Really? Hippie-punching? Does the Vatican think this is going to work?
A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.
Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.
[...]
The “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002 and by Pope Benedict XVI after it erupted in Europe in 2010.
Of course. Because when you and I hear this…
We think peace and love and maybe we just like Joni Mitchell a whole lot and will take any excuse to post one of her songs.
But when Catholic priests hear it…
They diddle kids? Really? This is what the Catholic Church is going with?
Yesterday, we congratulated and thanked CNN news anchor Don Lemon for courageously coming out of the closet, detailing his history of being sexually abused as a child, and telling the story of being a “double minority,” as a gay black man, in his new book Transparent. Later in the day, he sat on the other side of the anchor’s chair on his own network for his first television interview on the subject. I consider this Must See Teevee.
What a stellar role model he is. Oh, and by the way, did you notice that he used the phrase “pray away the gay”? Where did that phrase come from, I wonder?! So, if you’re out there reading, Don, thanks.
The web site of Victory Fellowship Church in Council Bluffs, Iowa, has much in common with conservative evangelical churches that host fraudulent “ex-gay” ministries:
It sells “sexual purity” to people who have been trained to feel “broken.”
It preaches an emotion-driven pentecostal outlook which is not held accountable to history, science, or the constitutional rights and freedoms of minorities.
Its leaders and school have few apparent credentials or certifications.
Victory Fellowship’s pentecostal good feelings, its disinclination toward accreditation and accountability, its desire to harm LGBT couples, and its obliviousness to the consequences of its political actions, all made the church ripe for exploitation by an antigay sexual predator whose idea of curing homosexual men was to molest them, much like other antigay thugs practice corrective rape to “cure” lesbians.
In the wake of the arrest of Brent Girouex, 31, on 60 counts of suspected sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist, the church’s confession leaves much unsaid: (Read More)
Well, I wish I could say this is unbelievable, but it’s unfortunately par for the course when it comes to extreme fundamentalists:
A former youth pastor in Council Bluffs, Iowa, says he had sex with teenage boys because it was his pastoral duty “to help (the teen) with homosexual urges by praying while he had sexual contact with him.”
But law enforcement has a different view of his actions. Earlier this month, Brent Girouex, 31, was arrested on 60 counts of suspicion of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist, reported The Daily Nonpareil.
In February, Girouex told Council Bluffs police detectives that he had sexual contact with four young men starting in 2007 in order to help them gain “sexual purity in the eyes of God.”
But Pottawattamie County Attorney Matt Wilber told the Nonpareil that at least eight men have come forward with complaints that Girouex molested them.
But, you see, there was a rhyme to his reason:
“When they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind,” Girouex allegedly told detectives.
Oh, my god. This is what the fundamentalist lifestyle does to people. It’s absolutely grotesque.
Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) was sexually abused at the hands of a camp counselor at the age of 10, he says in a new book.
[...]
“It was certainly, back then, very traumatic,” Brown said in a clip released by CBS today. “When people find people like me at that young, vulnerable age who are basically lost, the thing that they have over you is they make you believe that no one will believe you.”
“I haven’t told anybody. That’s what happens when you’re a victim. You’re embarrassed, you’re hurt,” he said.
I think this is extremely significant for a couple of reasons:
1. Personally, for Scott Brown to be talking openly about this, on national television and in print, has to be very liberating for him, for his own well-being.
2. For an attractive, male, Republican Senator to be talking about this really drives the point home that it can happen to anyone. The “traditional values” culture tends to undermine that fact, is often full of rape-apologists [as we see in the right-wing reaction to reports of the rapes and beatings endured by reporter Lara Logan in Egypt], and often communicates that people who are abused fit a certain stereotype. Indeed, anti-gay zealots cling to ideas that male sexual abuse is a cause for homosexuality, but here we have a very straight, very “man’s man” kind of guy, and a Republican no less, admitting that he’s hidden the abuse he suffered so many years ago. That, to me, provides an opportunity for people on all sides of the ideological spectrum to step back and untie some of the myths surrounding sexual abuse, sexuality and whatnot.
I wouldn’t have voted for him, but I applaud Scott Brown for his courage in talking about this, and I hope it helps someone else out there who has stayed silent, for whatever reason, to find their own voice and speak up. A clip from the interview is available at the National Journal.
If you’ve been a victim, last night or twenty years ago, help is available from the good people at RAINN.
Timothy Beauchamp at AmBlogGay points us to an important story that hasn’t gotten much coverage lately:
With little fanfare or news coverage, the four sexual coercion lawsuits confronting Bishop Eddie Long had the first hearing recently, with both sides opting for mediation to avoid a trial.
Why no major news outlet or editorial columnist has discussed the implications of such a move is nothing less than egregious in nature. Despite the initial media crush and coverage and the incessant analysis of Bishop Long’s statement on his website and “sermon,” there’s been nary a peep in response to the quest for mediation.
[...]
Bishop Eddie Long agreeing to mediation of sexual coercion charges is an end-run around the universally accepted moral and ethical responsibilities of any ecumenical leader. Mediation of sexual allegation grievances is tantamount to an admission of “some” guilt, “some” form of ministerial misconduct. Innocent folk don’t make deals if the claims against them are baseless and untrue. Mediation for the accused is a forfeiture of the right to ever claim innocence, and readers should be absolutely clear on this point.
Did you hear that?
That was the sound of Long publicly admitting to some degree of guilt when he agreed to mediation. The public wanted Long to thoroughly address the allegations. Well, there you have it. He said it all, you just had to have been paying attention to hear it.
There you have it, indeed.
Timothy ties it all up with a bow, adding:
It is important to use every gift of cognitive dissonance given us by the other side to prove they have no corner on human morality, and we deserve every single right they enjoy that they would gladly deny us while reminding all voters those rights are enshrined in our constitution.
Yet another tacit admission of guilt from a supposed beacon of morality. But yet, you, married happy gay couple, are the problem, according to these dolts.
A Catholic priest, facing criminal charges and a lawsuit alleging that he sexually abused a teenage boy, is now charged with attempting to hire someone to kill the youth, authorities said Tuesday.
The Rev. John M. Fiala was in the Dallas County, Texas, jail on Tuesday, charged with one count of criminal solicitation to commit capital murder, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety and the jail’s website. He also is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. His bail totals $700,000.
Fiala, 52, of Dallas, was out on bond on other sexual assault charges involving the youth, now 18, when he allegedly attempted to negotiate the boy’s murder, said Tom Rhodes, the teen’s attorney.
Not only that, but he’s accused of raping the teen at gunpoint! Moreover, the lawsuits state that the archdioceses and religious orders Fiala was under ALL covered up his sexual abuse.
It’s not often that the Catholic Church can shock me these days, since child rape and Catholicism are so inextricably linked in the public mind, but this one…
One of the four men who’ve accused a Georgia mega-church pastor of coercing them into sex called the man at the center of the controversy a “predator” and a “monster.”Jamal Parris, 23, told WAGA-TV in Atlanta that Bishop Eddie Long, leader of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, swept into his life and used him for sex and moved on to younger prey.
“I cannot get the sound of his voice out of my head, and I cannot forget the smell of his cologne, and I cannot forget the way he made me cry when I drove in his car on the way home, not able to take enough showers to get the smell of that man off my body,” Parris said in the Tuesday broadcast.
When Parris was 17, he said, Long would take him “alone to the guesthouse” and “encourage him to call him daddy,” according to his lawsuit.
According to published reports, the Vatican is soon to release new norms that govern matters of sexual abuse by clergy. (Ho hum—but wait, there’s more.) They are expected to include the ordination of women under the delicta graviora, the same category of grave sin that governs sexual abuse by priests. Cue the music of doom!
Music of doom, indeed. Women doing religious teaching = priests raping kids. But then again, if there are women in the priesthood, they might interfere with the special relationship so many Catholic priests have enjoyed with their personal, unwilling sex slaves over the years. That’s just a bridge too far, ladies.
Mixing the two issues, even under the same legal umbrella, is a profoundly perverse proposition. Either these gentlemen are more ethically tone deaf than one can imagine, or they are sly beyond the dreams of foxes in an effort to redirect attention from the criminal behavior of clergy against children to their wrath over the ordination of women.
Look over there! Misogyny! Pay no attention to the altar boys kneeling before various parish priests and bishops!
Perhaps they reason that the women’s ordination cases will keep them so busy that the pedophilia crimes will go away. Maybe they think people will be so scandalized by women wanting to get on with the ministry of the church at a time when the institution is morally bankrupt that they will forget the cover-ups that necessitated this revision of law in the first place. Or, perhaps the foxes may really think that this effort to centralize power with even less accountability can take place quietly since so many people will be exercised over the mere suggestion of women priests.
Completely morally bankrupt. You really should read the whole thing.
A Springfield, Mass.-area Roman Catholic priest has publicly called for Pope Benedict XVI (a.k.a. Joseph Ratzinger) to resign.
According to today’s Boston Globe, Rev. James Scahill of St. Michael’ Parish said the pope’s untruthfulness constituted a violation of an important tenet of Catholicism. The Globe added that Scahill “has long been outspoken on the need for accountability among church leaders.”
Unfortunately, his superiors are far less courageous.
Mark Dupont, a spokesman for the Diocese of Springfield, was quick to distance the diocesan leadership from the comments made by Scahill.
“It in no way represents the position of the bishop,” Dupont said. “We find his statements to be unfortunate.”
Well, I wish I could say 
According to today’s 
