dudley
Puritan Board Post-Graduate
I am an ex Roman catholic and now a Presbyterian Reformed protestant. I did not leave the RCC because of the priest sex scandal. I left it in 2006 because Joe Ratzinger was retuning it with other arch conservative Roman curia to a pre Vatican II mentality. I also read the bible and knew many Roman catholic teachings were heresy. I finally like the Protestant reformers renounced the authority of the bishop of Rome who is called its head, the pope. I realize that only Christ heads his church. As I explored many different Protestants denominations I began to see that I really had always been very much a protestant at heart but did not know it.
Joe Ratzinger is a criminal and I hope he is arrested and put on trial. It will expose to the world the false church and cult Roman Catholicism really is.
I am happy I am no longer a Roman catholic . I thank God for his bestowing his grace on me which is why I am now a protestant.
I think the Roman catholic church is in serious trouble and I pray for her complete collapse. She is a whore and her pope is a liar and a corrupt person. He is guilty of sins against humanity as is his false church! It is why I renounce Roman Catholicism and her antichrist pope. It is why I am no longer a roman catholic and why I am now a Protestant.
Joe Ratzinger, who as a bishop prevented a convicted abuser from being defrocked, and as a cardinal asserted the church's right to secrecy in the face of assault allegations, spent much of his papacy passively facing increasingly widespread sexual assault revelations. Is it possible that more—and worse—revelations are coming? The new HBO documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa, which premiered last week, indicts Benedict and the Vatican he presided over: as filmmaker Alex Gibney told the Daily Beast, the case he explored "uncovered documents that lead straight to the top, straight to Joseph Ratzinger-then-cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict." Did Mea Maxima Culpa push the pope over the edge?
Oscar-winning documentarist Alex Gibney's new film is a conspiracy thriller and all the better for being true. The conspiracy is the Roman Catholic church's closing of ranks for 1,700 years to cover up the way priests have used their positions of sacred trust to assault young boys placed in their charge. It begins and ends in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Father Lawrence Murphy spent years abusing schoolboys as head of the St John's School for the Deaf and was never brought to book. In between, Gibney and his production team look into the notorious Irish case of Tony Walsh, "Singing Priest", Presley impersonator and serial abuser of both sexes, and the way the Vatican concealed the crimes of the outrageous Father Marcial Maciel, a senior associate of Pope John Paul II, before sending him to live out the rest of his life in a Florida mansion. It's a lucid film everyone should see and the Vatican should answer for.
The institutionalized and mandated celibacy by the RC church provides an ideal environment for those men whose sexuality (and personality) development has been arrested at an immature level leading to their inability to establish intimate relations with another adult. Surely we should ask whether the seminary system, especially the minor seminary, may not be a factor inhibiting the development of mature heterosexual personality. At a crucial stage of personal development the young seminarian is formed in a culture of denial. He must deny his natural feelings, he must downgrade the natural order which includes those feelings, he must deny the importance of his natural family, he must relegate marriage and the procreation of children to an inferior level of life, and so he must even see children in a diminished light. When the worth of children is diminished and sexuality is immature, the distance to pedophilia is short.
A significant number of RC clergy are psychosexually immature. This has been studied and well documented. The church prefers men and women on this level of development for church service because they are easier to control—they tend to be idealistic, dependent, obedient to authority, in need of causes and devoted to people they feel are strong; underdeveloped people are responsive to well defined boundaries that
make them feel special (superior) and secure.
•
Men who say or think that they want to be completely free of any and all sexual activity are frequently troubled by their desires and instincts. Many are in denial about their basic drives and hope that the system will protect them from sin and perversion. Once within the clerical system—from seminary onward—they progressively discover that the system is full of sexual activity and opportunities for sexual expression.
Frequently confessors and superiors indicate (and act on) their spiritual and physical attraction to their students or young priests. As a student in Rome we observed and talked about the system of preference for “beautiful” boys that was open and starkly visible among the monsignori who served as Vatican secretaries to various bishops and cardinals. “Afternoon tea” was the entrée to ever more intimate introductions and
invitations. Parallel patterns are prevalent in seminaries, abbeys, and chancery offices all over the United States. Sexual activity, not celibacy, is the underground mood and energy of religious institutions.
One of the five man made and false sacraments of the RCC is Confession. It is like so many tings in Roman Catholicism a creation of the devil. Secrecy is the key element that drives the clerical engine and preserves its power. Sacramental Confession is and has been used as a cover for crime for centuries.[8] Clerical sexual activity of all strips—including abuse of children—is considered sin and therefore first and foremost under the jurisdiction of clergy. All is forgivable.
No one has described the clerical structure and current state of affairs better or more clearly than Fr. Brian D’Arcy: “A combination of bad theology, the dysfunctional abuse of power and a warped view of sexuality, have contributed to what the Murphy Report repeatedly refers to as “the systemic failure” to protect the most innocent and the most vulnerable children. I believe that the evil clerical culture which pervades our institution right up to the Vatican bureaucracy itself needs to be dismantled…Part of the human structure of the church is rotten to the core.”[10]
He is not alone: On March 10, 2010 Rev. Gabriele Amorth who has served as the chief exorcist of the Vatican for 25 years, was quoted in an Italian news paper: “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican,” and that “when one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” He said specifically that this includes cardinals.
Pedophilia in the system and how it works:
•
Between six and nine percent of priests active in the United States get involved sexually with minors at least
once.
•
Some Cardinals, bishops, abbots, seminary rectors are or have been sexually active. Some of that activity has been with their subordinates. Only a minor proportion of their sexual activity may be between them and children or minors. But some prelates in the highest ranks of church power do have sex with minors, mostly boys. Nonetheless the sexual histories of church officials are often known within the closely guarded circle of
high-ranking clerics. Part of this knowledge is acquired and sealed over the years behind the seal of confession. Some of it is bound by the brotherhood of the Scarlet Bond that forbids scandal and the preservation of image at all costs. Superiors who are or have been sexually active are compelled to keep their activity secret and preserve their anonymity. For instance Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles knew about or lived with several priests who have been credibly accused, convicted, or imprisoned for abuse. The cover up of abuse by the American bishops is now well documented even is substantial Grand Jury Reports.[12] The dynamic of the cover up is outlined also in Ireland[13]. This dynamic is operative also in the Vatican.
Psychosexually immature men are prone to select sexually immature partners.[14] A substantial proportion of priests (fall in love) or become sexually involved with children or minors under the guise and self-delusion that they are being kind.
The clerical system is homosocial—its structure and power system, including its theological construct of Father/Son/Holy Spirit is exclusively male. The only woman allowed in this theological hierarchy is a Virgin-Mother. This intellectual framework supports stunted development. The clerical system is significantly homosexual in orientation. This fact should neither be surprising nor derogatory. The structure and culture of the Roman Catholic Church makes room and positive use of the great reservoir of talent represented in the gay community. But just as gay priests can be exemplary pastors some, too, can remain underdeveloped. Because such a large proportion of the clerical community—bishops and priests—is homosexual a greater proportion of the sexual abusers of minors are gay and their victims, male.[16] Clerical culture is a reality—priests are not like other men; they conform to a well-defined state of existence: that is appropriately defined as a culture—“A set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group… An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.”
Clerical cultural is an institution as defined above and is essentially homosocial and frequently homosexual.
•
All clerics must conform to the same set of beliefs.
•
Blind Obedience is imposed on members of the hierarchy creating a situation of stultified growth and the perpetuation of adolescent function. In the words of Fr. Yves Congar, O.P. “In the Catholic Church it has often seemed that the sin of the flesh was the only sin, and obedience the only virtue.” This describes an adolescent mentality. Bishops and cardinals conform. Truth and justice are sacrificed.
•
Clerics are trained, develop and function in a culture of double standard—outward “perfection” and secret intrigue. This extends from the top to every level of clerical administration. Image first. Avoid scandal at all costs. Sexual activity is tolerated if secret.
•
Clerical culture is an existence of status and privilege. It is a culture of entitlement.
•
Clergy who get sexually involved with minors have demonstrated a clinical profile of narcissism,
The Roman church is a den of evil and she is the Whore of Babylon and Celibacy Is The Issue." at hand with the whore and all her corruptions. The chief problem with mandatory celibacy lies in its theological legitimation. To assert that the celibate state is the divine preference for human beings is to assert something about God. It is to assert that sexuality, with its powerful emotions and obvious orientation toward marriage, reproduction and family life, is some kind of divine ruse, for what God really wants is that people refrain from all sexual behavior. Mandatory celibacy makes God into a devious and perverse creator who leads us astray by our natural emotions. No matter what "divinely" ordained celibacy makes of us, it is what it makes of God that should concern us.
Pedophilia is not the only problem finding some connection with the celibacy myth. Because of celibacy's flimsy theological foundation many priests are experiencing identity crises. They are finding it difficult to be enthusiastic about their ministry. Denied the helpmate God created for them, they are experiencing deep loneliness and depression. Some have found companionship outside the norms of celibacy and are living in de facto marriages. This current state of affairs has to be known by the bishops. It is known by practically everyone else.
Being unmarried is no virtue. Being unmarried is not a "gift" from God, nor is "celibacy." Since everything we have is a gift from God we should stop talking about special gifts from God as though to distinguish ourselves from others who have not received these "gifts." Above all, we must no longer claim God as a legitimation for what is a human invention. There is scriptural and natural law evidence that God "invented" marriage but no revelation attests to the divine origin of clerical celibacy.
Joe Ratzinger is a criminal and I hope he is arrested and put on trial. It will expose to the world the false church and cult Roman Catholicism really is.
I am happy I am no longer a Roman catholic . I thank God for his bestowing his grace on me which is why I am now a protestant.
I think the Roman catholic church is in serious trouble and I pray for her complete collapse. She is a whore and her pope is a liar and a corrupt person. He is guilty of sins against humanity as is his false church! It is why I renounce Roman Catholicism and her antichrist pope. It is why I am no longer a roman catholic and why I am now a Protestant.
Joe Ratzinger, who as a bishop prevented a convicted abuser from being defrocked, and as a cardinal asserted the church's right to secrecy in the face of assault allegations, spent much of his papacy passively facing increasingly widespread sexual assault revelations. Is it possible that more—and worse—revelations are coming? The new HBO documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa, which premiered last week, indicts Benedict and the Vatican he presided over: as filmmaker Alex Gibney told the Daily Beast, the case he explored "uncovered documents that lead straight to the top, straight to Joseph Ratzinger-then-cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict." Did Mea Maxima Culpa push the pope over the edge?
Oscar-winning documentarist Alex Gibney's new film is a conspiracy thriller and all the better for being true. The conspiracy is the Roman Catholic church's closing of ranks for 1,700 years to cover up the way priests have used their positions of sacred trust to assault young boys placed in their charge. It begins and ends in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Father Lawrence Murphy spent years abusing schoolboys as head of the St John's School for the Deaf and was never brought to book. In between, Gibney and his production team look into the notorious Irish case of Tony Walsh, "Singing Priest", Presley impersonator and serial abuser of both sexes, and the way the Vatican concealed the crimes of the outrageous Father Marcial Maciel, a senior associate of Pope John Paul II, before sending him to live out the rest of his life in a Florida mansion. It's a lucid film everyone should see and the Vatican should answer for.
The institutionalized and mandated celibacy by the RC church provides an ideal environment for those men whose sexuality (and personality) development has been arrested at an immature level leading to their inability to establish intimate relations with another adult. Surely we should ask whether the seminary system, especially the minor seminary, may not be a factor inhibiting the development of mature heterosexual personality. At a crucial stage of personal development the young seminarian is formed in a culture of denial. He must deny his natural feelings, he must downgrade the natural order which includes those feelings, he must deny the importance of his natural family, he must relegate marriage and the procreation of children to an inferior level of life, and so he must even see children in a diminished light. When the worth of children is diminished and sexuality is immature, the distance to pedophilia is short.
A significant number of RC clergy are psychosexually immature. This has been studied and well documented. The church prefers men and women on this level of development for church service because they are easier to control—they tend to be idealistic, dependent, obedient to authority, in need of causes and devoted to people they feel are strong; underdeveloped people are responsive to well defined boundaries that
make them feel special (superior) and secure.
•
Men who say or think that they want to be completely free of any and all sexual activity are frequently troubled by their desires and instincts. Many are in denial about their basic drives and hope that the system will protect them from sin and perversion. Once within the clerical system—from seminary onward—they progressively discover that the system is full of sexual activity and opportunities for sexual expression.
Frequently confessors and superiors indicate (and act on) their spiritual and physical attraction to their students or young priests. As a student in Rome we observed and talked about the system of preference for “beautiful” boys that was open and starkly visible among the monsignori who served as Vatican secretaries to various bishops and cardinals. “Afternoon tea” was the entrée to ever more intimate introductions and
invitations. Parallel patterns are prevalent in seminaries, abbeys, and chancery offices all over the United States. Sexual activity, not celibacy, is the underground mood and energy of religious institutions.
One of the five man made and false sacraments of the RCC is Confession. It is like so many tings in Roman Catholicism a creation of the devil. Secrecy is the key element that drives the clerical engine and preserves its power. Sacramental Confession is and has been used as a cover for crime for centuries.[8] Clerical sexual activity of all strips—including abuse of children—is considered sin and therefore first and foremost under the jurisdiction of clergy. All is forgivable.
No one has described the clerical structure and current state of affairs better or more clearly than Fr. Brian D’Arcy: “A combination of bad theology, the dysfunctional abuse of power and a warped view of sexuality, have contributed to what the Murphy Report repeatedly refers to as “the systemic failure” to protect the most innocent and the most vulnerable children. I believe that the evil clerical culture which pervades our institution right up to the Vatican bureaucracy itself needs to be dismantled…Part of the human structure of the church is rotten to the core.”[10]
He is not alone: On March 10, 2010 Rev. Gabriele Amorth who has served as the chief exorcist of the Vatican for 25 years, was quoted in an Italian news paper: “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican,” and that “when one speaks of ‘the smoke of Satan’ in the holy rooms, it is all true—including these latest stories of violence and pedophilia.” He said specifically that this includes cardinals.
Pedophilia in the system and how it works:
•
Between six and nine percent of priests active in the United States get involved sexually with minors at least
once.
•
Some Cardinals, bishops, abbots, seminary rectors are or have been sexually active. Some of that activity has been with their subordinates. Only a minor proportion of their sexual activity may be between them and children or minors. But some prelates in the highest ranks of church power do have sex with minors, mostly boys. Nonetheless the sexual histories of church officials are often known within the closely guarded circle of
high-ranking clerics. Part of this knowledge is acquired and sealed over the years behind the seal of confession. Some of it is bound by the brotherhood of the Scarlet Bond that forbids scandal and the preservation of image at all costs. Superiors who are or have been sexually active are compelled to keep their activity secret and preserve their anonymity. For instance Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles knew about or lived with several priests who have been credibly accused, convicted, or imprisoned for abuse. The cover up of abuse by the American bishops is now well documented even is substantial Grand Jury Reports.[12] The dynamic of the cover up is outlined also in Ireland[13]. This dynamic is operative also in the Vatican.
Psychosexually immature men are prone to select sexually immature partners.[14] A substantial proportion of priests (fall in love) or become sexually involved with children or minors under the guise and self-delusion that they are being kind.
The clerical system is homosocial—its structure and power system, including its theological construct of Father/Son/Holy Spirit is exclusively male. The only woman allowed in this theological hierarchy is a Virgin-Mother. This intellectual framework supports stunted development. The clerical system is significantly homosexual in orientation. This fact should neither be surprising nor derogatory. The structure and culture of the Roman Catholic Church makes room and positive use of the great reservoir of talent represented in the gay community. But just as gay priests can be exemplary pastors some, too, can remain underdeveloped. Because such a large proportion of the clerical community—bishops and priests—is homosexual a greater proportion of the sexual abusers of minors are gay and their victims, male.[16] Clerical culture is a reality—priests are not like other men; they conform to a well-defined state of existence: that is appropriately defined as a culture—“A set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group… An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning.”
Clerical cultural is an institution as defined above and is essentially homosocial and frequently homosexual.
•
All clerics must conform to the same set of beliefs.
•
Blind Obedience is imposed on members of the hierarchy creating a situation of stultified growth and the perpetuation of adolescent function. In the words of Fr. Yves Congar, O.P. “In the Catholic Church it has often seemed that the sin of the flesh was the only sin, and obedience the only virtue.” This describes an adolescent mentality. Bishops and cardinals conform. Truth and justice are sacrificed.
•
Clerics are trained, develop and function in a culture of double standard—outward “perfection” and secret intrigue. This extends from the top to every level of clerical administration. Image first. Avoid scandal at all costs. Sexual activity is tolerated if secret.
•
Clerical culture is an existence of status and privilege. It is a culture of entitlement.
•
Clergy who get sexually involved with minors have demonstrated a clinical profile of narcissism,
The Roman church is a den of evil and she is the Whore of Babylon and Celibacy Is The Issue." at hand with the whore and all her corruptions. The chief problem with mandatory celibacy lies in its theological legitimation. To assert that the celibate state is the divine preference for human beings is to assert something about God. It is to assert that sexuality, with its powerful emotions and obvious orientation toward marriage, reproduction and family life, is some kind of divine ruse, for what God really wants is that people refrain from all sexual behavior. Mandatory celibacy makes God into a devious and perverse creator who leads us astray by our natural emotions. No matter what "divinely" ordained celibacy makes of us, it is what it makes of God that should concern us.
Pedophilia is not the only problem finding some connection with the celibacy myth. Because of celibacy's flimsy theological foundation many priests are experiencing identity crises. They are finding it difficult to be enthusiastic about their ministry. Denied the helpmate God created for them, they are experiencing deep loneliness and depression. Some have found companionship outside the norms of celibacy and are living in de facto marriages. This current state of affairs has to be known by the bishops. It is known by practically everyone else.
Being unmarried is no virtue. Being unmarried is not a "gift" from God, nor is "celibacy." Since everything we have is a gift from God we should stop talking about special gifts from God as though to distinguish ourselves from others who have not received these "gifts." Above all, we must no longer claim God as a legitimation for what is a human invention. There is scriptural and natural law evidence that God "invented" marriage but no revelation attests to the divine origin of clerical celibacy.
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