Ongoing religious scandals

Nodin

Pope's bank clean-up man 'found stuck in lift with rent boy'

"As the man charged with cleaning out the stables at the scandal-struck Vatican bank, Monsignor Battista Ricca will need Machiavellian cunning, good fortune and a whiter-than-white record to have even a fighting chance.

But Pope Francis’s new banker appears to possess none of these attributes after it was reported yesterday that he was found stuck in a lift with a rent boy. Msgr Ricca, as Francis’s new primate with responsibility for the troubled financial institution, known officially as the IoR (Institute for Religious Works), is supposed to usher in new transparency and badly needed reforms after years of financial scandal."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/popes-bank-cleanup-man-found-stuck-in-lift-with-rent-boy-8721296.html

Galvasean

ThreeBlindMice wrote: »

The plot thickens.

Vatican City: Few eyebrows were raised last week when Pope Francis brought the Vatican’s legal system up to date by criminalizing leaks of official information and formalizing laws against sex crimes. But now that the laws have been made public, a closer look revealed that the pope has made it illegal to report sex crimes against children.

http://www.newslo.com/pope-criminalizes-the-reporting-of-sex-crimes/#sthash.ihiW2CfX.dpuf

Well, there go my high hopes for the new Pope..

TheChizler

ThreeBlindMice wrote: »

The plot thickens.

Vatican City: Few eyebrows were raised last week when Pope Francis brought the Vatican’s legal system up to date by criminalizing leaks of official information and formalizing laws against sex crimes. But now that the laws have been made public, a closer look revealed that the pope has made it illegal to report sex crimes against children.

http://www.newslo.com/pope-criminalizes-the-reporting-of-sex-crimes/#sthash.ihiW2CfX.dpuf

I refer you to examples of other articles available on that particular website...

http://www.newslo.com/senator-challenges-theory-of-gravity-demands-schools-teach-both-sides/

http://www.newslo.com/texas-to-legalize-rape-since-it-doesnt-lead-to-pregnancy/

Hotblack Desiato

Woman in Dubai is jailed for being raped :mad:

Nodin

Depress fuck out of yourselves with this.....

NOT a single Catholic bishop or priest will be prosecuted for covering up the
scandal of clerical sex abuse over several decades at the end of a three-year
Garda investigation.

Detectives were unable to build a case against surviving clergy for secretly
moving paedophiles from parish to parish during the Eighties and Nineties
because covering up for child abusers was not a specific offence at the
time.
New laws, such as reckless endangerment of children and defilement of a
child, were passed only six years ago, while withholding information on child
abuse became a criminal offence last year.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/no-clergy-to-be-prosecuted-after-threeyear-probe-29436105.html

kylith

Words fail me.

recedite

Nodin wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/no-clergy-to-be-prosecuted-after-threeyear-probe-29436105.html

The probe was launched in 2009 after the Murphy report on clerical abuse in the Dublin archdiocese revealed how the Catholic priests and bishops colluded with state authorities and gardai to shield paedophile priests.

The final chapter of the Murphy report, which was finally published last weekend after being held up by legal proceedings, revealed an "inappropriate relationship" between gardai and the Catholic Church.

And now the Gardai have investigated the matter, and found themselves innocent :rolleyes:

I have some words; Accessory after the fact.
http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/1997/en/act/pub/0014/sec0007.html
It was always an offence to cover the tracks of a child rapist (or any other felon) thereby helping them to escape justice.
Failure to report child abuse is a different matter, it is a more modern offence.

Sulla Felix

Such bull****, if there was any will at all, there would be a way. Perverting the course of justice has been on the books forever.

kylith

Sulla Felix wrote: »

Such bull****, if there was any will at all, there would be a way. Perverting the course of justice has been on the books forever.

I was just thinking that.

robindch

Sarky wrote: »

I see the sale of indulgences is alive and well. Plus ca change...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/16/vatican-indulgences-pope-francis-tweets?CMP=twt_gu

"Indulgences not a 'magical formula,' canon lawyer explains"

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/indulgences-not-a-magical-formula-canon-lawyer-explains

CNA wrote:

An indulgence is defined as the remission of the temporal punishment – the unhealthy attachment to created things – due to sins which have already been forgiven.[...]

Flynn explained that an indulgence “isn't a magical formula,” but is a way of participating in the graces won by Christ. The decree specifies that to obtain a plenary indulgence, a person must be “truly repentant and contrite” for their sins.

Merely following the the tweets of Pope Francis won't gain a plenary indulgence – the Apostolic Penitentiary also specified that “the usual conditions” apply. Those usual conditions are that the individual be in the state of grace by the completion of the acts, have complete detachment from sin, and pray for the Pope's intentions. The person must also sacramentally confess their sins and receive Communion, up to about twenty days before or after the indulgenced act. These additional requirements show that, “like everything else in Catholicism,” indulgences “are something we participate in, but it's not something that we merit.” Christ's graces obtained through indulgences come through “a particular commitment to prayer, pilgrimage, sacrifice,” Flynn explained. [...]

“Thank God for Twitter,” Flynn emphasized.

TheChizler

So even a retweet wont cover it?

Galvasean

TheChizler wrote: »

I refer you to examples of other articles available on that particular website...

http://www.newslo.com/senator-challenges-theory-of-gravity-demands-schools-teach-both-sides/

http://www.newslo.com/texas-to-legalize-rape-since-it-doesnt-lead-to-pregnancy/

I have been Po'd! :pac:

Nodin

"The Government has vowed to pursue religious orders for half the €1.46bn cost of compensating their victims.

The congregations which were responsible for horrific child abuse in schools, orphanages, borstals and other institutions will now be under deepening pressure to stump up the €250m shortfall.

Four orders have already indicated they are willing to consider transferring more school buildings and other educational infrastructure on top of what has been offered.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said some properties will be used in the public and voluntary sectors and others sold with the proceeds used to pay for support services for survivors.

“The Government is obviously disappointed that the congregations have not agreed to a 50:50 share of the very considerable cost for redress,” Mr Quinn said.

“Today’s decision represents the most pragmatic way to maximise the level of contributions to be made by the congregations and the management bodies so that the taxpayer does not bear an unreasonable burden of the costs.”
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/religious-orders-will-be-pursued-for-compensation-costs-quinn-claims-601483.html

.....bit better news than usual.

UDP

These religious orders seem to be just biding time so that they can get most of their assets put into trusts out of the reach of the government. I wish the government would just give them a deadline and then go after the assets themselves if they have not coughed up the dough including going after the trusts.

Banbh

Ruairi Quinn was on the Pat Kenny show this morning and, as far as I could understand, is now saying that the orders need only hand over the title deeds of schools and other properties and the State will guarantee to allow them continue to run these institutions, with their Catholic ethos, State salaries and other benefits.
Now that's the deal I want on my house. It's even better than the FF/Green Party write off.

Brian Shanahan

Banbh wrote: »

Ruairi Quinn was on the Pat Kenny show this morning and, as far as I could understand, is now saying that the orders need only hand over the title deeds of schools and other properties and the State will guarantee to allow them continue to run these institutions, with their Catholic ethos, State salaries and other benefits.

So all the congregations have to do is to hand over stuff that the state has already paid for many times over through department of education and health spending on schools and hospitals. Something that the religious congregations have no right to hold the deeds for, abuse scandals or no abuse scandals?

robindch

Emer O'Kelly is not impressed with the four orders who've refused to stump up any cash:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/emer-okelly-faceless-nuns-shame-the-god-they-profess-to-serve-29436260.html

Emer @ The Indo wrote:

There is a term used in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church: "making reparation". It's required before a sin can be forgiven. But the four orders of nuns whose members used, abused and exploited for profit hundreds of other women over generations, seem not to be aware of it. The women who had the power, the all-powerful authority figures in the headquarters of the religious orders, and their "sisters", who had less but perhaps even more dangerous power, and stalked the Magdalene Laundries like the jailers they were, denied their prisoners hope, justice and charity. And they made a nice little (actually a very large) financial profit from it.

The crimes for which their victims were imprisoned were poverty, loneliness, bereavement, abandonment, and in the cases of those who were pregnant, innocence betrayed. The money the victims' unpaid sweated labour made for the orders who had power over them amounted to vast wealth: assessed at €1.5bn in 2009. And now the inheritors of that huge wealth, the current heads of the religious orders of nuns whose names struck terror into the dispossessed of past generations, are arrogantly and yes, wickedly, refusing to hand over a penny piece to make reparation for years of profitable and cruel exploitation. It's that glaring and that simple.

Equally simple, it seems, is the fact that neither the legal system, the parliamentary system, nor the judicial system can do anything about it. Once again our utterly inadequate and flawed Constitution has failed to make provision for justice. Because that is what it means if the Dail is unable to pass laws to rectify this glaring injustice. And I certainly give the Taoiseach enough credit on the Magdalene issue to accept that he has taken advice before telling the Dail that he can only appeal to the hard-faced, financially cold-hearted money-grabbing religious orders of nuns to do their "moral and ethical duty", in the phrase used by the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter. The Roman Catholic Church's power and wealth is constitutionally protected at every turn: the original Constitution was drafted to ensure it, as was the current document dating from 1937.

And these terrible, faceless women, who are refusing even to come into the light of day to be questioned concerning their greed and arrogance, can hide behind deeds of trust, and other acts of financial sleight of hand to ensure that they cannot be touched. The "saintly simple sisters" made damn sure that their wealth was beyond the reach of the helpless women they betrayed and destroyed over the generations, and is still beyond the reach of the taxpayers who are footing the bill for their cruel injustices. (Not that any taxpayer that I have spoken to begrudges the share of the national take that is going to set up the redress scheme for the surviving Magdalene victims. The State, after all, was complicit, again due to the nefarious influence of religious brainwashing.) But most of them are incensed at our national helplessness in pursuing the perpetrators of the daily vicious cruelties and humiliations suffered by the victims.

I am haunted to this day by a very early reporting experience when I covered the Children's Court. Yes, there were young thugs brought before it from time to time. But since it pre-dated the heroin scourge, it seemed to be a more innocent place than it is now. I certainly thought it was both innocent and sad as I watched two skinny (and filthy) little girls, who were 13 and 14 years old respectively, on a charge of being abroad without visible means of support. They were sentenced to a Magdalene Laundry, and fool that I was, I breathed a sigh of relief on their behalf, reared as I had been to believe the church was a just and caring institution (although I was already beginning to doubt it, and had never seen any evidence that it was a gentle one). I was talking to the clerk later and he said: "If you ask me, it should have been the two married men they were caught with who should be up here." The little girls were working prostitutes. And I was told that it was a rule that newspapers didn't report on child prostitution. Copy spiked.

I shudder to imagine what they would have been put through when the holy nuns got their hands on them. I hope they escaped. I even hope they were ill enough to die before they had to suffer the hellhole for too long. We have the power under the Constitution to put people in Mountjoy for not paying their TV licence. And we do. We have the power to put people in Mountjoy for not paying parking fines. And we do (admittedly only after they've been sneering at their fellow taxpayers for years). But we don't have the power to incarcerate women who subjected others to slave labour over years. And we don't have the power to confiscate the obscene wealth that accrued because of the slave labour.

Religion is supposed to be based on morality: the church teaches (or is supposed to teach) the difference between what is legal and what is moral. It's damn good at doing that when its power over lay women's bodies is threatened, as we've seen recently. But the proof of the hold the religious orders and the overall Catholic Church still have is that the most severe measure being called for on the Magdalene issue is merely that the orders involved should be stripped of their charitable status. (Even that, of course, is not possible under the laws in place in accordance with the Constitution, as the Taoiseach has had to tell us.)

He also told us that the victims do not have time on their side to allow the Government to pursue the orders. There is a solution: let the taxpayer pay; we won't object. And then let the Government, and all future governments if necessary, pursue these orders of nuns, relentlessly and mercilessly, up to and including bankruptcy if necessary, until they have made full financial, if not moral, reparation. What we should be calling for, and I make no apology for writing it, is that any members of the religious orders who were responsible for the shameful behaviour highlighted by Martin McAleese in his report into conditions in the Magdalene Laundries (in itself found to be inadequate and lacking in rigour by some survivors' representatives) who are still alive, any authority figures within the orders at the time of the laundries' operation still alive, should individually be required to serve a six-month internment under exactly the conditions imposed on their victims in the past.

They should be under lock and key 24 hours a day, receive inadequate, unhealthy food, work 12 hours of hard labour daily, not be permitted to speak to each other, sleep in filthy bedding, and be regularly verbally abused and humiliated, while receiving vicious physical punishment for any infringement of the rules.

For the record, the religious orders who should be so subject are: the Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters. These dreadful cold-blooded women shame Ireland; they shame religion; they shame womanhood; and they shame the God they profess to serve.

Banbh

Excellent article. Bravo Emer!

Hotblack Desiato

Banbh wrote: »

Ruairi Quinn was on the Pat Kenny show this morning and, as far as I could understand, is now saying that the orders need only hand over the title deeds of schools and other properties and the State will guarantee to allow them continue to run these institutions, with their Catholic ethos, State salaries and other benefits.
Now that's the deal I want on my house. It's even better than the FF/Green Party write off.

What a sad disappointment Quinn has turned out to be. The RCC must be laughing up their sleeves at him.

Tropheus

ninja900 wrote: »

What a sad disappointment Quinn has turned out to be. The RCC must be laughing up their sleeves at him.

What a sad disappointment Labour have turned out to be. They must be laughing up their sleeves at those who voted for them.

Hotblack Desiato

Your post would be deleted in Politics. Try After Hours.

UDP

ninja900 wrote: »

What a sad disappointment Quinn has turned out to be. The RCC must be laughing up their sleeves at him.

Unfortunately he is still better than any of the alternatives I can see. FF let the religious f'uckers off with way too much so lets hope they don't get back into power or there will be no hope at all at tackling the issues with religious groups/education etc at all.

Banbh

But Ruairi is getting nothing at the moment.

UDP

Banbh wrote: »

But Ruairi is getting nothing at the moment.

He is making some ground with the schools system.

Banbh

I think he is underestimating the mood of the country. People are more than fed up with the Catholic Church and its pomposity at the moment.
Action against the orders that won't pay up would be well received.

Hotblack Desiato

UDP wrote: »

He is making some ground with the schools system.

So, how many schools have changed ethos? That's right, none.

The survey thing is a joke. Why is it only in such a limited number of areas? Of course every holy Joe seemed to know about it but many parents didn't seem to.

He has allowed new sectarian schools (because that is the only way you can describe them really) to open up. There should be a complete freeze on new so-called 'religious ethos' schools opening, this is only making the problem worse.

I thought his statement about the orders was ridiculously weak, he'd have been better saying nothing on this point. Like I said, unfortunately I can't imagine any bishop or religious order being remotely afraid of him.

Tropheus

ninja900 wrote: »

Your post would be deleted in Politics. Try After Hours.

What?

Banbh

Not only have no schools changed ethos but the curriculum for 'religious education' is still little more than Catholic religious instruction. Also, State-financed Catholic schools are still preventing non-religious students opting out of religious instruction.

Minister Quinn could easily, and at no expense, bring in regulations obliging all schools to respect non-religious views.

I think that in the changing mood of standing up to the Catholic Church - brought about in part by the Taoiseach - Minister Quinn could be a little more forceful.

Delirium

New sex abuse crisis in Scottish Catholic church

The Catholic church in Scotland faces a fresh sex-abuse crisis involving some of the country's senior clerics. The Observer has seen documents suggesting a scandal similar to the one that led to the resignation of Cardinal Keith O'Brien as Archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews.

As a seminarian, a priest known as "Father Michael", who wishes to remain anonymous while an appeal to Rome is made, said he was sexually assaulted by a parish priest, Father Paul Moore. Father Michael said the church failed to deal appropriately with his complaint over a 17-year period, and that he is now being ousted from the church while, he feels, his abuser is being protected.

:mad:

Delirium

Federal Judge: Catholic Church Has A Constitutional Right Not To Compensate Victims Of Sex Abuse

A federal judge in Wisconsin handed down an opinion yesterday granting the Catholic Church — and indeed, potentially all religious institutions — such sweeping immunity from federal bankruptcy law that it is not clear that it would permit any plaintiff to successfully sue any church in any court. While the ostensible issue in this case is whether over $50 million in church funds are shielded from a bankruptcy proceeding triggered largely by a flood of clerical sex abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, Judge Rudolph Randa reads the church’s constitutional and legal right to religious liberty so broadly as to render religious institutions immune from much of the law.

The case involves approximately $57 million that former Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan transferred from the archdiocese’s general accounts to into a separate trust set up to maintain the church’s cemeteries. Although Dolan, who is now a cardinal, the Archbishop of New York and the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied that the purpose of this transfer was to shield the funds from lawsuits, Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican in 2007 where he explained that transferring the funds into the trust would lead to “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.”

This is beyond nuts. A religious organisation is potentially protected from financial judgements against them for crimes committed by their members.

The state wouldn't be singling out the RCC because of their religion/ for no reason. They would be compensating victims of childhood sexual abuse. The children were abused because priests abused their place of privilege in society, and now the churches get special privilege to avoid legal costs for those abuses?

If the churches are safe from financial penalties, what's to motivate them to stop this crap happening again? We know that trusting them to be moral and humane towards victims isn't enough. They need to be treated like any other group in society. They rape children then cover up the abuses, they better believe they'll be punished to the full extent of the law and the victims compensated for their suffering.