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. 

 http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/caught-in-the-spotlight/17044

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.