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This is some royal shite. The Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, always ready belch out bigotry at the drop of a hat. The man who said gay adoption is “against nature” and that the Catholic Church has a homosexual, not a pedophilia problem is trying in vain to build some sympathy for Pope Benedict by painting the NYT as a mean, Jew-loving (!), publication out to get his pedophile-priest-protecting Holiness.
Once upon a time there was a homosexual priest who was accused of molesting boys in Germany. That was 30 years ago. At the approval of Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger (now the pope), he was sent away for therapy and was later reinstated; years later, under a new archbishop, there was another incident and more therapy.We know this because the New York Times (which does not like to report on molesting rabbis in 2010), told us about this on Saturday in a front-page article. Today, it ran a front-page article on the same story. Was there any difference? Yes. On Saturday, the Times was only able to identify the priest as bearing the initial “H.” Today, it has real news: his name is Hullermann. And now “H” has been suspended.
Was it wrong to send abusers to therapy? Is it wrong today? The Times does not say. While it is painfully obvious that psychologists and psychiatrists have oversold their competency in treating abusers, it has long been considered to be both scientifically and ethically sound. It still is. Perhaps that view is unwarranted, but it is flatly unfair to cherry pick Catholic decision-makers for indictment when therapy fails.
Holy smoke. Cherry picking? Old Bill must have a pantload of cherries aboard for every time he’s picked ‘em about the gays. Back in 2006, he decided that the entire white race had been won over by the godless homosexuals who are responsible for the moral slide of America. Check this out:
Americans are a tolerant people. That’s good, just so long as tolerance doesn’t slide into amorality. For example, it is one thing to put up with immoral behavior, quite another to say we no longer object. Not only is there nothing wrong with registering moral outrage at morally outrageous behavior, there is something immoral about remaining silent. And no segment of society fails this test more than white people; in particular, well-educated white people.
So while he can pick and choose what he considers self-evident “facts” for his convenience, in Donohue’s eyes, the Pope needs to be handled like a delicate, kindly grandfather, above criticism (or a subpoena), not to be questioned about his judgment regarding the handling of child-raping priests because, you know, he meant well.
I’m sure the Pope meant well when he whisked Cardinal “Shift the Pedos Around” Law out of Boston in the dead of night to a new “appointment” beyond the reach of law enforcement.
I’m sure Benedict just hasn’t gotten around to calling for unrepentant Irish Cardinal Sean Brady’s head because the Pope is sure Brady meant well when he witnessed teenage abuse victims take vows of silence rather than tell what they knew during a Church inquiry against multiple child molester Father Brendan Smyth.
Related:
* Bill Donohue opens his foul trap on The Mike Signorile Show
12 Comments
I think its time for someone to re-post the clip of Kathy Griffin eviscerating this poster child for anencephaly
Do you mean this one?
I don’t know who first said it…But someone needs to explain to Bill that priests molesting boys are gay in the same way men who have sex with each other in prison are gay (read: not at all), and introduce to him the concept of “blue balls”.
Denta smile MDBigots will usually hide behind something like the Bible because they are frightened, it has little if nothing to do with religion.
http://www.articlesbase.com/he…
A thwarted libido…….is an engine for cruelty. End of story.
Yup!
That is true, in partI believe that somewhere around 40% of Roman Catholic priests are gay men. Some of those who are pedophiles are going to be gay. Many of them are not.
I am now up to two priests who were at my seminary in the 1960′s, who turn out to have been (or been charged with) abusing boys. At the time, I had no clue.
One of them was the notorious Dino Cinel, who had 160 hours of videotapes of himself having steamy sex with young (or young-looking) men in New Orleans. When Dino went to New Orleans, he asked about the age of consent, which he found out was 17. He was a chickenhawk who sought out teenagers who could show they were at least 17. Even with all the tape, he was not convicted, since none of the teens that the investigators found were under 17. Dino knew he had a compulsion, and took the steps he could to try to eliminate breaking the law. As a young minor seminarian in Italy, he himself had been abused by an older priest. Despite his compulsion for boys, I believe Dino is primarily straight.
The other one, A.B., was in the seminary and was ordained in 1976. He has been accused of molesting at least one boy when stationed in Boston. The accusation came out while he was serving as a pastor at a parish in Connecticut. He has been removed from parish duties and is now living at a retirement home run by the religious order. A.B. (I am not using his name because I am not sure he actually did anything wrong – an accusation is not the same as a conviction) was one of those seminarians who, even at the time, had all the affectations of being visibly gay in what one might think of as a stereotypical way. A.B. was well-liked, bright, intelligent, outgoing, artistic, funny, and a friend. Still, I think the handling of his case is proper – remove him from any contact with children until everything is concluded. I think that because of his obvious “gayness” he might well have been targeted for a false accusation. Of course, since he was a friend of mine, I find it very hard to believe that he could have actually done what he was accused of doing.
I know enough other priests who “everyone knows” are gay. None of them have ever been accused of abusing children.
The Roman Catholic Church’s pedophile problem is not a “gay” problem. Only some of those accused of pedophilia are gay. At least some of the priests may well have a psychological disorder (the example of Dino Cinel immediately comes to mind) and might be straight, or gay. Some are falsely accused, possibly because of an anti-gay bias (how better to ruin a priest’s career than to come up with an accusation, these days?).
I think that the root cause of much of the Church’s pedophile problem is the rule of priestly celibacy. The hierarchy heatedly denies this.
Matthew 19:12 (yes, the same chapter and verse I cite for Jesus’ views on trans people) is the primary hierarchical citation for priestly celibacy – as “those who make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.”
Early Church Fathers interpreted this as a calling for celibacy, while others (like Origen) took it literally, together with the “if your eye should offend thee, pluck it out” teaching Triple redundancy in Mt. 5:29, Mt. 18:9 and Mk. 9:47) to self-castrate, ala the priestesses of Cybele. Among the main opponents of self-castration was Augustine of Hippo.
Eventually, the Western Church took this teaching and made it mandatory, the ulterior purpose being to accumulate lnd and wealth into the Church rather than to the heirs of priests.
This, despite the admonition of Jesus that “He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”
The main reason for the greater percentage of gay men in the priesthood (despite all recent attempts to root them out) is the idea that young gay Catholics, when confronted with the idea that “homosexual acts are sinful” sometimes get the idea that their orientation toward men is a sign from the Holy Spirit that they must have a vocation to the priesthood – since the Church teaches that they are supposed to (try to) be celibate anyway, they may as well enter the seminary.
Then they get there, and discover that there are quite a few others like them right there in the seminary.
In the parish I was at until 1999, before the Dominican Fathers handed it over to the archdiocese to staff, one of our priests had a relationship with one of the priests from another Dominican-run parish nearby, that began when both were in seminary. They ended up leaving the priesthood together and bought a house in Nyack. These were both good priests, and neither one ever abused any children.
It’s not a “gay” problem, it’s a “mandatory celibacy” problem. There is an adage about Catholic priests – that they a third of them fool around with women, a third of them fool around with boys, and a third of them drink to excess.
Does the Southern Poverty Law Center know about the Catholic Leagueand its bigot-in-chief Bill Donohue? Or is its list of hate groups already unmanageably long?
Genius.No atheist can come up with anything better than how the Church has handled child rape, to kill off the Catholic church.
All anyone who dislikes the Catholic Church has to do is sit back and watch them inflict on themselves death by a thousand cuts.
Spam?
And no segment of society fails this test more than white people; in particular, well-educated white people. The fact that he picked out “well-educated” goes to show who his audience really is, undereducated/ignorant white people with a bias toward those who have worked hard to get an education. I would also add that, in my experience, well educated white people don’t go around morally outraged about the kinds of things that ignorant people get outraged about because they have more knowledge and can make rational decisions without emotionally laden biases based on fables, fairy tales, and the flying spaghetti monster.
WTF?It has everything to do with religion. Where do you think the bias comes from DOH!