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Catholic Church Covered Up Child Sex Abuse in Pennsylvania for Decades, Grand Jury Says [nytimes.com]

 

Bishops and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania covered up child sexual abuse by more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years, persuading victims not to report the abuse and police officers not to investigate it, according to a report issued by a grand jury on Tuesday.

The report, which covered six of the state’s eight Catholic dioceses and found more than 1,000 identifiable victims, is the broadest examination yet by a government agency in the United States of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. There have been ten previous reports by grand juries and attorneys general in the United States, according to the research and advocacy group BishopAccountability.org, but those examined single dioceses or counties.

The report catalogs horrific instances of abuse, including a priest who raped a young girl in the hospital after she had her tonsils out, and another priest who was allowed to stay in ministry after impregnating a 17-year-old girl, forging a signature on a marriage certificate and then divorcing the girl.

[For more on this story by Laurie Goodstein and Sharon Otterman, go to https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...se-pennsylvania.html]

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What happens in the Catholic Church is a form of compulsive neurosis.

If we formally prohibit something it is usually manifested in the most traumatizing form.

It is like blocking a stream with a dam that restricts the flow, then bursts, producing a lethal and devastating flood.

I assume that the majority of Catholic clerics can relate to this restrictiveness to a degree, thus they may be showing solidarity to fellow priests that committed a sexual crime in helping to cover things up.

The War on Drugs produces similar effects as Catholic codex of sexual behavior.

Prohibitions tend to produce dualism: pure outside and a very disturbing inside.

It is important that we let go of emotions and natural desires as we produce them instead of storing them for later.

Storing emotions and natural desires is another way one can credit themselves with their own health and it usually results in a violent eruption that only multiplies trauma.

Seriously, as a born Catholic (now lapsed ) I cannot even fathom how someone who has taken the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience can carry out such heinous crimes. And that, the Catholic church has covered up and protected these vile perpetrators.  Child sexual abuse is very traumatic, but to be abused by a man who seemingly is a representative of God must be devastating. Like Jesus said in Matthew 18:6

"If anyone should cause one of these little ones to lose his faith in me, it would be better for that person to have a large millstone tied around his neck and be drowned in the deep sea.

I don't know how much damage the Catholic church has done here in India, there have been cases but not yet on this kind of mass scale unearthing like in the US but the abuse has been there. 

I remember when growing up a female teen relative shared with a friend how a priest was taking her on rides. The friend immediately told the other members of their youth group which erupted into a scandal. The parents did not want the shame so brushed it aside as if it were nothing but the imagination of the friend that the priest was a devious crook.  The priest continued to visit the relatives home.

Most times it is the society and family who turn a blind eye to avoid being in the eye of a scandal. The onus of shame falls on the victim, not the depraved priest.  

To be honest I feel ashamed to be identified as Catholic because of these pedophiles destroying young innocent lives.

Last edited by Former Member

New Hampshire's Attorney General publicized their list of Priests and one Nun, in the Manchester Diocese [most, if not all of N.H.] who've acknowledged or been found by a court of law in NH to have engaged in sexual abuse of children... 

An article noting that the Catholic Church has paid out $6 billion in settlements for 'Clergy's' sexual abuse of children, didn't note if that figure was just in the United States, or world wide. I had posted a web comment to that effect, and a [Catholic] retired US Federal Judge noted her outrage about such events in her church....

Last edited by Robert Olcott
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