Catholic Stories

[Cleopatra7]

5 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

My problem with their behaviour is the hypocrisy with which they preach against pre-marital sex, against abortion, against the use of condoms and any contraceptives especially in those parts of the world where people would benefit even more greatly from family planning and protection from STDs. The damages their preaching do is concrete and tangible (I talked in another thread about the situation in El Salvador). But some of them feel like behind closed doors the morals they preach don't apply to themselves.

@samurai_sarah I hear you, the lavender mafia is pure idiocy. The asshole priest who was caught some months ago near Padua after a parishioner accused him of sexual assault wasn't gay. But he was involved with prostitution, in his capacity stole money from the local retirement home and allegedly abused minors too. Our former and now deceased bishop, the one who confirmed me, was a known alcoholic good for nothing except getting rich, have a villa built to his name and accept emoluments from industrialists in exchange for favors. And yet it seems that only gay priests are a problem.

 

The nature of the old boys' clerical club is such that everyone in the hierarchy has an interest in covering up bad behavior, whether it's sexual abuse, financial mismanagement, or even murder. It's crazy to me that a civilly married same-sex couple can be denied the sacraments as "public sinners" while a priest an have men and/or women on the side and that's considered okay by the hierarchy as long as the general public doesn't know about it. People who are engaged in honest, mature, longtime relationships are condemned, while priests who engage in secretive double lives are coddled to protect the image of institution. The Catholic priesthood suffers not so much from a "lavender mafia" so much as it's an institution where everyone seems to be blackmailing everyone else and so no one has an interest in transparency.

[samurai_sarah]

@laPapessaGiovanna

Have you seen the Netflix documentary "The Keepers"? It's about the unsolved murder of a nun in Baltimore, US. Hand in hand with the murder comes a horrific story of child sexual abuse that the murdered nun was trying to stop. Horrible stuff, but worth watching.

Since this is a long documentary, the makers took the time to explain how deeply Catholicism was entrenched in the community. Probably unsurprising to someone from Italy, not very surprising to someone who grew up in deepest darkest Catholic rural Germany, like me. But I thought it was a great addition to explain why the community kept silent about something so atrocious. Talk about skeletons in the closet!

[kpmom]

On 7/7/2017 at 10:27 AM, laPapessaGiovanna said:

 

George Pell, Australian cardinal named Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy by pope Francis in 2014 even if his name came up repeatedly in stories of abuses cover ups heard by the Australian Royal Commission into Child Abuse, has been charged by Australian police with historical sexual assault offences. More in the article linked. This is especially concerning because cardinal Pell  is in the third most important role in Vatican hierarchy.

I've seen posts, here and other places, about how people like and admire Pope Francis.  But, honestly, how can we think  he is any different than any of his predecessors when things like this come up?

He talks a good game, but that's about it as far as I'm concerned.

[samurai_sarah]

7 minutes ago, kpmom said:

I've seen posts, here and other places, about how people like and admire Pope Francis.  But, honestly, how can we think  he is any different than any of his predecessors when things like this come up?

He talks a good game, but that's about it as far as I'm concerned.

I'm right there with you. The only thing Pope Francis does is giving believers hope that things MIGHT change. But in reality, he's shilling the same old shite, packaged in new shiny paper. Different day, same shite.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

I don't have Netflix @samurai_sarah, but the story seems intriguing and I see that I can subscribe for a free trial period so I'm thinking about it.

I named the thread thinking about Elisa Claps, whose body lay apparently undiscovered for 17 years in the attic of the church were she was last seen entering. The chances that nobody, in particular the priest and the bishop, knew nothing about her whereabouts and what happened to her were nil. Members of the clergy have been lying shamelessly for decades to cover up the perpetrator (now sentenced to jail) and those who complicitly covered everything up. Thanks to them the same murderer years later killed another woman, Heather Burnett, in the UK .

Here is an article summing up her sad story.

I was thinking also of Emanuela Orlandi, a 15yo Vatican citizen disappeared in 1983. Her remains were never found, but those of her probable kidnapper rest in a Roman basilica. And pope Francis apparently told her brother that she's in heaven.

There are other less well known stories too but I didn't find sources in English.

[samurai_sarah]

Those are horrible stories, @laPapessaGiovanna! The most terrifying thing is that those are the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Grimalkin]

[Beermeet]

When I was full on Catholic, I had 2 priests I really loved.  Now, all I can think of is if they didn't directly molest, they knew and did nothing.  There is no God in that.  No love and caring for each other as humans.  

I'm still watching The Borgias as I type.  Oh, they have always been bad.  Like, really bad.  So much power, to this day.   

[samurai_sarah]

10 hours ago, Beermeet said:

When I was full on Catholic, I had 2 priests I really loved.  Now, all I can think of is if they didn't directly molest, they knew and did nothing.  There is no God in that.  No love and caring for each other as humans.  

I'm still watching The Borgias as I type.  Oh, they have always been bad.  Like, really bad.  So much power, to this day.   

Way, way too much power! My late parish priest was generally beloved. He was of the old fire and brimstone variety, and liked to slap misbehaving children in religious education class. The twisted thing was that this was technically illegal. When I told my mum about another child getting slapped, she wanted to raise a stink. The child's parents (!) wrote a letter to the school, saying that they were perfectly fine with the physical punishment! Mum said that if he ever raised a hand against any of her kids, she was going to the police.

This happened in 1990s Germany, and no one but my mum said anything! This man was going around hitting kids, and no one thought "hang on, this isn't okay". Mum had a fight about it with one of the neighbours, asking her what she would do if mum hit one of her kids. Well, that wouldn't be okay, "but he's the priest..."!

That's the kind of thing that I meant, when I said above that "The Keepers" did a great job of explaining how much authority and power the Catholic church held and holds over communities. No one in my community saw anything wrong with a stranger physically punishing their children, just because he was the priest. They defended him! And that is really just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[Four is Enough]

I watched "The Keepers", too. And while I grew up in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, where these things took place, I lived outside of Baltimore City/County, where there is a Catholic Church on nearly every corner. (and a bar across the street, according to my Baltimore bred husband..., but I digress)

Even in my part of the AoB, the priest was to be obeyed, and the nuns as well. If I went home from school saying that one of them had struck me for misbehaving, I'd have gotten it again. It was the 60s and children were "to be seen and not heard" 

But I grew up in a much more protestant filled area than my spouse did, and my worldview is much different than his. He would, to this day, pretty much never question the priest or the nuns. I certainly would, and would work to get something different from the party line when dealing with a question. But then, the only sex scandal that I'm aware of (in my parish) was pretty much a rumor of a run of the mill affair.. between a young priest and a young widow. There was no hint of any kind of "don't go near Father X"

After the situation involving my child, the Archdiocese, and the molestation of children, however, I can certainly relate to the way the victims of the priest in "The Keepers" were treated. They were systematically pushed away, offered bribes to shut up, or declared liars, threatened.. as we were pushed out of our parish, declared liars... at the time we needed the Church,  the AoB failed us utterly. The AoB seems to have a "circle the wagons" mentality that does not serve it well. As the Catholic environment continues to erode in this area, I'm sure more scandals will not only be revealed, but perhaps some perpetrators brought to justice rather than everything being swept under the rug.

[Beermeet]

@samurai_sarah. Wow.  I thought that stopped decades ago.  My mom has some doozys about her time in Catholic school.  Hitting, humiliation.  The worst was when she walked past a room and saw her little bother crying and had tape over his mouth.  He was like 6 or 7 and has severe asthma.   She went and protected her brother.  She must have been a fright because the nun just let them go.  Grandparents did nothing. This was mid 1950's.

[samurai_sarah]

1 hour ago, Four is Enough said:

(snip)

Even in my part of the AoB, the priest was to be obeyed, and the nuns as well. If I went home from school saying that one of them had struck me for misbehaving, I'd have gotten it again.

(snip)

That's what I mean! @Beermeet this went on, and on, and on. And unless you were my mother or your mother, or @Four is Enough, you never questioned. Even in the 1990s!

ETA: @Beermeet What a horrid story! I'm glad your mother rose to the defence. Goodness... who does that to a suffering child???

[Coconut Flan]

My mother was a renegade and had no delusions about our lackluster priest.  People would try to be awestruck with the he's a priest and my mother would plainly state he's just another lazy assed man who wants to be admired for doing little of nothing.  That's my mom. 

One of my now friends says her mother used to go around saying that's Catholic dumb when people ceased using their brains about any Catholic practice. 

So no, neither my friend or I would ever have been taken advantage of in any way by a priest or a nun.  I can't even wrap my mind around deifying either priests or nuns.  Thanks, mom!

[Beermeet]

12 minutes ago, samurai_sarah said:

 

ETA: @Beermeet What a horrid story! I'm glad your mother rose to the defence. Goodness... who does that to a suffering child???

Yeah, I hate that story.  Come to think of it, he was in kinder so, 5-6.  Horrible.  He was lucky she happened to walk by!  

[mtc3659]

I grew up in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in a relatively new church. When our one and only pastor retired, a new pastor was named. A couple weeks later, they were like "never mind! We need to find someone else". Later that year was when the list of priests who had "issues" was released. The priest who had originally been assigned to our church was on there. Everyone in the congregation was very shocked. Another priest who had once been assigned to our church was on there but he had only been at our church for a very short while before being reassigned somewhere else. 

[EmiGirl]

I'm a Baptist so I don't really understand the whole not questioning the preacher thing. My pastor actually said in one of his sermons that if we had issue with something he teaches to come to him to talk about it because he's open to changing his opinion on non salvation issues.  I know it's true too because that same morning he was set to preach against women preaching and I sent him scriptures and writings abou t how that's not really what Paul was saying and he sent me a picture of his notes all scribbles oi t and new ones written in the margins. He did not speak out against women preaching,  but said that the SBC didn't approve, but" here are scriptures, make of that what you will. " 

Other pastors we have had have been similar to that as well. All have encouraged us to study the scriptures on our own and fact check them if needed.

[Cleopatra7]

Probably the biggest skeleton in the RCC closet in recent memory is the case of Marcial Maciel, who was one of history's greatest monsters:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_scandal_of_Marcial_Maciel

http://www.newsweek.com/father-marcial-maciel-and-popes-he-stained-62811

The TL;DR version is that Maciel sexually abused boys and young men that he recruited into his organization, fathered six children (some whom he also abused/molested) with several women and kept said women in lavish apartments, but was still held up as a model of priestly virtue by all the popes from Pius XII to John Paul II. He was a favorite of JPII in particular, who refused to investigate the rumors that Maciel was an abusive monster. JPII's failure to act on Maciel alone should have derailed his canonization.

There's a lot of Spanish language material on Maciel on Youtube, since he targeted wealthy, conservative Catholics in Latin America in particular, but since I don't speak Spanish, I haven't seen them. PBS did a really good documentary about sex scandals in the RCC in general and Maciel in particular:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7mmL1djtcY

Maciel founded the conservative priestly order the Legion of Christ, which in theory was supposed to be the new Jesuits, since many conservatives and traditionalists think they've gone soft post-Vatican II. In reality, the LC appears to have just been an excuse for a cash grab (Maciel has raised more money for the RCC than any person in Catholic history), personality cult, and procuring ground for victims. The main charism of the LC seems to be that the priests are "orthodox" but that's hardly a preserve of the the LCs. There's really no reason for the LC to exist, and it really should have been dissolved, an action that has happened before with other horribly corrupt orders. I think the LC's ability to raise absurd amounts of money is what has kept it from being sin binned.

[samurai_sarah]

19 hours ago, EmiGirl said:

I'm a Baptist so I don't really understand the whole not questioning the preacher thing. My pastor actually said in one of his sermons that if we had issue with something he teaches to come to him to talk about it because he's open to changing his opinion on non salvation issues.  

(snip)

I'm glad your pastor is so open to dialogue. Last time someone in the Catholic church had serious issues and questioned, the Reformation happened. Kidding!

In Catholicism, priests act as intermediaries between you and God. They are the moral authority. You confess your sins to them, and they decide whether or not you're forgiven. Or even if you can be forgiven. They can hold your salvation hostage. Not God decides if you go to heaven, a priest decides!

This kind of immense power started at a time when only a tiny percentage of the population could read. People depended on the parish priest to interpret the scriptures, depended on priests to forgive sins, depended on priests to note down births, deaths, marriages, depended on them for blessings when things went pear-shaped and so on.

One of the most powerful things to come out of the Reformation was literacy for the masses. While Bibles in the vernacular are pretty neat, reformed churches started spreading literacy so people could actually read them. The revolutionary idea was that people should engage for themselves, make up their own minds, and not just blindly follow. Taken together with the invention of the printing press, it was a HUGE deal. It threatened the formerly absolute power of the Catholic church.

But as its continued existence and power shows, the Catholic church got away with it. The reason I told the story about my late parish priest hitting children, and the lack of response ties in with all of that. If you're a believing Catholic, your priest can still hold your salvation hostage.

That doesn't mean that no one ever questions. As others on this thread have pointed out, not all Catholics are blind followers. On the contrary. But Catholicism itself doesn't encourage questioning authority. The Vatican really doesn't like that!

I'll stop here, hoping to have given you a brief idea of it all. Kick me, if I mansplained though! But I am delighted to hear your perspective, and having to think about it all again. I'll refrain from sounding like a Hallmark card about how we can all learn from each other though...

[Coconut Flan]

Little known, apparently, fact is while a priest may decide to withhold his blessing, you are perfectly entitled within the Catholic church to go see any other Catholic priest.  And it is only his blessing the priest can withhold. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

True. But you don't have much of a choice when you're 9yo and your conservative Catholic mom takes you to her favourite confessor. Unfortunately the father uses to ask you things such as "do you touch yourself? It's a bad thing you know?". This didn't happen to me but to a friend of mine. I have less troubling examples from my personal experience but believe me the only thing I gained from Confessions when I was so young was lots of self loath and shame.

[Coconut Flan]

That's so sad.  The priests in our diocese are more the don't tell me details type.  My favorite priest (now deceased) was asked about remembering confessions and he said he tried not to even listen because it was to God the person was confessing.  It sounds like many of the priests could still use some lessons themselves.

[EmiGirl]

2 hours ago, samurai_sarah said:

I'll stop here, hoping to have given you a brief idea of it all. Kick me, if I mansplained though! But I am delighted to hear your perspective, and having to think about it all again.

No! Thank you! I live in an area where there are so few Catholics. I think I know a handful of them and none of them to awful well. T hats why I have no clue how anything about the Catholic church really works. We mostly covered around thr time of the Reformation in my Intro to Christianity class in college.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Absolutely @Coconut Flan. I know that there are priests like yours, I've met some myself (too late). If my father still identifies as a Catholic in spite of everything (he stopped going to Church when Elisa Claps body was found) is because he remembers well his mother's faith and the example of the holy man who was priest in our parish when he was a child. According to my father's memory don Antonio was the sort of priest you described, a truly humble and wise person. People like him who offered solace and comfort to his fellow humans without judgement are the true saints. Unfortunately behind their halo of true sainthood hide people whose morals are dubious to say the least. They profit from the respect earned to the RCC among the population by those who led lives of service, only to pursue their dirty aims (power, control, riches etc). This is possible because the RCC likes to present itself with an air of monolithic consistency. There's precious little discussion at its core about what's wrong with the RCC beyond the usual "we are all human sinners, we must pray for mercy and forgiveness", "Satan is attacking", "the bad soulless, amoral, relativistic, gay, atheist modern society is wrong".

My beef is that the system isn't geared towards protection of the people, especially of children. The power imbalance is totally in favor of the clergy. Imho no child should be left alone with an adult inquiring about the state of their conscience. I am convinced that after baptism any other Sacrament should be a free choice made by an adult.

 

Edited July 16, 2017 by laPapessaGiovanna

[Cleopatra7]

Unthinking obedience to priests and/or ministers happens in Catholicism and Protestantism, although the dynamics are different. In Catholicism, it is said that taking Holy Orders (i.e., becoming ordained as a priest) causes an ontological change in a man's soul and he becomes as an "alter Christus" during the mass. This means that a priest, no matter how dissolute or unworthy, is automatically of more worth than a lowly lay person, as this ontological change can never be revoked. By way of comparison, the sorts of extreme IFB and neo-Calvinist Protestant groups that we tend to talk about here justify authoritarian behavior among ministers with the "touch no God's anointed" line from the Bible, as well as the "no gossiping" commandment. There's no talk of ontological changes, but the underlying assumption appears to be that a "man of God" is literally chosen by God to preach, so you shouldn't argue with him. Because Protestant fundie churches tend to be much smaller and more insular than Catholic parishes, ministers can micromanage their parishioners' lives in a way that Catholic priests typically can't (think of how Gothard institutionalized his creepy curl fetish). Obviously, once you start looking at traditionalist groups, it becomes a whole other kettle of fish.

[samurai_sarah]

Not a literal skeleton, but I saw this on the German news today: http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/regensburg-547-domspatzen-laut-abschlussbericht-missbraucht-a-1158456.html

Article is in German, so here's what happened: Basically, a prestigious German Catholic school with a famous choir, run by the diocese of Regensburg got investigated for child abuse. The final report is out. 547 children were abused between 1945 and 1990. Physical abuse for 500, with added sexual abuse for the rest. The authorities identified 49 perpetrators.

After the first reports, more and more former pupils came forward, describing the place as "a prison" or "hell". Apparently especially the Kindergarten (!) was horrific.

Last year, the bishop publicly apologised and said that he couldn't undo anything, and all he could was beg forgiveness from the victims. The victims will receive financial compensation for the suffering they endured.