Youtube Vid: "The Catholic Church is Beyond Redemption: Pope Francis Cannot Save It"
Filmed at the Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler's Wells Theatre on 24th April 2013.
Mired in allegations of sexual abuse, corruption in the Vatican and the first papal resignation in six centuries, the Catholic Church is in crisis. Two thousand years of arcane methods, tired dogma and unpalatable lies have left the papacy crippled and out of touch. The secularised West has lost faith in notions of infallibility, of temporal power and of a world in which gay marriage, abortion and the use of condoms remain outlawed. The Catholic Church stands on the brink of entropy, and no amount of confession can save it. It is beyond redemption.
Or is it? In the wake of Benedict's abrupt departure, Pope Francis has emerged as a beacon of hope for downtrodden Catholics worldwide. Finally there's a leader who can reconcile the principles of the traditional institution with the needs of young church-goers in search of a spiritual path: a man of humility, concerned for those in want and committed to promoting dialogue between faiths and cultures. Moreover, as Catholicism in the West declines, the numbers of the faithful have surged across Africa and Southeast Asia, which as the West slumps into economic decline, must give grounds for optimism. The Catholic Church has come through a hell of a lot worse over the centuries, and with a new captain at the helm it can surely weather the storm. Pope Francis can save it.
Following last month's sell out debate on gun control, we're back for the latest in our series of monthly Versus debates with Google+. This time, we examine the Catholic Church.
Combining the flair of Intelligence Squared debates with the innovative technology of Google+ Hangouts, we're bringing the world's best speakers to the fray, either hosting them on stage at the Sadler's Wells Lilian Baylis Studio in London or beaming them in from wherever they are in the world. And you'll be able to join us either at the venue or by tuning in on the Versus Google+ and versus.intelligencesquared.com channels. - http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-catholic-church-is-beyond-redemption/
Excerpt from Beyond Belief: The Catholic Church and the Child Abuse Scandal, by David Yallop (Constable & Robinson, 2010). Reprinted with permission from the author.
From Part 2. Ratzinger: Confronting the Secret System
In April 2009, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin publicly warned all Irish Catholics to brace themselves for the publication of the Ryan Report in May. This was a monumental investigation, named after Chairperson Judge Sean Ryan, begun in 1999 and concluded ten years later. Entitled ‘The Report of the Commission on Child Sexual Abuse’, it dealt in great detail within its 2,600 pages with clerical abuse reaching back to before the Second World War. The Commission’s brief was to investigate all forms of child abuse in Irish institutions for children. The majority of allegations it investigated focused upon the system operated in some sixty residential ‘Reformatory and Industrial Schools’ operated by Catholic Church Orders, more often than not run by the Christian Brothers.
The report should be made compulsory reading for the wide range of apologists not only for the current Pope, it is a truly shocking indictment. The report establishes that the system within these schools treated children ‘like prison inmates and slaves’ devoid of any legal rights. The report identified sub-human behaviour that repeatedly records beatings and rapes, subjection to naked beatings in public, being forced to perform oral sex, and even beatings after failed rape attempts by Christian Brothers.
Adjectives including ‘systemic’, ‘pervasive’, ‘chronic’, ‘excessive’, ‘arbitrary’ and ‘endemic’ are used by the Commission to describe the indescribable. Those apologists will search in vain for evidence that what occurred was perpetrated by a very small minority, although even one perverted degenerate would be one too many. It is clear from the details contained within this document that we are confronted with a widespread evil that went on year after year, decade after decade.
It is mystifying therefore that the late Karol Wojtyla dismissed the clerical abuse of children as ‘an American problem’. Anyone who shares that level of self-delusion and therefore concludes, for example, that what confronted the Ryan Commission was first ‘an Irish problem’ should reflect that wherever the Christian Brothers went – be it Canada, Australia or elsewhere – they brought with them their version of Christianity, which included systematic brutality. The report contains forty-three conclusions and twenty recommendations. The former include:
Overall: physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, particularly boys’ institutions. Schools were run in a severe regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff.
Physical abuse: the Reformatory and Industrial Schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and fear of such punishment, which permeated more of the institutions and most of those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.
Sexual abuse: sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions.
When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the religious authorities’ response was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse, it was not systemic in girls’ schools. There is a belief in some circles that this secret system of moving a molester is a gambit that began in the 1980s, but the long reach of this investigation, back to testimony that is pre-Second World War, exposes this canard. The evidence extends much further and ranges from 1914 onwards.
Over 25,000 children attended these institutions. Approximately 1,500 came forward with complaints to the Commission. Doubtless that number would have been far greater if others had lived to tell their tale; still others did not testify for a variety of reasons, ranging from shame to fear. The effect of these abuses upon the children is there for the rest of their lives. It was not easy for any of them to testify to strangers; that would take extraordinary courage. They talked of the neglect, the poor standards of physical care, of the gnawing hunger day after day, struggling to survive with minimal food that was inedible and badly prepared. They described the lack of heating in bleak rooms, and the emotional as well as the physical abuse. Going to the toilet would often be seized upon as an opportunity for degradation and humiliation. They recalled that the criticism was incessant, as was the verbal abuse, which was invariably accompanied with shouting of how worthless they were. - PLS CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING.
Mired in allegations of sexual abuse, corruption in the Vatican and the first papal resignation in six centuries, the Catholic Church is in crisis. Two thousand years of arcane methods, tired dogma and unpalatable lies have left the papacy crippled and out of touch. The secularised West has lost faith in notions of infallibility, of temporal power and of a world in which gay marriage, abortion and the use of condoms remain outlawed. The Catholic Church stands on the brink of entropy, and no amount of confession can save it. It is beyond redemption.
Or is it? In the wake of Benedict's abrupt departure, Pope Francis has emerged as a beacon of hope for downtrodden Catholics worldwide. Finally there's a leader who can reconcile the principles of the traditional institution with the needs of young church-goers in search of a spiritual path: a man of humility, concerned for those in want and committed to promoting dialogue between faiths and cultures. Moreover, as Catholicism in the West declines, the numbers of the faithful have surged across Africa and Southeast Asia, which as the West slumps into economic decline, must give grounds for optimism. The Catholic Church has come through a hell of a lot worse over the centuries, and with a new captain at the helm it can surely weather the storm. Pope Francis can save it.
Following last month's sell out debate on gun control, we're back for the latest in our series of monthly Versus debates with Google+. This time, we examine the Catholic Church.
Combining the flair of Intelligence Squared debates with the innovative technology of Google+ Hangouts, we're bringing the world's best speakers to the fray, either hosting them on stage at the Sadler's Wells Lilian Baylis Studio in London or beaming them in from wherever they are in the world. And you'll be able to join us either at the venue or by tuning in on the Versus Google+ and versus.intelligencesquared.com channels. - http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-catholic-church-is-beyond-redemption/
Child Abuse Scandal: How the Irish Government protected the Catholic Church
From Part 2. Ratzinger: Confronting the Secret System
In April 2009, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin publicly warned all Irish Catholics to brace themselves for the publication of the Ryan Report in May. This was a monumental investigation, named after Chairperson Judge Sean Ryan, begun in 1999 and concluded ten years later. Entitled ‘The Report of the Commission on Child Sexual Abuse’, it dealt in great detail within its 2,600 pages with clerical abuse reaching back to before the Second World War. The Commission’s brief was to investigate all forms of child abuse in Irish institutions for children. The majority of allegations it investigated focused upon the system operated in some sixty residential ‘Reformatory and Industrial Schools’ operated by Catholic Church Orders, more often than not run by the Christian Brothers.
The report should be made compulsory reading for the wide range of apologists not only for the current Pope, it is a truly shocking indictment. The report establishes that the system within these schools treated children ‘like prison inmates and slaves’ devoid of any legal rights. The report identified sub-human behaviour that repeatedly records beatings and rapes, subjection to naked beatings in public, being forced to perform oral sex, and even beatings after failed rape attempts by Christian Brothers.
Adjectives including ‘systemic’, ‘pervasive’, ‘chronic’, ‘excessive’, ‘arbitrary’ and ‘endemic’ are used by the Commission to describe the indescribable. Those apologists will search in vain for evidence that what occurred was perpetrated by a very small minority, although even one perverted degenerate would be one too many. It is clear from the details contained within this document that we are confronted with a widespread evil that went on year after year, decade after decade.
It is mystifying therefore that the late Karol Wojtyla dismissed the clerical abuse of children as ‘an American problem’. Anyone who shares that level of self-delusion and therefore concludes, for example, that what confronted the Ryan Commission was first ‘an Irish problem’ should reflect that wherever the Christian Brothers went – be it Canada, Australia or elsewhere – they brought with them their version of Christianity, which included systematic brutality. The report contains forty-three conclusions and twenty recommendations. The former include:
Overall: physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, particularly boys’ institutions. Schools were run in a severe regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff.
Physical abuse: the Reformatory and Industrial Schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and fear of such punishment, which permeated more of the institutions and most of those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.
Sexual abuse: sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions.
When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the religious authorities’ response was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse, it was not systemic in girls’ schools. There is a belief in some circles that this secret system of moving a molester is a gambit that began in the 1980s, but the long reach of this investigation, back to testimony that is pre-Second World War, exposes this canard. The evidence extends much further and ranges from 1914 onwards.
Over 25,000 children attended these institutions. Approximately 1,500 came forward with complaints to the Commission. Doubtless that number would have been far greater if others had lived to tell their tale; still others did not testify for a variety of reasons, ranging from shame to fear. The effect of these abuses upon the children is there for the rest of their lives. It was not easy for any of them to testify to strangers; that would take extraordinary courage. They talked of the neglect, the poor standards of physical care, of the gnawing hunger day after day, struggling to survive with minimal food that was inedible and badly prepared. They described the lack of heating in bleak rooms, and the emotional as well as the physical abuse. Going to the toilet would often be seized upon as an opportunity for degradation and humiliation. They recalled that the criticism was incessant, as was the verbal abuse, which was invariably accompanied with shouting of how worthless they were. - PLS CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING.
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