While German authorities are seeking to break the Catholic Church's “wall of silence” on child molestation, Catholic reformers turn to Pope Benedict XVI for answers.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA - The Roman Catholic Church should take a look at priest celibacy when considering the possible causes behind the current sex abuse scandal, Vienna's archbishop said Wednesday.
But his office subsequently issued a statement insisting that the archbishop was not calling into question the Vatican's stance on celibacy.
Arizona State lawmakers in the Senate approved a measure to get rid of the statute of limitation for victims of child abuse to file lawsuits. However, this lifetime right to sue has one notable exception: for the church and school districts.
If you are suing the Church for its failure to act to stop a pedophile, you still only have two years.
The lobbyist for the Catholic Church admits that he has been pushing for the exception.
The actual definition of a cult varies greatly, but in general it refers to a cohesive social group bound together by veneration of the same atypical belief system. Popular perception often portrays cults as being violent, destructive maniacs with loaded paint ball guns, and while most cults are certainly controversial, they don’t always carry out extreme acts.
I have just returned from a short family visit in Germany, and, while there, some of the conversations with my family were about the recent revelations of clergy sex abuse in Germany and how they compared to the scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in the United States and Ireland.
Much of what has recently come out in the German media has been sickeningly familiar to Catholics in the United States: decades of cover-ups by church officials, reassignments of pedophile priests to positions that allowed them to continue their crimes, and a ubiquitous almost complete disregard by church officials for the well-being of children their institutions were supposed to educate, nurture, and protect.
A few days ago in San Diego a 30 year old sex offender by the name of John Albert Gardner was arrested for the rape and murder of Chelsea King, a 17 year old high school student. This crime has received national attention and will continue to receive attention until the man is sentenced and most likely put to death.
What will not receive national attention are similar crimes committed by men and women who are supposedly pillars of their communities. These crimes are being committed day in and day out with apparently no hope of ever containing them. The question is why? What shields these well-dressed, well groomed perpetrators when monsters like John Albert Gardner would be skinned alive and lynched on the spot if they weren't in protective custody?
I first met Jeannie years ago at a SNAP conference. I continue to appreciate her wisdom, honesty, transformation and joy.
JR: Thank you for participating in this interview. I experience you as a nurturer or guide in various kinds of survivor healing efforts: the Farm, SNAP, and individual support. How would you describe your kind of advocacy?
The Catholic Church in the United States owes its sister church in Ireland a great deal. It was the Irish who first brought our faith to these shores in great numbers, providing the nascent American church not merely with faithful lay Catholics in the pews, but with clergy on the altars, nuns in the convents, schools, and hospitals, and bishops in the chanceries. Sharing this common heritage, the Irish and American churches remain similar in many ways.
Now that the Murphy Report (formally, “The Commission of Investigation Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, July 2009”) has been issued by Judge Yvonne Murphy and her government commission, we can discern yet another similarity—a saddening and dispiriting one. For it is clear that for more than two decades, simultaneous tragedies of episcopal malfeasance played out in both the U.S. and Irish churches, as bishops in both countries systematically mishandled allegations of child sexual abuse committed by their priests.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper RNC Handelsblad have received dozens of reactions to their joint report on sexual abuse at a Catholic boarding school in the 1960s and 1970s.
The reactions address abuse at the school, but also the fact that priests were allowed to continue teaching even after abuse had come to light. Complaints from schoolboys were reportedly not taken seriously.
Kansas lawmakers are considering an innovative way to fight child pornography that has begun catching on in several state legislatures.
A new bill introduced in the state Senate Judiciary Committee last month would unleash lawyers on the producers, promoters, and consumers of child pornography and empower them to collect hefty damages on behalf of victims.
Kansas’ Senate Bill 549 would allow victims to sue each of their offenders for at least $150,000 in damages until they turn 21, or within three years after the completion of a criminal case.
SCHARBEUTZ, Germany (CNN) -- Norbert Denef says for years he couldn't speak about the crimes committed against him during his childhood in Germany.
He grew up, got married and became a father, but never managed to tell his family what was lingering inside him and about the pain that was eating him up. He became depressed, thought about killing himself -- and then realized he had to speak or die.
The Vatican on Tuesday defended the response of churches to pedophile priest scandals emerging in various countries, saying Roman Catholic leaders had reacted swiftly and decisively.
Spokesman Federico Lombardi also sought to put the issue into perspective, saying the sexual abuse of children went far beyond church walls.
Church leaders in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and elsewhere "confronted the emergence of the problem rapidly and decisively," Lombardi said in a note read out on Vatican Radio.
The head of a Salzburg monastery has admitted to sexually abusing a child decades ago and is offering to resign.
Arch-abbot Bruno Becker says he abused a 12-year-old boy more than 40 years ago. In a statement cited on Tuesday by the Austria Press Agency, he says he informed church authorities last year after his victim contacted him.
BERLIN (AP) - Catholic authorities in Germany announced two major abuse investigations Wednesday - one into the renowned choir once led by Pope Benedict XVI's brother and another into what everyone, including the pope, knew about the sexual and physical abuse of students.
The Roman Catholic diocese of Regensburg in southern Germany said it appointed an independent investigator to examine the allegations of physical and sexual abuse that have engulfed the prestigious Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, which was led by the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, the pope's older brother, from 1964 until 1994. So far, the sexual abuse allegations predate Ratzinger's term.
Former parliamentary chairman and CDA member Wim Deetman is to chair an independent investigation into reports of sexual abuse at a number of Catholic boarding schools.
The far-ranging investigation was ordered by Catholic bishops on Tuesday following mounting reports of abuse by priests at schools and seminaries in the 1960s and 1970s.
Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican", according to the Holy See's chief exorcist.
Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon".
St. Paul, Minn. — Hennepin County authorities are asking the public to help them identify any additional people who might have been sexually abused by a former police captain.
William Allan Jacobs, 66, of Deephaven, is charged with criminal sexual conduct for a series of alleged incidents with only one person -- a teenage boy. But on Wednesday, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said authorities think there are more victims.
A spokesman for the Regensburg Catholic diocese in Germany says the diocese will investigate allegations of physical and sexual abuse that have swirled around a famed choir once led by Pope Benedict XVI's brother.
Spokesman Jacob Schoetz told The Associated Press that the investigation will be led by an independent lawyer who will be named later Wednesday.
On this story on the pope’s brother, Georg Ratzinger, who is a bishop, I have presented below first comments by SNAP national director David Clohessy (received by email), and then a 3.10.2010, article in The Local, a website carrying “Germany’s news in English.”
The Vatican said Tuesday that the Catholic Church must do everything possible to investigate claims of sex abuse in Ireland, Germany, Austria and Holland.
However, while acknowledging the broadening issue of abuse, the head of the Vatican press office, Father Federico Lombardi, said "concentrating accusations against the church alone gives a false perspective".
A Cass County judge has denied the initial attempts to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that a former Shanley High School teacher sexually abused a 14-year-old student there in the 1970s.
The lawsuit filed last fall by David Gaffaney accuses Brother Raimond Rose, a member of a Chicago order called Christian Brothers of the Midwest, of abusing him while he was sleeping on a school-sponsored trip to Orlando, Fla., in 1977.
An audit of child sex abuse allegations in every Catholic diocese in the country will begin within weeks and is expected to take around two years to complete.
By MELISSA EDDY and ALESSANDRA RIZZO (AP) – 11 hours ago
BERLIN — The pope's brother said in a newspaper interview published Tuesday that he slapped pupils as punishment after he took over a renowned German boys' choir in the 1960s. He also said he was aware of allegations of physical abuse at an elementary school linked to the choir but did nothing about it.
The Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, said he was completely unaware of allegations of sexual abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir, part of a string of charges of sex abuse by church employees across Europe in recent days.
Today’s statement from the Vatican is disingenuous when it isn’t tip-toeing along the edge of plain-vanilla dishonesty.
Notice, for instance, this:
Certainly, the errors committed in ecclesiastical institutions and by Church figures are particularly reprehensible because of the Church’s educational and moral responsibility, but all objective and well-informed people know that the question is much broader, and concentrating accusations against the Church alone gives a false perspective.
This is weak tea, a simpering variation on the “just a few rotten eggs” defense, and exacerbated by sanguine assurances that “objective” and “well-informed” people know the churches are getting a bad rap from ill-informed noisemakers.
Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst cases in Dublin's Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical abuse there. However, for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain.
Newsnight's Olenka Frenkiel has investigated his case and tracked him down in the Canary Islands.
Last week The Jewish Week reported that Gov. Paterson had allocated $500,000 to be channeled to an as-yet-unnamed organization in the Brooklyn Orthodox community.
The money is to be used to help address what many now believe is an epidemic of childhood sexual abuse in the ultra-Orthodox world. While in theory we as a community should welcome governmental support to help us solve our social problems, how does one explain the apparent absence of rabbinic and lay leadership on this issue?
Following recent reports about sexual abuse of children by Dutch priests, it now appears that some nuns also took advantage of their charges. Tuesday’s edition of newspaper contains the story of Herman Harends, who says he was abused by nuns at a Roman Catholic boarding school he attended in the 1950s.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper published their report on sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church two weeks ago. Since then, more and people have come forward, saying they, too, were childhood victims.
The Pope’s older brother has admitted to slapping pupils in the face while he was leader of a renowned choir in Germany which is currently at the centre of a new rash of child abuse allegations rocking the Catholic Church.
In the midst of stories about the departure of Pastor Andrew Stock and over half of Destiny's Brisbane congregation, the cult has been shaken to its core.
Finally, a significant number of the cult's congregation have seen the real light by confirming the media stories about eftpos machines in church, onerous tithes, $300 signet rings and men only meetings. Pastor Stock and some of Brisbane's Destiny flock finally revolted against these things and probably the newest amendment to the church's covenant, that of the need to give up small luxuries like digital television and coffee in order to increase their tithing.
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Irish paedophile priest, Bill Carney, named in the Murphy report on clerical sex abuse has spoken out to dispute its findings.
Carney (60) made the comments after being tracked down by the BBC's 'Panorama' TV programme while he was taking a sun holiday in the Canary Islands.
Carney, who was named as one of the worst serial offenders in the Murphy report, pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assaulting altar boys in 1983.
THE CHAIRMAN of the Catholic bishops commission on education has expressed surprise at a speech by Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe last Friday in which he said his department “will shortly be providing an initial list of about 10 urban areas that can be used to test the concept of reducing the number of Catholic schools”.
Here's a lovely little Catholic story.
I, as a non-believer, am wondering where was this great god that christians talk about when a child was being buggered by a dirty rotten Vatican priest.
According to the 'believers', god orchestrates everything on the planet and other planets which the god-fearing never even heard of. So he orchestrated the buggering of a child...WHY?
Let's all go down to the river to pray!
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