"KIDS ARE BEING HURT !!!"
A legacy of abuse and cover-up
The Irish Times - Friday, November 27, 2009
CORRUPTION OF power and the fundamentally rotten nature of relations between the Catholic Church and the State has been laid bare in a damning report into the rape and sexual abuse of children in the Dublin archdiocese over a 30-year period. Denial and cover-up was the order of the day. Nothing changed until the late 1990s when a succession of scandals involving paedophile priests outraged public opinion and forced reforms through the courts, the Oireachtas and the archdiocese itself. There is still a distance to go.
“Repulsive” is a word that comes to mind in considering the response by former Dublin bishops and archbishops to clerical child abuse. As charted by the Murphy commission, the complaints of parents and their children were ignored and other families placed in immediate danger as prelates from John Charles McQuaid onwards suppressed scandals and took refuge in canon law to protect offenders at the expense of innocent children. The vast majority of uninvolved priests turned a blind eye.
As might be expected, given the traditional supine attitude of governments to the Catholic hierarchy, State agencies avoided involvement. What contact occurred with the Garda Síochána was regarded by the commission as “inappropriate”. Legislation was unclear and ineffective. Most cases referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions were not acted upon. Initially, one year’s delay in lodging a complaint was sufficient to have it rejected. But public anger, Supreme Court rulings and Dáil debates have since demolished that barrier. Read complete article - The Irish Times
Related links:
Child Protection Service of the Archdiocese of Dublin, November 2009 -Report by Commission of Investigation into the handling by Church and State authorities of allegations and suspicions of child abuse against clerics of the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin. Read complete report->Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin
"KIDS ARE BEING HURT !!!"
1 comment:
ALthough the “key bishop” of the child abuse scandal in Ireland will resign and even though “the head of the Irish Church, Cardinal Sean Brady, and Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin will meet with the Pope next week at the Vatican to discuss the report on abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese,” the question arises whether and to what extent this will help the victims and their families who have been deeply and emotionally traumatized, not to forget the alienation from God in society caused by such “STALWART DEFENDERS” of religious faith! Wouldn’t it be about time to ask where the responsibility for all this lies? Enforced celibacy has no biblical foundation at all! Why was it instituted in the first place? And why was such a perversion covered up for so long by an organization that claims to be the guardian of Christian ethics and morals? And why was this allowed by the authorities for so long? Were church and state in each other pockets?
May we hope that the discussion with the Pope at the Vatican next week will HELP clear up ALL THE TRADITIONS AND PRACTICES, DOGMAS AND RITES, that CONTRADICT the teachings of the greatest Prophet of all times, Jesus of Nazareth? AND PERHAPS, WHILE THEY'RE AT IT, start compensating for ALL THE wrongs DONE OVER THE ages?! What would Jesus of Nazareth say if He came to the Earth and saw what the church – which claims to speak for Him – has made of His life’s work?
A move has been made by a small group of people against such shameful sham Christianity. They’ve put out a website and call themselves “The Free Christians for the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount in All Cultures Worldwide.” At this website they announce a lawsuit against the Catholic Church – of all places, in Germany, a bastion of the Catholic institution! And the sexual abuse of young people is one of the reasons they give for having taken such a step. As they put it, they do not want to remain silent anymore on the “brazen labeling fraud,” with which Christ is mocked and His name abused to such an extent. They demand that the Archbishopric in Freiburg, headed by Zollitsch, and representing the Catholic Church in its totality, be enjoined from calling itself “Christian.”
As a Christian, I fully support this and consider it high time that someone calls a spade a spade. Nothing against the sincere folk and priests who work hard and honestly, upholding the ideals of a Christian life. But as an institution, it has taken on a life of it's own, and one could indeed ask if there is anything Christian about it! I commend the courage of these people to call the Church to task. Perhaps your readers would like to check them out: http://www.christus-oder-kirche.de/christ-or-church/index.php. There seems to be a grassroots movement to bring this up for discussion on the internet. Surely this could be very healthy for our society!
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