Comments on: Anglo Saxon Attitudes

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 22:00:56 +0000

“Everyone knows that priestly celibacy was created by a pope in order to protect church property
Celibate religious orders have existed in many religions, and in certain Jewish orders that pre-date Christianity.”

Both are true. Celibacy exists in lots of traditions. It probably originated in Hinduism and Buddhism. It is common in some shamanistic traditions. The impetus for it speciifcally in the midieval Church was to forestall Church property from becoming heritable.

By: Kilbarry1

Kilbarry1 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:59:54 +0000

bill d
That some claims made about the Catholic church in Ireland have not been substantiated does not mean that most of the claims are unsubstantiated. …….. Please note, the straw man of false claims of Satanic abuse had nothing to do with these well-documented cases. Note also that the church itself now accepts the truth of most of the charges against it.

Senior members of FOUR of the main “Victims” organisations in Ireland have supported allegations of child abuse that are clearly false. Note I don’t mean “unsubstantiated”, I mean false. The organisations that supported child killing allegations against the Christian Brothers and/or the Sisters of Mercy are Aislinn, Survivors of Child Abuse (SOCA) UK, SOCA Ireland and Alliance for Healing. The leader of a fifth organisation “One in Four” did not make any such statements – as far as I know. However three months after a former nun received a Certificate of Miscarriage of justice from the Court of Criminal Appeal this gentleman announced that:

“In the past few months a number of commentators have suggested that grave injustice is being done to priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Such suggestions rightly concern fair minded people, but remarkably, no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused.”
(See http://www.alliancesupport.org/news/archives/001858.html )

It is true that the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin is a serial apologiser in relation to child abuse. He accepts ANY allegation against one of his his priests as true unless the priest can prove it false. He is OUR Red Dean of Canterbury and is a great favourite with Irish journalists including the Religious Affairs correspondent for the Irish Independent who falsely accused the former Archbishop of Dublin John Charles McQuaid of being a homosexual paedophile. (The allegation was condemned by several Irish historians but NOT by the current Archbishop as far as I know).

If you want to check out what is likely to happen to Archbishop Martin in future then go to the Wikipedia article on John Charles McQuaid and especially the section headed “Handling of Allegations of Abuse Against Clergy”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Charles_McQuaid

Martin is heading for a fall as soon as his journalist friends decide that his career as a Useful Idiot is over.

(OK I admit that I have a personal interest in the Wikipedia article)

By: Josh Scholar

Josh Scholar — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:34:57 +0000

No. If it were women they missed, that’s who they’d be fooling around with. Note how most of these cases involve BOYS.

Probably priest are fucking women too, but because that’s neither all that illegal nor is it considered abuse we don’t hear about it.

By: Toady

Toady — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:32:56 +0000

does anyone think that child abuse by priests would be common if the clearly-nonspiritual requirement for celibacy was dropped

No. If it were women they missed, that’s who they’d be fooling around with. Note how most of these cases involve BOYS.

Everyone knows that priestly celibacy was created by a pope in order to protect church property

Celibate religious orders have existed in many religions, and in certain Jewish orders that pre-date Christianity.

Of course if people were capable of reasoning in a religious context, entire religions would disappear in a puff of laughter. Who can read the story of the the con-man Joseph Smith without cracking a smile?

The same amount of people who read about inanimate proteins self-assembling into dinosaurs over long periods of time.

By: go rimbaud

go rimbaud — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:27:12 +0000

“A couple of years ago I went along to hear an author of popular psychology books give a talk on the subject of ‘Affluenza’ a nifty portmanteau word which was also the title of his latest work. The virus, according to Oliver James – the author, is the state of dissatisfaction some people fall into after pursuing a materialist, keeping up with the Jones’, status-led lifestyle.”

Ughhhh – I used to run a lecture series, and we put Oliver James on. He is an insufferable, self-regarding, sophomoric fool.

By: Tim B

Tim B — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:12:04 +0000

Good point about the Oliver James book. I remember when it was published, some people responded with the comparative suicide rates – that being presumably a pretty concrete indicator of depression – and the UK and US (and probably Australia and Canada too) were some way down the international lists.

By: bill d

bill d — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:25:01 +0000

Oops, link for the archbishop’s quote.

http://www.dublindiocese.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1740&Itemid=372

By: bill d

bill d — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:18:03 +0000

That some claims made about the Catholic church in Ireland have not been substantiated does not mean that most of the claims are unsubstantiated. The real scandal is not just that some priests molested children, but that the church – a body that claims to be the sole true representatives of the word of God on earth – covered up dozens of cases. For decades.

On the one hand we have the recent Murphy Report (into one archdiocese) that found evidence that serial abusers were protected from justice by the church (on the grounds that their clerical status somehow put them above the law – this attitude is a pretty old one, it dates back to the Middle Ages); in many cases allowing them to continue abusing children. We have four archbishops and a brace of other bishops who colluded in this. Some of the living ones at least seem to have belated realised the enormity of their actions and are expected to do the decent thing and resign.

There have been other reports into this. The Ryan Report (earlier this year) heard that the church knew abuse was ‘endemic’ in industrial schools – and did nothing about it. Please note, the straw man of false claims of Satanic abuse had nothing to do with these well-documented cases. Note also that the church itself now accepts the truth of most of the charges against it.

To quote the current Archbishop of Dublin (no attempts to deny the overwhelming weight of evidence here):

Excuses, denials and minimisations were taken from priest abusers who were at the least in denial, at worst devious in multiple ways, and decisions were taken which resulted in more children being abused.
Efforts made to “protect the Church” and to “avoid scandal” have had the ironic result of bringing this horrendous scandal on the Church today.

By: Kilbarry1

Kilbarry1 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:30:49 +0000

GTM
I didn’t see the documentary you mention and now I have to go out for the day. However I will leave you with an (unpublished) letter I sent to the Irish Independent in 2005. It concern the number of Catholic religious child abusers compared to non-religious ones – especially in schools.

Sir
In her letter on 27 October [2005] Sheila McMorrow comments “the percentage of priests in abuse cases doesn’t seem to be compared to the amount of child abusers in other professions. How many teachers, doctors, bin men, lawyers or MPs have ever taken part in…child abuse?”

That’s a good question but don’t expect “liberals” in this country to provide such data. In December 2003 the Royal College of Surgeon’s published a study on clerical sexual abuse. This pointed out that the Irish Times used the term “paedophile priest” 322 times between August 1993 and August 2000. Apart from the term “paedophile farmer” which was used 5 times, no other occupation was linked to paedophilia in reports. I understand that the references to “paedophile farmer” occurred when a social worker wrote to the Irish Times to enquire why it never used such terms and a farmer then wrote in to protest!

In the USA however certain studies have been done. The following is from an article in “The Nation” magazine on 22 September 2003. The author JoAnn Wypijewski is a senior editor at the magazine which is the American equivalent of The New Statesman i.e. it is “progressive”, feminist, liberal, pro-gay, anti-Bush etc. (Ms. Wypijewski is referring to Philip Jenkins book ‘Paedophiles and Priests’.)

“Jenkins offers no brief for the church’s sexual agenda or its errant priests, but he rightly suspects games of “gotcha.” He notes that the soundest study of priestly sexual misconduct–involving 2,252 priests over forty years–indicates that 1.7 percent behaved badly, such behaviour ranging from inappropriate speech to rape, and in only one case involving a true paedophile: i.e., an adult sexually interested in prepubescent children. Obviously, some 1,500 priests accused of any sexual abuse between the 1960s and 2002 indicates trouble, but Jenkins argues that honesty demands a recognition that (a) incidents of paedophilia are rare, (b) priests hold no monopoly on such behaviour and (c) “there is strikingly little evidence that clergy of any kind are any more or less likely to abuse than non-clerical groups who have close contact with children.” A 1998 study by Education Week, for instance, cited 244 incidents of teacher-student sex over a six-month period, ranging from unwelcome touching to consensual relations to serial rape, an average of nine cases a week. The press has not elevated this to “social problem” status. (my emphasis)”

The last sentence is crucial and it applies to Ireland as much as to the USA.

By: gtm

gtm — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:14:39 +0000

@ Barad & Kilbarry1

What went on in boarding schools in the UK prior to the advent of childline & the general public’s heightened awareness of paedophilia has the potential to be an absolutely colossal scandal. Did you see the Calidicott documentary earlier this year?

My instinct is that having one or two members of staff who took advantage of their position was the norm in most schools rather than exceptional.

Of course it won’t happen. Middle aged stiff upper lipped chaps won’t want to bear their open wounds to the sharks etc.