"Tallying Church abuse"
Sister Sheila McNiff , coordinator of the Victims Assistance Ministry of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has an op-ed (click on this post's title), "Tallying Church Abuse," in today's L.A. Times.
She illustrates her essay with a graph "put together by the archdiocese" that shows the number of abuse cases charged for each year from 1931 to 2006.
The chart indicates that the cases charged each year began to rise in the late 1940s, jumped in the late 1950s, reached their highest in the 1960s and 1970s through 1981, and have tailed off since 1982.
We should note that the rise in abuse cases among the clergy and the rest of society began after the liar and bisexual monster Alfred Kinsey issued his widely publicized but fraudulent "report" in 1947 that falsely claimed "children are sexual from birth" and most men commit sex offenses and perversions.
That "report" prompted state legislatures in the next 20 years to weaken and even abolish laws against sex crimes and to put burdens on crime victims, such as opening their past history to questioning in open court.
The Kinsey "report" also greased the skids to mainstreaming pornography, to the 1960s explosion of sexual sins and to the creation of the field of "sexperts" who have exposed even seminarians and priests to pornographic sex miseducation that teaches that sexual sins are not sins.
Sister Sheila says that starting in 1987, the Archdiocese initiated "ever more effective methods for dealing with claims of abuse."
She does not mention the, ah, less than "effective methods" the Cardinal took with Michael Wempe and Michael S. Baker.
We should not let what our long-deceased Cardinals did or did not do distract us from what needs doing now.
Even in the wreckage of the trail of victims, of perceived cover-ups, of scandal, and of loss of faith, not to mention $774 million in payouts, the Cardinal still presents us with Religious Education Congress speakers who tell us to read homosexual books and see homosexual propaganda movies.
Something is still wrong, and some things have got to change. Do you agree?
(Yes, of course I know that not all the molestations have been homosexual. But the majority have been.)
She illustrates her essay with a graph "put together by the archdiocese" that shows the number of abuse cases charged for each year from 1931 to 2006.
The chart indicates that the cases charged each year began to rise in the late 1940s, jumped in the late 1950s, reached their highest in the 1960s and 1970s through 1981, and have tailed off since 1982.
We should note that the rise in abuse cases among the clergy and the rest of society began after the liar and bisexual monster Alfred Kinsey issued his widely publicized but fraudulent "report" in 1947 that falsely claimed "children are sexual from birth" and most men commit sex offenses and perversions.
That "report" prompted state legislatures in the next 20 years to weaken and even abolish laws against sex crimes and to put burdens on crime victims, such as opening their past history to questioning in open court.
The Kinsey "report" also greased the skids to mainstreaming pornography, to the 1960s explosion of sexual sins and to the creation of the field of "sexperts" who have exposed even seminarians and priests to pornographic sex miseducation that teaches that sexual sins are not sins.
Sister Sheila says that starting in 1987, the Archdiocese initiated "ever more effective methods for dealing with claims of abuse."
She does not mention the, ah, less than "effective methods" the Cardinal took with Michael Wempe and Michael S. Baker.
We should not let what our long-deceased Cardinals did or did not do distract us from what needs doing now.
Even in the wreckage of the trail of victims, of perceived cover-ups, of scandal, and of loss of faith, not to mention $774 million in payouts, the Cardinal still presents us with Religious Education Congress speakers who tell us to read homosexual books and see homosexual propaganda movies.
Something is still wrong, and some things have got to change. Do you agree?
(Yes, of course I know that not all the molestations have been homosexual. But the majority have been.)
posted by Quintero at 1:48 PM
8 Comments:
I absolutely agree, things do need to change. At the top. The Faith in any community is a reflection of whose leading them. While the change that needs to happen probally won't till 2011 (or when the Pope gets here, whichever comes last). But I think the things that we can do is continue to educate with the Truth, teaching Theology of the Body at a younger age just might help :)
Dear Joe of St. Therese,
We surely need "continuing to educate with the Truth," all right.
We don't want to go too young with teaching "theology of the body," but it is a fact that we need to teach young people the truth about life and love and marriage.
Very much true, all things, put in their place when the time is right, i'm certianly not advocating for the full TOB given to a 7 year old (although I know of several smart ones), but I am for promoting the message of TOB. Which I know will do everyone good.
From [Proto-]Diogenes'
"Off the Record" at Catholic World News
(http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/offtherecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&recnum=4530):
"mahony gloriosus"
His whole nature fails to persuade. That is because he has never remained silent about any of his good deeds. -- F. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882
The unsinkable Cardinal Mahony continues to amaze and confound us with yet another escape from self-created calamity. The latest episode concerns Mahony's claim (made during an address to Archdiocesan priests in October) that he had been assaulted in mid-summer by attackers who, he said, were upset over the sex abuse scandal.
Mahony's account stacks one teetering improbability on top of another. He claims to have been attacked while walking to drop off letters at a mailbox near his cathedral. The notion of the Cardinal's trotting off to the postbox himself is as plausible as his taking it into his head to get a mop and bucket and scrub the sacristy floor after hours. If he did, he'd have a photographer present.
One priest who attended the conference says Mahony further claims he was hospitalized as a consequence of the assault and took several weeks to recover. Are we to imagine that Mahony's assailants recognized him but that the doctors and staff at the hospital didn't? Or is it that everyone at the hospital forgot to mention they'd had a battered cardinal to tend to? Or that in the weeks that followed no one happened to notice the Archbishop of Los Angeles wasn't as sprightly as usual?
Mahony did not report the incident to the police. According to the priest-informant, the Cardinal declined to do so "because he felt he could offer it up in reparation for the sins of others." A noble gesture. Odd though, that his notion of "offering it up" included suffering in silence with respect to the police but not with respect to his fellow clergy. It's probably not a coincidence that the police could check up on the claim and the clergy couldn't. In any case, it's hard to see how suffering in tactically-selective silence accomplishes much in the way of reparation.
The commander of the LAPD's central region says the police are unable to investigate the incident unless the putative victim makes a crime report. An editorial in the Stockton (CA) Record adds the detail that "Los Angeles police have contacted Mahony's office but still are waiting to hear from him." In response to media inquiries, we're told that "The Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese has declined to comment"
"The annual meeting of archdiocesan priests is a private meeting. Any conversation that took place during that meeting was between the priests and their bishop," spokeswoman Carolina Guevara said in an e-mail.
And there we have it. Lacking even the name of the hospital at which the Cardinal was treated, the news media can't get to the bottom of the story, and what looked at first like an embarrassment will, somewhat mistily, remain as an edifying act of reparation and timely instance of solidarity with the wounded clergy of the Archdiocese. Unsinkable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
postscript: OTR wishes to quash the baseless rumor that the Cardinal has hired O.J. Simpson to assist him in the search for the real assailants.
Surely, had the Cardinal claimed he was hospitalized, that would have been in the original Daily News story, but it wasn't. I think Proto-Diogenes' priest friend didn't get it right...none of the priests who spoke to the news media made any mention of hospitalization
Cardinal Mahony does indeed do his own errands and household chores. He is spotted around town pumping his own gas, making purchases, and, yes, mailing letters. I remember one priest telling me that he once telephoned the cardinal at St. Vibiana's rectory and the cardinal was installing a new toilet in one of the bathrooms.
Dear Anonymous 1:13 p.m.,
As I've cited elsewhere in this blogspot, Fr. Shea did say the Cardinal was hospitalized.
But anyway, thank you for relaying the news that the Cardinal does his own chores.
Here's a true story about President Reagan. When he was recovering in the hospital after being shot, a nurse came in his room and found him, the President of the United States, down on his hands and knees, cleaning up water or juice he'd spilled, so the nurses would not have to do it.
Dear Q,
I saw in the Lopez column today that Father Shea told the Associated Press that the cardinal was hospitalized. So, I apologize for my inaccurate comment that the claim had not been reported by the media. However, none of the priests who attended the priests' assembly, and to whom I spoke, said that Cardinal Mahony mentioned anything about hospitalization. Perhaps Father Shea knows more from a follow-up conversation with the cardinal?
Dear Anonymous 3:02 p.m.,
Thank you for writing back. It's interesting that the padres with whom you spoke didn't mention any hospitalization. Maybe he just was treated at an ER and didn't have an overnight stay?
As for more news about all this, maybe we'll just have to let things sort themselves out, now. Maybe we won't hear more.
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