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Our Father Who Art In Prison
There is a strange mantra “We Roman Catholics” are extremely fond of repeating. “Everything Happens for The Best.” It often provides great alibis. It’s not a Biblical aphorism. The origin of the ancient saying cannot be ascertained, but that does not weaken its pseudo-philosophical content. The words are clear, asking one to depart from logic and reason and put your faith in a belief system that cannot be questioned. “Everything Happens for The Best.” is a statement that does not encourage refutation or rebuttal. The moment you ask “Why,” you break the metaphysical cardinal rule of implicit faith backed by unshakeable belief. By the dangerous question “Why?” you automatically begin to question infallibility. On the other hand, by accepting the philosophy of “Everything Happens for The Best”, you generally cover all bases including a safe and comfortable exit after the game.
Hurricanes rip homes and lives in New Orleans. Everything happens for the best.
Mother and child die in accident. Everything happens for the best.
Man lands on moon. Everything happens for the best.
Abundant wheat harvest. Everything happens for the best.
Famine in India and Africa. Everything happens for the best.
Homeless man wins lottery. Everything happens for the best.
Roman Catholic Priests molesting very young boys……Uh, oh…
As a young boy, who attended Catholic School, I was told, “Son, who are we to question?” I did not know what that meant then. Later, I deduced its philosophical undertone
“We are not worthy to question the infallibility of God. He knows best.” This awe for the Almighty was unfortunately extended to priests. It is a humble belief system handed down through the ages. You believe or you don’t. These days however, one does not hear that saying often from Roman Catholics around the world especially where the Church is concerned. Here are a plethora of reasons.
Recently CNN, Headline News Anchor, Thomas Roberts revealed how Father Jeff Toohey sexually abused him twenty years ago in Baltimore, Maryland. Roberts lived with this dark secret for years and tried to commit suicide when he was a teenager. Father Toohey later admitted his guilt in Court. Sentenced to five years in jail, he served just ten months, eight of those in home detention. Father Toohey, got away lightly. He should have been thrown into jail with the sodomites and made to endure all five years of incarceration.
The plague of Catholic priests sexually molesting minors is now legion. Now that the medieval stranglehold that the Church has had on its congregation world wide has loosened, a torrent of vile abuses conducted within the sanctity of myriad churches has come forth. At least now the Church can begin cleaning out the filth from its bell towers. What is troubling here is this: Had the allegations not come forth, the Church would have still maintained its undignified hypocritical silence and carried on in sublime piety while the molestations continued unabated. Child molesters in pulpits preaching to everyone including the choir! Child molesters hearing confessions and forgiving sins in the name of God. Child molesters preaching morality. Child molesters baptizing little babies. Does betrayal to both God and human kind get any darker than this?
1996, Archbishop Robert Sanchez spiritual leader of 275 thousand Roman Catholics in New Mexico admitted that he shielded his priests who were abusing children sexually. The archbishop also admitted to having affairs with women.
Four decades ago, when allegations of priests molesting alter boys surfaced, it was hushed by the Cardinals and Bishops. These individuals are keepers of the faith. They chose to stay silent, knowing full well what was going on beneath the holy robes of their priests. It is a travesty of justice, a breech of faith and a criminal abuse of power and trust. And it has cost the church financially world wide
The Catholic Church in the U.S. was ordered to pay 120 million in damages to 10 former alter boys. The Boston Church paid $ 85 million to settle claims that involved 500 members of the clergy.
Today, societies around the world are prosecuting priests who did the actual molesting. What about the Archbishops, Cardinals and priests who headed parishes, who maintained their silence and moved the molesters around from parish to parish, “for the good of the church”. One does not have to be a behavioral specialist to know that the molestations continued. The Archbishops and Cardinals who enabled these priests to remain free still preach from pulpits about morality and truth. They enjoy the respect, power and dignity that their office and titles elicit from society. They are guilty of aiding and abetting and are guilty by association. They should be prosecuted in a court of law; defrocked and jailed if found guilty. Why has the Roman Catholic Church been so morally flaccid all the years?
In Ireland, one priest systematically raped and sexually abused hundreds of boys between 1945 and 1990. His name was Father Brendan Smyth. Father Jim Grennan another parish priest from Ireland, sexually abused children as they prepared for their First Holy Communion. Father Sean Fortune, another child molester committed suicide before his trial for the rape of children at the Diocese of Ferns, south east of Ireland
From Botswana and Burundi to Brazil, Columbia, Ghana and India. From Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Zimbabwe Hong Kong and New Zealand to Australia and England there have been thousands of allegations and numerous convictions of priests. In the remote Chilean archipelago of Tierra del Fuego, a priest was discovered molesting little boys. Even in Poland, a solid Catholic nation, priests committing unspeakable acts of sexual degradation on children continue to surface. The evidence is disgustingly overwhelming.
Former Canadian nun, Yvonne Maes was raped by an Irish priest while serving in Southern Africa, The church did nothing. In Africa, the famous MacDonald report stated that when a nun is raped by a priest and becomes pregnant the priest insists that the nun have an abortion. One does not have to insult the intelligence of readers here to explain the Catholic Church’s stance on abortion.
These are the men who are keepers of the Christian flame. They are men of cloth, who dedicate their lives to God. Now they are being persecuted as more and more young adults and boys come forth detailing the abuses. The abuse of children by priests is universal. Prosecuting them is not going to stop the plague. A drastic change in clergy dogma is needed. Records indicate that most Catholic priests molest little boys. Records indicate that Catholic priests urge pregnant nuns to have abortions. The Church is a moral institution. That is what it believes and preaches to its faithful. For decades, churches around the world have hidden the dark secrets of their priests. If nobody came forth, the Church would have carried on, knowing full well what its priests were doing. How many sermons do you hear in church today about this plague?
What will it take for Rome to admit: “Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.” The Church it seems, continues to hide behind its flowing cassock of hypocrisy
Everything Happens for The Best. Go ahead; you are permitted to ask the forbidden question, “WHY?”
Comment by Helen McGonigle
Posted on May 25, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Brendan Smyth also molested girls. I am one of those victims and know/knew three other girls who were molested by Smyth. This was during his assignment at Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich Rhode Island from the summer of 1965-1971 time period. Smyth was caught molesting children at Our Lady of Mercy in early 1968 and that is why he was sent for his first round at a mental hospital, Purdsyburn in Belfast in 1968.
Comment by Jessica Lambert
Posted on May 31, 2007 at 3:33 pm
This is a message for Helen McGonigle. Brave, bravo, bravo. If only more like you would come out and expose these so called Priests, Bishops and Cardinals maybe it will all stop.
These parasites, get paid by the Catholic Church for doing a job. They certainly are not doing it very well.
Let’s look at these people; these men of the cloth. For years now, the Cardinals and Bishops knew what was going on. They shifted their molesting priests around, hoping that it would all go away. These were Shepherds who were molesting their flock. Oh! What misery. These are men who represent Jesus Christ. What a shame!
The church today is corrupt.Do you want to offer a mass for your dead mother?You have to pay for her name to be mentioned during mass. Do you want to offer a prayer for your sick father, dying of cancer? You have to pay for his name to be mentioned during mass. How corrupt is this?
I mean, I know the Church needs money to run, but there are other ways of raising money. The selling of indulgences, that is what this amounts to. Horrible corruption.
And BINGO! Churches are famous for holding Bingo nights. I remember, going to one once. (I left after fifteen minutes) It was held in the “Social Hall” that was on church property. And there, under the holy hanging Christ was the Bingo Board, gleaming like the eyes of Judas, advertising numbers in a gambling game. Nothing is sacred to the Roman Catholic church anymore. Bingo is gambling. The church states that Bingo brings in much needed funds. So it holds these socially acceptable gambling sessions three or four nights a week. Where are The Roman Catholics with any sense? Why isn’t anybody saying anything about these things? Does the Pope know about this Bingo gig that Churches all over the world hold on their properties. Of course he does. This is so morally wrong.
The church encourages gambling, their priests molest little boys and girls and they expect people to respect them as pillars of a holy institution. Would you go confess your sins to a priest today? I wouldn’t.
How far away from Christ have the clergy gone. The garments, they wear from Bishop to Cardinal to Pope. The Roman pomp and splendor. Have Roman Catholics forgotten that these men represent Jesus Christ who personified simplicity. The Church is not Christ. The Church is Roman. And we all know how corrupt and decadent the Roman empire was.
And, the funny thing here is this. Time and time and time again, you hear Cardinals and Bishops complaining that not enough young people are joining the priesthood. Hello, why should they join? Look at the justified and proven stories of the corruption of the Catholic church that these young people are hearing. I have heard priests say that the priests who molest young children are a few rotten apples. Well, what was the entire infrastructure of Roman Catholic power doing, hiding what these priests were doing through the years. The Bishops must have known. The Cardinals must have known. The Pope must have known. So…… This is not turning the other cheek. This is covering your eyes with your hands and complaining of blindness. And just for the record, “The Few” rotten apples that the church talks about are not so few, father, dear father. Look at the statistics worldwide. Learn to count and then learn to pray.
And nothing seems to be radically changing within the Catholic church. Nothing. And that is what it has become to millions. Nothing. I was Roman Catholic, a long time ago. My church drove me away. How can you stay, pray and be active in a home that is so corrupted? I needed to find a new home. I found one in Christ.
Believe me, it feels real.
Comment by Diana Longworth
Posted on June 12, 2007 at 11:24 am
The Catholic church needs to be more open. The current Pope has done nothing to address the problems of priest’s who molest young boys and girls. If a change has to come The Pontiff will have to issue orders that all the prests, Bishops, Cardinals and various other church officials who helped cover up these crimes, year after year, be punished, first by the Church and then by the law.
Of course this will never happen. The Pope goes on these tours, to Brazil and various other places to get more people to join the Catholic church, to raise an awarness of the Catholic Church. BY at the grass roots level there are all kinds of corruption rotting the roots of the Church. Instead of addressing that problem the Pope gives speeches on morality. The people who are guilty of the sin against conventional morality are his own priests. That is documented proof. If this continues to happen, the Catholic church will find itself losing members in the thousands every year. Statistics state that this is already happening, and the Church sits back and talks of morality! What is it about this business they don’t grasp?
What would Jesus do?
I think you know the answer to that question. He would storm the temple and drive out these merchants of deceit.
That’s what Jesus would do. That is what the Pope should do. If he fails to do so, he is not a representative figure head of the Church that Christ founded. He should step down or shape up. Yes, I know this will never happen. Power corrupts, absolute power, corrupts absolutely. That is what has happened to the Catholic Church. They have become a law unto themselves. Unfortunately for them, the whole world, both Catholics, Christians and people from other faiths, can see through the cover that they have covered the Church with.