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Saturday, April 2, 2016

Those Disgusting Priests

I was watching a fairly 'mild' English detective TV program the other night - Grantchester. It  features a C of E Vicar in the 1950's who daily it seems teams up with a detective to solve crimes. The detective is an 'earthy' fellow and the Vicar gets to give a moral sermon at the end to drive points home. Last night the criminal was another vicar who got an underage girl pregnant. It was all very much the hysteria of the 2015's, along with all the usual PC cant and Bishops whisking the disgusting criminal man of God away from the long arm of the law.

Similar hysterical cant and hyperbole, mendacity and cherry picking (excuse the off-colour pun) has hit the big screen too. I was a little suprised that the TV show picked on a C of E chap as the villain when there are hordes in the Catholic Church.... so we are lead to believe.

The hatred of Priests is reaching a fever pitch.

Not that this old Knight defends criminal hypocrits. I do not condone or excuse child sexual abuse.  Certainly not by Priests of any persuasion. A family which discovers that one if its own has committed such a crime is disgusted, but very often will gather around to defend him - and increasingly her - from the Law.

The Church is a family too. 

But many families are afflicted by the false accusations that are so rife in our society. A society which cherry-picks what to be disgusted about. And at whom their disgust-driven vitriol is to be aimed. 

Are priests more likely than others to be sexual deviants?  It is surely time for all rational people to look at the evidence, both at individual level and societal, before leaping, prejudicially, to a conclusion.

Kevin Ryan was talking just last night in the US room.
Caught in the spotlight
A new film is raking up the coals of the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal.
Coming soon to your local theatre is a new movie celebrating the Boston Globe’s investigative reporting on the darkest moments in the American Catholic Church, the sexual molestation of children by some clergy. 
We haven’t seen the film, but the trailers are enough to tell us it will be a blockbuster and will present, as the paper’s original report did, a one-sided view of a wrenching moment in the history of the Catholic Church.

The movie will be a huge success because its hero is played by Oscar nominee Michael Keaton, plus a cast of well-known actors. Also, the studio’s advertising machine is in promotional high gear. And, the scandal provides an enticing and voyeuristic story. And, again from the trailers and Hollywood’s history, it will be a one-sided, black-and-white story.
As it has proven to be. 
The film will surely bring back the shame Catholics, clergy and laity, experienced when we became aware of the horrible events committed by some members of the clergy. 
It will also re-ignite the hatred and deep animosity that many, particularly in the media, have for the Catholic Church. 
Much of the good will generated by Pope Francis’s recent visit to the United States with be replaced by the return of an anti-Catholicism that sadly lies just below the surface in the hearts of many.
There is, however, another side to this story. 
Here are some facts, many drawn the 2004 independent study conducted by the prestigious John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. The focus of the study was the rates and characteristics of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. 
Researchers found that a total of 10,667 individuals had made allegations of child sexual abuse against 4,392 Catholic priests between the years 1950 and 2002. The 4,392 accused priests made up 4 percent of all US Catholic priests. Further, most of these acts took place between 1960 and 1984. The apex of these crimes was 1970, 32 years before the Boston Globe’s “report.”
Not that it is an excuse, but Catholic priests commit no more abuse than other American males. 
Nevertheless, shortly after the Globe’s Spotlight story, a WSJ-NBC poll reported that 64 percent of those polled believed that Catholic priests "frequently'' abused children. In 2010 Newsweek printed an article entitled, “Priests Commit No More Abuse than Other Males.”
A well-known social scientist, Carol Shakeshaft, was principal investigator for a US Department of Education study on the issue of child abuse.   
She reported that the sexual abuse of children by school personnel is 
“100 times the abuse by priests.”
What is not made clear or even alluded to is that the 'school personnel' are predominantly FEMALE in the USA, as in most western countries. And why? 

Because men have been virtually driven from the classrooms by innuendo, false allegation, bigotry and ideology, most of which stems from Feminism. 

It has become a 'several times a week' event  for instances of female teachers (often married) having 'affairs' or 'relationships' with mainly teenage boys and the occasional girls, appear on page 14 of a newspaper. It is never called 'Rape'. 

Do not hold your breath waiting for a Study' or a 'Report, let alone a film of a newspaper's Investigation Team armed with pointy sticks telling of female sex abusers. They would find so many as to declare it 'normal'.

Another common distortion is that most priests committing child sexual abuse were pedophiles, that is, individuals attracted to children under age 11. 
In fact, the majority of victims (almost 75 percent) were between 11 and 17, showing preference to children in their early years of adolescence. In addition, the majority (81 percent) of alleged victims were male.   
This finding suggests that the offending priests had a homosexual orientation. 
The fact that so much of the press coverage characterized the abuse as crimes against children rather than adolescent boys suggests that the media has a pro-gay agenda.
This is made clear by the almost adulation of some Cardinals in the USA who do not simply condone homosexuality but seem to align with it and encourage it. The media hang on Cardinal Dolan's every word, certain that nary a Catholic one will escape his lips. 
If Cardinal Timothy Dolan were not a prince of the church you could easily imagine him as an old fashioned Irish pol. Except he is well up to date courting the damned and taking walks down Main Street with the Gay hordes in their gold lame underpants.
Other key findings were that  fewer than half of the priests (1,881) were found to be subject to unsubstantiated allegations and more than half had only one allegation brought against them. It should also be noted that a handful of priests accounted for a disproportionate number of victims. For instance, 3.5 percent of priests accounted for 26 percent of victims.
Even though an investigation was conducted almost every time a report was filed, only 217 or 5.4 percent of priests were charged with a crime by a district attorney. Of the 217 priests who had criminal charges brought against them, a substantial majority (64 percent) were convicted -- but a third were found not guilty.
Many cases depended on “recovered memories” evidence, recognized now as the psychological quackery of the 20th century. 
We now know that people, especially young people, are quite suggestible and can and do form false memories.  Adults, too, lie and have false memories, particularly when big money is involved.
What has been the impact of the sensational and often distorted coverage of this tragic problem? For over a dozen years, innocent priests, men who have made heroic sacrifices to serve others, were spat upon and accosted in our streets. Who knows what will be the effect of this new film on them and their work? And who knows the numbers of young men who were and are discouraged from priesthood?
What, beyond sorrow and shame, has the scandal cost the Catholic Church?  Estimates of financial penalties range from US$2.6 to 3 billion. To date, six dioceses have been bankrupted.
The parishioners whose churches closed, the inner-city students whose Catholic schools were shut down and so many others no longer served are victims, too. Much of the Catholic Church’s historic work has been truncated as a result of the huge penalties.
Yes, some priests have committed horrible crimes and some in the hierarchy were unresponsive and negligent. 
But why, as the American Review of Journalism commented, has there been such a “feeding frenzy” in the American press? And why 13 years later is Hollywood pulling out all its stops to drag this story back?
One answer is the nation’s increasing hunger for sensationalism. 
More convincing, however, is that virulent anti-Catholicism is alive and well in our country and particularly in our media. 
The Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr  characterized prejudice against Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people."
But what is behind the secular press’s deep-seated antagonism toward the Catholic Church and Christianity? 
One answer is that the Christian religion stands athwart their secular, “progressive” project. 
It resists their efforts to celebrate a homosexual lifestyle and to control population through contraception and unrestricted abortion. 
Christians have the audacity to cling to the words of a first century desert preacher.
Unforgivable!
And hypocritical.

Hypocricy has a firm grip on our society. Jason Murray spoke to it.
You know why it's so weird that Christians are the only group it's completely OK to smear with the label "Hypocrite?"
It really is. It's odd, strange, bizarre, when you think about it.
Mohammed was not known for teaching against hypocrisy. (He mostly "taught", at the point of a sword, against any dissent from his own culture.)
Buddha was not known for teaching against hypocrisy. (That was just another form of illusion, incorrectly named and thus an impediment to enlightenment.)
Krishna did not teach against hypocrisy. (Misnamed, too, as an illusory impediment in the cycle of reincarnation toward annihilation.)
Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, and Freud (can't forget the greatest faith leaders in the western world) did not teach against hypocrisy per se, except insofar as it was part of what they hated about Christianity. (But being two-faced in the pursuit of wealth-equality, evolutionary progress, power, or self-realization is perfectly fine...not hypocritical at all.)
Hah ! As if ! How Hypocrits show hypocricy.
In fact, nobody hates hypocrisy, really, unless it's part of their hatred of Christianity.
But here's what's weird about that.
JESUS WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO TAUGHT AGAINST HYPOCRISY.
Matthew 23. The only full-length tirade against hypocrites by any global religious leader in human history. From JESUS. The founder of Christianity.
The first thing Jesus' followers agree to is to fight THEIR OWN HYPOCRISY.
Jesus' followers are the only people in the world who relentlessly police their own hypocrites.
(By the way, that's why there is no movement, in "peace-loving" Islam, to fight the terrorists; no movement in "peace-loving" Buddhism and Hinduism,to fight their ethnic terrorists in Southeast Asia and India; no movement in today's Marxism [progressive Europe and America] to fight tyranny: because "hypocrisy" in the pursuit of THOSE beliefs isn't actually wrong.)
So if you hate hypocrites, and think that's a reason by definition to hate ONLY the people who follow Jesus...
...guess what that makes you?
Yeah. It's not just weird. It's ironic. I'd say it's....well, yes....HYPOCRITICAL.

Keep your meters on.




Drink deep. The dark night comes.

Pax. 

6 comments:

  1. Working through the math: 2511 substantiated allegations in 52 years, that's a enviable rate in any population of men. So is 139 criminal convictions. But a 64% conviction rate for a prosecutor in the US is nothing to boast about, proves that they were not cherry picking obvious and egregious cases but exactly the opposite

    Interesting about the apex of the charges being in 1970, a time when all kinds of social restrictions on sexual behavior were being set aside.

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    1. Numbers and percentages take us into clarity when we also take the population figures into account. It is very common these days to be mendacious with stats. For example, in Oz the figure of 100 women a year are killed by their 'partners' is bandied about. This is actually the number taken from a UK 'report'. The UK has 40 million more people! And Oz figures are dealt with on a State by State basis. That is to say, the figure is bogus. Neither here nor there does the number of men killed by their partners get trotted out. They are very much the same. In those figures also are lesbians killing and lesbians ! The 'killing rate' per capita overall is 0.0000015%. The number of Married' spouses being killed by their 'partner' is an even tinier proportion.

      The Priest figures are alarming and well past. But again the proportion is tiny. And you are right about the social upheaval period. It is when the homosexual rot set in.

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  2. Did a review of Grantchester recently.

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    1. Indeed you did and a fine job you did on it too. It was on my mind as I watched it. I might not have otherwise. You have a lively insight.

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  3. I can sense a change of mood about this demonisation of Catholics in Ireland. This country used to be very Catholic for a very long time. But even those Irish people who are not believers - wedding and funeral churchgoers; tend to see the Catholic Church as a major part of their heritage.

    This Godless atheist has gotten to know the local parish priest quite well. He is helping us to raise money for a men's shed project to restore some derelict houses for homeless men. We often have long debates which I enjoy and although we never agree in the end, it is always amicable. If I should meet him in the street he always stops for a chat and parts with a joke - "so we will see you at mass on Sunday then?"

    So I have always found Catholics to be pretty open and tolerant. A lot of people here know a local priest and many are getting tired of the constant hostility against them in the trendy media. They are being attacked with lies and generalised slander and they are an easy target, because their attackers know that they will not stoop to that level in their own defence.

    During the recent gay-marriage campaigns the priests and bishops of Ireland also won my admiration for the way they handled themselves, refusing to either bow before the vitriol that was being spewed at them or to respond in kind.

    So Germany can embrace the backward barbarity of Islam if it likes. But I prefer to do business with those tolerant reflective men in black.

    There was a local "scandal" here when it emerged that one of the priests was having a relationship with a woman. I couldn't see the big deal, but he was pilloried in the local press for his hypocrisy. When I asked the local parish priest one day what he thought of it all, he said - "We are priests Lana, not saints. Sometimes we fall and we must ask forgiveness like everybody else."

    Now the Irish gay-rights activists are going to Australia to begin campaigning there. We can expect more of the same closer to you. Maybe you need to sharpen your sword sir-knight.

    http://www.irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/irish-campaigner-aims-to-bring-marriage-equality-to-australia-1.2595513

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    1. """We are priests Lana, not saints. Sometimes we fall and we must ask forgiveness like everybody else."" Indeed, and hopefully nearer to Sainthood than the average Len or Lana :) The 'way' of the Church is to forgive the wayward IF they are repentant; IF they are sorrowful and know their sin. But of course they are Judged by God who is Merciful and not by the court of public opinion which us far less so (unless of course the sinner is a celebrity).

      I admire your open-mindedness, Lana. To engage in a friendly fashion with the 'men in black' while retaining your 'atheism' is a dangerous game, m'dear. You just might be seduced !! Hahahaha

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Ne meias in stragulo aut pueros circummittam.

Our Bouncer is a gentleman of muscle and guile. His patience has limits. He will check you at the door.

The Tavern gets rowdy visitors from time to time. Some are brain dead and some soul dead. They attack customers and the bar staff and piss on the carpets. Those people will not be allowed in anymore. So... Be Nice..