the ELCA and PCUSA and UM and shot their load in the Catholic Church. They will come for the rest of us and pick us off one by one unless we put up a united front. Yes, we all have disagreements, some minor, some serious, but we need to see the common enemy -- the secular left who hate Christianity as the main obstacle in their path -- this goes for all of us. If tomorrow there is an ELCA parish that needs picketeers against the gays trying to take over, there should be Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists etc. marching along side. If tomorrow there is a gay crowd screaming outside the Catholic Church, we should all be standing together against these hatersAt CatholicVote.org, Thomas Peters recently wrote about the effort by homosexual billionaires to change the Roman Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality by funding dissident groups within the church. Peters catalogs funding to the tune of almost $600,000 to various Catholic groups through something called the Arcus Foundation.After reading Peters’ article, I went to the Arcus website and discovered that it isn’t just Roman Catholic groups this foundation is funding. Money is also going to many dissident groups in mainline Protestant denominations.
Ditto for those attempting to debase Methodists, Baptist, Pentecostals etc.
The Bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe...
***
"I don't have the impression at all that I am a paedophile," he said. "It was really just a small relationship. I did not have the feeling that my nephew was against it, quite the contrary. It was not brutal sex."
"When they came to visit, the nephews slept with me. It began as a game with the boys. It was never a question of rape."
That is an odd shape for a man, the stomach is far too low or could it be that he has secreted a small boy beneath that cassock.
The John Jay Study (see threads here, here, and outside coverage here) - commissioned by the U.S. Catholic Bishops' National Review Board itself - found that the number of accused Catholic priest abusers equaled four percent of the entire Catholic priest population. The John Jay study's findings are more than conclusive - they're exhaustive of the entire US population of Catholic priests.
But the real scandal was never about the 4% accused of abuse within their ranks. The real scandal was that 66% of bishops covered for the 4%, negatively affecting 95% of the dioceses in the United States - actions which cost the Catholic Church over three billion dollars paid in settlements and awards to the victims.
[Faithful Departed author Philip Lawler] points out that while less than five percent of American priests have been accused of sexual abuse, some two-thirds of our bishops were apparently complicit in cover-ups. The real scandal isn't the sick excesses of a few dozen pedophiles, or even the hundreds of priests who had affairs with teenage boys -- the bulk of abuse cases. No, according to Lawler, it is the malfeasance of wealthy, powerful, and evidently worldly men who fill the thrones -- but not the shoes -- of the apostles. In case after case, we read in their correspondence, in the records of their soulless, bureaucratic responses to victims of psychic torture and spiritual betrayal, these bishops' prime concern was to save the infrastructure, the bricks and mortar and mortgages. Ironically, their lack of a supernatural concern for souls is precisely what cost them so much money in the end.
-- from the thread Kneeling Before the World"The Dublin Archdiocese's preoccupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church and the preservation of its assets," said the report. "All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the state"....
-- from the thread Pope calls Irish church leaders to Vatican to discuss abuse report
Related threads:
The Narcotic of Secrecy (Canon Lawyer Charles Wilson on the Bishops)
Pope's challenge, US bishops' quick response
Kneeling Before the World [Catholic Caucus]
Abuse crisis has shown clerics how deeply victims are hurt, bishop says
"Former Belgian bishop Roger Vangheluwe has gone live on TV to talk about how he sexually abused two boys but does not see himself as a paedophile. Emerging from hiding, he revealed he had molested two of his nephews, and not one, as he confessed last year before resigning as bishop of Bruges. 'It had nothing to do with sexuality,' he said, in comments that caused indignation among politicians."
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