jump to navigation

‘Dirty War’ Questions for Pope Francis March 14, 2013

Posted by rogerhollander in Argentina, History, Human Rights, Latin America, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

Roger’s note: This says it all:

In contrast to the super-upbeat tone of American TV coverage, the New York Times did publish a front-page analysis on the Pope’s conservatism, citing his “vigorous” opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the ordination of women. The Times article by Emily Schmall and Larry Rohter then added:

“He was less energetic, however, when it came to standing up to Argentina’s military dictatorship during the 1970s as the country was consumed by a conflict between right and left that became known as the Dirty War. He has been accused of knowing about abuses and failing to do enough to stop them while as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.”

March 13, 2013

Exclusive: The U.S. “news” networks bubbled with excitement over the selection of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to be Pope Francis I. But there was silence on the obvious question that should be asked about any senior cleric from Argentina: What was Bergoglio doing during the “dirty war,” writes Robert Parry.

 

By Robert Parry (Updated March 14, 2013, to delete incorrect reference to Bergoglio in Guardian article)

If one wonders if the U.S. press corps has learned anything in the decade since the Iraq War – i.e. the need to ask tough question and show honest skepticism – it would appear from the early coverage of the election of Pope Francis I that U.S. journalists haven’t changed at all, even at “liberal” outlets like MSNBC.

The first question that a real reporter should ask about an Argentine cleric who lived through the years of grotesque repression, known as the “dirty war,” is what did this person do, did he stand up to the murderers and torturers or did he go with the flow. If the likes of Chris Matthews and other commentators on MSNBC had done a simple Google search, they would have found out enough about Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to slow their bubbling enthusiasm.

Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francis I, in 2008. (Photo credit: Aibdescalzo)

Bergoglio, now the new Pope Francis I, has been identified publicly as an ally of Argentine’s repressive leaders during the “dirty war” when some 30,000 people were “disappeared” or killed, many stripped naked, chained together, flown out over the River Plate or the Atlantic Ocean and pushed sausage-like out of planes to drown.

The “disappeared” included women who were pregnant at the time of their arrest. In some bizarre nod to Catholic theology, they were kept alive only long enough to give birth before they were murdered and their babies were farmed out to military families, including to people directly involved in the murder of the babies’ mothers.

Instead of happy talk about how Bergoglio seems so humble and how he seems so sympathetic to the poor, there might have been a question or two about what he did to stop the brutal repression of poor people and activists who represented the interests of the poor, including “liberation theology” priests and nuns, during the “dirty war.”

Here, for instance, is an easily retrievable story from Guardian columnist Hugh O’Shauhnessy from 2011, which states:

“To the judicious and fair-minded outsider it has been clear for years that the upper reaches of the Argentine church contained many ‘lost sheep in the wilderness’, men who had communed and supported the unspeakably brutal Western-supported military dictatorship which seized power in that country in 1976 and battened on it for years.

“Not only did the generals slaughter thousands unjustly, often dropping them out of aeroplanes over the River Plate and selling off their orphan children to the highest bidder, they also murdered at least two bishops and many priests. Yet even the execution of other men of the cloth did nothing to shake the support of senior clerics, including representatives of the Holy See, for the criminality of their leader General Jorge Rafael Videla and his minions.

“As it happens, in the week before Christmas [2010] in the city of Córdoba Videla and some of his military and police cohorts were convicted by their country’s courts of the murder of 31 people between April and October 1976, a small fraction of the killings they were responsible for. The convictions brought life sentences for some of the military.

“These were not to be served, as has often been the case in Argentina and neighbouring Chile, in comfy armed forces retirement homes but in common prisons. Unsurprisingly there was dancing in the city’s streets when the judge announced the sentences.

“What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentine hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church’s collaboration … in these crimes. The extent of the church’s complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence),” which alleges Bergoglio’s complicity in human right abuses.

The Guardian article stated: “The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio’s name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.

“One would have thought that the Argentine bishops would have seized the opportunity to call for pardon for themselves and put on sackcloth and ashes as the sentences were announced in Córdoba but that has not so far happened. … Cardinal Bergoglio has plenty of time to be measured for a suit of sackcloth – perhaps tailored in a suitable clerical grey.”

Now, instead of just putting forward Bergoglio’s name as a candidate for Pope, the College of Cardinals has actually elected him. Perhaps the happy-talking correspondents from the U.S. news media will see no choice but to join in the cover-up of what Pope Francis did during the “dirty war.” Otherwise, they might offend some people in power and put their careers in jeopardy.

In contrast to the super-upbeat tone of American TV coverage, the New York Times did publish a front-page analysis on the Pope’s conservatism, citing his “vigorous” opposition to abortion, gay marriage and the ordination of women. The Times article by Emily Schmall and Larry Rohter then added:

“He was less energetic, however, when it came to standing up to Argentina’s military dictatorship during the 1970s as the country was consumed by a conflict between right and left that became known as the Dirty War. He has been accused of knowing about abuses and failing to do enough to stop them while as many as 30,000 people were disappeared, tortured or killed by the dictatorship.”

[For a limited time, you can purchase Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush family for only $34. For details, click here.]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

A Rogue Power: Vatican May Shield Pope from Growing Prosecution Efforts February 20, 2013

Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
3 comments
Roger’s note: Apparently it was Mussolini who made the Vatican into a sovereign state.  Somehow that seems appropriate.
02.19.13 – 12:30 PM, http://www.commondreams.org

by Abby Zimet

Amidst growing efforts by international law advocates to arrest and prosecute Pope Benedict for the Church’s cover-up of child sex crimes, Vatican officials have announced they will give the retiring Pontiff sanctuary, arguing that otherwise he would be “defenseless” – a feeling likely familiar to the Church’s many victims of sexual abuse. A week before his resignation, the Pope reportedly heard from an undisclosed European government that the International Tribunal into Crimes Against Church and State (ITCCS) had called on “all people of conscience” to “disestablish the Vatican,” and seek Benedict’s and others’ arrests for crimes against humanity. Their call comes as part of an upcoming Easter Reclamation Campaign that also seeks to seize the assets of the Church under international law. In addition, the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights has requested, on behalf of the Survivors’ Network, an international inquiry into the Church’s sheltering of pedophile priests. Pope Benedict is reportedly scheduled to meet next week with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to request immunity against  allegations of child rape. We don’t really wish him well; we simply wish him what he legally and morally deserves.

“We call upon all citizens and governments to assist our efforts to legally disestablish the Vatican, Inc. and arrest its chief officers and clergy who are complicit in crimes against humanity and the ongoing criminal conspiracy to aid and protect child torture and trafficking.”

U.S. nuns locked in battle with conservative Vatican leadership August 19, 2012

Posted by rogerhollander in Religion, Women.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

Roger’s note: it may be because of my own long discarded religious background that I bother to post an article about the Roman Catholic Church, which is today a bastion of misogynist patriarchal tyranny.  I often wonder why good people remain involved in and institution that is so fundamentally corrupt, but I suppose that I have no right to be judgmental, especially where good works are being done.  The nuns who are the subject of this article would do better, in my opinion, to be working outside their dinosaur of a Church; but then again, they have invested their lives within that organization, and it may not be fair to expect them to abandon it without a fight.  As the article suggests, excommunication could very well be the outcome for these socially progressive and feminist nuns.  Today’s incarnation of the Inquisition, known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is at the center of power within the RC Church, the current Pope Ratzinger being its former head and today’s champion.  This startling statistic tells the story about the out of touch nature of the male patriarchical hierarchy of the Church: “… more than two-thirds of Catholic women have practised officially prohibited contraception, and according to Gallup, 82 per cent find birth control morally acceptable.”

<!–

 

Published on Sunday August 19, 2012

 
 

Farrell Deacon

Seth Perlman/ASSOCIATED PRESS Pat Farrell, left, outgoing president of The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, left, stands with president-elect Sister Florence Deacon, at St. Louis vigil Aug. 9.

 

Peter Sartain

Erika Schultz/ASSOCIATED PRESS Seattle Roman Catholic Archbishop J. Peter Sartain praised the nuns’ good works and promised to deal with their differences “in an atmosphere of prayer and respectful dialogue.”

 
Image

By Olivia WardForeign Affairs Reporter, Toronto Star
 
ST. LOUIS, MO.—In the packed ballroom of the Millennium Hotel, a serene-looking 65-year-old woman strides toward the podium. Alongside her, like disciples in an archaic temple, other women waft strips of flame-coloured gauze through the humid air, while a heavenly chorus floats above the crowd.

It’s no New Age drama revival, but a crisis meeting of more than 900 Catholic sisters of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, who represent some 80 per cent of America’s 57,000 nuns, a group attacked by the Vatican for harbouring “radical feminist ideas:” putting too much energy into social justice and too little into fighting abortion, contraception, gay rights and other traditional Catholic anathemas.

They have also dared to discuss women’s ordination, priestly marriage and hot-button political issues such as U.S. President Barack Obama’s health-care plan, to which the church is fiercely opposed.

When Pat Farrell, the group’s outgoing president, reaches the microphone, her message is loud and clear. Church criticism should not be met by “violence,” she tells the rapt female audience. But neither should it be accepted “with the passivity of the victim. It entails resisting rather than colluding with abusive power.”

Heads nod and smiles flash across tight-lipped faces in the crowd. “I believe the philosophical underpinnings of the way we’ve organized reality no longer hold,” Farrell continues, gaining momentum. “The human family is not served by individualism, patriarchy or competition . . . Breaking through in their place are equality, communion, collaboration, expansiveness . . . intuitive knowing and love.”

The words are like a splash of cold water in the face of the conservative church fathers. But the Aug. 7-10 gathering itself, with its free-form ceremonies and freethinking speakers, is also part of the problem, in the view of the Vatican’s watchdog Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

In April, it issued a damning report, ordering the nuns’ leadership to correct its “serious doctrinal problems,” and submit to an overhaul under the direction of Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain. He is known, most recently, for opposing Washington state’s Marriage Equality Bill, on the grounds that same-sex couples, being “different” from male-female couples, do not deserve equal treatment in law.

Earlier this week, Sartain met with the nuns’ national board after praising their good works in “social, pastoral and spiritual ministries,” and promising to deal with their differences “in an atmosphere of prayer and respectful dialogue.” The sisters pledged the same. But the simmering anger beneath the nuns’ outwardly tranquil demeanour and the outpouring of support for them from Catholics across the country point to a confrontation that could rock the church for decades to come.

It’s a struggle that the Vatican may find hard to win.

While some American Catholics uphold the traditional views of the church and its ecclesiastical mission on earth, millions of others find its teachings less relevant and are privately going their own way.

Most tellingly, studies show that more than two-thirds of Catholic women have practised officially prohibited contraception, and according to Gallup, 82 per cent find birth control morally acceptable.

A recent University of Michigan survey said that by 2000, only 6 per cent of Catholics believed that divorce was never permissible, and 19 per cent that homosexuality was never justifiable. The book Just Love, on modern Catholic sexual ethics, became a runaway U.S. bestseller when the church campaigned against it.

As the ordination of women grows in other religions, the Vatican looks increasingly like King Canute trying to hold back the tide. Sexual abuse scandals have thrown the celibacy requirement for priests under a harsh spotlight, and allegations of Byzantine power struggles and corruption swirled after recent leaks of papal documents and arrest of the pope’s butler on theft charges. Some within the church say that 85-year-old Pope Benedict XVI is out of touch and “isolated.”

Though the winds of change have raised scarcely a breeze behind Vatican walls, they have struck American nuns with cyclone force.

When 17-year-old Mary Ann Nestel left her middle-class home in Kansas City and entered a convent back in the 1950s, she took her parents’ names, draped herself in a standard-issue habit and became Sister Robert Catherine.

But with the meeting of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, convened by Pope John XXIII to review and renew the church, and inherited by his successor Pope Paul VI, the focus shifted from doctrine and tradition to community outreach. Priests and nuns were urged to stop setting themselves apart from contemporary life, and to wear clothing “suited to the circumstances of time and place” in which they worked.

“It was in the 1960s that I stopped wearing a habit,” recalls the ginger-haired, 72-year-old Nestel, sporting a scoop-necked t-shirt and comfortable flared skirt in the breathless summer heat. “At first we dressed very conservatively in navy or black. But our (leader) said we should look like the people of the day.”

Moving with the times was an act of obedience then, she says. But in the more reactionary era where nuns find themselves today, modernity has become defiance. It is this tension between an evolutionary church, and one that believes its teachings are immutable and eternal, that is at the heart of the sisters’ struggle.

“I think that the fundamental faith of the Catholic Church is that there are objective truths and teachings. . . that really do come from revelation and are interpreted authentically through the teaching of the church. . . and are expected to be believed with the obedience of faith,” said Bishop Leonard Blair, who took part in the doctrinal assessment of the sisters. “Those are things that are non-negotiable,” he told National Public Radio.

But to the greying generation who took “Vatican II” to heart, as well as younger progressive Catholics, it’s the church fathers who are on the wrong side of history.

A visit to the south St. Louis suburb of Carondelet is telling.

Here, Nestel is a local hero, sharing the struggles of the community and offering hands-on help.

She is executive director of the Community Betterment Foundation and Carondelet’s housing corporation. The former supplements the meager budgets of the working poor with a storehouse of food and children’s clothing, a free health clinic, seniors’ centre and literacy program. The latter has partnered with the city to change the character of the place, from a dilapidated, drug-ridden marginal community to one that is bringing back working- and middle-class people to affordable renovated homes, safe playgrounds and attractive and accessible shopping and recreational sites.

Over the desk of Nestel’s spotless, sparsely furnished office, a cross-shaped graphic rather than a traditional crucifix is on display. It reads: “We the People + The Body of Christ.” It was taken from Network, the group of Washington-based activist nuns who recently made a national bus tour to drum up opposition to legislation that would dramatically cut spending on social services.

Nestel takes the people-centred message seriously. When the food pantry was almost empty last week, she phoned the media and declared an emergency. Now she smiles broadly as she walks through the narrow basement shelves, replenished with tins, packages and boxes of food. People from every walk of life responded to the call, she says, and a local bar offered free beer to donors.

Nestel’s work goes beyond charitable services. A few blocks away, she congratulates a crew of renovators who drip with sweat as they put the finishing touches on a trim, brick three-bedroom house that was reclaimed from a drug gang and rebuilt by the housing corporation. It will be marketed for $160,000, (U.S.) sweetened by a 10-year tax holiday for the new owners.

On a nearby street, bright, artist-designed murals decorate walls that were once eyesores, another urban renewal project. Blooming gardens and a fenced playground might have sprung from the film Meet Me in St. Louis. People on the street may not recognize a visiting bishop, but they know Nestel on sight.

The corridors of the conference hotel are a poor woman’s tour of the world. They are lined with tables and posters advocating for social justice in Guatemala, in Africa, in South Sudan — and for causes closer to home. Many of the sisters present here have done service in the world’s roughest neighbourhoods, ministering to the hungry, homeless and oppressed.

Farrell, the leadership conference’s retiring president, worked with the non-violent resistance movement in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, and on the front lines of El Salvador’s bloody civil war, where four female Catholic missionaries were tortured, raped and murdered. Others have worked in U.S. inner cities where the lines between war and peace are blurred.

But harsh conditions are nothing new to North American nuns, nor is the heavy hand of the male-dominated church.

“In the 19th century, Catholic nuns literally built the church in the American West,” wrote Utah State University historian Anne Butler in the New York Times. They braved “hardship and grueling circumstances to establish missions, set up classrooms and lead lives of calm in a chaotic world marked by corruption, criminality and illness. Their determination in the face of a male hierarchy that then, as now, frequently exploited and disdained them, was a demonstration of their resilient faith in a church struggling to adapt itself to change.”

Since the early 18th century, more than 200,000 Catholic sisters have pioneered the country. But now their numbers have shrunk to less than 60,000, and threaten to dwindle by thousands more in the next decade as the older ones die or retire from duty.

That makes the struggle between the nuns and the Vatican all the more urgent, as fewer young women are interested in enrolling in what they see as an institution that imposes archaic rules. Many serving today fear that if they cannot move with the times, the times will eventually pass them by and their orders become extinct.

“Today individuals have the right to decide how to live their lives and craft their own morality,” says Jamie Manson, a lay minister and graduate of Yale Divinity School. “They are not hard-wired to live in community.” But, she says, many young Catholic lay workers are still hungering for spiritual mentorship. Allowing them to live in religious communities that are devoted to public service, along with their partners, might rejuvenate dedicated religious life.

It’s one more challenge for the nuns as they continue their mano a mano confrontation with the bishops charged with bringing them into line.

At best, the church may drag out the talks to prevent a perilous split, although the Vatican’s current conservative leadership seems to make that less likely. But officials can also see warning signs of strains within the church: the powerful Conference of Catholic Bishops has joined the sisters in speaking out against government budget cuts that would slash food and nutrition programs for the poor. Meanwhile, highly vocal Catholic social conservatives back widening state crackdowns on abortion and defunding of contraception.

At worst, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and its members may find so little common ground with their critics that they opt to defy the church’s authority and form their own organization. Some have pondered the ultimate threat of excommunication.

Can those who have lived at the sharp end of the world’s harsh realities retreat to an obedient quiet?

“Many of the foundresses and founders of our congregations struggled long for canonical approval of our institutes,” Farrell tells the sisters. “Some were even silenced or excommunicated.” And she adds with a fleeting smile, “a few of them . . . were later canonized.”

Catholic Church Revives Abandoned Centuries-Old Tradition To Bash Gays August 7, 2012

Posted by rogerhollander in LGBT, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

 

by David Badash on August 6, 2012

in International,Marriage,News,Politics,Religion

Post image for Catholic Church Revives Abandoned Centuries-Old Tradition To Bash Gays

 
The Catholic Church has revived a tradition originally begun in the 17th century and abandoned almost 100 years ago, to bash gay people. Following the Vatican’s’s edict to begin a gay marriage holy war, Pope Benedict XVI‘s followers have looked high and low for every opportunity to attack gay people and same-sex marriage. In France, the Catholic Church has actually issued a prayer to be used on August 15, the Prayer for the Assumption, which was begun by King Louis XIII (image, right,) under Cardinal Richelieu in 1638.

The special Prayer (Google translation) directs the faithful to pray for “those who were recently elected to legislate and govern.” France’s new President, Francois Hollande, has promised gay marriage will be the law of the land next year. The Catholic Church also is telling its believers to ask Jesus Christ to “grant us the courage to make hard choices and a better quality of life for all and vitality of our youth through strong families and loyal,” and specifically to ask Christ to ensure children “cease to be objects of desires and conflicts of adults to fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother,” a direct attack on same-sex couples adopting or raising children.

For children and young people that we help all people to discover their own path to progress towards happiness, they cease to be objects of desires and conflicts of adults to fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother.

The Advocate notes:

French bishops typically avoid entering political debates, but Reuters reports that spokesman Monsignor Bernard Podvin said the [Catholic] Church wanted to “raise the consciousness of public opinion about grave social choices.”

The prayer effort follows the Catholic Church’s outspokenness against recent plans to legalize same-sex marriage in England and Scotland. Pope Benedict XVI denounced the momentum for marriage equality in the United States during a visit of American bishops to the Vatican in March.

A Reuters report confirms the purpose of the Prayer.

In May, the Pope told Catholics they should become more political and ignore what the Bible teaches about politics. Speaking in Tuscany, the Pope urged the melding of Church and State, and told listeners to be “the engine of society in promoting peace through justice.”

The Catholic Church in France did not explain why only heterosexual couples should be allowed to raise children, nor does the Prayer direct the faithful to pray for the victims of pedophile priests.

Related:

Catholic Church Castrated Homosexual Boys And Those Who Accused Priests Of Abuse

Vatican Declares Gay Marriage Holy War, Forms Worldwide Religions Coalition

Pope Proclaims Reasons For Pedophile Priests Still A ‘Mystery’

Image

You might also like:
 
Catholic Bishops Defunding Non-Profits Who Voice Support …
 
Pope Demands U.S. Bishops’ “Full Commitment” To Fight …
 
Santorum Supports Torture Against Church Teachings – Why …
 

Colbert: If Mormons Posthumously Baptize Holocaust Victims, I’ll Posthumously Circumsize Mormons February 25, 2012

Posted by rogerhollander in Humor, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

WATCH THE VIDEO:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/409086/february-23-2012/posthumous-mormon-baptism

Elie Wiesel has recently spoken out against the far too common Mormon practice of posthumously baptizing Holocaust victims–including a record nine baptisms of Anne Frank.

In his new segment on the controversy, Colbert gets in a few digs at the Mormon tiers of heaven (the top of which is only reseved for true Mormons), his own Catholic faith and a certain recent comedy film too (to tell you which one would spoil the joke), before he gets down to his retributive business.

“Right now I’m going to balance everything out by converting all the dead mormons to Judaism,” says Colbert, before he ritually circumcizes a hot dog in proxy for all the world’s departed Mormons. “Mormon Tov!” he cries.

Pedophiles and Popes: Doing the Vatican Shuffle May 10, 2010

Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 comment so far
Published on Monday, May 10, 2010 by CommonDreams.orgby Michael Parenti

When Pope John Paul II was still living in Poland as Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, he claimed that the security police would accuse priests of sexual abuse just to hassle and discredit them. (New York Times, 3/28/10). For Wojtyła, the Polish pedophilia problem was nothing more than a Communist plot to smear the church.

By the early 1980s, Wojtyła, now ensconced in Rome as Pope John Paul II, treated all stories about pedophile clergy with dismissive aplomb, as little more than slander directed against the church. That remained his stance for the next twenty years.

Today in post-communist Poland, clerical abuse cases have been slowly surfacing, very slowly. Writing in the leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza,  a middle-aged man reported having been sexually abused as a child by a priest. He acknowledged however that Poland was not prepared to deal with such transgressions. “It’s still too early. . . .  Can you imagine what life would look like if an inhabitant of a small town or village decided to talk?  I can already see the committees of defense for the accused priests.”

While church pedophiles may still enjoy a safe haven in Poland and other countries where the clergy are above challenge, things are breaking wide open elsewhere. Today we are awash in a sludge of revelations spanning whole countries and continents, going back decades—or as some historians say—going back centuries. Only in the last few weeks has the church shown signs of cooperating with civil authorities. Here is the story.

Protecting the Perpetrators. As everyone now knows, for decades church superiors repeatedly chose to ignore complaints about pedophile priests. In many instances, accused clerics were quietly bundled off to distant congregations where they could prey anew upon the children of unsuspecting parishioners. This practice of denial and concealment has been so consistently pursued in diocese after diocese, nation after nation, as to leave the impression of being a deliberate policy set by church authorities.

And indeed it has been. Instructions coming directly from Rome have required every bishop and cardinal to keep matters secret. These instructions were themselves kept secret; the cover-up was itself covered up. Then in 2002, John Paul put it in writing, specifically mandating that all charges against priests were to be reported secretly to the Vatican and hearings were to be held in camera, a procedure that directly defies state criminal codes.   Rather than being defrocked, many outed pedophile priests have been allowed to advance into well-positioned posts as administrators, vicars, and parochial school officials—repeatedly accused by their victims while repeatedly promoted by their superiors.

Church spokesmen employ a vocabulary of compassion and healing—not for the victims but for the victimizers. They treat the child rapist as a sinner who confesses his transgression and vows to mend his ways. Instead of incarceration, there is repentance and absolution.

While this forgiving approach might bring comfort to some malefactors, it proves to be of little therapeutic efficacy when dealing with the darker appetites of pedophiles. A far more effective deterrent is the danger of getting caught and sent to prison. Absent any threat of punishment, the perpetrator is restrained only by the limits of his own appetite and the availability of opportunities.

Forgiving No One Else

The tender tolerance displayed by the church hierarchy toward child rapists does not extend to other controversial clergy. Think of those radical priests who have challenged the hierarchy in the politico-economic struggle for liberation theology, or who advocate lifting the prohibitions against birth control and abortion, or who propose that clergy be allowed to marry, or who preside over same-sex weddings, or who themselves are openly gay, or who believe women should be ordained, or who bravely call for investigations of the pedophilia problem itself.

Such clergy often have their careers shut down. Some are subjected to hostile investigations by church superiors.

A Law Unto Itself

Church leaders seem to forget that pedophilia is a felony crime and that, as citizens of a secular state, priests are subject to its laws just like the rest of us. Clerical authorities repeatedly have made themselves accessories to the crime, playing an active role in obstructing justice,  arguing in court that criminal investigations of “church affairs” violated the free practice of religion guaranteed by the US Constitution–as if raping little children were a holy sacrament.

Church officials tell parishioners not to talk to state authorities. They offer no pastoral assistance to young victims and their shaken families. They do not investigate to see if other children have been victimized by the same priests. Some young plaintiffs have been threatened with excommunication or suspension from Catholic school. Church leaders impugn their credibility, even going after them with countersuits.

Responding to charges that one of his priests sexually assaulted a six-year-old boy, Cardinal Bernard Law asserted that “the boy and his parents contributed to the abuse by being negligent.” Law himself never went to prison for the hundreds of cover-ups he conducted.  In 2004, with things getting too hot for him in his Boston archdiocese, Law was rescued by Pope John Paul II to head one of Rome’s major basilicas, where he now lives with diplomatic immunity in palatial luxury on a generous stipend, supervised by no one but a permissive pontiff.

A judge of the Holy Roman Rota, the church’s highest court, wrote in a Vatican-approved article that bishops should not report sexual violations to civil authorities. And sure enough, for years bishops and cardinals have refrained from cooperating with law enforcement authorities, refusing to release abusers’ records, claiming that the confidentiality of their files came under the same legal protection as privileged communications in the confessional—a notion that has no basis in canon or secular law.

Bishop James Quinn of Cleveland even urged church officials to send incriminating files to the Vatican Embassy in Washington, DC, where diplomatic immunity would prevent the documents from being subpoenaed.

Just a Few Bad Apples

Years ago the Catholic hierarchy would insist that clerical pedophilia involved only a few bad apples and was being blown completely out of proportion. For the longest time John Paul scornfully denounced the media for “sensationalizing” the issue. He and his cardinals (Ratzinger included) directed more fire at news outlets for publicizing the crimes than at their own clergy for committing them.

Reports released by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (one of the more honest organizations in the Catholic Church) documented the abuse committed in the United States by 4,392 priests against thousands of children between 1950 and 2002. One of every ten priests ordained in 1970 was charged as a pedophile by 2002. Another survey commissioned by the US bishops found that among 5,450 complaints of sexual abuse there were charges against at least sixteen bishops. So much for a few bad apples.

Still, even as reports were flooding in from Ireland and other countries, John Paul dismissed the pedophilic epidemic as “an American problem,” as if American priests were not members of his clergy, or as if this made it a matter of no great moment. John Paul went to his grave in 2005 still refusing to meet with victims and never voicing any apologies or regrets regarding sex crimes and cover-ups.

With Ratzinger’s accession to the papal throne as Benedict XVI, the cover-ups continued. As recently as April 2010, at Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square, dean of the college of cardinals Angelo Sodano, assured Benedict that the faithful were unimpressed “by the gossip of the moment.” One would not know that “the gossip of the moment” included thousands of investigations, prosecutions, and accumulated charges extending back over decades.

During that same Easter weekend, Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera, archbishop of Mexico City, declared that the public uproar was an “overreaction” incited by the doings of “a few dishonest and criminal priests.” A  few? An overreaction? Of course, the picture now becomes clear: a few bad apples were inciting overreaction by engaging in the gossip of the moment.

The church seems determined to learn nothing from its transgressions, preoccupied as it is with avoiding lawsuits and bad publicity. Really Not All that Serious There are two ways we can think of child rape as being not a serious problem, and the Catholic hierarchy seems to have embraced both these positions. First, pedophilia is not that serious if it involves only a few isolated and passing incidents. Second, an even more creepy way of downplaying the problem: child molestation is not all that damaging or that important. At worst, it is regrettable and unfortunate; it might greatly upset the child, but it certainly is not significant enough to cause unnecessary scandal and ruin the career of an otherwise splendid padre. 

It is remarkable how thoroughly indifferent the church bigwigs have been toward the abused children. When one of the most persistent perpetrators, Rev. John Geoghan, was forced into retirement (not jail) after seventeen years and nearly 200 victims, Cardinal Law could still write him, “On behalf of those you have served well, in my own name, I would like to thank you. I understand yours is a painful situation.” It is evident that Law was more concerned about the “pain” endured by Geoghan than the misery he had inflicted upon minors.

In 2001, a French bishop was convicted in France for refusing to hand over to the police a priest who had raped children. It recently came to light that a former top Vatican cardinal,  Dario Castrillón, had written to the bishop, “I congratulate you for not denouncing a priest to the civil authorities. You have acted well, and I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all the bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his ‘son’ and priest.” (The bishop actually got off with a suspended sentence.) Castrillón claimed that Pope John Paul II had authorized the letter years ago and had told him to send it to bishops around the world. (New York Times, 4/22/2010.)

There are many more like Cardinal Law and Cardinal Castrillón in the hierarchy, aging men who have no life experience with children and show not the slightest regard or empathy for them. They claim it their duty to protect the “unborn child” but offer no protection to the children in their schools and parishes.

They themselves are called “Father” but they father no one. They do not reside in households or families. They live in an old-boys network, jockeying for power and position, dedicated to the Holy Mother Church that feeds, houses, and adorns them throughout their lives. From their heady heights, popes and bishops cannot hear the cries of children. In any case, the church belongs not to little children but to the bedecked oligarchs.

The damage done to sexual victims continues to go unnoticed: the ensuing years of depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, panic attacks, sexual dysfunction, and even mental breakdown and suicide-all these terrible aftereffects of child rape seem to leave popes and bishops more or less unruffled.

Circling the Wagons

The Catholic hierarchy managed to convince itself that the prime victim in this dismal saga is the church itself. In 2010 it came to light that, while operating as John Paul’s über-hit man, Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Ratzinger) had provided cover and protection to several of the worst predator priests. The scandal was now at the pope’s door—exactly where it should have been many years earlier during John Paul’s reign.

The Vatican’s response was predictable. The hierarchy circled the wagons to defend pope and church from outside “enemies.” The cardinals and bishops railed furiously at critics who “assault” the church and, in the words of the archbishop of Paris, subject it to “a smear campaign.” Benedict himself blamed secularism and misguided applications of Vatican 2′s aggiornamento as contributing to the “context” of sexual abuse. Reform-minded liberalism made us do it, he seemed to be saying.

But this bristling Easter counterattack by the hierarchy did not play well. Church authorities came off looking like insular, arrogant elites who were unwilling to own up to a horrid situation largely of their own making. 

Meanwhile the revelations continued. A bishop in Ireland resigned admitting he had covered up child abuse cases. Bishops in Germany and Belgium stepped down after confessing to charges that they themselves had abused minors. And new allegations were arising in Chile, Norway, Brazil, Italy, France, and Mexico.

Then, a fortnight after Easter, the Vatican appeared to change course and for the first time issued a directive urging bishops to report abuse cases to civil authorities “if required by local law.” At the same time, Pope Benedict held brief meetings with survivor groups and issued sympathetic statements about their plight.

For many of the victims, the pontiff’s overtures and apologies were too little, too late. Their feeling was that if the Vatican really wanted to make amends, it should cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities and stop obstructing justice; it should ferret out abusive clergy and not wait until cases are publicized by others; and it should make public the church’s many thousands of still secret reports on priests and bishops.

In the midst of all this, some courageous clergy do speak out. At a Sunday mass in a Catholic church outside Springfield, Massachusetts, the Rev. James Scahill delivered a telling sermon to his congregation (New York Times, 4/12/10): “We must personally and collectively declare that we very much doubt the veracity of the pope and those of church authority who are defending him. It is beginning to become evident that for decades, if not centuries, church leadership covered up the abuse of children and minors to protect its institutional image and the image of priesthood”

The abusive priests, Scahill went on, were “felons.” He had “severe doubt” about the Vatican’s claims of innocent ignorance. “If by any slimmest of chance the pope and all his bishops didn’t know–they all should resign on the basis of sheer and complete ignorance, incompetence, and irresponsibility.”

How did Father Scahill’s suburban Catholic parishioners receive his scorching remarks? One or two walked out. The rest gave him a standing ovation.

Michael Parenti’s recent books include: Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader (City Lights); Democracy for the Few, 8th ed. (Wadsworth); The Assassination of Julius Caesar (New Press), Superpatriotism (City Lights), The Culture Struggle (Seven Stories Press), and God and His Demons (forthcoming).  For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org.

What Did the Pope Know, and When Did He Know It? March 25, 2010

Posted by rogerhollander in Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

(R0ger’s note: I would point out that Ratzinger was a member of Nazi youth organizations, for which he has been exonerated because it was the thing to do at the time; I would also point out, perhaps more to the point of the man’s character, that as a Cardinal he led for many years the notorious Congregation for the Propogation of the Faith, which serves as a modern day Inquisition; as its leader Ratzinger centralized Church authority, and effectively silenced religious and political progressives, including liberation theology advocates in Latin America; to what we already know about the man’s authoritian and undemocratic bent we are now learning about his lack of moral and ethical principle.).

David Gibson, www.politicsdaily.com, March 25, 2010

That is the question every scandal-plagued politician fears, mainly because it has no good answer. Once the public starts framing the inquiry that way, it generally means they don’t trust the responses given so far — as well as the person giving the answers — and likely won’t put much faith in what comes next, no matter how sincere the reassurances.

That Pope Benedict XVI finds himself in this unenviable position Thursday morning is a result of both a “tsunami” of stories — the word used by an Austrian cardinal close to the pontiff — concerning the sexual abuse of children by clerics across Europe, but also of the steady, and personally more damaging, drip of revelations about Benedict’s own track record in dealing with abusers.

The pope’s responsibility came to the fore in two ways on Thursday.

One was a protest in front of the Vatican by members of the leading American-based clergy abuse victims group, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests).

“I would ask the pope if he would please open up the files from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and turn over all the information to the police,” said Barbara Blaine, the president of SNAP and one of four leaders of the group in Rome on Thursday. All of them were sexually abused by priests. As Reuters reported, they held up photos of themselves as children and signs reading “Stop the Secrecy Now.”

The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith was headed by the pope for more than 23 years when he was a cardinal, and it deals with cases of sexual abuse.

The other development was a story in Thursday’s issue of The New York Times, and it is shocking: That top Vatican officials, including Benedict, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and chief guardian of doctrine for Rome, did not take action, despite pleas from some American bishops, against a Wisconsin priest who molested hundreds of deaf boys.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal. . . .

The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

In 1996, Cardinal Ratzinger failed to respond to two letters about the case from Rembert G. Weakland, Milwaukee’s archbishop at the time. After eight months, the second in command at the doctrinal office, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, now the Vatican’s secretary of state, instructed the Wisconsin bishops to begin a secret canonical trial that could lead to Father Murphy’s dismissal.

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

This is not an isolated story. Over recent weeks hundreds of abuse cases from past decades have emerged in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and the pope’s homeland, Germany — in particular Bavaria, the deeply Catholic southern German region where Joseph Ratzinger was born and raised. The stories seemed to be touched off by investigations in Ireland that cataloged thousands of cases of clergy abuse of children over decades, shaking the church in that once-devoutly Catholic island to its foundations.

The most problematic case thus far for Benedict concerned his 1977-1982 tenure as archbishop of Munich, when he accepted a priest, Father Peter Hullermann, into the diocese for psychological evaluation and treatment after Hullermann had sexually abused a number of children. The priest was soon reassigned to a parish, where he went on to abuse more children for years, even after Ratzinger left to become a top doctrinal official at the Vatican.

Lower-ranking church officials in Munich took responsibility for Hullermann’s reassignment (one of them resigned) and said Ratzinger did not know about it. Many find that assertion dubious, and the psychiatrist who treated Hullermann has said he repeatedly warned the Munich archdiocese that the priest should be kept away from children.

Even the pope’s older brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, has been embroiled in the wave of revelations, as he admitted that he used to slap boys in the famous Bavarian church choir he directed for 30 years, until his retirement in 1994. The elder Ratzinger is not accused of engaging in anything other than the kind of corporal punishment that was common at the time, but he acknowledged that he knew boys had been physically abused by other priests and he did not tell authorities.

All this news comes as Benedict has been trying to reassure Catholics, most recently in his letter to Irish Catholics, that the church is doing everything possible to protect children. He also criticizes Irish Catholics themselves for not practicing their faith sufficiently, as well as pointing to two of his favorite punching bags, “secularism” and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, as responsible in part for the abuse scandals.

Benedict does use strong words about bishops who made “serious mistakes” in failing to rein in abusers, and there are indications that some episcopal heads will roll — which is what Catholics want to see as much as penalties for any abusive priests who may still be alive or at large.

On Wednesday, Benedict accepted the resignation of Bishop John Magee, once a powerful figure who had served as a personal aide to three popes before taking over the Cloyne diocese in Ireland in 1987. But recent investigations showed that Magee covered up for abusive priests, and his career has been in limbo for a year. Other Irish bishops are also facing pressure to resign, though whether Benedict will accept their resignations is unknown.

The new revelations about Benedict’s own track record could complicate his efforts to make the hierarchy appear accountable, as targeted bishops will wonder why they should pay a penalty for the same decisions the pope himself once made.

Meanwhile, the SNAP protests by victims did not help the Vatican’s cause, or that of the pope.

SNAP leader Barbara Blaine and the other protesters were taken away away by the police, who confiscated their passports as they took them in for questioning.

Meanwhile, a top papal aide, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, told reporters that the news reports were evidence of “a conspiracy” against the church.

“This is a pretext for attacking the church,” he said. “There is a well-organized plan with a very clear aim,” he said, without spelling out who was behind it.

Saraiva Martins said that while he was in favor of zero tolerance now, he could understand why some bishops covered up cases of child abuse in the past.

“We should not be too scandalized if some bishops knew about it but kept it secret. This is what happens in every family, you don’t wash your dirty laundry in public,” he said.

Such comments are not likely to play with the many Catholics who are demanding accountability — of Benedict XVI and other bishops.

The danger is not so much that the pope will resign — that won’t happen, and maybe can’t happen, under the church’s arcane rules and traditions.

The real risk is that with new reports of his own record emerging seemingly daily, with doubts about his candor growing just as quickly, and with protesters parading in front of the Vatican, the bishop of Rome, despite the aura and authority of his office — handed down from St. Peter himself — will begin to look like every other bishop these days. And that’s most definitely not a good thing for him — or the church.

Thank God I’m and Atheist December 7, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in About Religion, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

 

 by Roger Hollander, December 7, 2009

 Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional,
There, the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.
If it is, try playin’ it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!

 Tom Lehrer, “The Vatican Rag”

 

You hungry, ain’t you, babies.

 Lord Buckley, “The Naz”

 

 Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.  It is the opium of the people.

Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction (1843)

 

 

 I live in what is referred to as a “Catholic country” in South America.  The Church and its rituals and its paraphernalia are ubiquitous.

 

I have a profound disrespect for institutionalized religion, and that most certainly includes the Roman Catholic Church.

 

I make it a point, however, not to disparage individual believers or to show disrespect, although, if the circumstances permit, I will quite willingly enter into debate on questions of faith and belief.

 

This weekend I had occasion to attend the first communion ceremony of a ten year old niece.  I sat patiently through the mass and participated in the après mass family photo taking and then the party at the parents’ home.

 

Here is a short list of what offended me about the ceremony:

 

  • The indoctrination of young children

 

  • The emphasis on confession, guilt and a repressive notion of sin whereby war can be OK, but masturbation or pre-marital intercourse can send you to you know where

 

  • The false, arrogant and unctuous attitude of the priest and his attempt to appear “cool”

 

  • The display of ostentatious wealth in a dirt-poor country (this was an upper-middle class all white congregation); the money spent on designer dresses, thousand dollar suits, beauty parlour hair-dos,and expensive digital cameras could feed the population of the near-by slum ghetto for a year

 

Here is a short list of what offends me about the Roman Catholic Church:

 

  • A pope who is a former Nazi youth and who, as a Cardinal and chief defender of the faith, did all he could to destroy local autonomy and suffocate the promotion of Liberation Theology

 

  • The Church patriarchy, its misogyny, the policy of celibacy, its protection of child abuser priests, and its aggressive stand on therapeutic abortion, which has caused untold death and suffering for women around the globe

 

  • The Church’s past and present active support for dictatorships and authoritarian regimes

 

I endured a mass through which I sat with bitterness in my heart, and this little essay is my attempt to get it off my chest.  Having done that I would like to end on a positive note by saying that some good things happened as well.  Children were made to feel special (this was “first communion weekend” in Ecuador, with thousands participating; at the mass I attended there were about 35 children taking their first communion).  It brought families together in joyful celebration.  Most children will end up living their Catholicism as a cultural artefact and will resist the authoritarianism of the Church.

 

Karl Marx’s classic statement (cited above) about religion is usually taken out of context and wrongly considered to be anti-religious.  I do not believe it is inconsistent to be Marxist and Christian (or any other religion) at the same time.  Even within the Catholic Church there have been and are those who struggle and sacrifice for the good of humanity.  Marx was not a critic of the spiritual; rather he wished to replace the misguided hope for the relief of suffering via faith in a future heaven with the revolutionary struggle to transform human social structures as a means of alleviating human suffering on earth.

ps. for the record, in case God is listening, I consider myself an agnostic, not an atheist, but I couldn’t resist the oxymoron title.

 

 

 

 

Catholic Church gives D.C. ultimatum November 13, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Human Rights, LGBT, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1 comment so far

jesus-washing-foot

[FYI  Two weeks ago the Pope made an offer to Anglicans to become Catholics, and yesterday the Vatican announced the search for extra-terrestrial life (yes, seriously).Now this news where the carrot routine has been replaced by the stick.   NT]

Roger’s Comment: TAKE AWAY THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH’S TAX EXEMPT STATUS!


Same-sex marriage bill, as written, called a threat to social service contracts

 

 

By Tim Craig and Michelle Boorstein

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

The clash escalates the dispute over the same-sex marriage proposal between the council and the archdiocese, which has generally stayed out of city politics.

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church. City leaders said the church is not the dominant provider of any particular social service, but the church pointed out that it supplements funding for city programs with $10 million from its own coffers.

“All of those services will be adversely impacted if the exemption language remains so narrow,” Jane G. Belford, chancellor of the Washington Archdiocese, wrote to the council this week.

The church’s influence seems limited. In separate interviews Wednesday, council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) referred to the church as “somewhat childish.” Another council member, David A. Catania (I-At Large), said he would rather end the city’s relationship with the church than give in to its demands.

“They don’t represent, in my mind, an indispensable component of our social services infrastructure,” said Catania, the sponsor of the same-sex marriage bill and the chairman of the Health Committee.

The standoff appears to be among the harshest between a government and a faith-based group over the rights of same-sex couples. Advocates for same-sex couples said they could not immediately think of other places where a same-sex marriage law had set off a break with a major faith-based provider of social services.

The council is expected to pass the same-sex marriage bill next month, but the measure continues to face strong opposition from a number of groups that are pushing for a referendum on the issue.

The archdiocese’s statement follows a vote Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary to reject an amendment that would have allowed individuals, based on their religious beliefs, to decline to provide services for same-sex weddings.

“Lets say an individual caterer is a staunch Christian and someone wants him to do a cake with two grooms on top,” said council member Yvette M. Alexander (D-Ward 6), the sponsor of the amendment. “Why can’t they say, based on their religious beliefs, ‘I can’t do something like that’?”

After the vote, the archdiocese sent out a statement accusing the council of ignoring the right of religious freedom. Gibbs said Wednesday that without Alexander’s amendment and other proposed changes, the measure has too narrow an exemption. She said religious groups that receive city funds would be required to give same-sex couples medical benefits, open adoptions to same-sex couples and rent a church hall to a support group for lesbian couples.

Peter Rosenstein of the Campaign for All D.C. Families accused the church of trying to “blackmail the city.”

“The issue here is they are using public funds, and to allow people to discriminate with public money is unacceptable,” Rosenstein said.

Rosenstein and other gay rights activists have strong support on the council. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), chairman of the judiciary committee, said the council “will not legislate based on threats.” “The problem with the individual exemption is anybody could discriminate based on their assertion of religious principle,” Mendelson said. “There were many people back in the 1950s and ’60s, during the civil rights era, that said separation of the races was ordained by God.”

Catania, who said he has been the biggest supporter of Catholic Charities on the council, said he is baffled by the church’s stance. From 2006 through 2008, Catania said, Catholic Charities received about $8.2 million in city contracts, as well as several hundred thousand dollars’ worth this year through his committee.

“If they find living under our laws so oppressive that they can no longer take city resources, the city will have to find an alternative partner to step in to fill the shoes,” Catania said. He also said Catholic Charities was involved in only six of the 102 city-sponsored adoptions last year.

Terry Lynch, head of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, said he did not know of any other group in the city that was making such a threat.

“I’ve not seen any spillover into programming. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen if [the bill] passes,” he said.

Cheh said she hopes the Catholic Church will reconsider its stance.

“Are they really going to harm people because they have a philosophical disagreement with us on one issue?” Cheh asked. “I hope, in the silver light of day, when this passes, because it will pass, they will not really act on this threat.”


Benedict XVI on Aids and Condoms April 6, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Health, Religion.
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
add a comment

Joseph S. O’Leary

http://josephsoleary.typepad.com, March 29, 2009

UPDATE: My thoughts are in The Irish Times April 1: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0401/1224243794437.html

Hans Kung has spoken out strongly, claiming the John Paul II and Benedict XVI will be remembered as among the chief culprits for the spread of Aids: http://dieunousaimechretiensetgay.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/04/02/derives-et-esperance.html

(This article also notes how the Vatican is now packing the ranks of the hierarchy worldwide with extreme reactionaries. If there is to be a reform of the Church, it is more and more clear that an overturning of many of these appointments will be necessary. Perhaps concerned Catholics should start to draw up proscription lists of obstructionist Cardinals and Bishops — Caffarra, Bagnasco, Ruini, Castrillon Hoyos, Medina Estevez, Cañizares, Cardoso Sobrinho, Rouco Varela, Ranjith, Burke, Martino, DiNardo, Pell, Pujats, Grocholewski, Meisner, Haas, Okogie, … the list would be very long. The laity and clergy, who have been increasingly shut out of appointment processes, should be allowed to reclaim their voice by having a say in which hierarchs have to go. There are many calls for the resignation of Benedict XVI: http://www.golias-editions.fr/spip.php?article2749. He is apparently unpopular even with those who elected him, if this report has any credibility: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2009/04/01/cardinals_and_bishops_have_run_away_from_the_pope_like_the_apostles_in_gethsemane_says_leading_catholic_magazine.)

A scapegoat must be found for recent Vatican debacles, and the lot has fallen on Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, the rather sympathetic press officer of the Pope. Prediction: His replacement will do a worse job of cushioning the Church against papal gaffes. For these gaffes are not gaffes at all; they represent the settled views and method of communication of Joseph Ratzinger for the last four decades. This will not change

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/popes-press-spokesman-to-resign.html 

http://www.kreuz.net/article.8913.html

***

The ‘broken kettle’ argument is frequently referred to by psychoanalysts, and it goes something like this:

‘The kettle I lent you was broken when you gave it back.’ ‘No, it was in perfect condition when I returned it; you never lent me a kettle anyway; and it was already broken when you lent it to me.’

Reading Catholic defenses of the Vatican stance on condoms, I discern the same revealing paralogism:

‘Your teaching is causing mass deaths in Africa.’ ‘No, our teaching is the only teaching that is effective against Aids; even if condoms are more effective, they cannot be tolerated in any case because we see them as intrinsically evil; no one is dying because of our teaching, because it has no influence.’

One thing is clear, in any case. The famous words intrinsice inhonestum of Paul VI in Humanae Vitae are being applied with a vengeance to the use of condoms, even to the point of a quasi-Manichean view of these friendly implements as being the very embodiment of Evil.

The Vatican considers condoms to be so evil that they cannot be used even to save the millions of lives threatened by Aids. Moreover, the Vatican also claims that condoms are not effective against Aids but actually worsen the problem.

http://tv.repubblica.it/mondo/aids-preservativi-non-servono/30667?video

http://jp.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=100582

http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_df88ai.htm

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_20031201_family-values-safe-sex-trujillo_en.html

http://www.wf-f.org/Lopez-Trujillooncondoms.html

http://www.zenit.org/article-8666?l=english

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=6641

http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/hivaids/bishopsopposecondoms.asp

There are, however, sane bishops who support the use of condoms:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/03/pope_condoms_and_aids.html

http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/topics/hivaids/bishopssupportcondoms.asp

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/04/10/why-the-pope-is-wrong-about-condoms.html

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/bishop-says-condoms-sometimes-needed.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29404-2005Jan22.html

http://enlightenedcatholicism-colkoch.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-is-not-bishop-who-says-condoms-are.html

http://thewildreed.blogspot.com/2009/03/in-this-example-of-dissent-i-find-hope.html

http://www.golias-editions.fr/spip.php?article2734

Deeply impressive is the humane and dialogal approach of the Archbishop of Canterbury:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?l=JP&hl=ja&v=lkIoGAKf0cg&eurl=http://fathertlistenstotheworld.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMKHUSyyf94

Defenders of the intransigent Vatican stand cite the Philippines as a country where abstinence has worked in curbing Aids. But this Filipino voice suggests that this may be an ideological idealization:

http://filipinovoices.com/benedict-condemns-millions-to-die-of-hivaids

A petition may be sent to the Vatican: http://www.avaaz.org/en/pope_benedict_petition/98.php?cl_taf_sign=7141c1859f7afd4ccda82fa4a08f01be

Here are some other protests:

1. Popular:

http://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/nachrichten/2009/3/18/news-114744837/detail.html

http://namitembo.blogspot.com/2009/03/popes-willful-cultural-deafness.html

http://links.org.au/node/521

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/protests-in-paris-over-popes-condom.html

http://www.france24.com/en/20090322-youths-clash-notre-dame-condom-protest-pope-benedict-paris-protest

http://benoit-catho-homo.skynetblogs.be/post/6827485/ca-devait-arriver

http://jp.truveo.com/Pope%E2%80%99s-condom-stand-challenged/id/3481014947

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/vatican-to-receive-condoms-by-post.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,615820,00.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5976192.ece

http://www.repubblica.it/2009/03/sezioni/esteri/benedetto-xvi-32/mappe-25mar/mappe-25mar.html

http://www.dignityusa.org/press/gay-catholic-groups-condemn-pope%E2%80%99s-statements-africa-condom-use

2. From Governments and Politicians:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/5015580/Vatican-in-new-row-over-attempts-to-alter-Pope-Benedict-XVIs-Aids-comments.html

http://www.la-croix.com/afp.static/pages/090326192208.y4trhl15.htm

http://www.la-croix.com/afp.static/pages/090329125553.b0srx1ye.htm

http://www.repubblica.it/2009/03/sezioni/esteri/benedetto-xvi-32/scontro-belgio/scontro-belgio.html

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/04/belgium-to-lodge-condom-complaint.html

http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2009/03/18/pour-alain-juppe-le-pape-vit-dans-une-situation-d-autisme-total_1169447_3212.html

http://www.afriquemagazine.com/article/article.asp?id_article=1168340203125

http://www.lastampa.it/redazione/cmsSezioni/esteri/200903articoli/42029girata.asp

3. From Health Agencies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ni/2009/03/the_pope_and_condoms_1.html (an important critique of the much touted remarks of Edward C. Green — hat tip to Michael Bayly. I note that Green actually supports the distribution of condoms, though finding it unsuccessful in Africa because of specific, contingent features of African sexual culture. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html; also: http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=2989.)

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/world-health-assembly-pope-benedict.html

http://data.unaids.org/pub/BaseDocument/2009/20090318_position_paper_condoms_en.pdf

http://www.thebody.com/content/art51035.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,613871,00.html

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=19561

http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKLR110752._CH_.2420

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/cameroon/5007124/Anger-as-Pope-Benedict-XVI-says-condoms-make-Aids-worse.html

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/Pope39s-criticism-of-condoms-has.5097019.jp

http://www.golias-editions.fr/spip.php?article2739

http://www.derwesten.de/nachrichten/waz/2009/3/18/news-114788913/detail.html

4. From US Bloggers:

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/03/follow-up-benedict-on-condoms-dreher-on.html

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/03/shakin-rattlin-rollin-american-catholic.html

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/03/condoms-cause-aids-cruel-twisted-logic.html

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/03/benedict-bush-and-condoms-in-africa.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_03/017328.php

http://judiphilly.blogspot.com/2009/03/cartoon-of-day_19.html

http://thewildreed.blogspot.com/2009/03/popes-message-of-ignorance-in-africa.html

http://thewildreed.blogspot.com/2009/03/pope-accused-of-distorting-scientific.html

http://creativeadvance.blogspot.com/2009/03/popes-condom-quandary-facebook-groups.html

http://enlightenedcatholicism-colkoch.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-culture-of-life-is-really-culture.html

http://rogerhollander.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/condom-papa-the-pope-blinded-by-the-fantasy-of-abstinence/

http://ftmackinc.newsvine.com/_news/2009/03/20/2572762-the-pope-aids-the-common-american-religious-charlatan

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=2975

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=2928

http://blogs.nyu.edu/fas/dri/aidwatch/2009/03/whose_worse_the_pope_or_the_co.html

5. From Europe:

http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2009/03/vatican-is-not-pro-life.

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Is-Pope39s-stance-on-condoms.5092167.jp

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=20724

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/bishop-claims-aids-virus-can-penetrate.html

http://www.golias-editions.fr/spip.php?article2740

http://dieunousaimechretiensetgay.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/03/30/offensive-contre-le-preservatif.html

http://dieunousaimechretiensetgay.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/03/26/rejet-du-realisme.html

http://dieunousaimechretiensetgay.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/03/24/agression-fasciste.html

http://dieunousaimechretiensetgay.blogspirit.com/archive/2009/03/21/eglise-africaine-criminelle.html

http://benoit-catho-homo.skynetblogs.be/post/6819176/agir-de-facon-responsable

http://donfrancobarbero.blogspot.com/2009/03/caro-papa.html

http://donfrancobarbero.blogspot.com/2009/03/caro-cardinal-bagnasco.html

http://www.notiziegay.com/?p=26235

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/437/462057/text/

A number of Catholic defenders of the Pope cite Uganda as an example of a successful condom-free policy: http://anneminard.com/2009/03/18/day-54-pope-benedict-xvi-condoms-and-aids/

http://www.splendoroftruth.com/curtjester/archives/2009/03/pope-still-cath.php

However, this cannot be right, since the famous ABC policy means “Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms.” See: http://www.thebody.com/content/art9249.html

Other defenders (or enablers):

http://www.journalducameroun.com/article.php?aid=1008

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTNlNDc1MmMwNDM0OTEzMjQ4NDc0ZGUyOWYxNmEzN2E=

http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/benedict-cameroon-tale-two-trips

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/04/african-cardinal-says-popes-remarks.html

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/04/french-bishops-rally-to-popes-defence.html

http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090325_1.htm

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/rc20090329a2.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0325/1224243368629.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0326/1224243450529.html

http://www.zenit.org/article-25430?l=english

http://www.zenit.org/article-25511?l=english

http://www.zenit.org/article-25485?l=english

http://www.zenit.org/article-25491?l=english

http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/03/is-the-pope-more-than-just-another-pretty-smart-theologian.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/william_rees_mogg/article5955647.ece

http://www.spectator.co.uk/faithbased/3466376/questioning-the-will-of-god.thtml

http://www.catholicpillowfight.com/blog759.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/george_pitcher/blog/2009/03/18/why_the_pope_is_right_about_condoms

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2009/03/18/the_pope_condoms_and_the_aids_mafia

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2009/03/20/the_popes_worst_enemies_are_catholics

http://www.repubblica.it/2009/03/sezioni/esteri/benedetto-xvi-32/risposta-avvenire/risposta-avvenire.html

http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/stats-never-lie-media-usually-do.html

http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-condom-lies.html

http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/many-questions.html

http://www.repubblica.it/2009/03/sezioni/esteri/benedetto-xvi-32/risposta/risposta.html

http://lesalonbeige.blogs.com/my_weblog/2009/03/mgr-fort-soutient-benoit-xvi.html

http://www.golias-editions.fr/spip.php?article2738

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1337637?eng=y

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1337717?eng=y

http://e-deo.info/archives/7134

http://e-deo.info/archives/7197

http://e-deo.info/archives/7155

http://e-deo.info/archives/7144

http://e-deo.info/archives/7382

http://e-deo.info/archives/7489

http://e-deo.info/archives/7459

http://e-deo.info/archives/7445

http://eucharistiemisericor.free.fr/index.php?page=1903091_phrase

http://luigicrespi.clandestinoweb.com/2009/03/ratzingher-non-mi-piace-ma-sullafrica-ha-ragione/

http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.com/2009/03/popes-message-is-not-problem.html

http://politischunpolitisches.blogspot.com/2009/03/der-gummi-papst.html

http://debatte.welt.de/kommentare/118555/das+lachen+des+papstes

http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1237227649921

http://www.benoitjaiconfianceentoi.org/Benoit-XVI-et-le-Sida-petit.html

http://www.imgpress.it/notizia.asp?idnotizia=41146&idsezione=4 From this piece one learns that writers in Avvenire, a review associated with the Italian bishops, sees the attacks on the Pope as due to a massive concerted plan in which “the little hand of international Freemasonry” is to be found. And this plot is directed not against the Pope’s views on condoms but against the teaching on social justice that he proclaimed in Africa. This comes from Massimo Introvigne, a controversial student of cults, who claims that modern scriptural exegesis is the work of Satan. So much wackiness among the Pope’s defenders..

http://paparatzinger2-blograffaella.blogspot.com/2009/03/e-tempo-che-la-santa-sede-richiami-il.html

http://www.kreuz.net/article.8919.html

http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/04/the-arrogant-gene-the-autobiography-of-richard-dawkins.html

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 98 other followers