Pope Francis has a lot to say about a lot of things
Except this news
Except this news
Historically, there has been an oscillation between good and bad Church leadership. Since WW2, the Church has experienced stability and relative peace, especially since the fall of communism in the USSR. In good times, you tend to get the worst leaders, in bad times, the best.
What happened in Chile might provide a blueprint. Trust should never be assumed. A more adversarial relationship toward the leadership is in order. Nobody should want to become a bishop, cardinal or pope.
He was helping Dabo Swinney and Urban Meyer break down game film
Glad I quit religion in 6th grade - wasting my time in church cut into playing and watching the NFL.
And I was in the least oppressive of all churches - Unitarians.
Religion is ridiculous
And I was in the least oppressive of all churches - Unitarians.
Religion is ridiculous
maybe for you...and that is great....for others, it is a incredibly powerful tool. I am sure that people watching football games and "playing" are just bad, if not worse. My advice? Don't ever close doors. Different things work for different people
You should attend a church sponsored AA session some time. quite an eye-opener.
Wow.
(CNN)A new grand jury report says that internal documents from six Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania show that more than 300 "predator priests" have been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than 1,000 child victims.
"We believe that the real number of children whose records were lost or who were afraid ever to come forward is in the thousands," the grand jury report says.
"Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal."
The lengthy report, released Tuesday afternoon, investigates clergy sexual abuse in six dioceses dating back to 1947. Pennsylvania's two other dioceses, Philadelphia and Altoona-Johnstown, were the subjects of earlier grand jury reports, which found similarly damaging information about clergy and bishops in those dioceses.
Pennsylvania diocese names 71 clergy accused of sexual misconduct
"There have been other reports about child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. But never on this scale," the grand jurors wrote in Tuesday's report.
"For many of us, those earlier stories happened someplace else, someplace away. Now we know the truth: it happened everywhere."
The grand jurors said that "almost every instance of abuse we found is too old to be prosecuted." But charges have been filed against two priests, one in Erie diocese and another in Greensburg diocese, who have been accused of abusing minors.
"We learned of these abusers directly from their dioceses -- which we hope is a sign that the church is finally changing its ways," the grand jurors said. "And there may be more indictments in the future; investigation continues."
At a news conference announcing the report's release, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro called it the "largest, most comprehensive report into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church ever produced in the United States."
Molestations and rapes
At times, the lengthy catalog of clergy sexual abuses in the report is difficult to read. As the grand jurors note, priests and other Catholic leaders victimized boys and girls, teens and pre-pubescent children.
Some victims were plied with alcohol and groped or molested, the report says. Others were orally, vaginally or anally raped, according to the grand jurors.
"But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and their institution above all."
Among the more egregious cases, the grand jury reports that:
• In the Greensburg diocese, a priest impregnated a 17-year-old, forged a pastor's signature on a marriage certificate and divorced the girl months later. According to the grand jury, the priest was allowed to stay in ministry by finding a "benevolent bishop."
• Another priest in Greensburg groomed middle-school students for sex, according to the grand jury, by telling them that Mary had to "bite off the cord" and "lick" Jesus clean after the Nativity.
• In Harrisburg, a priest abused five sisters from the same family and collected samples of their urine, pubic hair and menstrual blood.
• Also in Harrisburg, a priest raped a 7-year-old girl who was in the hospital after her tonsils were removed, according to the report.
• In Pittsburgh, church officials said that a 15-year-old boy "pursued" and "literally seduced" a priest. A church report later acknowledged that the priest had admitted to "sado-masochistic" activities with several boys.
• In the Allentown diocese, a priest admitted sexually molesting a boy and pleaded for help, according to documents, but was left in ministry for several more years.
• Also in Allentown, a priest who had abused several boys, according to the grand jury, was given a recommendation to work at Disney World.
Tuesday's news conference began with a short video of three victims who told how they were abused and how it changed their lives.
An 83-year-old man said he couldn't show any affection to his wife and children as a result of the abuse he suffered. A woman said the abuse started when she was 18 months old. Another man said, "When you have the priest touching you every day, that's a hard memory to have. The first erection that you have is at the hands of a priest."
The victims said this was "not a vendetta against the church" and that abusers have "to be accountable in the church for what they did."
'Grave failings'
The grand jury's searing report comes as the Catholic Church, including Pope Francis, is struggling to contain a sexual abuse scandal rapidly consuming the church on several continents.
In Australia, a bishop has been found guilty of covering up sexual abuse. In Chile, the Pope was forced to recant his dismissal of an abuse scandal involving a prominent priest and bishops accused of covering up his crimes.
Bishop says Catholic Church suffers from 'crisis of sexual morality'
And in the United States, a prominent archbishop was removed from the powerful College of Cardinals following reports that he had molested a teenage altar boy and several others while he was rising through the church's ranks. Meanwhile, bishops in Boston and Nebraska are investigating possible cases of sexual abuse in Catholic seminaries.
"The report of the Pennsylvania grand jury again illustrates the pain of those who have been victims of the crime of sexual abuse by individual members of our clergy, and by those who shielded abusers and so facilitated an evil that continued for years or even decades," Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Bishop Timothy L. Doherty, chair of the bishops' Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, said in a statement.
"As a body of bishops, we are shamed by and sorry for the sins and omissions by Catholic priests and Catholic bishops."
DiNardo and Doherty noted that the grand jury's report spans 70 years, and many of the abuse accusations were made before 2002, when the bishops adopted new policies. The policies, known as the Dallas Charter, after the city in which they were adopted, have been revised in 2011 and 2018. The charter, the bishops said, "commits us to respond promptly and compassionately to victims, report the abuse of minors, remove offenders and take ongoing action to prevent abuse."
For weeks, many Catholics in the United States had been warily waiting for the Pennsylvania grand jury's report, especially as bishops in the state began publicly releasing the names of accused clergy in an apparent attempt to preempt some of the report's findings.
In a statement on Monday before the report was published, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the former Bishop of Pittsburgh who now heads the Archdiocese of Washington, said the report "will be a reminder of the grave failings that the church must acknowledge and for which it must seek forgiveness."
"We are now in the midst of a new era where our communal bonds of trust are once again being tested by the sin of abuse."
Delays in publication
Court action had delayed the report's publication. A number of individuals named in the report claimed that its findings were false or misleading, that they were denied due process of law and that its release would impair their reputations.
On July 27, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ordered the grand jury report to be released by 2 p.m. August 14 with redactions in sections where litigation was ongoing.
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro had written to Pope Francis on July 25, requesting that the Pontiff direct church leaders to stop "efforts to silence the survivors."
"A comprehensive investigation by the Office of Attorney General found widespread sexual abuse of children and a systematic coverup by leaders of the Catholic Church," Shapiro said in his letter. "Last month I planned to release the findings of our investigation. As I prepared to do so, anonymous petitioners implicated in this report went to court to stop me and silence the victims ..."
Shapiro later issued a statement welcoming the state Supreme Court's decision to allow the report's release.
"Our fear throughout this process has been that the entire grand jury report would be shelved and victims' truth would be silenced," Shapiro said. "Today's order ensures that will not be the case -- the redacted report on widespread sexual abuse and cover up within the Catholic Church will be released."
"I will continue to fight to ensure every single victim is heard and every priest, bishop and church official is held accountable for their abhorrent conduct. No one victim's truth is any less important than another and no one's criminal conduct any less loathsome."
Harrisburg abuse list
On August 1, the leader of one of the largest Roman Catholic dioceses in Pennsylvania released a list identifying 71 priests, deacons and seminarians accused of "substantiated" sexual misconduct over the past seven decades.
Bishop Ronald Gainer of the Harrisburg Diocese also issued an apology on behalf of the religious community.
"That conduct has left a legacy of pain and sorrow that is still being felt," he wrote. "I apologize for these actions."
While most men on the Harrisburg list are accused of sexually abusing children, others were investigated for inappropriate behavior, such as kissing or inappropriately communicating with a minor, Gainer wrote. Others were accused of viewing or possessing child pornography.
The list did not say how the diocese handled most of the accusations and did not give the men's current whereabouts, though a few cases that were forwarded to civil authorities were more detailed.
Archbishop's resignation
A long series of abuse allegations have rocked the world's 1.2 billion Catholics since the scope of systemic abuse and cover-ups began emerging in 2002.
US Cardinal resigns over abuse allegations 04:06
In July, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick from the College of Cardinals, one of the church's most powerful bodies, amid allegations of molestation and sexual misconduct. McCarrick, 88, had been a popular and politically influential leader in Washington. He maintained his innocence in June against some claims and has been unavailable to comment on others.
The sexual abuse accusations against McCarrick reveal a "grievous moral failure" within the Catholic Church, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops said July 31.
"Our Church is suffering from a crisis of sexual morality," Daniel DiNardo said. "The way forward must involve learning from past sins."
CNN's Carma Hassan and Janet DiGiacomo contributed to this report.
Heroin deaths; Suicide on the rise; School shootings; Child Sex Abuse; etc...
And, America would rather tear itself apart over some football players that take a knee during a football game.
Really. You can't make this up. And, yet, there are people here that think it's "me" that has issues.
I have many family members who were students of the Catholic schools and parishioners of the churches where the abuse took place. None had any idea that this was happening. Studies indicate that most comparable institutions have similar rates of abuse. Yet how many of us are aware of any abuse taking place? Very few, I would bet. Kinda disproves the idea that JoePa and everyone in State College had to have known what Sandusky was up to.
These guys hide in plain site and make themselves out to be "great" guys. They gain peoples trust that way. Sadly the Clemente report fell on deaf ears because there was a lynching going on.
That is because you mock others beliefs as if they are forced on to you and they aren't. You have the freedom of religion. You don't have to talk about or buy into the fake moral outrage over the people kneeling, but you do. You now trying to play a victim is pretty funny. Is anyone forcing you to join a religion, nope. Do you mock people on this same site because they may follow a religion....yep. That is their right to, yet you protest daily over it. I don't recall too many other posters saying you need to be religion X or else. That hasn't occurred.
The next time you are forced to go into a church, be sure to let people know as hopefully we can help you out in contacting the proper law agency. Until such time, you're the same whiney look at me douche you have always been.
Oh, brother...
talk about Delusional with a capital D... You take the banana-cake, monkey boy.
First off, Ape-brain, I don't (ahem) mock people and their beliefs. I don't have to. All I have to do is mock the ideology - which I do as often as the right-wing nut jobs on the test board do with Socialism (an ideology) and Islam (an ideology).
You feel as though Capitalism (an ideology) and Judeo/CHRISTIAN (an Ideology) should be exempt from criticism. You're not alone, btw. There are many delusionally-functional apes just like you beating their chests, climbing trees, eating bamanas who (ahem) think like you. But, thank (ahem) god, your numbers are dwindling.
Ask Benny "The Mouth" Shapiro to debate me. I look forward to it. All Humanists look forward to it.
Then you get assclown reporters like this guy:
"In that way, what the Catholic church has done is not that much different than how Penn State responded to charges that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had molested and raped numerous children. "
Yep, Penn State had many allegations of Sandusky raping many kids. Idiot.
https://www.petoskeynews.com/news/u...cle_6af1ccaf-bb8a-5873-a299-0ae2039c1129.html
"In that way, what the Catholic church has done is not that much different than how Penn State responded to charges that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had molested and raped numerous children. "
Yep, Penn State had many allegations of Sandusky raping many kids. Idiot.
https://www.petoskeynews.com/news/u...cle_6af1ccaf-bb8a-5873-a299-0ae2039c1129.html
I was watching EWTN last night. For those who don’t know, EWTN is a Catholic cable network. They were very hard on the Church leadership, going all the way up to Pope Francis. They asked why he isn’t saying or doing anything. He did start action in Chile against bad bishops, but that wasn’t until a tremendous public outcry.
They also went after Archbishop Wuerl, good friend of recently defrocked Cardinal “ Uncle Ted “ McCarrick ( think of a homosexual, clerical version of Harvey Weinstein without victim age restrictions ). Wuerl’s comments about the recent Grand Jury report were a collection of bizarre and unrelated nonsequiters. I am wondering just how dirty this guy might be.
They also went after Archbishop Wuerl, good friend of recently defrocked Cardinal “ Uncle Ted “ McCarrick ( think of a homosexual, clerical version of Harvey Weinstein without victim age restrictions ). Wuerl’s comments about the recent Grand Jury report were a collection of bizarre and unrelated nonsequiters. I am wondering just how dirty this guy might be.
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