....We all tend to make excuses for the people closest to us. Apparently that tendency affects even the most vociferous critics of clerical abuse. But even if it is a very natural weakness, it remains a weakness. If we want to eliminate the abuse of children, we must get tough with abusers. Sometimes that might mean fighting off the temptation to make excuses for them—in effect, getting tough with ourselves.
Not so. Only Spanier and Paterno were fired. Curley and Schultz are only on a leave of absence. And McQueary is still there.
The house wasn't swept quite so clean, was it?
I was wondering when someone was going to point out this glaring contrast. Now I wonder how many people who are frothing at the mouth against Paterno are also Catholic apologists (including indifference or trivialization) for similiar abuses from Catholic clergy. Quite a few, I think - rural PA is heavily Catholic.
"Freshmen Orientation At Penn State Is A Cause For Concern For Christian Parents" – by Gary L. Morella
Students are being manipulated at Penn State by confusing "perversity" with "diversity." This is the result of President Graham Spanier's social engineering agenda where, through the Vice-Provost’s Office for Educational Equity, being inclined to unnatural sex acts is presented to PSU students as a cause for pride, an alternative lifestyle, contrary to almost unanimous condemnation across a broad spectrum of faith traditions from time immemorial. It's not a question of "tolerance" anymore, but rather a "demand" for compromising your faith, something that is against the law if "freedom of religion" still has meaning in this country. Graham Spanier needs to be reminded that his incoming freshmen during orientation, and his student body as a whole, are not obliged to "tolerate" the promotion of sin. To do so is coercion in the strongest sense of the word. This is happening at a university that receives a significant amount of annual public funding from Harrisburg, a university that prides itself on "freedom of speech", which seems to include all speech except that of those who disagree with its policies for reasons of faith.
In a memorandum to the Penn State faculty dated August 21, 2001, President Spanier said, "I am enclosing a summary of some key University Park resources available to students. Please do not hesitate to make referrals." Included in this referral list was the
Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Resource Room, 328 Grange, 863-1248 www.lions.psu.edu/lgbt.
The room provides confidential support and information to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Penn Staters.
So with a stroke of the pen President Spanier has given his unqualified support to the official promotion of sexual deviancy at his university equating it with the Center for Adult Learner Services, Center for Ethics and Religious Affairs, Student and Family Services, Disability Services Office for Students, Division of Undergraduate Studies, Student Aid Office, University Health Services, and Veterans Programs, to name a few of the other University Park resources getting equal billing with the promotion of homosexuality. It's one thing to allow radical student groups a voice under the most liberal of ACLU guidelines; it's something else to embrace such groups as official university policy contrary to the beliefs of a large number of taxpaying residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who find themselves being forced to support behavior that their faith traditions hold in anathema.
The Penn State student paper, The Collegian, reported that "that tremendous paragon of virtue," Jesse Jackson, who recently proved that he's just as shameless as his hero, William Jefferson Clinton, would be coming to campus. Jackson should be making the distinction between "invidious" discrimination, which everyone should be against, and "just" discrimination between right and wrong, which everyone should be for, in making it clear to PSU students that the civil rights movement has been hijacked by a group of radicals whose demand for unity to include their particular agenda allows for no dissent whatsoever. Somehow, I doubt that this will occur. It was also reported that a parent of Matthew Shepard would be speaking on campus.
It's very sad what happened to Matthew Shepard, something that should not happen to any creation of God. It's equally sad what happened to a young boy in Arkansas, Jesse Dirkhising, who was brutally sodomized, tortured, and killed by homosexuals. Equal justice under the law applies in both cases. Evidently, equal reporting doesn't, by the media's own admission, as Shepard has been made a homosexual icon while Dirkhising has been forgotten.
Would someone care to provide a list of American bishops who (a) have not resigned; (b) have not yet retired; and (c) are themselves (not their predecessors) credibly accused of coverups ?
The most egregious case I can think of Mahoney, who’s both retired (finally) and protected by the liberal media. You can guarantee that a bishop who was conservative — a Chaput or Bruskewitz — who could be painted as guilty of covering up child abuse would have been pilloried in the press by now. The press covers up for Mahoney and those like him because he’s a liberal like they are.
His latest book, “The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture” is one I highly recommend.
Evil knows no social, geographical, political, religious, or cultural boundaries and it does no good to pretend otherwise.
Let’s remember that this is the same college that just whitewashed Michael Mann’s academic fraud on the global warming hockey stick . . .
This is naive. Many of the bishops had skeletons in their own closets and were blackmailed to keep quiet.
Why, oh why, does the media always write about the Catholic Church when there is abuse in all churches?
Everyone has the Penn State scandal backwards. This isn’t about football programs being so sacrosanct that the school will turn a blind eye to infractions. This is about respected institutions being infiltrated by people who use the institution as a shield for their own disgusting deeds.
The other college sports scandals have been about getting the best players on the field. Reggie Bush gets money. At Oklahoma, under Switzer, players with criminal backgrounds were allowed onto the field.
At Penn State, after Sandusky was discovered molesting boys, Paterno divested him from the program. There was no possible benefit to Penn State football in allowing a man who was committing heinous acts to continue to use the facilities to attract and molest young boys.
The reports were so pervasive and so similar, over such a long period of time that everyone in power at Penn State had to know what was going on.
Graham Spanier, the former President of Penn State, was removed by the Board of Regents after the scandal exploded, but maintained as a professor. He wrote a paper entitled “Sexual socialization and premarital sexual behavior : an empirical investigation of the impact of formal and informal sex education.” in 1973, and had Rene Portland removed from her position as head women’s basketball coach because she would not allow lesbian activities on the team.
Note that Paterno and Coleman, who were never accused of any sexual activities were removed from association with Penn State, while Sandusky and Spanier, the molester and the man who made the ultimate decision about his presence on campus, were allowed to remain. Oh, and Penn State will fund Spanier’s defense. Does anyone really think the Board had a problem with Spanier or Sandusky? No. They didn’t put Sandusky on administrative leave when it became obvious what he was doing, even during the grand jury investigation and the deposition of many Penn State employees. They didn’t do it when Sandusky was indicted. They did it when it became a public relations problem.
Anyone who thinks, even at this time, that Penn State is doing anything other than the absolute minimum they can get away with to try and make this story go away is wrong.
The big similarity between the situations at both institutions is that pedophiles infiltrated the institutions and used their good names as a shield to carry on their activities. In both instances, the institution and the press have been so infiltrated by the perpetrators and enablers, that their only goals are to do the absolute minimum necessary to make the story go away so they can return to their network of activities, using the institution as a shield, method of recruiting children, and a money stream.
Tough is protecting pedophiles for 13 years? Wow.