The spokesman for Belgium’s Roman Catholic leader quit on Tuesday, citing a loss of trust in the archbishop who has caused a storm with harsh comments on AIDS and caring words for some paedophile priests…
“I no longer want, can and will act as spokesman for Archbishop Leonard,” said Mettepenningen, 35, in a statement announcing his immediate resignation.
“Archbishop Léonard has sometimes acted like someone who’s driving against the traffic and thinks everyone else is wrong,” he later told journalists (see full statement in French here). “For three months, I was his GPS but the driver holds the steering wheel and decides which way to go. All too often, I had to indicte that the route should be recalculated. But if the driver continues on his way, if he is blind to the accidents caused, then the GPS doesn’t have to wait to be dismissed. It should withdraw by itself because its function has become superfluous.”
“Archbishop Léonard does not take his leadership duties seriously,” Mettepenningen added. “But it is above all his surrealist attitude regarding the turmoil stirred up by his remarks that I take too seriously to still support this.”
Read complete report:
Belgium's Catholic primate faces homophobia charge - By Claire Rosemberg (AFP), November 2, 2010 – France 24
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/11/belgiums-catholic-primate-faces.html
400,000 Anti-gay marriage DVDs - $1 million Nienstedt “Minnesota Bishops on Gay Marriage” October 29, 2010 - RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY PBS – video (NP)
Gay Marriage Obsession of Benedict XVI Neglected Safety of Children & Cover-ups Wrongly Blaming Gays - - “What the Pope Knew” - Gary Tuchman, September 25, 2010, CNN & CNN International (Investigative documentary) video
Gay Teen Suicide & Gay Marriage
Benedict XVI and the Hierarchy
Accountability
CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE & ABUSE LGBT CHILDREN
HUMAN LIFE, MORAL CONSCIENCE & AUTHORITATIVE TEACHING
Child Protection Service of the
Archdiocese of Dublin
Gay Marriage Obsession of Benedict XVI
Neglected Safety of Children &
Cover-ups Wrongly Blaming Gays
“What the Pope Knew”
Gary Tuchman,
September 25, 2010,
CNN & CNN International
(Investigative documentary)
video
Read more/related links:
Priest says he was pressurised into taking blame for pope
– by PADDY AGNEW, DEREK SCALLY and PATSY McGARRY
4/19/10
Priest says he was bullied into taking fall for Pope in abuse scandal
- The Local – 4/18/10
Germany’s News In English – read more
Ratzinger & Vatican
“They did as much as they had at each point in time given the public outcry, and no more.”
Katrin Bennhold – 4/27/10
The New York Times – read more
“…the church must … end its campaign to block the weak and the vulnerable from receiving help to deal with the consequences of criminal sexual abuse.”
By Lawrence Lessig – 4/26/10
The New York Times – read more
Hurricane Katrina - Nancy Pelosi - Washington, DC – 2005
&
Accountability Benedict XVI Child Sexual Abuse
Who Can Mock This Church?
By Nicholas D. Kristof
May 1, 2010
The New York Times
Church Sex Abuse Victims To Gather Near Vatican,
Demand Crime Against Humanity Designation
By Nicole Winfield
October 29, 2010 - Associated Press - CBS News
Victims: Child Sex Abuse Is Crime Against Humanity
(AP) ROME (AP) - People who were raped and molested by priests are gathering in Rome this weekend to launch a petition demanding the United Nations designate systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity.
Organizers said the Sunday gathering would mark the first time that abuse survivors from around the world will gather for a day of healing and to demand greater accountability from the Vatican. A few hundred people from a dozen countries are expected.
Organizers had hoped to stage the demonstration in St. Peter's Square, but said they had to move it a few hundred meters (yards) away because the Holy See declined to give them access.
Organizer Gary Bergeron, abused as an altar boy by a Boston-area priest, said Friday the issue needs to be treated as a global one.
"If it can happen in an institution like the Catholic Church, it can happen anywhere," he told reporters at the Foreign Press Association. "If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone."
Read complete report:
Watergate 1973
Ripping Open An Incredible Scandal
(TIME, April 30, 1973) -- The denials, the evasions, the secretiveness, and, yes, the lies, all had failed. The Watergate case was breaking wide open. A 10-month campaign by some of the highest past and present officials of the Nixon Administration to cover up their involvement was crumbling. Read more - CNN TIME
GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE
Roman Catholic - hierarchy child sexual abuse “cover-ups”
ordered by Benedict XVI
to avoid public outrage & criminal charges
falsely accused gay priests - WATERGATE?
December 17, 2009
by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Thalamus Center
The following statements are harsh statements, but unfortunately they are heavily documented. (1) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy failed to protect children from child sexual abuse for decades. (2) They mistreated and intimidated the victims and their families who came to report the child sexual abuse, in order to cover up publicity of any child sexual abuse. (3) They failed to protect children by repeatedly reassigning the child sexual abusers to assignments where children would be present. (4) When the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children became public, globally, in 2002 they shifted the blame wrongfully onto gay priests.
Read complete report:
Child Protection Service of the Archdiocese of Dublin http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504
(5) By falsely, against known research to the contrary, blaming gay priests they implicated the entire LGBT community and how they are fighting against Marriage Equality. When the scientific facts known for decades about human sexuality have been discounted with no substantiated facts given to explain why, it causes many questions whether Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s fight against Marriage Equality is more a fight to maintained the cover-up of the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children? Benedict XVI and his hierarchy need to clearly offer substantiated reasons why they are against Marriage Equality. This statement needs to be spelled out in great detail and follow Pope John Paul II’s test of truth of not separating science and religion.
(6) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous public propaganda against homosexuality encourages public intolerance towards LGBTQ&I adults and children. They continue to do this even though this summer 2 major Christian denominations approved LGBT singled and partnered people for all forms of ordained ministries. (7) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous promulgation of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings that are harmful to children in their early childhood psychological developmental years, harm that is crippling throughout their lives. They have continued this even after the beginning of the year, 2009, the Family Acceptance Project research studies had shown the negative effects caused to youths, when their sexual orientation is not accepted, having health problems, suicidal ideation, etc. They ignore all the major medical, psychiatric, psychological and social workers national and international professional associations regarding their findings regarding human sexuality and sexual orientation. WHEN DO WE START PROTECTING CHILDREN?!?!
Written by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Professor's view:
Witch hunt for gay priests off base
when target
should be child abusers
By: Iver Bogen,
University of Minnesota Duluth - Duluth News Tribune
Pope Benedict XVI in August 2005 ordered an investigation of America’s 229 Catholic seminaries in order to eliminate gay seminarians. The week of Sept. 27, Vatican investigators began the “witch-hunt” at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. The question posed to the students: “Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?”
The investigation was reminiscent of the house arrest of Galileo in his home near Florence from 1633 until his death in 1642 for espousing the Copernican heliocentric view of the universe. The church does not suffer “heretical” thinking well and is extremely slow in altering its doctrines to be consistent with scientific progress as well as changes in cultural mores regarding acceptable human behaviors… photo
… It is my belief the Catholic Church’s focus on gay priests is merely a strategy for affixing blame and is consistent with its historical antipathy toward homosexuality and same-sex behaviors. However, research in the area of child sexual abuse suggests that pedophilic intrusions occur preponderantly with heterosexual males rather than gay men. It is not one’s orientation that is predictive of pedophilia. According to Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy, “The man who offends against prepubertal or immediately postpubertal boys is typically not sexually interested in older men or women.”
Being immature psycho-sexually, these men find themselves responding sexually to other males who also are immature. One’s orientation is not predictive of pedophilia. Read complete article - By: Iver Bogen, University of Minnesota Duluth - Duluth News Tribune
Gay Marriage & Galileo:
Pope described as …"so averse to anything intellectual that everyone has to play dense and ignorant to gain his favor"
The Trial of Galileo - by Douglas O. Linder (2002)
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI-KANSAS CITY (UMKC) SCHOOL OF LAW
Threats, Silence, Harm and Disposal of Catholic Personnel Supportive of LGBT Adults and Children - Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s Directives To Hierarchy
By Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation
Dr. Gregory Herek,
University of California at Davis &
Yale University &
City University of New York
Report: Homosexuality No Factor in Abusive Priests
by RACHEL ZOLL
ABC News – 2009
New Catholic Sex Abuse Findings:
Gay Priests Are Not the Problem
by DAVID GIBSON
Politics Daily - November 18, 2009
NO EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THESE [homosexual] STEREOTYPES
Judge Vaughn Walker Ruling
California Prop 8. August 4, 2010
Related Links:
Tortured For Being Gay
by Andrew Sullivan
October 9, 2010
The Atlantic
This story in the NYT this morning obviously speaks for itself. The plight of gay teens and youths, despite so much advances in the culture, for so many remain an unimaginable nightmare. The truth is not, I suspect, that there is a sudden new wave of this; the truth is that we have not been so aware of it before, or that shame on the part of victims, has kept some of this from the light of day. The five well-publicized suicides of the last month do not represent a rise, which is why I've tried before on this blog to mention The Trevor Project, an organization devoted to helping to save suicidal gay teens and children...--Photo GWB
For too long, gay people have been described by too many on the right as a threat to the family, society and decency. Those words have consequences. This is especially true of religious leaders. When even the Pope describes us as "intrinsically disordered" and directed to an "objective moral evil", when Republicans call us a threat to family life, when NOM runs ads of a "storm coming", I hope they understand what these words do to the psyches and souls of the young and impressionable, and to those who need a mere signal to take up arms and attack us.
When you do these things to the least of my brethren, you do them to me, said Jesus. I pray that those who say they follow him would sometimes remember those words when it comes to the rhetoric that gay children and teens cannot help but hear...
Read complete article:
Gay bullying and Catholic responsibilities
by David Gibson, October 8, 2010
Commonweal
A striking aspect of the focus by many bishops on the battle against gay marriage, such as the DVD campaign by Minnesota’s Archbishop John Nienstedt, discussed below, is how out of synch it is with the tragic realities of bullying against gay youths, brought home so forcefully by the deaths of Tyler Clementi and many other teens.
Bishops who have been concerned about gay marriage have also been fighting against anti-bullying laws that include sexual orientation (along with religion and race, e.g.) as a targeted category, which studies show it often is. They argue that including sexual orientation to protect youths from harassment is the slippery slope to gay marriage and other gay rights.
I have a story at PoliticsDaily.com today about some serious soul-searching by Christians, especially those of the conservative stripe, about their language and approach on gays in light of the rash of suicides and bullying that has come to light.
Read more:
Homophobia in the Church:
What Catholics Are Doing About It, and
What Still Needs to Be Done
By Michele Somerville, October 10, 2010
The Huffington Post
I attended a Roman Catholic baptism about two weeks ago. A crowd of young parents and others of all ages stood in semi-circle around the font. The atmosphere was reverent yet festive. Toddlers squirmed. The church was exquisite. Blades of late-morning light slid down through colored glass. The priest exuded hope and delight as he kicked off the rites. As the two parents approached the font to offer their child to the church, I began to tear up. My 11-year-old daughter Grace, not unaccustomed to my poet's penchant for being capsized by moments so tender, saw my waterworks start up, rolled her eyes as adolescents do, smiled, and handed me a tissue. As I often do when my emotions get the best of me in the presence of my children, I get all pedagogical on them. I whispered sidebars to Grace: "That's litany of the saints, it's beautiful when sung in Latin... And that the part about Satan and the empty promises -- it's technically an exorcism!" Photo
I didn't have to explain that it was no ordinary baptism we were witnessing. She knew it was extraordinary, because I had taught her. The two parents at the font were bravely (or so I believe) demonstrating their desire not to throw the baby out with the baptismal water.
They were two gay dads asking a church governed by bullies to bless their child.
My daughter later asked how it was that gay people could have their children baptized in Catholic churches but not be married in them. Good question. I broke it down for her. I told her a far greater percentage of Catholics support gay marriage than support the Vatican. I characterized the failure of my church to offer gay Catholics marriage in the church as just that -- "a failure." And a sin. Photo - not the 2 dads in this article
Read complete article:
The history of Valentine's Day
— and its patron saint — is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. So, who was Saint Valentine and how did he become associated with this ancient rite? Today, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred.
One legend contends that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine's actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.
Read more:
Pope Benedict to Beatify
a
Gay Saint?
A Conservative Icon? Maybe Both
by David Gibson – September 18, 2010
Politics Daily
…"It is not good for a Pope to live 20 years," Newman once wrote of the long-lived Pius IX. "It is an anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it."
Such frank talk about the failings of the hierarchy tended to make Newman a champion of liberal Catholics -- a courageous man who wrote about the "development of doctrine" in the church at a time when the Vatican was projecting an image of unceasing continuity. He also disagreed strongly with the church's adoption of the doctrine of papal infallibility, and famously wrote that if pressed, he would drink "to Conscience first and the Pope afterwards." Photo
…Complicating all the interpretations is the fact that Newman had an extraordinarily close relationship with another English Catholic, Father Ambrose St. John, who had died in 1875, leaving Newman bereft -- and giving today's gay Christians an icon of their own.
"I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow greater, than mine," Newman wrote at the time of his friend's death. "From the first he loved me with an intensity of love which was unaccountable." And elsewhere: "As far as this world was concerned I was his first and last."
GROWING UP GAY
By Christopher Muther
October 21, 2010 – The Boston Globe
A spate of gay teen suicides, including that of 18-year-old Rutgers student Tyler Clementi, has focused attention on homophobic bullying and resulted in the “It Gets Better’’ project, a YouTube campaign aimed at offering support to gay teens and young people. We asked several well-known Bostonians to share their memories of growing up gay, and they accepted, revealing the fear and loneliness they lived with and the strength they’ve achieved. Here are their stories, in their own words.
Short excerpts:
Gregory Maguire
Author of many books, including ‘Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West’
I always wrote. Took my cue from “Harriet the Spy’’ in fifth grade and never looked back. But like many kids, I wasn’t introspective. Didn’t question my own identity. I came of age in a liberal time (early ’70s) in a progressive Catholic environment (not always an oxymoron) among good people who were tolerant of many things as long as they went unnamed. So I remained basically clueless about myself.
For a while, in high school, a cadre of friends caught my writing habit. We scribbled approximations of our real feelings in the safety and pretend anonymity of our journals. Then we circulated these notebooks for peer review, scrawling appreciative comments or jokes in the margins. A way of sharing private apprehensions and affections in a safe environment…
Ryan Landry
Actor/playwright and cofounder of theater group The Gold Dust Orphans
I thought of suicide many times as a teenager. I grew up in a factory town in Connecticut, where the only fun to be had was either sex or stealing your mother’s car. There, like so many places with no imagination, “faggot’’ was the worst word you could use.
The first time I heard the word “faggot’’ of course it was directed at me. Who else? I was 12 years old. It was summer, I remember, because I never wore shoes in the summer, even to the movies. Walking barefoot along a guardrail, a sort of bridge from my house to the candy store, I remember thinking myself a great acrobat. I always had these thoughts, that I would somehow escape the torture of being what I was, a sort of swishy “halfbreed’’ among spitting, strutting “cowboys.’’…
David Brown
Meteorologist, WCVB-TV Channel 5
Growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, I thought I was the only gay kid. In junior high I was picked last in gym class, made fun of for playing the piano, and tormented by the older kids. I moved after the seventh grade to a suburb of St. Louis, with a hope that things would improve for me. It wasn’t any better. I didn’t fit in because I was the new kid. I didn’t fit in because I joined the choir and not the football team. Deep down I knew the reason why I didn’t fit in — it was because I was gay. Still, I wanted to fit in more than anything.
In junior high I was beat up in the halls because I was different. Coaches who were supposed to be looking after and supporting students mocked me because I would rather be in school plays and choir than run track.
It slowly turned around in high school. I was president of my senior class. But it wasn’t until I came out to myself and my family that it got better, and that wasn’t until after I graduated from college…
Tiffani Faison
Chef at Rocca Kitchen & Bar, former contestant on ‘Top Chef’
My teen years were spent in northern California. While the majority of the California population is seen as flag-waving liberals, the flags I was most aware of were the Confederate ones affixed to pickup trucks that burned rubber pulling up to the school parking lot. There was an inherent fear that I felt around all of those young men.
At the time, I didn’t openly identify as gay, but there was a brotherhood of bigotry. It made me nervous and I steered clear. I knew I was different, but saying the word meant target. It meant zero assimilation; no cheerleading, no prom, no sleepovers, no parties. It meant self-imposed exile in the day-to-day life of high school that was already socially and emotionally unbearable…
Read complete list: Bostonians - Growing up gay - open up about the homophobia, fear, and isolation they endured as teens — and how they made it through – The Boston Globe
No Antigay Religious Norms
Gay Children
Not Harmed
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, Thalamus Center
It is important to note that a male child who grows up to be gay but is “not” raised in social environments that are influenced by antigay social and religious norms does not experience problems connecting to others as those who do. The attachment process is not disturbed in this regard of experiencing rejection and abandonment for the expressions of the basic human need to love and to be loved. It is important to note that there are numerous factors of degree and kind that effect early childhood psychological development causing an infinite number of possible variations. Photo
Antigay Religious Norms Harm Gay Children
The question to be answered is what kind of person is likely to be formed who is brought up by antigay social and religious norms and is taught that it is acceptable to live in an "implicit" form of isolation from human connectedness? Always depending on the kind and degree of intensity of rejection experienced as child, though not always, as an adult this individual is likely not to be able to tune into the most essential part of bonding with another or other human beings. This is possible sometimes no matter how hard he may try to do so. He is likely to unknowingly treat others the same way he was treated as a child, which was “implicitly” inhuman. Observing this person from the outside, he is likely to appear picture perfect, productive, successful and even engaging interacting with many different groups of people. However, he may unknowingly be perpetuating his “implicit” form of isolation from any human contact, living a very lonely and depressing life. He may be suffering these symptoms and not have a clue why. He would tend not to know of any other way to live or that a happier life is possible, even for him.
Read more:
Related Links:
This post has no photos (NP) for quicker loading. Photos click HERE.
To the world, it seemed as if Ricky Martin was living la vida loca. Inside, the Grammy winner says he was really living a lie. The declaration of truth that changed his life forever.
Read more/view video:
Ricky Martin Opens Up About Family Life, Coming Out:
"I Couldn't Take It Anymore"
November 2, 2010 – E! Online
Speaking To Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin Says
He's Stopped Pretending,
November 2, 2010 - ON TOP MAGAZINE
Speaking Tuesday on the Oprah Winfrey Show, singer Ricky Martin said he's stopped pretending to be somebody else.
The thirty-eight-year-old Martin, father of twin boys Valentino and Matteo, came out gay on a blog post at this official website in March, but has not spoken publicly about his decision until now.
Martin told his host that denying his sexuality had become too burdensome.
“I couldn't take it anymore, Oprah,” he said. “It was too painful.”
The gay dad said holding his twins sons in his arms gave him the courage to come out of the closet.
Read more/view video:
400,000 Anti-gay marriage DVDs - $1 million Nienstedt
“Minnesota Bishops on Gay Marriage” - October 29, 2010
RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY PBS – video
Sexual orientation
- Internalized Homophobia -
“Auschwitz – Benedict XVI - Christmas 2008 -A flashback far more severe than in Brokeback Mountain”
GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times. Photo
Gay marriage -> Restoring
"Hope of Love"
To Children In Early Childhood -> Marriage Equality
March 23, 2010 – by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Marriage Equality, like Galileo, is the truth about the facts of growing up gay. Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the “hope of love” to children in early childhood – essential to their development and well-being for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.
Galileo
facing the Roman Inquisition - Read more
Biblical quotes used to Condemn Galileo
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New International Version)
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New American Standard Bible)
5 Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New International Version)
30 Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New American Standard Bible)
30 Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New International Version)
1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New American Standard Bible)
1 The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
Psalm 96:10 (New International Version)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.
Psalm 96:10 (New American Standard Bible)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity."
Psalm 104:5 (New International Version)
5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Psalm 104:5 (New American Standard Bible)
5 He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever.
Read more:
“Someday,
maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of
all possible sins is the mutilation of
a
child’s spirit.”
…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Photo
Matthew 18:6
Protect children and the entire world will be safe.
Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!
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