Wisconsin
- Last week the New York time reported that from 1950-1974, Reverend Lawrence C. Murphy molested at least 200 boys at a school for deaf children in Wisconsin He was simply moved to another institution to continue his "religious work" for the next 24 years
- Cardinal Joseph , Pope Benedict XVI was in charge of the Congregations for the Doctrine of Faith (Vatican department for investigating these allegations)
- When Murphy was put under trial he pleated "I simply want to live out time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood. i ask your kind assistance in this matter"
- The trial was halted and Murphy died in 1998 free of accusation
Germany
- Peter Hullerman working the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising was accused of molesting boys and was approved for therapy in 1980
- Hullerman was permitted to continue parish work in the path of more young children
- In 1986 Hullerman was convicted on sexual molestation charges. Only after his criminal history was revealed to the congregation was he suspended from his work as a priest
- The German wing of the church recently hired an attorney. "The cases are growing everyday," said Thomas Pfister, the attorney appointed by the German church to investigate abuse charges
- The Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse which just ended its 9 year investigations states the the church leaders knew sexual abuse to be "endemic" but did little to stop it
- 2000 witnesses detailed that the church officials used rape, beatings, and other tactics to maintain a "culture of serving secrecy"
- More cases of abuse are appearing in other parts of Europe such as Austria, Italy, Netherlands and Switzerland
4 comments:
I'm going to do Sam Kennedy a favor by posting his notes about the Catholic church here:
"I really don't know why people are always "shocked" when the Catholic Church demonstrates its lack of moral authority. It never had any. It's the most corrupt, perverse institution that has ever existed.
Throughout history it has had to be dragged by the ear into having the tolerance that it claims to have a monopoly on.
It is responsible for many, many wars (The Crusades). It is these wars, not World War II, which contained the first mass Jew killings. It is also very much responsible for the anti-Jew discrimination that made the Jews such an excellent scapegoat for Hitler.
Several hundred years ago it was common for indulgences to be sold. That's right; you could buy God's forgiveness and go to heaven, if your pockets were deep enough.
Bishops and Priests were able to purchase their positions. Have enough money? Become a priest! The clergy, while it preached morality, had virtually none.
Today:
The current Pope has spread the lie that condoms spread HIV/AIDS.
The Church is an enormous force of homophobia, which is odd considering that the few lines that are anti-gay in the Bible are in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament says that if a man has a wet dream, he has to leave the town for the day. Also, being gay is biological; this is no longer debatable.
The Church has become famous in modern times for the molestation of innocent school boys.
Now let’s look at its Philosophical Contributions:
(a) Saint Augustine: Believed that we are all sinners that deserve to burn in Hell eternally because we inherited Original Sin from Adam and Eve. Hell shows God's divine justice and Heaven shows God's divine mercy. We all deserve to burn; the fact that some of us don't only emphasizes God's goodness. Oh, and he wrote a book called "Confessions" in which he spends 4 chapters crying about how he's a sinner that deserves to burn because, when he was eight, he stole pears from his neighbors pear tree.
(b) Saint Aquinas: He was actually somewhat reasonable, and at the very least tried to solve some of the paradoxes surrounding God (he did, for example, impose limits on God's omnipotence so that God couldn't uncreate himself). While he was certainly talented philosophically, he managed to ensure that Aristotle would be misinterpreted for several hundred years. He was a poor logician, as he decided upon conclusions and then set out to prove them, which is stupid.
(c) The Roman Empire and the Catholic Church managed to ensure that logic would remain flawed until the time of Bertrand Russell. It discouraged original thought, so when Aristotle was demonstrated to be inadequate, the philosopher would assume he was wrong, and adhere to Aristotle as the authority (this happened to Leibniz). Aristotle would have contributed far more to philosophy as an intermediate had the Catholic Church not arrived on the scene and decided he was an absolute authority.
(d) The Church effectively retarded the rise of science. For example, Copernicus' Heliocentric Theory was not original to him, but had been discovered by people living in modern day Italy before the rise of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church rejected this view, and that of all others who used any empirical evidence to demonstrate that the Bible was wrong. The Church felt that these people should be tortured into recanting their views, and that Copernicus' book explaining his Heliocentric Theory ought to be on the banned books list, so that whoever read it could be tortured to death by the Spanish Inquisition.
(e) Many people have told me that the modern science was brought to light by Catholicism and Christianity. This is wrong. Modern Science has been brought around by original thinkers who somehow managed to avoid persecution by superstitious organizations. These people were forward thinkers, and while many were certainly religious, this was common.
That concludes my brief history of the Catholic Church. So can we all stop being surprised when it commits moral atrocities that are actually common to it? More common, in fact, than any of the goods it provides? It is and always has been a superstitious, power hungry, stupid, intolerant, genocidal, morally impaired organization. Let us not pretend otherwise."
Thanks Kevin! Much obliged.
Hm. Despite the fact that I agree with Sam on most if not all of this, I think it is a bit long for a blog comment. It is a good length for a blog post, but not only is it far too long for a comment, but I feel that a comment should be more directed towards the post itself, instead of the organization that the blog post is about.
Despite my opinions on the length and relevance of Sam's post, I do agree: The Catholic Church does not demonstrate moral authority very strongly, if at all. It is also an extremely rich organization, and can afford to pay for lawyers, bribes, and reparations for many upper-level members.
-Ilan Seid-Green
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