IT WAS JUST A TRAINING ISSUE

Thank God the Conference of US Catholic Bishops was able to clear up the priest abuse issue. It was the fault of Woodstock and poor training. I guess the thousands of predator priests were out sick at the Seminary on the day they taught them to not stick their dicks into the mouths of 10 year old boys. Below is a link to the latest Catholic Heirarchy coverup. They can keep writing reports to rationalize and try to explain the indefensible. Until Bishops and Cardinals are taken away in handcuffs, I will not believe a word these corrupt evil men spew out to the public.

http://www.usccb.org/mr/causes-and-context.shtml

It takes a comedian to make this issue as clear as can be. The Catholic Church is in denial and is still in coverup mode. I hope they are losing billions in contributions. They deserve to pay dearly for their evil acts.

“Do: Give sermons, counsel your flock, preach the good word. Don’t: Molest anyone… ever!” –Stephen Colbert

Flawed analysis in priest report

The idea that individuals are responsible before God for their sins and before the law for their crimes is nearly universal.

But a report released last week that explores the context and causes of child sexual abuse by priests in this country at times seems to downplay personal responsibility and lays the blame on the permissive society of the 1960s and 1970s. That’s a shame, and it calls for a firm and quick response from the church itself.

The report, commissioned by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, was undercut by one of its main conclusions: namely, that the hippies of the ’60s and the libertines of the ’70s were in some ways responsible for some priests’ reprehensible actions.

Any attempt to deflect responsibility away from those who actually perpetrated the abuse (and those in the church hierarchy who aided and abetted it) is absolutely antithetical to the principle of individual responsibility, enshrined in both American jurisprudence and Christian theology.

Elsewhere in the report, the authors use the word “vulnerability” in describing priests who committed the crimes.

The use of that word is bitterly ironic as applied to these priests. It was they who found and abused their young, truly vulnerable victims. And priests are called to rise above sin, not descend to its most disturbing fringe.

The report also makes a distinction between those priests who preyed on teenagers and those who abused prepubescent children. While that may matter to the psychiatrists who diagnosed and treated them, it is of no comfort to a 14-year-old abuse victim that his attacker was not, technically, a pedophile, but some other classification of deviant.

In explaining the downward trend of such incidents since the mid-1980s, the report points to the victims’ advocates groups calling for justice and tougher responses to abuse by bishops.

But for far too long, Catholic leaders looked the other way. Many people, male and female, gay and straight, came of age in the decades marked by changing mores. However, very few of them ever decided, even at their most promiscuous, to sexually abuse a minor. Too many priests did. And they got away with it for far too long.

The value of this study is in its painstaking and quantitive analysis of the scandal. Unfortunately, some of its conclusions are lacking the rigor of its statistical models.

What is called for now is a response from the Catholic Church that recognizes the role of personal responsibility — for priests and for members of the church hierarchy who allowed these acts to go on for decades.

Church Report Cites Social Tumult in Priest Scandals

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

Published: May 17, 2011

A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.

Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.

Known occurrences of sexual abuse of minors by priests rose sharply during those decades, the report found, and the problem grew worse when the church’s hierarchy responded by showing more care for the perpetrators than the victims.

The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.

But this study is likely to be regarded as the most authoritative analysis of the scandal in the Catholic Church in America. The study, initiated in 2006, was conducted by a team of researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City at a cost of $1.8 million. About half was provided by the bishops, with additional money contributed by Catholic organizations and foundations. The National Institute of Justice, the research agency of the United States Department of Justice, supplied about $280,000.

The report was released Wednesday by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, but the Religion News Service published an account of the report on its Web site on Tuesday. A copy of the report was also obtained by The New York Times. The bishops have said they hope the report will advance the understanding and prevention of child sexual abuse in society at large.

The researchers concluded that it was not possible for the church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance. Priests who abused minors have no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or mood disorders that distinguished them from priests who had not abused, the researchers found.

Since the scandal broke, conservatives in the church have blamed gay priests for perpetrating the abuse, while liberals have argued that the all-male, celibate culture of the priesthood was the cause. This report will satisfy neither flank.

The report notes that homosexual men began entering the seminaries “in noticeable numbers” from the late 1970s through the 1980s. By the time this cohort entered the priesthood, in the mid-1980s, the reports of sexual abuse of minors by priests began to drop and then to level off. If anything, the report says, the abuse decreased as more gay priests began serving the church.

Many more boys than girls were victimized, the report says, not because the perpetrators were gay, but simply because the priests had more access to boys than to girls, in parishes, schools and extracurricular activities.

In one of the most counterintuitive findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.

“Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests,’ ” the report says.

That finding is likely to prove controversial, in part because the report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those age 10 and under. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. If the John Jay researchers had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent.

The report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2002,” is the second produced by researchers at John Jay College. The first, on the “nature and scope” of the problem, was released in 2004.

Even before seeing it, victims advocates attacked the report as suspect because it relies on data provided by the church’s dioceses and religious orders.

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a Web site that compiles reports on abuse cases, said, “There aren’t many dioceses where prosecutors have gotten involved, but in every single instance there’s a vast gap — a multiplier of two, three or four times — between the numbers of perpetrators that the prosecutors find and what the bishops released.”

David Clohessy, national director of the Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that while the report contained no surprises, it had nonetheless been a disappointment because it did not include recommendations for far-reaching reforms, including limiting the power of bishops. Mr. Clohessy said this was critical because bishops had covered up many instances of sexual abuse by priests in the past.

“Predictably and conveniently, the bishops have funded a report that says what they’ve said all along, and what they wanted to hear back,” he said. “Fundamentally, they’ve found that they needn’t even consider any substantive changes.”

Robert M. Hoatson, a priest and a founder of Road to Recovery, which offers counseling and referrals to victims, said the idea that the sexual and social upheavals of past decades were to blame for the abuse of children was an attempt to shift responsibility from church leaders. Mr. Hoatson said he had been among those who had been abused.“It deflects responsibility from the bishops and puts it on to a sociological problem,” he said. “This is a people problem. It wasn’t because of the ’70s, and it wasn’t the ’60s, and it wasn’t because of the 1450s. This was something individuals did.”

Kristine Ward, the chairwoman of the National Survivor Advocates Coalition, said the cultural explanation did not appear to explain why abuse cases within the Catholic church have shaken places from Australia and Ireland to South America. “Does the culture of the U.S. in the 1960s explain that? It’s hard to believe,” she said.

William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a conservative Catholic group, however said he believes permissiveness in the church in the 1960s and 1970s – particularly at seminaries – had been a significant reason for the rise in sexual abuse. Mr. Donohue said that while he generally supported the report’s findings, he believed that the study seemed to have purposefully avoided linking abuse cases with the increase in the number of gay men who became priests during the 1960s and 1970s. “The authors go through all sorts of contortions to deny the obvious – that obviously, homosexuality was at work,” Mr. Donohue said.

In Philadelphia, where a grand jury in February found that as many as 37 priests suspected of behavior ranging from sexual abuse to inappropriate actions were still serving in ministry. The archdiocese initially rejected the grand jury’s findings, but soon suspended 26 priests from ministry.

An essay in the Catholic magazine Commonweal last week by Ana Maria Catanzaro, who heads the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s sexual-abuse review board, which is supposed to advise the archdiocese on how to handle abuse cases, said that the board was shocked to learn about the dozens of cases uncovered by the grand jury. Her essay raised questions about whether bishops provide accurate data even to their own, in-house review boards.

Still, the John Jay report says that when it comes to analyzing the incidence and causes of sexual abuse, “No organization has undertaken a study of itself in the manner of the Catholic Church.”

Because there are no comparable studies conducted by other institutions, religious or secular, the report says, “It is impossible to accurately compare the rate of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church to rates of abuse in other organizations.”

EVILNESS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH – UPDATED

UPDATE

I am updating my post from yesterday and making it my featured post. I’m so infuriated by this story that I’m seeing red. The local radio station was reporting the story this morning and they said that the reason the Grand Jury did not indict Cardinal Bevilacqua was because he is 86 years old and in poor health. Since when does your age have anything to do with whether you have committed a crime. And make no bones about it, this man committed a horrific crime. He knowingly allowed deviant evil predators to rape 10 year old boys. He transferred these fiends to other parishes, allowing them to rape again. This man should be thrown into prison like a common punk criminal.

The evil acts of these priests is almost beyond comprehension. You need to understand the point of view of a 10 year old boy in Catholic school. You are in 4th grade. You still play with army men. You play little league baseball. You are taught from 1st grade on that priests are Jesus Christ. You are in awe of priests. You are a little bit afraid, because they have the power to forgive your sins. A priest is an all-powerful figure. Now imagine your ten year old son with a priest’s dick in his mouth and the priest sticking his dick in your ten year old son’s ass. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If anyone had done this to my sons, I would get a gun and I would kill these deviant fuckers. I would not care about the consequences. First I would beat them within an inch of their lives and then I’d put a bullet in their heads. Then I’d go to confession, say I’m sorry, say 5 Our Fathers, and then according to the Catholic Church everything would be OK.

Think about the fact that Bishops, Cardinals, and even the Pope not only covered up these acts, they shipped these deviants to other parishes. When told of these acts, Cardinal Bevilacqua’s first question was whether the statute of limitations was up. THINK ABOUT THAT!!!!

I was born Catholic. Do I believe in God? Yes I do. I do wonder how he can allow this to happen, but I do believe in God.

Do I believe in the Catholic Church? NO I DO NOT. The Catholic Church is an Institution made by men for the benefit of men. The MEN who run the Catholic Church care about power and money. They are no different than Wall Street Bankers. These MEN have not been brought to justice. The Catholic Heirarchy is Evil because they have committed evil acts. Until they are brought to justice anything the Catholic Church does or says is suspect.

YESTERDAY

It has been many months since my last post about the Catholic Church Sexual Abuse coverup. The Phila Archdiocese had been shaken by a priest abuse scandal a few years ago. When the list of evil child fucking priests was revealed, I saw the name Father Shea on the list. He was the assistant pastor at my parish when I was a kid. Not only did this little boy fucker not go to jail, Cardinal Bevalaqua didn’t even defrock him. He lives out his days in the St Francis Home for elderly priests in Darby, PA. It seems that the statute of limitations was up for all the abuse cases put forward by the Grand Jury.

The part that infuriated me was not that there were child fucker deviant priests. There are sexual deviants all over the place. The heirarchy of the Catholic church – Pastors, Bishops, Cardinals and even the Pope, covered up this sexual abuse. They did not turn these evil scum over to the police. They knowingly transferred them to other parishes where they could satisfy their evil urges again and again. For these acts, the heirarchy of the Catholic Church deserve to burn in the hottest part of HELL.

The Catholic Church PR machine assured the public that they had rooted out the evil sexual predators and the scandal was a thing of the past. Pass the collection plate please. No one in the Catholic heirarchy went to jail. No Cardinal or Bishop was defrocked. The Pope has been implicated in the coverup. The Catholic Church is the richest church on earth. They fight every accusation. They pay hush money to the families of the victims. They close parishes and don’t build new high schools because they have to keep paying millions to the victims. All done in secret.

But the truth keeps being revealed. Below is one of the most disgusting stories you will ever read. The Grand Jury has just issued a 128 report of evilness that will make your blood boil. I have provided a link to the report, but I’ve posted the first 5 pages below for your enjoyment. This evilness permeates the Philadelphia Archdiocese. The current and past Cardinals of Phila should go to jail.

I spent 12 years in Catholic School. I went to church every week. I’ve sent all three of my boys to Catholic School. In the past year, I’ve become so disgusted by the leadership of the Catholic Church, that I stopped going to Mass and giving them any money. I will never give another dime to this corrupt evil organization. They are no better than the mafia or the criminal banks that I rail about.

I judge people and organizations by their actions, not their words. The actions of the Catholic Church are vile, evil and disgusting. These MEN portray themselves as holy and representing Jesus Christ. Nothing could be further from the truth. May they all burn in hell.

http://www.phila.gov/districtattorney/PDFs/clergyAbuse2-finalReport.pdf

4 priests charged in sex abuse investigation

By David O’Reilly

Inquirer Staff Writer

Monsignor William Lynn, former head of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s Office for Clergy, has been charged for allegedly failing to protect children from sexual abuse by priests, District Attorney Seth Williams announced today.

Two felony counts of endangering the welfare were lodged against Lynn follow a grand jury investigation, Williams said at a news conference.

Williams also announced the Revs. Charles Engelhardt, 64, and Edward Avery, 68, and Bernard Shero, 47, a former 6th grade teacher at St. Jerome’s School in Northeast Philadelphia, had been charged with raping and sexually assaulting the same boy in the parish between 1998, when he was 10 years old, and 2000.

Another priest, the Rev James Brennan, 47, is charged with raping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in 1996.

All five men were arrested today, official said.

Williams said Lynn, who was the Archdiocese’s Secretary of the Clergy from 1992 to 2004, “supervised two of the abusers . . . knew they were dangerous and chose to expose them to new victims.”

Since 2004 Lynn has served as pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Downingtown, a parish of nearly 4,000 families.

As head of the clergy office, Lynn oversaw all priest personnel issues, which included advising Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and his successor, Cardinal Justin Rigali, on the assignment of priests; interviewing persons who reported sexual abuse by a priests; and overseeing the treatment of clergy known to have abused children.

In a message to church deacons, Rigali said he could not comment directly on the grand jury report because he had not yet received it.

But, he added: “I know the release of this report will be painful and my deep concern is for all of those who have been abused. I urge all the faithful of the Archdiocese to pray for, to extend every concern for and remain open to understanding the experience of the victims. It is in that spirit that we reflect upon the grand jury’s actions and the recommendations they make.”

At Lynnn’s church in Downingtown, workers in the parish office declined comment, abruptly referring reporters to Donna Farrell, the archdiocesan spokeswoman.

When an Inquirer reporter began to speak with a female parishioner outside the building, one of the workers ran out, grabbed her, and pulled her inside.

Several other parishioners expressed shock at news of the charges but declined to give their names. A man arriving for choir practice said he did not have enough information to comment. A woman who pulled up at the adjacent church school – which her daughter attends – said she did not want her remarks to reflect adversely on the school.

“We love this school,” she said. “I’m absolutely stunned; we totally trusted him.”

Today’s charges come nearly 5 1/2 years after a Philadelphia grand jury excoriated the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for an “immoral cover-up” of its sexually abusive clergy, and for creating what it said was a climate that exposed hundreds of children to assault.

Although the 2005 report directed much of its ire at Bevilacqua, the Roman Catholic archbishop from 1988 to 2003, it mentioned Lynn 652 times – more than any other member of the archdiocesan hierarchy, including Bevilacqua.

“Secretary for Clergy Lynn . . . treated victims as potential plaintiffs. Not only did they not receive apologies acknowledging their abuse, but many were bullied, intimidated, lied to, even investigated themselves,” the report said.

It also accused Lynn of repeatedly failing to investigate abuse charges, reassigning abusive priests, and concealing their crimes from civil authorities and the Catholic laity.

“It became apparent to the Grand Jurors that Msgr. Lynn was handling the cases precisely as his boss [Bevilacqua] wished,” it said.

The assistant district attorneys who wrote the scathing, 468-page report in 2005 said their office had sought ways to bring criminal charges against several archdiocesan leaders but were frustrated by Pennsylvania’s “inadequate” state laws, such as the statute of limitations.

OPENING PAGES OF THE GRAND JURY REPORT

In September 2003, a grand jury of local citizens released a report detailing a sad history of sexual abuse by priests of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. That abuse was known, tolerated, and hidden by high church officials, up to and including the Cardinal himself. The previous grand jury was frustrated that it could not charge either the abusers or their protectors in the church, because the successful cover-up of the abuse resulted in the expiration of the statute of limitations. Now, measures taken in response to the previous report have led to new information about more recent abuse, which this grand jury was empaneled to investigate. The fact that we received that information, and from the church itself, is some sign of progress; and this time there will be charges. The present grand jury, however, is frustrated to report that much has not changed. The rapist priests we accuse were well known to the Secretary of Clergy, but he cloaked their conduct and put them in place to do it again. The procedures implemented by the Archdiocese to help victims are in fact designed to help the abusers, and the Archdiocese itself. Worst of all, apparent abusers – dozens of them, we believe – remain on duty in the Archdiocese, today, with open access to new young prey.

Billy and Mark

This grand jury case began because two men came forward, while still young, to say what was done to them as children. By no means do we believe that these are the only two parishioners who were abused during this period. It remains an extraordinarily difficult thing for adults to tell authorities that they were taken advantage of, in the most intimate, shameful ways, by people they trusted. Their stories must be told, however, because they reveal a great deal about the current treatment of sexual abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

Twelve years ago, Billy was a 10-year-old altar boy in the fifth grade at St. Jerome School in Philadelphia. “Billy” is a pseudonym; he is still reluctant to name himself publicly, although he knows he will have to do so soon. While alone with him in the sacristy, Father Charles Engelhardt began to show Billy pornographic magazines. Eventually, the priest directed Billy to take off his clothes, and to put his penis in the priest’s mouth. Then the priest reversed positions, until he ejaculated on the boy. After that, Billy was in effect passed around to Engelhardt’s colleagues. Father Edward Avery undressed with the boy, told him that God loved him, had him engage in oral intercourse, and ejaculated on him. Next was the turn of Bernard Shero, a teacher in the school. Shero offered Billy a ride home, but instead stopped at a park, told Billy they were “going to have some fun,” took off the boy’s clothes, orally and anally raped him, and then made him walk the rest of the way home.

That was the beginning of a longer journey. Billy stopped talking with friends and started smoking marijuana. He would often gag and vomit for reasons the doctors could not discern. He checked books out of the library about sexual abuse. By high school he was taking pills, and then heroin.

The second victim, Mark, was only nine when he first met Father James Brennan, a parochial vicar at St. Andrew Church in Newtown. Father Brennan became a family “friend” who often visited the house. Mark, though, was the subject of special attention from the priest, who persistently wrestled with the boy, rubbed his back and shoulders, and openly brought up sex talk. When Mark was 14, in 1996, Father Brennan was finally ready to make his move. He arranged with Mark’s mother for a “sleepover” at an apartment the priest was renting. Once he had the boy there, Brennan showed him pornographic pictures on his computer, bragged about his penis size, and insisted that Mark sleep together with him in his bed. Then he lay down behind the boy and put his penis into the boy’s buttocks. Mark told his parents what happened, and they confronted Brennan, but he denied it and they believed the priest. From that point, Mark suffered depression, dramatic weight loss, and drug and alcohol addiction. Ultimately he attempted suicide.

FACES OF EVIL

Above is a description of the evil acts of evil people. The worse part is the coverup by the heirarchy of the Church. This man, Cardinal Bevilacqua knowingly allowed boy raping priests to be shielded from authorities and transferred to other parishes, while using the legal system to protect the Catholic Church from crimes. He authorized the payment of millions in hush money to keep the families of victims silent.

The exploits of Father Lynn are detailed above.

Cardinal Krol was the head of the Phila Archdiocese when I was a kid. He confirmed me. He also knowingly moved deviant rapists from parish to parish where they could prey on little 10 year old boys.

Father Thomas Shea was the asst pastor at St. Joseph’s parish in Collingdale when I was a kid. He had raped boys at St. Huberts. They transferred him to St. Josephs where he raped at least two boys, one who later committed suicide. He resides in an old priests home, never being charged because of the statute of limitations.