Catholic Stories

[laPapessaGiovanna]

@samurai_sarahThe Guardian has an article on it.

Quote

Five-hundred-and-forty-seven pupils at one of Germany’s most famous Roman Catholic choir schools were physically or sexually abused between 1945 and 2015, an independent report has found, with some boys likening the institution to “prison, hell or a concentration camp”.

...

Georg Ratzinger, 93, brother of the former pope Benedict XVI, led the choir from 1964 to 1994. He acknowledged in 2010 that he had slapped pupils in the face but said he had not realised how brutal the discipline was.

Weber said he was “to be blamed especially for turning a blind eye and not intervening despite having knowledge”, adding the investigation did not show he was aware of sexual abuse. Several testimonies said he was generally friendly.

...

He found that 547 former pupils had probably been victims of physical and/or sexual violence. Of those, 67 suffered sexual abuse. He blamed 49 individuals, 45 of whom were physically violent and nine of whom were believed to have committed sexual violence.

...

"Victims ... described the institution as a prison, hell and a concentration camp,” Weber told a news conference. “Many of them called the time there as the worst of their lives, which was marked by violence, fear and helplessness.”

...

"These are not 547 cases where an individual was affected once. Rather, this was an ongoing practice over decades where 547 children were tormented, abused, mistreated and socially harmed,” the former choir boy and abuse victim Alexander Probst told Reuters TV.

“They are severely traumatised to this very day. This upsets me. I thought I had gotten over it after a seven-year battle but in fact this greatly upset me today.”

The article is inaccurate because it identifies Joseph Ratzinger as former pope. Benedict XVI actually is pope emeritus.

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

15 hours ago, samurai_sarah said:

Last year, the bishop publicly apologised and said that he couldn't undo anything, and all he could was beg forgiveness from the victims.

It seems like he could at least promise to try to make sure that similar abuse wouldn't happen again. 

Edited July 19, 2017 by WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?
riffle

[Cleopatra7]

And then there was that time Mother Teresa defended a child molester:

https://archives.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/tainted-saint-mother-teresa-defended-pedophile-priest/Content?oid=2183718

The fact that her homes for the sick and dying are horribly run is probably known to most of us, but this one you may not be aware of.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

Believe me or not @Cleopatra7 I've discovered Mother Teresa shady side here on FJ. On the eve of her proclamation as a saint some of our news channels referred to her as a controversial figure, but they never specified what the controversial aspects were, making it appear as if it was a given that such a saintly and outstanding figure must have had some haters. Our press traditionally presents an hagiographic and whitewhashed version of important Catholic figures.

[hoipolloi]

58 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

On the eve of her proclamation as a saint some of our news channels referred to her as a controversial figure

The late Christopher Hitchens, a staunch atheist, laid out excellent reasons for why Mother Teresa is the worst of person to be elevated to sainthood. Apart from the basically fraudulent nature of her "ministry," she was a rather vile human being.  Others agreed with him.

Unfortunately, the RC church barged ahead.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

@hoipolloiSaying anything negative about her here would be unthinkable. The myth of her goodness, self sacrifice and faith is unquestioned. You'd be metaphorically stoned if you fare to question her perfection. I'm not joking nor exaggerating.

Thank you for the links.

[sawasdee]

25 years ago in India, I met two British nurses who had volunteered to work six months, at their own expense, at Mother Teresa's Kolkata (Calcutta) hospital. They left after two weeks, appalled at the conditions and the unnecessary suffering. One said that her (MT's) idea of treatment was to give a dying man an aspirin....and she ruled with an iron fist, so staying and attempting to change things for the better was not an option. It was her way or the highway.

[Coconut Flan]

Perhaps one of the more appalling things is that while all the people in her care suffered, she received top flight medical care when she became ill. 

[2manyKidzzz]

1 minute ago, Coconut Flan said:

Perhaps one of the more appalling things is that while all the people in her care suffered, she received top flight medical care when she became ill. 

I didn't know this as I have never tried to find out about her. This is terribly sad and well, sad. 

I was raised RC but don't like these types of deceptions, for one thing. More accountability is what I would like to see. It is of course not the fault of many "rank and file" clergy and church officials. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

@Coconut Flan is she widely criticized among Catholics too?

 

[Coconut Flan]

I can't speak for Catholics in general, but since much of her medical care was here in Southern California, it was well known and widely discussed.  At first there was a general agreement that, of course, she should get the best care possible.  Then stories began surfacing of the conditions in Mexico and then in India and while I didn't see much public backlash among Catholics, I heard a lot of murmurings and shock.  Considering that it seems none of the people she "helped" received a tenth of the care that she did including life flight from Mexico, all the meds possible to make her comfortable, all the latest treatments and technology, private hospital suite, security, visits by bishops, top doctors, nothing left undone in her care, nurses begging to be assigned to her care, etc., it doesn't mesh with the humble nun doing her best in the slums and identifying with her charges. 

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, Coconut Flan said:

Perhaps one of the more appalling things is that while all the people in her care suffered, she received top flight medical care when she became ill. 

From the Christopher Hitchens piece (emphasis added):

Quote

She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit.

 

[Cleopatra7]

9 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

@Coconut Flan is she widely criticized among Catholics too?

 

I think there's some murmurings but few Americans, Catholic or not, have the courage to publicly speak out against MT, lest they run afoul of Bill "Catholic League" Donahue, the bishops, and the Catholic Answers crowd. The image of MT is also very appealing and few people are interested in investigating the reality behind the media facade. For example, when I asked the other posters at the Catholic Answers board whether the allegations about MT were true, they were more offended that I had asked the question than interested in providing actual examples that would refute the charges (this is why I think CA functions less as a true apologetics site and more of a place where conservative OCD Catholics can have their anxieties fed into). 

If you want to learn about a woman who actual did work for peace and social justice in India, that would be Indumati Parikh:

https://humanist.nz/obituaries/indumatiparikh/

The reason why MT is a household name but Parikh isn't is pretty simple; Early on in her career, MT caught the attention of British journalist and Catholic convert Malcolm Muggeridge, who heavily promoted her in the West as a saint walking among us. Since Parikh was actually working to help people, she didn't bother with the relentless self-promotion that catapulted MT to global superstardom. Parikh was also a secular humanist, a feminist, and perhaps most importantly, not white, all of which were obstacles to being popular in the West.

I think one reason why MT was so popular and why this popularity is so insidious is because she created the impression that Calcutta is a giant hellhole that can only get relief by the crumbs graciously given to the inhabitants by a white Christian woman. When I have tried to point out the terrible conditions in MC facilities the common retort is what are you doing for these people, the implication being that poor black and brown people should be thankful for whatever white people condescend to give them, no matter how crummy (and as Parikh demonstrated, there are secular humanists in India doing much better work than MT). The problem is that the MCs have more than enough money to create state of the art facilities for the poor, handicapped, and dying, but they choose not to because of their fetishization of poverty for the sake of poverty. It's not that the MCs can't do more, but that they choose not to because of their religious beliefs.

As another counterpoint, Indian "god man" Sai Baba founded a number of hospitals for poor and low caste Indians. While Sai Baba was a pretty shady character himself, I haven't found any evidence that the hospitals and other charitable work he did are suspect. This shows that it is possible for a religious organization in India to provide top notch services to the poor. Sincerely Sai Baba's fame is mostly confined to India, just think how much more could the MCs could do in the name of MT. If they announced a project to create a modern hospital in Calcutta for poor and low caste Indians, you can bet they'd have enough money in less than a month, since they'd have donations pouring in from all over the world. But like I said, they choose not to. Finally, I think it's nuts that the very same conservative Catholics who constantly complain about "government waste" and "welfare frauds" have no problem with handing over money to the MCs with no questions asked about here their money goes.

[Four is Enough]

I didn't question MT's actions until my cousin, a non Catholic, pointed them out to my face. I was embarassed and angry.. I'd known about the medical care, and wondered at the time why she got all the highfaluting treatment, but didn't research the rest.

I've read a LOT of the stories of the saints, and let me just say, she's not the first that was rushed to sainthood prematurely. 

 

[2manyKidzzz]

And then the accounts of the letters she wrote where she really questioned her faith....had doubts. 

Why was Mexico involved? I didn't know that.

All in all, I'm sure there are saints among us, compassionate and giving people who are never known or acknowledged. To me, miracles belong to another dimension bleeding through somehow. 

[Coconut Flan]

1 hour ago, 2manyKidzzz said:

Why was Mexico involved? I didn't know that.

She had a "clinic" there also.  My memory is fuzzy but toward the end of her life she seemed to spend more time there than in India.  The cynic in me says to be close to high class medical care in San Diego and LA.  I am not the only person around here who has said that.    One other may have been a priest who suspiciously sounded like he snorted when someone mentioned her "home" in Mexico.

[Cleopatra7]

I don't think many Fjers know about the St. Gregory the Great Academy scandal:

https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curious-case-carlos-urrutigoity-i-updated

(the links to the other parts are within Part I)

The TL;DR version is that a traditional Catholic boys' boarding school was established in Scanton, PN in the 1990s and it  crashed and burned in 2012 due to an abuse scandal that spans multiple states and continents. Since traditionalists seem to be unable to learn from history, they're restarting the school with many of the same people from the first iteration:

http://www.candidworldreport.com/my-brush-with-the-sex-abuse-scandal.html

(a conservative website/perspective, but useful for a more condensed account of what happened and the resurrection of the school)

Traditionalists tend to be into homeschooling, since they believe regular Catholic school have gone to hell in a handbasket and wouldn't be able to afford tuition, given how they tend to have large broods. However, the idea of single-sex Catholic schools remains attractive to many trads, presumably because Pius XI wrote an encyclical endorsing such schools:

http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-illius-magistri.html

There seems to be a major disconnect with this love of single-sex boarding schools and the accompanying belief that homosexuality is the worst thing ever (other than abortion, of course), since these hothouse, homo-erotic institutions virtually guarantee that same-sex experimentation will happen. Since trads usually believe that simply being a trad is enough to make someone not a sexual predator, they don't seem to have any compunctions about priests having questionable boundaries with boys, especially given their obsession with fostering priestly vocations.

[Four is Enough]

Well, I can't speak to single sex boarding schools, but two of the Four went to single sex high schools. For each, I believe the removal of the opposite sex in the classroom gave them the opportunity to really shine... the one was very shy and always felt that he had to "perform" for the females... without females, he could learn, produce, and blossom without any social constraints or problems. There were still social things, with band, prom, dances, etc.. and he had lots of opportunity to participate in them.

For the other, she became very assertive and was quite the leader, which I never saw or expected in  her coed school years. She learned self confidence and was honored several times for leadership.

I can't speak to homoerotic things.. I know the Christian Brothers and faculty teaching the boy were very careful to always have more than one person in the private office with them, and open door policies, etc., because there had been cases where a teacher had abused students years ago.

In the girl's classes, always with doors open, no private meetings, always a third person, etc. She never even expressed a feeling of unease. So in one or two schools at least, they were working on it.

[Blahblah]

http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2016/03/15/tim-minchin-doesnt-regret-cardinal-pell-song-i-wish-the-fucker-had-come-back/

Tim Minchin, comedian, composer, singer, actor and dead-set Aussie legend, wrote a song aimed at Cardinal Pell when the Cardinal refused to come back to Australia to give evidence at the Royal Commission. The refusal was on the basis of ill health and being unable to travel. The song went to number #1 on our music charts (shows how deeply Aussies despise the cardinal and the cover ups in general). Tim gave all the profits to charity.

if you are unfamiliar with Tim's work, he is, amongst many other achievements, the composer and lyricist of the Tony and Olivier award winning, and Grammy nominated musical Matilda the Musical.

[hoipolloi]

@Blahblah - stunning & brilliant.

Thank you for posting that.

[samurai_sarah]

@Blahblah

Purely brilliant! Hats off to Mr Minchin and the Australian people who made this Nr1, not only shaming Pell, but also helping the survivors.

[Hokey Pokey]

I love Tim Minchin and was just think of that song, just brilliant

[Cleopatra7]

@Four is Enough, I'm not against single sex schools as such, since for some students that may be the best choice. I'm assuming your children went to a day school and not a boarding school, where third parties were acting in loco parentis. While I'm not against boarding school per se, the opportunities for abuse in such environments are increased, a situation not helped by the longstanding opinion that abuse and brutality among children could be a character forming experience (google British boarding school horror stories for more on that). There is more awareness about the need to be proactive about abuse in education in general, but fundies, regardless of their beliefs, seem to obstinately believe that just because one has correct theological beliefs or looks outwardly pious then that means that that person is automatically trustworthy and not an abuser. That St Gregory the Great Academy was re-established with almost all the original staff intact and very little safeguards in place to prevent a repeat of the previous scandal indicates willful blindness on the part of parents and teachers.

[Cleopatra7]

I don't like posting twice in a row, but I figured this would probably get merged into this thread eventually. Notorious serial pedophile priest Paul Shanley is being released this week:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/07/27/paul-shanley-pedophile-priest-level-3-sex-offender/

He's so high profile that it wouldn't surprise me if he's a victim of vigilante justice. Whenever you read an account of the Boston sex abuse scandal, Shanley,s name always comes up, along with Joseph Birmingham and John Geoghan, who was killed in prison by a white supremacist.

[Cleopatra7]

I'm studying for my comprehensive exams, and one of the books I'm reading is History and Presence by Robert Orsi. He mentioned a nine year old boy from the Bronx named Joseph Vitolo who claimed to see the Virgin Mary in 1948 and became instantly famous for a time, including receiving a Mary statue from Frank Sinatra. Naturally, I had to Google him, and discovered that his adult life has been rather melancholy and disappointing:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2002/12/22/nyregion/the-boy-who-saw-the-virgin.html

Vitolo's story reminds me of the experiences of former child stars who have lots of attention as children and can't cope with being a regular adult. His story was even more difficult because he was a religious celebrity, which made everyone think that he had to grow up to be a saint. He tried seminary, but doesn't seem to have had the academic ability and the regimented lifestyle seems to have given him anxiety. Vitolo continued to manage his humble Marian shrine into his old age. I saw a link for an obituary for a Joseph Vitolo of the Bronx, so I assume he must be dead now. Hopefully he has the peace that he was never able to achieve in life.