The Pope sacked Augsburg's bishop, Walter Mixa, who has been embroiled in a child abuse scandal. The 68-year-old bishop admitted that he had slapped children decades ago at a children's home when he was still a parish priest.I dont know. When I was in school, teachers used to beat our fingers with a ruler. It was a ritualized punishment. Then, it was not child abuse.
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I guarantee that this man did more than slap a child across the knuckles with a ruler. The allegations that have been publicly announced are just the tip of the iceberg. The rot in the Church is very deep. Yes, standards of behavior have changed and it is wrong to judge past conduct by modern standards, but what these men were doing would not have been approved by Jesus ever. These people are their own worst enemies - they have built an organization ostensibly dedicated to God that is corrupt and literally perverted. If they had been openly worshiping the Devil their conduct could not have been any worse. And those who did not participate in the perversion turned a blind eye to it and tolerated it, which is just as bad.
K
It is probable that he was sacked for something that cannot be published, not for slapping a child fifty years ago.
It is probable that he was sacked for something that cannot be published, not for slapping a child fifty years ago.
Of course, the Vatican is willing to use such a pretext for firing the bishop because so many men are ruined over accusation of petty impropriety. The insanity of the age provides cover for evil men to slither away.
The number of abuse cases in the Catholic Church has seen a marked decline since the rolling scandals came to public notice in the 90s. IIRC the latest report for the US puts the number of confirmed cases at between 9 and 32 for 2009, and I am certain that it includes no rapes or other violent sexual abuse. The US bishops have already whipped the problem, but we may see problems emerging in South America. Some blame the previous Pope, JP11 for his laxity, he however may have been fooled by his earlier experiences. It was a standard trope of the Nazis and Communists to manufacture all kinds of lurid tales about priests and nuns. I always make it a point to pray for the priests caught up in this coxcomb, as Jesus indicated that the payback may be eternal damnation.
My favourite priest when I was a kid, Fr Odo from Holland used to throw his sandals to get out attention. These days the most innocent gestures are liable to be misrepresented.
Very often by the time a problem becomes widely known, it is already largely over, but the damage is done already. Of course in the face of multi-billion $ judgments and massive publicity the Catholic Church in the US had to clean up its act. But by the time they did this, thousands of lives had been affected and in some cases ruined. As in the case of Watergate, "the coverup is worse than the crime". The pedophile priests at least had the excuse that they were mentally ill or possessed by the Devil or whatever. The church hierarchy had no such excuse. They wanted to protect the reputation of the church at all costs and not "ruin the lives of good men". They gave no thought to the victims. As priests themselves, they identified with their fellow priests and not with their flock. This is not what Jesus taught. The whole structure of the church as a form of royalty with ridiculous royal robes and palaces, with statues and relics, etc. is diametrically opposite to the kind of church he would have wanted, if he wanted one at all.
The church in many cases was in possession of highly reliable information regarding the activities of the pedophile priests. These were not rumors whipped up by Communists but firsthand reports, confessions by the priest himself, etc. And the response of the church was always, over and over, to quietly transfer the priest to another parish where he could find a fresh set of victims.
K
I suspect a lot of bishops may have been involved in this themselves when they were parish priests. Queers work their way into positions of authority and then go on to hire and promote others like themselves, which is how the problem of homosexual priests goes from a local problem to a global problem. And the pedophile problem *is* global as the constant problems now surfacing in Europe show all too well. If the hold of the RCC in Latin America wasn't so strong then a lot of cases of sexual depravity down there would probably come to light.
In fact, a group of Catholics has written a book claiming that the problem was not prevented or remedied effectively because homosexuals have penetrated the Vatican. At the national level a Catholic author wrote a book on his two year tour of America's Catholic seminaries in which he states that many if not most of the seminaries are controlled by homosexuals who exclude straight men from the priesthood. If the second book is true then even if the current problem is rooted out priests will go on to abuse again. If the first book I linked to is true then it follows that the church itself is damned.
I don't doubt that many priests are homosexuals who were raised religiously - they therefore feel guilty about acting out their attractions and think that the priesthood and celibacy is the solution. But then they are put in a situation which is like putting a dieter in a candy store - all that young flesh under their supervision with lots of opportunities to be alone and trusted by parents - what other profession gives single men such access to children? Most heterosexuals no longer have any interest in a celibate life and so the % of gay priests continues to increase.
I think you have to distinguish between pedophile and homosexual (the two are not synonymous and some of the priests have molested girls rather than boys). I don't doubt that there is a gay mafia in the church but I doubt that there is a pedophile mafia. What they did was bad enough but it was out of motives to protect the church and priests, not because they wanted to actively encourage pedophilia.
K
K
K, the problem you describe besets any large organisation that lacks oversight and humility, this is being remedied. In many instances it was the same priests who continued on their abusive ways. The percentage of abusing priests at the peak was around 3% of the clergy in the US, in that era (the 70s) most people would avoid speaking about it. Then again one has to distinguish between the truly depraved and the Father X who pinched some ass twenty years ago and has since regretted it. There is a flip side to this. I know of a seminarian who committed suicide after being accused of the crime of outrage of modesty. (In Singapore, a leering look at a girl in hot pants is sufficient warrant.)
Ronduck, both homosexuals and heterosexuals are expected to exercise continence when they become priests. The ultimate sanction for celibacy comes from Jesus Christ:
Mt 19:12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
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