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isabella R

A history lesson in papal pettiness and misogyny - 0 views

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    It seems the all-male hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church was aggrieved and threatened simply by the fact that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had the audacity to include the word "leadership" in the name of a women's organization. The misogyny is that deep and that visceral:
isabella R

Bilgrimage: About Those "Non-Partisan" Stand Up Rallies Yesterday: One Reporter's Analysis - 0 views

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    It was a political event. A Republican politician was a featured speaker. Republican political operatives were on hand and sent out photos, such as the one above. Republicans called the roll on which Republicans were in attendance and Democrats who were not. Obamacare and abortion were much on the minds of the attendees. Catholic Bishop Anthony Taylor got a noticeably cool response when he mentioned the government's ill treatment of immigrants. Taylor, whose advocacy for immigrants was once a foundational interest, has become more engaged in sexual politics of late, and not just the all-out fight against contraception. He also recently punished a vital Latino assistance group because of its tangential relationship to an out-of-state organization that believed help to immigrant families should include those headed by same-sex parents.  In short: Friday's rally was primarily about people who want to defeat President Obama's health care policies and defeat Obama in the fall. A non-existent attack on religion was the bloody shirt.
isabella R

Bilgrimage: Richard Sipe on Sexual Abuse as Product of Clerical Culture - 0 views

  • "The context of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic bishops and priests is the culture of the priesthood."
  • clerical culture centers on the maintenance of a club whose boundaries are impermeable to non-ordained outsiders and are premised on the assertion that everything one does to keep those boundaries intact is done for God and the church--even when that "everything" comprises keeping noxious secrets, telling toxic lies, and maintaining absolute silence when faced with demands for transparency and accountability.
  • Sipe writes:  If a priest is apparently compliant with the demands of the culture he receives automatic status regardless of any individual merit. The culture provides an assurance of employment and continued material compensation for the duration of his life. The identification with the power system and subordination to it relives individuals of responsibility for the consequences of their individual actions. Truth telling is curtailed and subjected to the welfare of the organization (the good of the church). The prevailing rationale is that clerics’ first duty is to the higher law of God. Secrecy and loyalty are essential binding elements operative to the function of clerical cultural. Men within the clerical culture are labeled "special" since ordination confers an "ontological" superiority. Clerics thus incorporated into the culture often demonstrate qualities of dependency, entitlement, superiority/arrogance, variable degrees of psychosexual immaturity, but in many cases "they possess enormous powers of empathetic discernment—albeit for purposes of self-aggrandizement." And he concludes:
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  • The fundamental causes of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy are within the clerical culture.
  • That is, after the gentlemen running things get done with their bashing of Girl Scouts.  And gays.  And women in general and nuns in particular.  And abuse survivors.
  • Anybody but their own sweet selves.  And the super-rich right-wing men on whose behalf they are doing all this theatrical staging
isabella R

Bilgrimage: Breaking News: Victim of Father Thomas Euteneuer Files Suit - 0 views

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    ARLINGTON, Va. - A Roman Catholic priest "kissed (a woman) on all parts of her body" during a so-called "exorcism" session, and "frequently explained full, passionate kisses as 'blowing the Holy Spirit into' her," the woman claims in court. -the opening paragraph from today's "Courthouse News" article
isabella R

Abbey-Roads: Euteneuer back in the news. - 0 views

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    A Roman Catholic priest "kissed (a woman) on all parts of her body" during a so-called "exorcism" session, and "frequently explained full, passionate kisses as 'blowing the Holy Spirit into' her," the woman claims in court. -the opening paragraph from today's "Courthouse News" article
isabella R

US priests accused in 700 sex cases in 2011: Report - General | hindujagruti.org - 0 views

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    Washigton (USA) : About 700 people launched new claims of sexual abuse against Catholic clergy in the United States last year, including 21 who are still minors, according to a new report released by US bishops.
isabella R

Sister Abhaya murder case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

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    The CBI informed the Kerala High Court in late November 2008 and early December 2008 that Sister Abhaya had accidentally intruded upon Sr. Sephy and the other two accused priests in a "compromising position". Sr Sephy panicked and, on the spur of the moment, Sephy hit Abhaya with an axe meant for chopping firewood. The three accused together dumped Abhaya's body into the well.

    CBI also informed the High Court about the remarkable degree of care the accused took to hide the crime. This allegedly included the bizarre claim of a hymen-restoration (hymenoplasty or hymenorrhaphy) procedure on Sr. Sephy which was discovered through gynecological tests conducted on her in late 2008. This was strongly refuted by the accused. The counsel for the accused dared CBI to prove that such an operation has ever been conducted in India. Further, the building where the crime was allegedly committed was extensively remodeled.
isabella R

The Hindu : Kerala / Kottayam News : Former police officer dead - 0 views

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    Dead: VV Augustine, former Additional Sub-Inspector of police; (right) police personnel in the compound at Ithithanam, near Changanasserry, where the body of VV Augustine was found on Tuesday KOTTAYAM: V.V. Augustine, former Additional Sub-Inspector (ASI) who had carried out the inquest on the body of Sr. Abhaya 16 years ago, was found dead in a compound near his house on Tuesday afternoon. He was 72.
isabella R

Amen - Autobiography of a Nun, by Sister Jesme, alleges sexual abuse and corruption in ... - 0 views

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    A suicide note that accused another nun of sexual harassment Photo: Sister Anupa Mary Photo: Sister Anupa Mary On August 11, 2008, Sister Anupa Mary committed suicide in St. Mary's convent, in Kollam. She left a suicide note that accused a senior nun, in the convent, of sexual harassment. In a fit of uncharacteristic originality, the Superior of St. Mary's convent denied the allegations by saying that sexual abuse is impossible because the nuns sleep in a cubicle which is only 6 feet high. And two orphans try to kill themselves.. On August 26, 2008, two girls living in the Nithya Sahaya Matha Balika Mandiram, an orphanage for girls, tried to commit suicide. The orphanage is part of the Holy Cross order in which Sister Anupa was ordained. The two girls who had consumed poison and were admitted in a hospital run by the church gave a rather garbled explanation. They said that an apprentice priest Benedict spoke to them in a humiliating tone when he was counselling them and also told them that he had come to know that they were not good girls. Another girl who was also present at the counselling session told the Kerala State Women's Commission the priest had only blessed them by putting his hands over their heads and told them to be good girls.
isabella R

7th Most Powerful Person in the World and a Formidable Opponent of Obama « Th... - 0 views

  • Ascension Health Alliance, sponsored bhe Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the Daughters of Charity and the Congregation of St. Joseph, is “planning to build a $2 billion ‘health city’ in the Cayman Islands with an India-based hospital group. ‘We’re not considering this a medical tourism facility. That’s not the intent at all,’ said Anthony Tersigni, president and chief executive…. But the system’s for-profit partner, Narayana Hrudayalaya Hospitals in India, has cast the project in sharply different terms. For years, Narayana’s founder, Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, has promoted the idea of building an offshore medical center to serve primarily American patients who cannot afford health care in the United States.”
  • A Mexican official admitted in 2007 that the Church accepted drug money.“ This appears to be so widespread that the spokesman used the customary term for this – “narco-alms.”
  • s ‘Octopus Dei,’ it created a financial empire…replete with offshore accounts, financial scandal and nefarious names.” Murder by digitalis-induced heart attacks is their preferred method of dealing with their enemies. This led Opus Dei, pledged to support and promote hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church, “to the jubilant arrival at the right hand of Catholic power.” “On its tightening Church ties, Hutchison sketches in how Pope John Paul II as archbishop of Cracow, Poland, and many other bishops, were brought into Opus Dei’s network, or net.”
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  • The American fraternal society, the Knights of Columbus,
  • The modern day Knights of Malta
  • Opus Dei prelate
  • Neocatechumenate, Focolare, Legion of Mary for example – as well as the Knights of Columbus, the Legion of Christ’s lay group, Regnum Christi, and Opus Dei, turning out large crowds in St. Peter’s Square“to cheer the pope and his policies, and they have these people all over the world.”
  • According to a November 2011 study conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Catholics had 41 lobbying groups in Washington D.C. “
  • Mercy Health, with revenue of nearly $4 billion, “could qualify as one of the largest corporations in the St. Louis region.” But due its 501(c) (3) status “pays few corporate, income, property, capital gains or sales taxes…and is exempt for federal requirements to disclose certain financial data about its operations….Mercy Health oversees a network of more than 55 tax-exempt organizations, including fundraising foundations, physician groups and hospitals in Missouri and three other states.
  • The financial statements list “Social Development and World Peace” as an expense category which received only 8 percent of chancery (archdiocesan headquarters) spending from 1997 through 2009. Catholic Charities (CC), the only archdiocesan agency completely dedicated to helping the unfortunate, states year after year in its annual report that it receives only 3 to 4 percent of its income from the “archdiocese, parishes and other church” while 35 percent came from the government. Most people think that the Roman Catholic Church receives the bulk of its income from a percentage of parish collections forwarded to the (arch)bishop. From 1997 through 2009, only $54 million (21 percent) of $251 million in chancery income came from the parishes. For the archdiocesan entities combined, $312 million (34 percent) came from gifts. (The rest came from investment income, program fees, tuition, cemetary sales, etc.) The archbishop gave away $34 million in gifts. Some dioceses are not as wealthy as Denver; some more so. With 200 dioceses in the U.S., their numerous foundations and the USCCB also receiving millions in donations and government grants, that’s a staggering amount of money coming and going with no transparency or accountability.
  • A good example of how Roman Catholic money flows around the world is when the Los Angeles archdiocese had to pay a $660 million settlement to its victims of sex abuse, the Allied Irish Banks (AIB) provided a loan of $240 million in 2009.  AIB loans of up to $500 million were extended to four American dioceses in 2005-07 which had claimed bankruptcy. According to the Irish Daily Mail in 2011, the loans are being serviced and repaid “…from an unknown source.”
  • As noted in His Holiness, the Church fears exposure more than monetary loss
  • have fought so hard to prevent laws which extend the statutes of limitations on sexual abuse
  • The Church wants to prevent more lawsuits and, therefore, further exposure of their internal documents. And that’s also why there will probably never be another diocesan bankruptcy due to sex abuse lawsuits – because the debtors must provide the court with a list of their assets.
isabella R

Vatican spokesman pelts out one denial after the next - Vatican Insider - 0 views

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    "Certain statements which invite the Italian government to take on a role it is not meant to play in a democratic state, are shocking. As such, the parliamentary interrogations announced by certain policians whom one would expect to firmly defend the freedom of press, appear out of place,"  the note continued.
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