Day: Dec 12, 2019

Inés San Martín Dec 10, 2019

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, is pictured after an interview in his office at the Vatican April 17. (Credit: Paul Haring/CNS.)

ROME – A leading Vatican official says he would “hold the hand” of someone who was dying from assisted suicide, even though he considers it wrong, because “no one is abandoned” by the Church.

Italian Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia was speaking on Tuesday during the presentation of an upcoming symposium on end-of-life issues co-sponsored by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life, which he heads.

“I believe that from our perspective, no one is abandoned, even if we are against assisted suicide, because we don’t want to do death’s dirty job,” the archbishop said, when asked about one bishops’

conference’s directive that a priest not be in the room if euthanasia or assisted suicide is performed.

“To accompany, to hold the hand of someone who is dying, is something that every faithful must promote as they must promote a culture that opposes assisted suicide,” Paglia said.

But regardless of a willingness to accompany a person through such a decision, the archbishop said Catholics should continue to fight against a “selfish” society that labels the elderly, the terminally ill and others as “not good enough” and a surplus to the world.

Suicide – in whatever form – is a “defeat” for the rest of society, Paglia said: “We can never transform it into a ‘wise decision’.”

However, he admitted he always celebrates the funerals for those who take their own lives because he sees suicide as “a great request for love that was not satisfied. This is why the Lord never abandons anyone.”

Paglia was speaking with journalists at the presentation of a Dec. 11-12 conference on Religion and Medical Ethics: Palliative care and the mental health of the elderly, which is being co-organized by the British Journal of Medicine and Qatar’s WISH foundation.

The archbishop told reporters that even though they were looking “for a rule,” the principle of never abandoning anyone is not a matter of law for him.

“In this selfish society, we don’t need new laws. We need a love supplement, a co-responsibility supplement,” Paglia said.

“We are all necessary, with no one to spare. A society that runs towards a perspective of justifying suicide or leaving behind those who are not ‘good enough’ is a cruel one,” he explained.

“For me, a person who takes their own life shows a failure of society as a whole,” the prelate insisted.

“But it is not a failure from God. We are each children of God. Can a mother abandon her son?”

Paglia noted that the Church says there’s no certainty that even the apostle Judas, who betrayed Jesus before killing himself, is in Hell.

“For a Catholic to say so, it’s heresy,” he said.

The bishop was also asked to share his thoughts about Italy’s growing anti-Semitism, where Senator Liliana Segre, an Auschwitz survivor and a member of the Italian Senate, now travels with a policse escort due to anti-Semitic threats.

Paglia said that a leap of conscience is important, so that the word “‘race’ is banned, and the words ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ are used instead.”

He said that open demonstrations of support for people like Segre from other Italian politicians are indispensable because “there is a surge of anti-Semitism. We see it almost daily, and the Internet favors its growth.”

Paglia also said that it’s important not to forget Pietro Terracina, one of the last Italian survivors of the Holocaust, who died on Sunday.

“Those who forget will repeat, and those who pretend not to remember, risk these tragedies being repeated,” Paglia said.

PAT SAYS

I agree with Archbishop Paglia. I too would hold a person dying like this in my arms. The infinite compassion of God and His Christ is everywhere.

Like abortion, suicide can never be affirmed as a GOOD. At best, is the lesser of two evils.

I can understand someone in extreme pain and and degeneracy choosing to end it all.

Some people have a very high pain threshold and others do not.

Some people’s faith can see them through a Calvary period and others cannot.

Only God can judge in the end.

We Christian’s are called to enter into all types of situations as signs of love and hope. Sometimes we bring our hope into situations of hopelessness.

But above all else we should bring the infinite love of God to everyone.

As a child of 4 the nuns in Carlow taught me this prayer I say everyday:

“Jesus Mary and Joseph I give you my heart today.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph assist me now and in my last agony.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph I breathe forth my soul in peace with you.

Into your hands O Lord I commend my spirit.

Lord Jesus, receive my soul”.

Mark Olivet Listverse.com

For decades, it was an open secret that thousands of Catholic priests across the globe had been caught molesting young children. Within the upper ranks of the Catholic Church, reports of sexual abuse had crossed every desk.

The Church did their best to keep it from leaking to the press and to deal with the problem within the church. More often than not, though, their solution was little more than to pass child molesters onto a new parish, where they’d be surrounded by a whole new set of children to prey on or sentenced them to the “life of prayer and penance” the religion already demanded.

They couldn’t keep it quiet forever. It was inevitable that the truth of what was going on inside of some of the Catholic Church’s parish walls would explode out into the public.

But even now that the stories have come out, most people still have no idea just how horrifying the sex abuse scandal really was. This was more than just a case of a few bad apples. The details are staggering, and most still have no idea just how deep the cover-up really went.

7% of Catholic Priests In Australia Have Been Accused Of Sexual Abuse.

Most of the stories we’ve heard from the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal come from the United States or Ireland, but the epidemic there was light compared to what was going on in Australia. In the land down under, sex abuse was more rampant than anywhere else on earth.

7% of all Australian Catholic priests have been accused of sexual abuse, typically by children who are 11-years-old or younger. In other words, if you found yourself in a room with fourteen Australian priests, chances are that one of them would be a child molester.
The numbers get even worse when you look at them in detail. Out of children who ever actually found themselves alone in a private session with a priest, 37% reported being sexually abused. And in the worst order, St. John of God, nearly half of the priests were accused of abuse.
Even these numbers, though, are just based on how many people were willing to come out and report the abuse. Most of the children targeted by the priests were young boys, a group that is statically very rarely willing to come out and speak about sexual abuse – and so there’s no telling how many people just haven’t told their stories.

For people behind the statistics, it was devastating. At least 40 victims in the city of Victoria alone ended up killing themselves over what they’d endured at the hands of men they’d trusted.[1]

Dutch Sex Abuse Victims Who Spoke Out Were Forcibly Castrated

In 1956, a young boy at the Harreveld Boarding School called the police. He’d been repeatedly raped by multiple monks at the school, he told them, lead by a Brother Superior named Gregorius.

Nothing came of it. The monks at the school simply apologized to the police and told them the boy was mentally ill. They would take care of it themselves, they assured them. Then they brought the young boy into a psychiatric ward and, as punishment for speaking out, violently castrated him.

It’s one of the most horrifying stories to come out of the scandal – but it didn’t just happen once. It’s believed that at least ten other boys went through the same thing. The others, though, didn’t get as far as calling the police. As soon as it slipped out that they might be thinking of talking, they were locked up and their genitals mutilated, an act the priests justified as “treatment for homosexuality”.

The whole church tried to cover the story up. When the Catholic Church wrote their report on sex abuse, they conveniently left Harreveld out. And the Dutch Prime Minister Victor Marijen even tried to get a royal pardon for the monks who’d raped and castrated the boys in their care.[2]

A Known Child Molester Was Appointed To The Sexual Abuse Advisory Board

In 1996, Rev. Martin O’Loghlen openly admitted to sexually abusing a teenage girl. And in the very same year, he was appointed to the Church’s sexual abuse advisory board.
O’Loghlen, as he openly admitted, had repeatedly committed statutory rape on a teenage girl. He was a Vice Principal at the Catholic high school at the time, and he sexually preyed on young girls for his entire time in a position of power.
The girl didn’t report what had happened until 1996. When she did, O’Loghlen didn’t deny a single word. His only justification was that he was a “sex addict” and that he’d changed. There’s little to think that he did, though. The girl didn’t report it out of the blue. She reported him because 30 years after sexually assaulting her, he had tracked down her new address and started harassing her all over again.
Even after O’Loghlen admitted to statutory rape, the church still left him on the sexual advisory board. He enjoys “highly esteem” among the clergy, the man responsible for investigating him wrote. They let him off the hook and put him on the board – and he stayed on it for more than 10 years.[3]

Orphans In Quebec Were Falsely Labelled Mentally Ill And Left With Sex Abusers

Between 1949 and 1956, 20,000 illegitimate children of unmarried women in Quebec were sent into the care of the church. But instead of being raised like sons and daughters of God, they were put through unimaginable abuse.
At the time, abortion and contraceptives were illegal. If a woman got pregnant, there was little she could legally do about it, and, in the culture, the stigma of unwed motherhood was harsh. The church would try to coerce them into leaving their children in their orphanages, promising to take good care of them.
Instead, though, the children were so horribly mistreated that most didn’t even start speaking until they were 6-years-old. They were repeatedly reminded that they were “children of sin”. If they cried, they were beaten.
When the Church realized that they could double their federal funding by running a psychiatric hospital, they falsely labeled thousands of the children as mentally deficient. These children were pulled out of school and put into forced labor camps.
Rape was horrendously frequently. One survivor, who says he was raped two or three times a week, says he grew up thinking “it was normal to have sex between men”.
It took until 2006 before the Church apologized for what they’d done. Their atonement was to give the survivors about $15,000 each – and, in exchange, to force them to sign a contract promising never to press charges.[4]

The Church Ignored Complaints About A Priest Who Raped 200 Children For 50 Years

At a school for the deaf in Wisconsin, Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy made a habit of calling his pupils into his office around the time when they turned 14-years-old. God had commanded him to teach them about sex, he would tell them. But God forbade them from telling anyone about it.
Between 1950 and 1974, it’s believed that Rev. Murphy molested approximately 200 young boys, usually using that story. Despite what he told them, though, the kids didn’t keep it quiet. They told everyone they could what was happening – and not a soul listened.
One of the boys said he told three archbishops but was told to just forget about what Rev. Murphy had done to him and let it drop. In turn, he contacted two police departments and the district attorney, and still nothing happened.
Even the future Pope Benedict XVI himself was told about what was happening. In 1996, while he was still a Cardinal, the future Pope was sent reports about Rev. Murphy’s abuse, but never did anything about it. Murphy died two years later in 1998, still a priest, without ever suffering a single consequence for sexually assaulting 200 children.
“That man should have been in prison for a very long time,” one of his victims said after he died. “He got away with it.”[5]

An Archbishop Claimed He “Didn’t Know” It Was Illegal To Have Sex With Children

When his Archdiocese was put on trial for the sex abuse in 1984, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson was asked if he understood that having sex with a child was illegal. Carlson replied, “I’m not sure whether I knew it was a crime or not.”
Carlson wasn’t actually that ignorant – he just wasn’t too caught up on the “thou shalt not give false testimony” part of the Bible. He’d written multiple memos that not only made it clear that he knew his priests were sexually assaulting children, but also made it clear that he was actively using the law to cover it up.
When one child’s parents complained about their child being abused by Carlson’s priests, he sent out a memo reminding the other bishops that the statute of limitations would expire in two years. If they could just keep them from talking to police for a little bit longer, the parents wouldn’t be able to press charges.
Carlson also told the court that he had no regrets about how he’d handled it. “I think in everything we do, once we’ve experienced it, we reflect on our actions and we ask what we can do better,” he told them. “I think we did a pretty good job.”[6]

The Cover-Up Has Been Going On Since At Least The 1940s

The first hints of what was going on didn’t really hit the media until the 1980s and 1990s, but within the church, people have been talking about it since the 1940s.
That was when the American Rev. Gerald Fitzgerald set up the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete, a religious order to treat monks who were struggling with sin (specifically alcoholism). Shortly after opening his congregation, Fitzgerald sent a letter to the Pope complaining about the massive number of child molesters being sent his way.
Nothing was being done to punish them, Rev. Fitzgerald complained. Instead, they were allowed to make a quick, fake repentance, and then were put back in – as he put it – “a position where they can continue their wonted activity.” That letter was sent in 1957, but it’s widely believed he’d been struggling with the problem for more than a decade already. The reverend did not hold back in the forcefulness of his recommendations. In the letter he further said: “These men Your Excellency are devils and the wrath of God is upon them and if I were a bishop I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization [(defrocking)].”
In Ireland, the problem may have been well-known even before then. Way back in the 1930s, they set up the “Christian Brothers” and “Sisters of Mercy” – workhouses where sexual abuse was “endemic”, according to one report.
“They were routinely sexually abused,” the report said, as well as physically beaten. Children there were beaten while hung from hooks, set upon by dogs, forced to eat their own vomit, and far more – and word never slipped through to the public until 50 years after it had started.[7]

The Church Has Kept Secret Books On Their Cover-Ups Since The 18th Century

The church has kept secret records on their scandals for far longer, though. Since at least the 18th century, they’ve kept a secret set of books called the Canon 489 Files: an archive of murder, scandal, and abuse, meant to be kept from prying eyes.
Around the 1970s, the pages of the Canon 489 books became filled with stories about priests sexually abusing children and with clear records of a deliberate cover-up. There are written confessions from priests openly admitting to raping children, paired with letters from church officials telling them to destroy all evidence.
Some records were kept in the books, though, because the Catholic Church never thought they’d have to show it to the world. They were confident that they’d win the legal right to keep their books secret.
When a lawsuit forced them to reveal the information to the world, the Church complied – but there’s no telling what they managed to tear out before the world looked at their pages. One bishop was caught calling for a meeting to discuss how to keep their dirtiest secrets from being exposed to the word.
“If there’s something there you really don’t want people to see you might send it off to the Apostolic Delegate,” he suggested. “They have immunity to protect something that is potentially dangerous.”[8]

Pope John Paul II Personally Promoted A Cardinal Who Was Caught Covering It Up

On December 13, 2002, Cardinal Bernard Law resigned from his position as Archbishop of Boston. An expose in the news had revealed that he had personally helped cover up the sexual abuse in his archdiocese, even protecting a man who had personally molested 130 children.
That man was John Geoghan, a priest who repeatedly raped and assaulted children over a three-decade spree. The boys he targeted were young – one was only four-years-old.
Cardinal Law was fully aware of what Geoghan was doing. There are records showing he was getting reports about Geoghan’s abuse by at least 1984. He signed letters complaining about Geoghan’s “history of homosexual involvement with young boys”, and yet, for almost 15 years, kept him in parishes where he’d be surrounded by young children.
Geoghan didn’t get in trouble until the parents of his victims took their complaints to the media and the courts – and, when it became clear that Law that been involved in the cover-up, he resigned.
But the Church, it seems, didn’t have much of a problem with one of the Cardinals protecting rapists. Less than two years after the scandal broke, Pope John Paul II himself made Cardinal Law the Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, an important basilica in Rome. The new position made him one of the most powerful men in the church, with no superiors other than the Pope himself.[9]

In 2016, The Church Once Again Ordered Bishops Not To Report Sex Abuse

At this point, it’s probably no surprise that the Church was trying to keep these stories from reaching the press. In the 1990s, the Church specifically sent letters to their Bishops telling them that they were to keep all reports of sexual abuse within the church courts and outside of the public ones, with the letter they sent specifying that it “must be meticulously followed”.
What’s deeply troubling, though, is how little has changed, even now that the stories have come to light. As recently as in 2016, the Church was caught sending another letter to their bishops, telling them: “It is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors.”
The letter was talking about sexual abuse from priests. It was full of a horrifying refusal to take responsibility. It wrote the Church’s sex abuse scandals off by saying that most sexual assaults are still committed by families and friends, only acknowledging that “the church has been particularly affected by sexual crimes” – as if the real victim in all of this has been the Church’s reputation.
The Catholic Church backpedaled and apologized when the letter made it out into the media. Still, it’s a deeply troubling glimpse into what still happened behind closed doors, when there are no cameras or reporters on hand to expose what’s happening to the world.[10]

FATHER PAUL PRIOR – CONTINUED

The redacted documents on yesterday’s blog were from a Dublin seminarian.

That seminarian reported the whole Paul Prior matter to the Dublin director of vocations and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin.

The seminarian and DM had a one hour meeting during which he was believed and encouraged and DM offered to send him to a new seminary. The seminarian declined.

That seminarian is now a very happily married young man and following a successful career.

He was treated disgracefully in and by Maynooth.

How many other good young men have been lost to the priesthood by disgraceful formations?

Subsequent to Joe’s leaving the seminary, his friends were intimidated and aggressively interrogated by Fr. Michael Mullaney regarding their knowledge of his complaints against Fr. Paul Prior.

1. Marius O’Reilly (then Cork & Ross seminarian and now priest) was interrogated by Fr. Mullaney and Fr. Paul Prior then compiled a very negative and untrue end-of-term report for his then bishop, John Buckley.

Marius volitionally stood down from being a seminarian with Cork & Ross and discerned a vocation with a foreign order before returning to his diocese. Bishop John Buckley sent him to Rome to finish his formation.

2. Jonathan Flood (then Raphoe seminarian and now priest) received similar treatment from Mullaney and Prior. He requested that his then bishop, Philip Boyce, send him to Rome to finish his formation as he refused to continue same in Maynooth.

3. Derek O’Connell (then Cork & Ross seminarian) received similar treatment from Mullaney and Prior. His bishop withdrew his support for him and Derek then discerned a religious vocation.

4. Osmond Omeje (then Cork & Ross seminarian) received similar treatment from Mullaney, Prior and his bishop as Derek O’Connell. Osmond is now a priest with a foreign order.

5. Sean Mulligan (then Clogher seminarian and now priest) received similar treatment as above. He was told to take time out and eventually finished his formation in Rome.

6.Anthony McGorian (then Dublin seminarian) was also interrogated by Mullaney and Prior. He was accepted back to Maynooth the following year but was deliberately isolated, run-down and eventually ejected by Prior at the end of the year. Anthony was a mentally fragile individual and he received shocking and utterly ruthless treatment from Connolly, Mullaney and Prior. They showed scant regard for this man’s mental health.

The Jesuits are currently retaining Paul Prior.

They are now, with full knowledge, responsible for any problems he causes in the future. They are liable, morally and legally, for his future actions.

*****

Today, the Maynooth ex seminarian has made a formal complaint to the Jesuit Safeguarding Officer.

That officer is already investigating two other complaints from two young lay men with regard to alleged incidents in a Dublin Jesuit church.