Free Republic

Hardly any of the more than 100 Buffalo area priests implicated as child molesters spent so much as one day in jail. For years, most of their victims were too scared or embarrassed to make complaints. But Buffalo Police had marching orders not to arrest Catholic priests, according to former vice squad Detective Martin Harrington and other retired officers. Instead they alerted the bishop's office to any illegal activities. "The department's unwritten policy was that Catholic priests did not get arrested," said Harrington, who investigated vice crimes for 17 years and retired in 1995. "I never had any experience with...

We are very sad that any law enforcement officer would face threats for doing his or her job and we are distressed that the Michigan attorney general has suffered in this way. https://twitter.com/kenkolker/status/1126550761910018050/video/1 We hope Michigan's bishops quickly and harshly condemn this hatred. Violence is never the answer. For decades, police and prosecutors who pursued clerics who commit and conceal child sex crimes have been stonewalled, and Church officials have contributed to the unhealthy atmosphere that leads to threats of violence. While the Church hierarchy often postures as being the victims of governmental overreach, the reality is that they were often treated with too much deference in the...

Attorneys on Monday, May 6, 2019 released a report containing names of more than 300 New Jersey priests and others accused of misconduct. Philip DeVencentis, Staff Writer, @LocalNewsPhil A law firm specializing in representing abuse victims put the names in a report, linked to a suit by a man who says he was abused in Ridgefield Park. Edward Hanratty doesn't think it's a coincidence that four abusive priests wound up at his parish in Ridgefield Park.  In his Irish Catholic community, nobody ever questioned the church, which was at the epicenter of the community, recalled Hanratty, a victim of clergy...

Complete title: When he was a priest, this N.J. teacher impregnated a 16-year-old. No, you can't fire him, school district is told. A veteran Burlington County teacher who had a baby with a 16-year-old girl while he was a Catholic priest nearly 30 years ago should not lose his job because of his past, a state arbitrator told the school district. Cinnaminson school officials brought up tenure charges against middle school teacher Joseph DeShan earlier this year after parents learned about his history as a priest in the diocese in Bridgeport, Connecticut. DeShan left the priesthood in 1994, four years...

It is both harrowing and infinitely sad to see "Leaving Neverland" and "Surviving R. Kelly,"  two cable television documentaries about the crime of child sexual abuse, its perpetrators and victims. R. Kelly currently sits in a Chicago jail cell for failure to pay child support, while at the same time, years of allegations about his sexual abuse of underage girls, have finally caught up with him. The R&B star says he is unfairly accused and that his career has been ruined by the allegations. "Leaving Neverland" aired last week, profiling two men who say Michael Jackson sexually abused them when...

Do not turn a blind eye. Pedophilia goes far beyond the walls of the church, and spreads much like the plague, infesting local communities and infiltrating daycares, schools, and foster care, while many remain protected by local community leaders and officials. Child sex trafficking and church pedophiles are rampant, and the lists being disseminated by churches across the country, pointing to pedophile priests and clergy, most of which have long been deceased, is a swift way to clean their hands of it, with false transparency. What they don’t want people to know, is just how far this truly reaches, and...

Full title: Kerala rape case: Sister Lucy, who protested against accused bishop, says sexual abuse is rampant in Church Religious women, priests and laymen who supported a nun after she filed a police complaint of rape against Jalandhar ex-bishop Franco Mulakkal, are being systematically targeted by the Catholic Church in Kerala. Nuns, who form the most vulnerable community in the Church, are facing most of this oppression. While five nuns who took to streets demanding the arrest of the bishop are being put under pressure and threatened, another nun who was an important witness in the case was harassed and tortured...

Image: http://indiafacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Galloping-Growth-of-Madrasas-1000x500.jpg Islam is hell-bent on re-conquering India. Post-independence through Madrasa multiplication Darul Uloom Deoband has laid a formidable siege to India. The task was facilitated by secularism-doped Hindus swearing by Pandit Nehru! The quantum jump in the number of madrasas from 88 in 1947 to five lakhs in 2006 across India is a mind boggling narrative of unremitting Islamic aggression. It has the potential to bring about tectonic changes in the future geopolitical developments across India -- including the much dreaded clash of civilizations! Unfortunately the secularism-trapped Indian government never tried to exercise any control over lakhs of madrasas...

A new international sports team may have a supernatural boost: Vatican representatives announced last week that the city-state has launched a national track and field team. The group will start with about 60 members, pending official clearance and a health examination required by the Italian government, Father Melchor Jose Sanchez de Toca y Alameda, team president and the head of the Vatican’s sports department in the culture ministry, told Runner’s World. Those members range in age from 18 to 62, and have a variety of professions within the Vatican. “There’s all types of people—it cuts across the Vatican world. There...

LANSING, Mich. --The Michigan Attorney General’s office says it’s launched an investigation into alleged sex abuse and assault of children in all seven dioceses in Michigan. Michigan Catholic Diocese Map by Madeline Ciak on Scribd Ads by ZINC The attorney general’s office says it’s investigating allegations dating back as far as 1950. The investigation will also include any allegations related to the cover up of sexual abuse or assault.

The Greensburg Catholic Diocese removed the name of the late Bishop William Connare from a retreat center in Unity Township, Bishop Edward Malesic said Wednesday. The move was the latest of a series of aftershocks rippling across the state in the wake of the Aug. 14 grand jury report that detailed seven decades of priest sexual abuse allegations and cover-ups by church leaders in six dioceses across the state, including Greensburg and Pittsburgh. Malesic said the decision to strike Connare’s name from the center was made at the request of several survivors of priest sexual abuse who said it was...

Fr. Paul Sullins, Ph.D., Research Associate of the Ruth Institute, Answers Questions on The Clerical Sex Abuse Scandal Is the current Catholic sex abuse scandal related to homosexuality?Yes. The current scandal includes mostly revelations about male on male sexual abuse of seminarians, where the victims are adults. These kinds of cases were not even considered in the responses to the 2002 scandal, which was about the criminal abuse of minors.Was the 2002 scandal also related to homosexuality?The US Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned two reports, one in 2004 and in 2011, by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to...

"The Patriarchate of Constantinople is struggling with the Russian Church for influence in the Orthodox world. The Moscow and Constantinople Patriarchates are in tense relations today because of Ukraine.” Russian Orthodox priests are complaining they are unable to obtain Schengen visas for EU travel through Greek missions as relations between Athens and Moscow worsens... In a report carried by the BBC’s Russian-language service on Thursday, a source from the church in Constantinople claimed this Greek “policy” is because “Russian priests … are perceived as potential spies and agents of influence”. Several priests told the BBC they had either been refused...

As scientists, we are concerned about recent discussions regarding clergy sexual abuse. Numerous authors, like a recent Chilean post by Riccardo Cascioli (February 8, 2018), seem to believe there is a significant difference between ‘pedophiles’ and homosexuals. Indeed, Riccardo Cascioli re-makes a point often made: “the so-called ‘pedophilia cases’ are actually an overwhelming majority of incidents of homosexuality”[1] where pedophilia properly refers to the attraction of adults for pre-pubescent children. When such attraction is directed towards teenagers, one must instead speak of ephebophilia which is initiated by homosexual persons. This is what we are talking about in Chile, but it...

WASHINGTON — Fifty-seven Orthodox Christian clergymen and lay leaders, including the heads of two leading Orthodox seminaries in the U.S., have issued a public statement calling on church leaders to defend Orthodox teaching on the creation and calling of man as male and female by opposing the appointment of deaconesses in the Orthodox Church. The statement comes in response to a public statement issued in October by nine Orthodox liturgical scholars in the U.S. and Greece, expressing support for the Patriarchate of Alexandria’s November 2016 decision to “restore” the ancient order of deaconesses and its February 2017 appointment of deaconesses...

The proportion of people who say they trust priests to tell the truth has reached an all-time low in Britain, while the number of those trusting politicians and police has risen, according to an Ipsos MORI survey.Only 65 percent of respondents said they trusted priests to tell the truth, according to the survey, conducted among 988 adults last month, The Times reports. Last year, 69 percent had said they could trust clergy, and in 1983, when the annual poll was first conducted, the percentage was as high as about 85 percent.The proportion of those who say they can trust politicians rose...

There are many religious people in the pro-life movement, and they take courage and inspiration from their faith. Pro-life Christians want their pastors to speak out against abortion. But the following clergy members have come out in favor of abortion, and some of the things they say are shocking. To illustrate exactly what they are talking about when they speak of abortion, below is a picture of an 8-week-old preborn baby, a potential victim of an abortion. ***IMAGE ON LINK*** There are many religious people in the pro-life movement, and they take courage and inspiration from their faith. Pro-life Christians...

A group of clergy and lay scholars from around the world have taken the very rare step of presenting Pope Francis with a formal filial correction, accusing him of propagating heresies concerning marriage, the moral life, and reception of the sacraments. Entitled Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis, meaning ‘A Filial Correction Concerning the Propagation of Heresies,’ the 25 page letter was delivered to the Holy Father at his Santa Marta residence on Aug. 11.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) -- Pope Francis acknowledged Saturday that the Vatican has a 2,000-case backlog in processing clerical sex abuse cases and says criticism of the slow pace was justified. But he says more staff are being added and insists the Vatican is "on the right path." Francis was making his first comments about the criticism leveled at the Vatican's handling of sex abuse cases by Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor who resigned from Francis' sex abuse advisory commission in March. Collins quit because of what she said was the "unacceptable" level of resistance within the Vatican...

A Catholic diocese in Minnesota filed for bankruptcy on Friday, joining more than a dozen other U.S. Catholic districts and religious orders driven to seek protection from creditors by the church's clergy sex abuse scandal. The Roman Catholic Diocese of New Ulm, which is southwest of Minneapolis, said in a statement it will use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to reorganize its finances and produce a plan to pay creditors. The rural diocese is defending 101 lawsuits involving alleged sex abuse by clergy mostly from the 1950s through the 1970s. Minnesota had lifted the civil statute of limitations for a period of...