F Rosa Rubicondior: Catholics
Showing posts with label Catholics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholics. Show all posts

Saturday 13 January 2024

Creationism in Crisis - Americans Are Now Abandoning Religion As Fast As Europeans Did A Generation Ago


Belief in Five Spiritual Entities Edges Down to New Lows
As the chart on the right shows, the decline in belief in God and Heaven has been the most dramatic, falling 16 percentage points in 22 years and the decline in belief in other magical entities like Angels and Satan has run in parallel, the differences being within the statistical error of the data.

What this reflects is the trend that has been apparent in American religious belief since about the mid 1960's where the younger generation have tended to be significantly less religious than their parents with belief in God and the importance of religion tending to increase in older generations. However, as people age, they tend to keep the religious beliefs they formed by the age of about 25-30. What these charts show then is the effect of the older generations dying and the younger generations moving up through the age groups, as the following chart shows:

Friday 27 October 2023

Catholic Sex Abuse News - Spanish Catholic Priests Sexually Abused Over 200,000 Children


Cardinal Isidro Gomá y Tomás, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain, when the Catholic Church was at the height of its power in Spain.
Spanish clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children, inquiry estimates | Spain | The Guardian

The routine sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests is back in the news after an independent commission, led by Spain's national Ombudsman, former education minister, Ángel Gabilondo, has discovered that more than 200,000 minors have been sexually abused by Catholic priests since 1940.

This figure is an estimate based on extrapolating the figure of 0.8% of 8,000 Spanish adults in a survey who reported being sexually abused by Catholic priests before the age of 18 - a figure which rose to 1.13% (360,000 of Spain's 32 million adult population) if lay members of the church were included. Lay members of the church perform some of the duties of priests but are not ordained or under holy orders. As such, they come under the authority and control of senior church figured, usually the bishops, archbishops and cardinals in charge of diocese.

For most of the period, the Spanish Catholic Church was a privileged and protected institution that considered itself largely above the law - a position that derived from its active support and cooperation with General Frano's Fascist regime. During this period, the Catholic Church was given control of most of the influential and welfare aspects of Spanish life, including education, health and institutions such as orphanages, mother and baby homes and homes for single mothers, many of whom were themselves victims of sexual abuse.

Sunday 23 July 2023

Lesson from France - The Bloody Extermination of the Cathars at Béziers - "Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His!"


Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His!

Abbot Arnaud Amalric of Citeaux
Papal legate in charge of the Cathar genocide.
Citing 2 Timothy 2:19
Burning the Cathars at Béziers
Another reminder of the brutal, blood-soaked history of Christianity is to be found in the history of the French town of Béziers on the banks of the River Orb, in the Languedoc region, southeast of Montpellier, on the edge of the Camargue.

It has been, in turn, along with much of the area south of Toulouse, under the control of Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Moorish Moslems from Andalucia, Catholic Spain and latterly, Catholic France. Until recent times, the local language was a dialect of French, Occitan, which has close links with Catalan. This gave it a sense of a separate identity from that of France - something that concerned King Philip II, keen to exert the same control over the southern provinces as he had over the North.

Béziers is now a peaceful, quite little market town and cultural centre but it was not always so. It was, until 1209, a stronghold of the Cathars, a religious sect which rejected Roman Catholicism and the authority of the Pope, which was brutally suppressed in the 'Albigensian Crusade' on the orders of Pope Innocent III in alliance with King Philip II of France.
For more information on the Albigensian Crusade and Pope Innocent III's and King Philip II of France's reasons for launching it, see:
  1. Lesson from France - Massacre of the Cathars of Carcassonne, or How Christians Settled Theological Differences
  2. Feel That Christian Love!
  3. Brotherly Love - How Christians Settle Disputes
Fresh from their success in laying siege to and then massacring the inhabitants of the Carcassonne, the crusaders moved on to other towns in the area, including Béziers.

Sunday 21 May 2023

Catholic Child Abuse News - They're Still at it in San Francisco

Catholic Child Abuse News

They're Still at it in San Francisco

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordilone
Salvatore Joseph Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco.
Refusing to release names of accused priests.
Why is San Francisco’s top Catholic shielding pedophile priests? | San Francisco News | sfexaminer.com

It's been a while since I wrote about the paedophile ring known as the Catholic Church, because the stories have become so commonplace that they had dropped out of the mainstream new.

Many people assume the much-vaunted reforms supposedly implemented by the Catholic Church at the behest of Pope Francis to protect potential abuse victims from their priests, have been successful and put a stop to the routine sexual abuse of minors by priests and nuns that had become the norm throughout the Catholic world.

However, not all senior Catholic clerics have signed up to these reforms. It seems that the instinct of some, such as Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, of San Francisco, is to protect the paedohiles and facilitate their abuse of minors for recreational sex.

According to this report in the San Francisco Examiner:

Monday 10 April 2023

Fake News - Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth- But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed
Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed
Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed
Fake News

Pope Francis Can Declare the Truth!
But God Needs to be Kept Informed

Francis focuses Easter message on hope, with prayers for an end to global conflicts

In his traditional Easter address 'Urbi et Orbi' ([to] the City and the world), Pope Francis announced that it was a solid fact that Jesus has risen, leaving historians bemused and wishing they too had the powers to declare truth by fiat. It would save an awful lot of time and money.

Scientists, of course, have long been envious of the magical power of religious clerics to simply declare facts to be true, even mutually contradictory ones and ones proven to be false. No need for all that experimentation and analysis; simply give it some thought, decide what would be convenient if it were true, and declare it to be so! Voilà! (Or should that be, Shazam?)

The Pope has this magical power, apparently, because an omniscient God speaks directly to him and informs him of the inerrant truth - rather like a mega-rich televangelist in that respect. All Pope Francis must do is announce it, and, at least as far as the Catholic Church and its followers are concerned, it is so.

However, he then went on to throw that whole 'fount of divine wisdom' thing into confusion by calling on the world to pray for peace between Russia and Ukraine. (There is nothing like an empty gesture in times of trouble, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than sending aid.)

But hold on!

Thursday 30 March 2023

Hypocrisy News - Pope Turns to Medical Science to Delay His Meeting with God

Hypocrisy News

Pope Turns to Medical Science to Delay His Meeting with God

Pope Francis
Holy hypocrite

Pope Francis in hospital with respiratory infection - BBC News

If anyone should be looking forward to the next life where he will spend eternity with God, according to the teachings of the church he heads, it's Pope Francis.

And yet we see him tonight in Hospital desperately trying to put off that day as long as possible. Like so many evangelicals preachers who told us we could look forward to a blissful after-life if only we obeyed all the rules, paid the tythes and did what they told us, Pope Francis is in hospital in Rome where medical science will be used to delay his meeting with God as long as possible.

Prayer having failed to cure his chest infection, or at least been recognised as ineffective, the pontiff has turned to science for help.

Having supposedly been chosen personally by God, who inspired the cardinals in conclave to vote for him, to be his personal representative and mouthpiece on Earth, like all his predecessors, Pope Francis should be confident of his place in Heaven.

Unless he knows something we don't know, of course.

Saturday 17 December 2022

Catholic Priest Sex Abuse - And Still They Come

Archdiocese of Chicago list of alleged sex abusers who are priests, clergy expands by 72 names - ABC7 Chicago
Archbishop Blase Cupich of Chicago.
"Regretted our failure to qddress the scourge of clerical sexual abuse"
You might think a 28-page list of Catholic priests from the Chicago Catholic archdiocese alone, against whom substantiated allegations of the sexual abuse of minors have been made, would more or less cover the scale of the danger the church and its priests represent to the children of Chicago.
But not a bit of it!

A further 72 names are to be added to the list. These are of deceased priests who have been posthumously accused of sexual abuse.

So does that total of 150 names cover it?

Not according to SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) who point out that the attorney’s office has said there at at least another 500 [sic] names that have not yet been made public!

And this is just one American Catholic diocese.

Nor is that likely to be an end to the matter, since each release of names normally results in even more people finding the courage to come forward with yet more allegations against yet more priests. The Catholic Church is paying the price for decades of acting as a de facto paedophile ring with coverup and facilitation the norm. The question isn't so much whether there had been abuse in any Catholic diocese or institution but by who and how many victims there were?

Religion - Providing Excuses for People Who Need Excuses

Friday 14 October 2022

Declining Religion in USA - Latinos Are Leaving the Catholic Church

Pie chart of religious beliefs of Hispanic Americans
New poll finds 4 in 10 non-Catholic Latinos were once Catholic and left

Tucked away on page 15 of the NBC News/Telemundo National Survey report conducted over Sept. 17-26, 2022 by Hart Research Associates/Public Opinion Strategies, is a table that should spread despondency in the US Catholic Church, which had been pinning its hopes of avoiding the haemorrhage of members experience by other Christian churches in the USA, by the immigration of Hispanic people, assumed to be overwhelmingly Catholic.

Sunday 29 May 2022

Catholic Child Abuse News - Will Italy's New Senior Cardinal Launch a Historical Child Abuse Enquiry?

Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy
President of the Italian Bishops' Conference
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi is the new president of Italy’s Catholic bishops’ conference | Catholic News Agency

The appointment by Pope Francis of Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, to the powerful post of President of the Italian Bishops' Conference, raises the delicious possibility of another major investigation into historical sex abuses by Catholic Priest in a devoutly Catholic Country, and of course the likely haemorrhage of membership from the church and loosening of the Church’s grip on national politics when the truth is revealed, as was seen in France, Spain, Ireland and elsewhere.

Zuppi is regarded as a liberal and was appointed by the Pope when Italian Bishops declined the Pope's invitation to be given the power to elect their president from amongst themselves. This gives him power in Italy second only to the Pope, who as Bishop of Rome is also Primate of Italy. He is believed to have strong links with the Sant’Egidio Community - a liberal-leaning, humanitarian community which describes itself as:
Sant’Egidio is a Christian community born in 1968, right after the second Vatican Council. An initiative of Andrea Riccardi, it was born in a secondary school in the centre of Rome. With the years, it has become a network of communities in more than 70 countries of the world. The Community pays attention to the periphery and peripheral people, gathering men and women of all ages and conditions, united by a fraternal tie through the listening of the Gospel and the voluntary and free commitment for the poor and peace.

Although it doesn't mention LGBTQ issues on its website, the Sant’Egidio Community is believed to support an inclusive approach to members of the LGBTQ community.

Italian bishops have long resisted calls for an enquiry into the sexual abuses of children by Catholic clerics but recently, they agreed to launch an enquiry into abuses over the past 10 years, having rejected one going back 50 years. Obviously, they know they have much to fear from such a long historical period going back to a time before the historical abuse scandals swamped the church and prompted actions to prevent them; a time when deference and a code of silence allowed abuses to go unreported and the abusers to continue their predation without let or hindrance. Similar enquiries in other countries have usually revealed thousands of victims of hundreds of priests, nuns and monks in most Catholic diocese and institutions, and a culture of tolerance, cover-up, facilitation and bullying of victims who dared to complain.

Zuppi's rise has been relatively rapid, having been ordained in 1981 and serving as an auxiliary bishop in Rome. He was appointed bishop of Villanova by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and Archbishop of Bologna by Pope Francis in 2015. He was made a cardinal by Pope Francis just 3 years ago, but he needs to tread carefully, as a too liberal approach with too much revelation of the murky world of Italian Catholicism, could alienate him from the powerful conservative wing of the Church which is especially strong in Italy, and that could scupper his chances of becoming the next Pope - a position for which he is currently regarded as a leading candidate.

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Saturday 7 May 2022

Vatican Financial Abuse News - Pell Gets His Revenge As the Stink of Corruption Increases

Cardinal Becciu
Gave a "somewhat incomplete" testimony to the Vatican court where he is accused of embezzlement.
Cardinal Pell highlights 'somewhat incomplete' account given by Cardinal Becciu at Vatican finance trial | Catholic News Agency

There was no hint of that alleged Christian love and forgiveness in the Vatican the other day when Cardinal Pell, former financial controller at the Vatican, put the boot in to Cardinal Becciu, once his detractor in his attempts to reorganise and regularise the Vatican's Byzantine finances, who is now on trial in the Vatican, charged with embezzlement.

In his testimony to the court, Pell accused Becciu of making a "somewhat incomplete" testimony - polite code for lying.

Regular readers may recall how Pell was originally brought in to clean up the Vatican's finances when the Vatican Bank was found to be laundering very large sums of money for organised crime under cover of the diplomatic immunity endowed on the Vatican as an independent state in its own right. The Vatican was reputedly on the verge of bankruptcy, not even having enough funds to pay for its day to day activities.

During the course of his investigations, Pell found that heads of departments in the Vatican had control of secret slush funds running into hundreds of millions of Euros, accountable only to them with no proper records of where the money came from or what it was spent on. When put under Pell's control, they restored the Vatican's finances to good health but in the course of this, Pell made many powerful enemies who resented being accountable and not have vast resources of their own to spend as they wished. One of these was Cardinal Becciu, who as sostituto of the Secretariat of State was effectively Pope Francis Chief of Staff.

Pell eventually ran into difficulties of his own when allegations of his involvement in the sexual abuse of minors began to circulate in Australia where he had been the senior Catholic cleric. At Pope Francis' insistence he returned to Australia to face charges of which he was initially convicted and given a custodial sentence, only to have the convictions quashed by the Australian Supreme Court on a technicality. Before he left Rome, Pell had signed up auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to audit the Vatican's finances. Immediately on Pell's departure to Australia, Becciu celebrated by, for reasons which he has never satisfactorily explained, summarily cancelling the contract with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Again for reason never explained, the Vatican's own internal auditor, Libero Milone, also resigned, so the Vatican accounts remained unaudited.

The reasons for this cancellation soon began to emerge however when Becciu began using a fund known as "Peters' Pence", which is donated to by Catholics in an annual fund-raising event in the belief that it is for the Pope to use for charitable purposes, for donations to, for example, his brother's Sardinia-based ‘refugee charity’, and to bail out a private hospital in Rome where his niece had recently been taken onto the staff, which was facing financial difficulties, and to pay €500,000 to a 'security advisor', Cecilia Marogna, known in the Italian press as “the cardinal’s lady”. Marogna was subsequently arrested in Milan and charged with embezzlement.

Becciu also invested heavily in a property deal in London which was to be his eventual downfall. According to a report in the online Catholic news magazine, The Crux:
The deal was brokered in 2014, while Becciu was the sostituto, through an Italian financier and drawing upon funds collected by “Peter’s Pence,” an annual appeal directed to Catholics around the world as a way to support the pope’s activity, especially his charitable works. The original deal was for 50 percent of the London property, but the Secretariat of State eventually soured on its relationship with the first financier and planned to purchase the rest of the property with the aid of another.

The Secretariat of State appealed to the Institute for the Works of Religion, the so-called “Vatican bank,” for a loan to finance that transaction, which triggered an internal investigation. In October 2019, Pope Francis authorized raids at Secretary of State as well as the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF), which monitors for suspicious financial transactions, and seven officials were either suspended or fired along with Becciu who was reported to have 'resigned' suddenly.

Not only did Becciu have to approve the deal, but he’s been accused of attempting to disguise the loans it required by cancelling them out on Vatican balance sheets against the value of the property, a practice prohibited by general accounting norms and specifically forbidden by legislation decreed by Pope Francis in 2014.
The upshot was that the businessman Raffaele Mincione, the owner of the London property in question - the former Harrods shop in Chelsea - was also charged with money-laundering and embezzlement, as was Gianluigi Torzi who had been enlisted to help push through the deal. He was also charged with extortion. Readers may recall how last April, Torzi successfully applied to Southwark Crown Court to have a freeze on his bank accounts lifted. Judge Tony Baumgartner cited the lies and inconsistencies in statements from Vatican officials as his reason for unfreezing the account. The Vatican subsequently applied to have Torizi extradited from the UK to face charges of embezzlement.

However, according to the Italian magazine, Il Messaggero at the time, Becciu's sacking was not over possible misuse of Vatican money in the London purchase, but over allegations of embezzlement, again involving the "Peter's Pence" slush fund, but this time in the form of a 'gift' of €100,000 to a charity run by Becciu's brother in Sardinia. The charity's official purpose it to help refugees, but the money appears to be unused and sitting in the charity's banks account (according to Il Messaggero).

Now the plot has thickened with Pell's testimony. The issue now is over Becciu's account of the payment of $AU 2.3 million [$1.6 million] to the Australian firm, Neustar, allegedly for the rights to the Internet domain name ‘.catholic’, supposedly from the Vatican Council for Social Communications, but Pell raised the question whether this was from that council or from the Secretariat of State. The suspicion now is that it may have been a device for channelling money to pay for Pell's defence in his struggle with the law over the allegations of child sexual abuse.

The murky world of Vatican finances continues to give off the noxious stink of corruption as yet more bubbles burst on the surface of that stinking cesspit in the heart of Rome.

Catholic Abuse News - California's Catholic Bishops go Whining to SCOTUS to Avoid Compensating Their Victims

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles
Seat of Archbishop Jose H. Gomez

Credit: David Castor/public domain.
California Catholic dioceses ask Supreme Court to hear statute of limitations extension case | Catholic News Agency

In a desperate attempt to avoid paying out even more in compensation to the victims of predatory paedophile Catholic priest, nine of California's Catholic diocese and archdiocese have got together to petition SCOTUS to overrule the State of California's suspension of the statute of limitation (SOL) which bars victims from claiming for lapsed abuses. The state recently passed an order giving former victims a 3-year window of opportunity to register claims which would otherwise fall foul of the SOL.

Catholic priests often hide behind a SOL which serves them well, since many of their victims were young children at the time and at a time when sex was a taboo subject and society was more deferential to religious clerics than now, so children felt uncomfortable talking about their abuses. Indeed, that very culture was why so many priests felt confident they could get away with it. By the time their victims reached adulthood and the psychological effects of their abuse manifested themselves, it was too late to bring the case to court.

The bishops and archbishops behind the collective whinge are:
  • Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles
  • Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Orange
  • Bishop Joseph V. Brennen of Fresno
  • Bishop Daniel E. Garcia of Monterey
  • Bishop Michael C. Barber of Oakland
  • Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento
  • Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco
  • Bishop Oscar Cantú of San Jose
  • Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Santa Rosa
In their petition, the bishops state:

Twenty years ago, California revived decades-old sexual-abuse claims, offering claimants a one-year window to sue even though the statute of limitations had expired long before. When that window closed at the end of 2003, the Catholic Church in California reached a series of settlements that paid out over a billion dollars without regard to the validity of any individual claim. The State tried to revive the same category of lapsed claims three more times between 2004 [*6] and 2018, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the bills each time. In 2019, however, the Legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation reviving the claims for a second time, expressly seeking to impose "additional punishment" on the Catholic Church and other institutions for their past acts. This time, defendants' past conduct is subject not only to claims for compensatory and punitive damages that were previously time-barred twice over, but also to additional penalties (in the form of "treble" damages) based on a newly defined category of "cover up" activity.

The final sentence shows that the real concern of these bishops and archbishops: as well as the new claims for compensation they could face, they could face additional claims for compensation for "cover up" activity. A theme running through many of these abuse cases is that the church systematically covered up and thereby facilitated the abuses. Known abusers were allowed to continue to work in positions which gave them access to more victims and those who knew of their predations failed to notify the law enforcement and child protection agencies.

Indeed, some of them were even party to the abuses themselves, having come through the same highly sexualised culture in Catholic seminaries. The objective was to defend the church at all costs and ignore any obligation they had for safeguarding against potential abuses. The sexual predilections of priests was ‘understandable’ given their ‘celibate’ lifestyle, so could be forgiven.

In the introduction to their 21-page petition, the petitioners make several statements of dubious validity. For example, in reference to the original one-year suspension of the the SOL three years ago:

After this one-year revival period ended, Petitioners reached a series of settlements that paid out more than a billion dollars to bring these matters [*9] to a close. To finance these settlements, they expended significant resources, sold vast swaths of Church property, and in some cases exhausted or relinquished insurance coverage for past and future abuse claims. In reaching these settlements, Petitioners relied on the explicit cutoff date in the California statute, which assured them that unasserted lapsed claims would be extinguished at the end of the one- year revival period.

That assurance proved to be false. In 2013, 2014, and 2018, the State attempted to enact additional revival statutes that would have allowed the same category of abuse claims to be asserted yet again.

In other words, we knew there were very many victims who had not come forward and we thought we had got away with those, so, it's not fair that these victims should also be given an opportunity to claim compensation. It is not true that the same victims would have been able to claim for the same abuses again although this statement clearly implies they would have. What this 3-year window offers victims is an opportunity to claim again against those who covered up their abusers’ crimes.

They go on to say:

After Governor Gavin Newsom took office, however, California enacted a new double-revival statute, now with a three-year revival window. This time, the new law not only revives old claims (including claims for punitive damages), but also adds [*10] new punishment in the form of treble damages for a novel category of "cover up" activity. As various legislators proclaimed, this "draconian" measure was designed to "drastically expand[] the actionable conduct" and to make defendants "hurt" by creating " another revival period" and by subjecting them to "additional punishment" for decades-old claims. Pet.App.166a, 170a, 177a, 179a.

California's double-revival statute violates the Constitution in two ways. First, it violates the Ex Post Facto Clause by imposing new punishments on past conduct and reviving claims for punitive damages. In Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607, 632-33 (2003), this Court identified punitive revivals as ex post facto violations. But California's courts, despite recognizing that the statute "has changed the legal consequences of past conduct," including by "imposing new or different liabilities," Pet.App.110a-11a, 123a-24a, have allowed these claims to proceed because they purportedly seek to impose only "civil" liability, Pet.App. 30a, 123a-24a. That holding conflicts with both this Court's precedents and the original understanding of the Ex Post Facto Clause, which prohibit retroactive punishment regardless of the label [*11] "civil" or "criminal," see E. Enters. v. Apfel, 524 U.S. 498, 538-39 (1998) (Thomas, J., concurring).

Second, the California statute also violates the Due Process Clause, which prohibits "retroactively . . . creat[ing] liability" by reviving certain time-barred claims. William Danzer & Co. v. Gulf & S.I.R. Co., 268 U.S. 633, 637 (1925). As an original matter, the Clause prohibited States from depriving defendants of ripened limitations defenses, which was understood to be a deprivation of property without due process of law. And while modern precedent has watered down that original rule, this Court's precedents still recognize that States cannot revive certain time-barred claims, particularly when it would impose a "special hardship[]." Chase Sec. Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U.S. 304, 316 (1945). The paradigmatic example is when a State induces reliance on a statutory time bar but then pulls out the rug by reviving the expired claim, id.--exactly what happened here. Having made significant outlays in reliance on the cutoff date at the end of the last revival period, Petitioners now face potentially ruinous liability as a result of California's virtually unprecedented double-revival law.

[It's not obvious what the numbered asterisks in square brackets relate to in these quotations.]
Of course, the petitioners face 'potentially ruinous liability' not as a result of California's suspension of the SOL for 3 years, but because of the sexual predations of their paedophile priests, and in particular, for theirs and their predecessors’ criminal activity in covering up these abuses and failure to safeguard children in their care. And, again, they do not face renewed claims for abuses that have already been settled, but for new cases that can now come forward and especially for the 'new' offence of covering up.

An organisation which faces bankruptcy and an inability to continue because of its criminal activities does not deserve to continue, let alone have the highest court in the land guarantee their immunity from further claims for compensation on the grounds that they thought they had got away with it. The Catholic Church is massively wealthy but wants its victims to be denied adequate compensation in order to protect that wealth. Once again, the Catholic Church is putting the church and its finances above the needs of its victims.

What will be interesting is whether SCOTUS with its new right wing fundamentalist Christian majority, will come down on the side of abusers because they are Christians or on the side of their victims whom the law should be designed to protect.

Sunday 27 February 2022

Religious Stupidity News - Blundering Priest Now Trying to Save People From the Hellfire His Blunder Destined Them For

Pope Benedict XVI performing the ritual of baptism - but the words must be exact or God doesn't know it has been performed.
Priest’s new assignment: Helping those he invalidly baptized

The ludicrous tale of the Catholic priest who inadvertently condemned thousands of residents of St. Gregory Parish, Phoenix, Arizona USA, to hellfire by using a wrong word in the magic spell called baptism, took a new turn recently.

Having resigned as the parish priest, he took up a new role of baptising those he cursed, this time with the right words in the magic spell. The ritual of baptism inducts children into the Catholic Church, and so the 'one true faith', without their consent or participation. This then gives them special protection by God who casts everyone without the 'one true faith' into Hell, there to suffer an eternity of agony in hellfire.

The problem was that by using the wrong words, God was unaware that he, in the form of Jesus, for whom the priest was speaking, had baptised the children into the one true faith, so he doesn't know which ones to save and which ones to cast into the fiery pit for having the wrong faith. What Fr. Andrés Arango, should have said was "I baptise you...", instead, he said "We baptise you..." and obviously, "I" means "Jesus" in that context, and "We" doesn't, because, being specially anointed, a Catholic priest (but now any other priest, mind you!) speaks for Jesus, so God wouldn't know what was going on as he, being omniscient, doesn't understand a spell if even one word is wrong.

Monday 21 February 2022

Catholic Fraud News - Cardinal Becciu's Defence Team Accuse Pope Francis of Breaking the Vatican Laws!

Cardinal Angelo Becciu talking to journalists during a news conference in Rome. Defence lawyers are questioning the legitimacy of the Vatican tribunal where 10 people are on trial, including Becciu, on finance-related charges, arguing their clients can’t get a fair trial in an absolute monarchy where the pope has already intervened in the case and where prosecutors have failed to turn over key pieces of evidence.

Credit: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia
Cardinal Becciu laments 'humiliation' after police raids tied to Vatican financial trial

Using a form of reasoning of which any Byzantine lawyer would be proud, the defence team for Enrico Crasso, one of those charged alongside (former) Cardinal Angelo Becciu with embezzlement, have petitioned the Vatican judges hearing the case against him to rule that the trial should be stopped and all charges rescinded because Pope Francis violated the Vatican's own legal system.

Their argument is that in exercising his right, as absolute ruler and head of the Vatican City state to issue four 'resctipta' to firstly allow the case to be brought against Becciu and to give prosecutors leeway in their treatment of witnesses and the defendants, to circumvent the archaic and convoluted procedures behind which the defendants in the case were hiding, Pope Francis has violated the Vatican's Legal system, so a fair trial under that system is now impossible. In effect, so the argument goes, Pope Francis has reduced the Vatican City to a lawless state.

Readers of this blog may remember how (former) Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, number three in the Vatican as Chief of Staff of the Vatican's Secretariate of State, was summarily sacked (or in Vatican terms, 'resigned his rights as a cardinal') and accused of embezzling Vatican funds in connection with a $225 million property deal in London in 2014.

As I reported at the time:

Sunday 20 February 2022

Oops! The Wrong Magic Spell has Doomed Thousands of Catholics to Hellfire, Apparently.

Casting a spell in the rite of baptism to ensure God knows you have the one true faith.
But the spell must be precise or it won't work!
A Catholic priest in Arizona resigned after discovering he'd incorrectly performed thousands of baptisms for over 20 years

The thing about protective magic spells is that they must be said exactly, without the slightest deviation or alteration, or they don't work, and when they are directed at an omniscient god, he/she doesn't understand them if even one word is wrong, so they don't work!

At least, this appears to be the official position of the Catholic Church, because Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, of Phoenix, Arizona, USA has informed thousands of people who assumed they had the protective spell of baptism cast on them by a parish priest, have no such protection because the said priest got one word of the spell wrong when performing the ritual, which also includes magic hand movements and magic water. In a letter to his distraught flock, Bishop Olmstead said:

Thursday 17 February 2022

Catholic Child Abuse News - A Czech Cardinal Apologist for Paedophiles Defends Pope Benedict XVI

Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague
"'Only' 10% of abuse accusations against priests are proven to be true."
Czech cardinal accuses Germany's Cardinal Marx of 'betraying' Pope Benedict | National Catholic Reporter

The ambivalent view of the Catholic hierarchy towards child sex abuse by priests was brought into sharp focus a few days ago when Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague, Czechia, accused Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich of 'harming Pope Benedict XVI's reputation' and calling on Marx to "take responsibility" for the report which revealed that the then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger of Munich and Freising was complicit in allowing four paedophile priests to continue practising as priests in his archdiocese.

Ratzinger was later promoted to Cardinal and transferred to Rome as head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, i.e., the then Pope John-Paul II's enforcer. It was in that post that he earned a reputation as the Pope's Pitbull and is widely believed to have tried to supress the growing claims that the Catholic Church was complicit in thousands of cases of child sexual abuse to protect the Church and avoid paying compensation to the victims.

Under his tenure, Catholic clerics were forbidden from revealing any information to the authorities which might harm the reputation of the Church on pain of excommunication, even if revealing such information was required by law in the host country. In effect, Ratzinger was telling Catholic clerics and other in holy orders that they owed allegiance only to the Church and ultimately to the Pope in the Vatican, and were therefore above the law of their host country.

The report also revealed that Pope Emeritus Benedict had appeared to try to mislead the enquiry by denying he was present at a meeting in 1980, during which the transfer of a convicted paedophile priest (Priest X in the report) from the diocese of Essen to the archdiocese of Munich was discussed - a denial that was later withdrawn when minutes of the meeting recording his presence were produced, but only after Pope Benedict had first tried to dismiss then as evidence only that something had n written down [sic] and not that he was present or was aware of the discussion.

Pope Benedict then claimed he had misremembered the meeting and still claims to have no recollection of discussing the case.

Cardinal Duka's curious argument appears to be that the then Archbishop Ratzinger had 'no jurisdiction' and that the investigation which revealed his complicity should not have been commissioned by the German. In a published statement, he says:
Munich betrayal for the second time

The publication of the Pope's letter is indeed a glimpse into the soul of the priest, the bishop and the Pope, who retrospectively evaluates his life, but no longer has the strength to comment on all his specifics.

The following is an analysis of the above-mentioned experts, who show us line by line how the so-called goodwill works in the Archdiocese of Munich. It is one of the biggest disappointments I have experienced in our Roman Catholic Church. To defile a person, to injure him unfairly and not even give him the opportunity to appreciate in his favour this so-called goodwill, which must have cost hundreds of thousands of euros, because it does not give the possibility of legal delay? I ask: what is it?

In my article, published in the German magazine Die Tagespost, I point out the following fact: that from all enrolment, every priest who studied ecclesiastical law, even a layman who graduated from the Faculty of Theology and attended an ecclesiastical law course, must understand that the then archbishop [of] Munich, Joseph Ratzinger, had no jurisdiction and no way to deal with the case - Priest X was the priest of the diocese of Essen.

That is why I protest and I really dare to call the Archbishop of Munich, his curia, but also the President of the German Episcopal Conference, to take responsibility for defaming and tarnishing the reputation of Pope Benedict XVI.

Dominik Cardinal Duka, Archbishop of Prague

Translation by Google Translate from the original in Czech.
But the accusation was not that, as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Joseph Ratzinger had jurisdiction over 'Priest X' when he was predating on children in Essen, but that he was complicit in the removal of Priest X to his own jurisdiction in the archdiocese of Munich, where he was allowed to continue as a priest with access to more potential victims, and that he did nothing to inform the authorities or take steps to protect children in his archdiocese from a known predatory paedophile. The transfer of offending priests into other diocese where their reputation was unknown, was a standard way of covering up their crimes and facilitating their continued access to new, unsuspecting, victims.

And Duka's misleading apologetic does nothing to address the other three cases in which the report found Joseph Ratzinger to be complicit.

Duka himself is no stranger to accusations of being complicit in child abuse cases, so probably has some sympathy with the beleaguered Pope Benedict XVI. According to this report in Agenzia Nova, in 2019 he was suspected:
[…]of having covered up a case of sexual abuse that took place within the Dominican order. This was revealed by the information portal "Seznam.cz". The alleged victim, who remained anonymous, claims to have been abused for many years during his training to become a priest, and to have informed Cardinal Duka about him in time. However, the latter did not act in any way. The priest responsible for these abuses later left the Dominican order due to other allegations from many other alleged victims and died before facing trial. Cardinal Duka admits he remembers the event but justifies his failure to react because the priest at the time would have sworn on the cross that the young victim was lying. Duka says he is ready to cooperate with law enforcement.
In other words, Duka took the word of the priest and assumed his victims were lying, so did nothing to prevent him abusing more victims until the complaints became too many to dismiss them all as lies.

It's obvious from this and his attack on Cardinal Marx, that this odious Cardinal still thinks the most important thing is to protect the Church even at the expense of its victims, and suppress information about sexually predatory priests, and that his first instinct is to believe their victims are liars rather than believe an ordained priest would do such a thing. Clearly, he has learned nothing from the thousands of proven instances of abuse that have swamped Christian churches and bankrupted so many Catholic diocese with claims for compensation, and so is likely to allow it to continue under his watch.

There is no word so far of any action from Pope Francis, either in sanctioning Pope emeritus Benedict XVI for his negligence and attempt to mislead the German enquiry, or against those senior clerics who publicly display this readiness to tolerate paedophile Catholic priests and to dismiss their victims a liars.


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Sunday 13 February 2022

Hypocrisy News - Another Sex Scandal Rocks the French Catholic Church

Archbishop Michel Aupetit (former) Archbishop of Paris
Relationship with a woman was 'ambiguous'
© Ludovic Marin / AFP
Pope accepts Paris archbishop's resignation over "ambiguous" relationship

Probably the last thing the French Catholic Church wanted right now was another sex scandal involving a senior cleric, but that's just what they've got in the form of Archbishop Michel Aupetit, (former) Archbishop of Paris, who has resigned following the revelation that he had a sexual relationship with a women, despite his vow of celibacy and his requirement that all those under him in his archdiocese take the same vow.

The story of the consensual relationship was exposed by Le Point magazine. Aupetit denied that he had had a sexual relationship with the woman but told Le Point that the relationship was 'ambiguous' - a neat euphemism for clandestine sexual relations with a woman outside marriage and contrary to his oath as an ordained Catholic priest.

This came on top of the recent report which revealed that 3,000 French Catholic priests had sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years and that there had been a widespread, systematic cover up. When abuse by lay members of Catholic schools and other institutions was taken into account, the number of abused children, almost all of which were young boys, rose to some 330,000.

It's a Miracle! Not a Single Red Face as Lourdes Reopens After Closing for the Coronavirus Pandemic!


The shrine to Bernadette Soubirous, Lourdes, France
Lourdes resurrected: grotto reopens to pilgrims after two year Covid closure

Without the slightest sign of irony, the Catholic Church in France has re-opened the Lourdes faith-healing scam in the Hautes-Pyrénées region, which had been closed because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Lourdes, it may be remembered, sells quack cures for all manner of afflictions and illnesses, but is powerless to prevent people catching COVID-19, apparently.

The grotto was officially reopened on February 11, on the anniversary of the date in 1858 on which a young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, or Sobirós, in the local language, Occitan, then spoken in the Languedoc region of France, whom many townspeople, including her own father, thought was mentally disturbed, claimed to have seen a vison of the Virgin Mary.

Friday 28 January 2022

Catholic Child Abuse News - Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI Misled Enquiry into Munich Abuses

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Future Pope Benedict XVI.
Complicit in the abuse of 4 children by paedophile priests in Munich.
Editorial: In penance for mishandled abuse cases, Benedict needs to give up 'pope emeritus' | National Catholic Reporter

More information is emerging from the enquiry into the sexual abuse of children in the Munich-Freising Archdiocese, Germany, when, as Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI was in charge of the archdiocese.

The enquiry by the law firm, Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, who had been commissioned by the Catholic Church to investigate the numerous reports of cases in the dioceses, has concluded that Ratzinger was complicit in the abuse of 4 of the 65 victims by failing to act, even though he was aware of the predatory paedophile nature of the priests involved. The investigators also concluded that Pope Benedict's 80 plus page submission to the enquiry contained claims and assertions that were not credible - in essence, accusing Pope Benedict XVI of lying to them to try to cover up his culpability.

They also revealed that he had stated that he did not think a priest acted improperly when he masturbated in front of pre-pubescent girls, because he didn't touch them!

According to this editorial in the National Catholic Reporter:
In his 80-some pages of written testimony for the report's investigation, the 94-year-old Benedict initially denied any wrongdoing and drew some disturbing conclusions, such as indicating that a priest did not "act improperly" because he didn't touch prepubescent girls while masturbating in front of them.
In the same document, Pope Benedict XVI claimed he was not present at a 1980 meeting to discuss the transfer of a priest accused of misconduct. The enquiry team called this claim, "not very credible" and produced the minutes of the meeting which clearly recorded his presence. As I reported earlier, Benedict’s initial response was to claim that the minutes were "only proof that something was written down, not evidence that he read it". Through his private secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, has since admitted that Ratzinger was present at the meeting and his denial had been "a clerical error - an oversight in the editing of his statement."

Funny how one of the most damaging allegations - that the then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger was aware that a predatory paedophile priest was being moved around in his dioceses and allowed to continue working as a priest - was the subject of a clerical error that should have been edited out, but was not!

According to this report in the Guardian:
In one of the cases examined by Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, a now notorious paedophile priest, Peter Hullermann, was transferred to Munich from Essen in western Germany where he had been accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy. He was reassigned to pastoral duties despite his history.

In 1986, he was convicted of molesting more children and given a suspended prison sentence. He continued to work with children for many years and his case is regarded as a pertinent example of the mishandling of abuse by the church.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the current archbishop of Munich and Freising, was also found to have failed to act in two cases of suspected abuse. Although he tendered his resignation to Pope Francis, this was rejected.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) is calling for Benedict to give up his title as "pope emeritus". There are also calls for Pope Francis to impose sanctions on 94-year-old Benedict XVI, but, since a Pope is elected for life being officially chosen by God who guided the Conclave of Cardinals that elected him, and since having two popes in the Vatican simultaneously is unprecedented, the rules are being made up as they go along, so it is not clear what authority, if any, Pope Francis has over Benedict or whether Benedict can even resign his position and title.

For Benedict to be convicted of misconduct by a special Vatican tribunal would be cataclysmic for the Catholic Church and would raise all manner of questions of basic doctrine such as the doctrine of papal infallibility and divine guidance as God's personal representative on Earth. It would undermine the entire credibility of the Papacy.

There is probably more of this scandal to come and, if I can obtain an English translation of the Westpfahl Spilker Wastl report in full, I will post it here. So far only the index and the first 21 of the more than 1200 pages have been translated and published. A German language version is available here [PDF].


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Friday 21 January 2022

Catholic Child Abuse - How Cardinal Ratzinger Protected Paedophile Priests

Pope Benedict, formerly, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich
Pope Benedict XVI knew of abusive priests when he ran the Munich archdiocese, investigators say - CNN

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the predecessor of Pope Francis and the first pope for centuries to resign, knew of the abuse of children by Catholic priests in his diocese when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

This is the devastating finding of an enquiry, commissioned by the Catholic Church, into historic sexual abuse at the Munich Archdiocese over several decades. In effect, this finding accuses Pope Benedict XVI of lying when he denied any knowledge of the abuses.

He was informed about the facts. We believe that he can be accused of misconduct in four cases; two of these cases concern abuses committed during his tenure and sanctioned by the state. In both cases, the perpetrators remained active in pastoral care.

During his [Benedict's] time in office there were abuse cases happening. In those cases, those priests continued their work without sanctions. The church did not do anything. He claims that he didn't know about certain facts, although we believe that this is not so, according to what we know.

Martin Pusch, Lawyer.
Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm.
Lawyer, Ulrich Wastl, produced a copy of the minutes of a meeting of Church leaders in Munich on January 15, 1980, when a decision was taken to appoint a known abuser (referred to in the report as "Priest X"). Pope Benedict denied being present when this decision was made, but this is contradicted by the minutes of the meeting. Benedict's incredible response to this evidence of his lies was that the document is only proof that something was written down, not evidence that he read it. However, the charge is not that he read the minutes but that he was present when the decision was made to appoint a known paedophile priest in the diocese of which he was head.

The building of lies to protect Pope Benedict has just collapsed with a crash. Benedict was complicit in the abuse of numerous victims after 1980, victims of Priest X

Matthias Katsch, Abuse survivor.
Leader of "Eckiger Tisch" which seeks justice for abuse victims.
In 2019, the then former Pope, Benedict XVI wrote an essay in which he sought the shift the blame for the paedophile priest scandals which have rocked the Catholic Church, away from the priests and the Church and onto society at large and liberals in particular by claiming it was the result of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the liberalization of the Church's moral teaching. He also blamed homosexuals whom he claimed had established cliques in seminaries which significantly changed the climate in the seminaries. In other words, it wasn't the fault of senior clerics such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who turned a blind eye to the abuses and allowed abusers to continue their abuses under the protection of the Church, but the fault of those high in the Catholic Church's demonology, 'liberals and homosexuals'.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was effectively Pope John Paul II's deputy and enforcer and was widely believed to be behind efforts to suppress reports of clerical abuse of minors in an effort to protect the reputation of the church and minimise compensation paid to its victims.

According to this article:

Tuesday 18 January 2022

Anger as an Indian Court Acquits Catholic Bishop of Charge of Repeatedly Raping a Nun

Bishop Franco Mulakkal
Judge ordered acquittal of charge of raping a nun
Kerala court clears bishop in nun's rape | BBC

In a verdict which shocked and angered the leaders of women's groups who supported the nun, sessions Judge G Gopakumar, in a brief order last Friday, declared that the prosecution had failed to prove all the charges against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, Bishop of a diocese in Jalandhar in the Punjab, Northern India. His accuser was a nun in the Missionaries of Jesus, a congregation from Kerala, that is part of the Jalandhar diocese. The prosecution case was hampered by the sudden death in October 2018, of Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, a key witness, vociferous supporter of the nuns and a critic of Bishop Mulakkal.

Readers of this blog may remember how the nun finally went to the police after repeated complaints to the Church authorities, and a letter to the Pope, were met with indifference. Several other nuns from the mission also came forward with allegations of harassment, intimidation and sexual assault by priests.

As head of their diocese, Mulakkal wielded immense power over the mission, including budgets and job allocations. His response to the accusation was to claim that Sister Villoonnickal of trying to blackmail him into giving her a better job. Sister Villoonnickal is one of the nuns who supported the accuser. A prosecution was only brought after a prolonged campaign including public demonstrations, which themselves were met with persecutions, bullying and vilification of the victims and expulsions.

Sister Josephine Villoonnickal, left, sister Alphy Pallasseril, center, and Sister Anupama Kelamangalathu, at St. Francis Mission Home, in Kuravilangad.
Credit: AP Photo/Manish Swarup
Sister Lucy Kalappura, a member of the Franciscan Clarist Congregation and a teacher at Sacred Heart High school at Dwaraka, Kerala, who was at the forefront of protests against Mulakkal and one of the five nuns who took part in a sit-in near the Kerala High Court in Kochi, was removed from her teaching post and expelled from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation.

According to Sister Villoonnickal, the rapes took place in Room 20 of a small convent at the end of a one-lane road in rural Kerala. She alleges that every few months, Mulakkal would visit the St. Francis convent and summon the nun. Then, according to a letter she wrote to church officials, he raped her, a total of thirteen times; the first time on May 5, 2014; the last time on Sept. 23, 2016. The dates of these visits are corroborated by entries in the convent’s visitor logs.

Reports of the sexual abuse of Catholic nuns in Karela, one of the oldest Christian communities in India, are widespread. Legend has it that Christianity was brought to southern India by St Thomas the apostle, in 56 AD.

Rural Indian Christian culture is one of deference to male authority and especially to the authority of Catholic priests. Nuns are required to be celibate and any who admit to sexual experience, even non-consensual, risk alienation and even expulsion from their order, so there is enormous social pressure on them to comply with the demands of priests and then to keep silent about it. Some are so naive they may even think it is normal and even part of their duty to minister to a 'celibate' priest's needs. Some may even blame themselves for the assault.

Often these offences take place in private and the nuns are reluctant to report it immediately, so there is never any forensic or medical evidence of the offence and any trial comes down to one word against another.

The scandal surrounding the allegations, the obstruction by the Church and the arest of Mulakkal prompted the Pope to admit publicly that the abuse of nuns by priests was a problem the Church needed to confront, admitting for the first time that his predecessor, Pope Benedict, had been forced to shut down an entire order in which nuns were being kept as 'sex slaves' for priests. It also prompted Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara of Faridabad, a former Vatican diplomat, to issue an apology to the victims of sexually predatory priests.

However, Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council defended Mulakkal and criticised the nuns who campaigned for justice, accusing them of helping "the Church’s enemies to attack it and its leaders and disdain the Sacraments, causing much pain to all those who love the Church." Three bishops showed their support by visiting Mulakkal in prison during the three weeks he spent in custody before being released on bail.

The prosecution has announced that they will be appealing against the acquittal, to the Indian High Court.
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