DEVASTATING MISTAKES: Benedict XVI and his hierarchy failed to protect children from child sexual abuse for decades. Father Marty Kurylowicz

No “Checks and Balances”--WHEN DO WE START PROTECTING CHILDREN?

¨A major problem with the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church is that there are no “checks and balances.” When the necessary “checks and balances” are not in place to protect any organization, it leaves “not making waves” the rule that governs the hierarchy and opens the way to many devastating mistakes harmful to everyone and allows corruption to grow. The following statements are harsh statements, but unfortunately they are heavily documented.

(1) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy failed to protect children from child sexual abuse for decades.

(2) They mistreated and intimidated the victims and their families who came to report the child sexual abuse, in order to cover up publicity of any child sexual abuse.

(3) They failed to protect children by repeatedly reassigning the child sexual abusers to assignments where children would be present.

(4) When the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children became public, globally, in 2002 they shifted the blame wrongfully onto gay priests.

(5) By falsely, against known research to the contrary, blaming gay priests they implicated the entire LGBT community and how they are fighting against Marriage Equality. When the scientific facts known for decades about human sexuality have been discounted with no substantiated facts given to explain why, it causes many questions whether Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s fight against Marriage Equality is more a fight to maintained the cover-up of the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children? Benedict XVI and his hierarchy need to clearly offer substantiated reasons why they are against Marriage Equality. This statement needs to be spelled out in great detail and follow Pope John Paul II’s test of truth of not separating science and religion.

(6) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous public propaganda against homosexuality encourages public intolerance towards LGBTQ&I adults and children. They continue to do this even though this summer 2 major Christian denominations approved LGBT single and partnered people for all forms of ordained ministries.

(7) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous promulgation of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings are harmful to children in their early childhood psychological developmental years, harm that is crippling throughout their lives. They have continued this even after the beginning of the year, 2009, the Family Acceptance Project research studies had shown the negative effects caused to youths, when their sexual orientation is not accepted, having health problems, suicidal ideation, etc. They ignore all the major medical, psychiatric, psychological and social workers national and international professional associations regarding their findings regarding human sexuality and sexual orientation. HERE


UPDATE

The Catholic Church Needs Its Gay Priests

¨...But when the institutional Catholic Church looks for scapegoats they must be found. And the quick and easy answer coming from the Vatican will be to simply not ordain gay priests.

Such an order, of course, makes the assumption that all gay priests are pedophiles or, if not active pedophiles, are predisposed to it.

However, in the face of overwhelming evidence by behavioral scientists to refute such a harmful and homophobic claim, the Catholic Church, nonetheless, believes that a homosocial and celibate atmosphere of gay men produces a preponderance of pedophilic priests.

But studies have proved over and over again that the overwhelming majority of pedophiles are heterosexuals. And most of these pedophiles are not only married heterosexual men, but are married heterosexual men with children.

The Catholic Church, however, will think it can solve its problem of both pedophilia and homosexuality if it rids itself of gay priests. With the Catholic Church rid of both social cancers, the spiritual and religious life of its hallowed sanctuaries can now go on with life as normal.

However, if the Catholic Church is to go on with life as normal, it couldn't possibly ban gay priests. It needs its gay priests.

The Rev. Donald B. Cozens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, wrote that with more than half the priests and seminarians being gay, the priesthood is becoming a gay profession. Many who know the interior of the Catholic Church would argue that the priesthood has for centuries been a gay profession, and not to ordain gay priests or to defrock them would drastically alter the spiritual life and daily livelihood of the church.

"If they were to eliminate all those who were homosexually oriented, the number would be so staggering that it would be like an atomic bomb; it would do damage to the church's operation," says A.W. Richard Sipe, a former priest and psychotherapist who has been studying the sexuality of priests for decades. Sipe also points out that to do away with gay priests "would mean the resignation of at least a third of the bishops of the world. And it's very much against the tradition of the church; many saints have gay orientation and many popes had gay orientations."

The reality here is that as quietly as the Church has tried to keep it, the Catholic Church is a gay institution. And that is not a bad thing!
The problem in the Catholic Church is not its gay priests, and its solution to the problem is not the removal of them. The problem in the Catholic Church is its transgressions against gay priests. And I ask: Who will remove the church from itself?

Years of homophobia and years of church laws to maintain the homophobia have made the church unsafe for us all, young and old, straight and gay, adult and child.

Eugene Kennedy, a specialist on sexuality and the priesthood and a former priest, wrote in his book, The Unhealed Wound: The Church and Human Sexuality, that the Catholic Church “...had always had gay priests, and they have often been models of what priests should be. To say that these men should be kept from the priesthood is in itself a challenge to the grace of God and an insult to them and the people they serve."

The Church's edicts against LGBTQ people is a farce in light of its reality and of the gifts gay priests have given and continue to give to the Catholic Church. If the Catholic Church wants to solve its problem of pedophilia, it should not look at a priest's sexual orientation but instead at his overall personality development.

Right now, the Catholic Church stands in the need of prayer.

Scapegoating all gay priests as pedophiles is a cheap and easy solution. It gives the Catholic Church an easy escape hatch that allows the Church to not own up to the reality that the reason the Catholic Church exists and will continue to exist in perpetuity is because of the gifts, and dedicated service of its gay priests.¨ HERE

GAY PRIESTS ARE NOT PAEDOPHILES

Cardinal Bertone's attempt to blame gay priests for the church's scandals is foolish and wrong

¨Prudence is a cardinal virtue, but not a virtue always shown by cardinals in Rome. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, recently refuted a link between clerical sex abuse and celibacy, but then claimed "a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia" which, he said, "many psychologists and psychiatrists have shown". His remarks were greeted with horror, as well they should have been, for they implied that homosexuals were more inclined to sex abuse of minors than heterosexuals, which is simply false.¨ HERE


Victims slam ¨blame-shifting¨ Vatican

¨A US support group for victims of predator priests slammed the Vatican for allegedly seeking to shift blame for the now global child sex abuse scandal away from the church.

Remarks made earlier this week by Pope Benedict XVI's top aide, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, which linked pedophilia and homosexuality, were "distracting, blame-shifting" and very calculated, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said on Wednesday.

"They were calculated, as are so many similarly misguided, distracting, blame-shifting, finger-pointing comments by so many church staff seeking to scapegoat others, among them journalists, prosecutors, lawmakers, victims, lawyers, liberals and gay people," the victims' group said.

Bertone's remarks "rub even more salt into the already deep and still-fresh wounds of hundreds of thousands of men and women who have been assaulted by clerics and betrayed by bishops, especially women and girls," SNAP said.

· Thanks to Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
· Thanks to Thalamus Center, sidebar
· Thanks to A Quest for Checks and Balances at the RC Church
· Thanks to ¨Shatter the Silence¨
· Thanks to Change.Org
· Thanks to The Reverend Irene Monroe
· Thanks to Eugene Kennedy
· Thanks to A.W. Richard Sipe
· Thanks to The Reverend Donald B. Cozens
· Thanks to The Guardian, U.K.
· Thanks to Austen Ivereigh
· Thanks to The Sydney Morning Herald
· Thanks to SNAP