"While the moral panic of Salem's witches may be over, an equally
pernicious panic continues to grow -- that of the pedophile priest."
Anne Hendershott. 1
"Nothing much can shock us in today's world, but in the past weeks
we've seen things, heard things, and read things that we never would have
dreamed of." Father Raymond Mann, St. Anthony Shrine, Boston, MA, on
Palm Sunday,
2002-MAR-24, when the public in Massachusetts generally became aware of the levels of abuse, and massive coverup by the church. 2
"The far right will tell you the reason we have this problem goes back
to Vatican II. We made too many reforms. They blame everything on the reforms.
The far left says the problem we have today is we didn't make enough reforms.
... Both sides greet the bad
news about the Catholic Church, particularly regarding matters sexual, as
good news because they feel vindicated."William Donohue, president of the Catholic League. 3
"We would be naive and dishonest were we to
say this is a Roman Catholic problem and has nothing to do with us because
we have married and female priests in our church. Sin and abusive behavior
know no ecclesial or other boundaries." Rt. Rev. William Persell, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Good Friday Sermon,
2002. 4
A conspiracy theory: "The Vortex" discussed the problem in the Catholic church:
Michael Voris of RealCatholicTV.com discussed the abuse of children in the
Catholic church. His talk is an interesting blend of accurate terminology, and
hatred of gays, lesbians and
liberals. His video makes for interesting viewing:
He correctly identifies the abuse as being motivated by abusive ephebophilia (involving victims in later teen years),
not pedophilia (involving victims under the age of 11) as much of the secular media has stated.
He blamed the child sex abuse problem on liberals in the church. He describes their goal
as to use the Catholic Church to advance the "homosexual agenda." He seems to use the terms "liberal" and "homosexual" interchangably as snarl words. Apparently
he believes that their agenda involves high levels of child abuse. That is an
interesting conclusion, which he does not support with facts.
He commented: "One by one, these bishops and priests who [had] rained down
spiritual terror on the church for decades are finally exiting the scene. In
their place are good bishops and holy priests who love the Church and the
faith." However, he still believes that the terrorist bishops and priests
still form a majority.
Resources:
BishopAccountability.orgmaintains a database of publicly accused
Roman Catholic priests in the U.S., sorted by state and diocese. See: http://app.bishop-accountability.org/
Pointer.org "is a
non-profit school for journalists, focused on helping journalists get
better at what they do." They maintain a Clergy Abuse
Tracker at http://www.poynter.org/ It consists mainly of
articles on clergy abuse extracted from newspapers and news services from
around the world. An amazing resource.
Reformation.com maintains a list of hundreds of instances of alleged sexual molestation
scandals among Protestant denominations. As of 2002-SEP-3, these included
147 by Baptist ministers, 251 by other Fundamentalist / Evangelical
leaders, 140 by Episcopal, 38 by Lutheran, 46 by Methodist, 19 by
Presbyterian, and 198 by other church leaders. See: http://www.reformation.com
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests(SNAP)
"is a self-help organization of men and women who were sexually abused by
spiritual elders (Catholic priests, brothers, nuns, ministers, teachers,
etc)....SNAP was founded by Barbara Blaine of Chicago in 1991." It has
"several local chapters in the United States and Canada." See: http://www.survivorsnetwork.org
References used:
Anne Hendershott, "A perfect panic," San Diego Union-Tribune,
2002-MAR-20, Page B-7. Professor Hendershott is a sociologist at the
University of San Diego. She is the author of "The Politics of
Deviance."
Jennifer Peter, "Abuse scandal shrouds beginning of Holy Week:
Catholics asked to take solace from Easter message of victory over evil,"
Associated Press, 2002-MAR-24. Published in Toronto Star, 2002-MAR-25,
Page A2.
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