Catholicism and abuse

So the report on Catholicism and the child abuse endemic within it's churches and 'care homes' has been released.

It's shameful, disgusting even, what has been found. And I'm not in the least bit surprised. I've read some of the survivor books and hear about individual abuses in the news all the time.

What has surprised me, is this quote:

"I think of those in religious orders and some of the clergy in Dublin who have to face these facts from their past which instinctively and quite naturally they'd rather not look at. That takes courage, and also we shouldn't forget that this account today will also overshadow all of the good that they also did."

That, from the Archbishop of Westminster.

You know what I get from that? More unwillingness to face up to the crimes. He is basically ignoring the victims, ignoring the crimes and pretending that the clergy did nothing so much as, I don't know, occasionally shout at a child.

I mean, come on. This is more of that Catholic bullshit. For years this church has been ignoring victims, ignoring the crimes, ignoring the fact that if not punished, the perpetrators will keep doing it.

We all know that, basically, the church has simply been moving pedophile and abusive priests around, in an attempt to cover up the problem, rather than deal with it.

And here we have a perfect example of the mindset that leads to that action.

'Oh, they weren't so bad, they're courageous to face up to it' - bollocks. Big, fat, hairy, wrinkly bollocks.

No. The victims are courageous for coming forward. The perpetrators are cowards, despicable, disgusting cowards.

What makes the victims that more courageous, is the fact that this is not a criminal enquiry. Many, if not most, of the perpetrators sued for anonymity in this investigation and no charges will be brought against individuals.

The Christian Brothers delayed the investigation for more than a year with a lawsuit that successfully defended their members' right to anonymity in all references in the report, even in cases in which individual Christian Brothers had been convicted of sexual and physical attacks on children.

"I'm very angry, very bitter, and feel cheated and deceived. I would have never opened my wounds if I'd known this was going to be the end result. It has devastated me and will devastate most victims because there is no criminal proceedings and no accountability whatsoever."

The thousands of survivors said they had no safe way to tell their stories until the investigation began because much of Irish Catholic society regarded them as liars.

The investigators are now calling on the Vatican to make a similar investigation into other areas under the Catholic rule - as well as to do a full investigation into the Irish Catholic Religiouis orders.

I have little hope that the Vatican will do anything. They haven't done anything other than move pedophiles and abusers around, in an attempt to hide from the reality of their situation, for decades.

However, maybe now they'll stop doing that and actually take real action when abusers are discovered.

I'm also left wondering, on a side note, how the Catholic people are reacting. They've just had it confirmed, on a very large scale, that their own kind can act in truly horrific ways - not just their own kind, but members of the actual clergy, ordained and most of them supposedly celibate. Surely they must be wondering how their 'good God' could let this happen?

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But when questioned, the Christian Brothers indicated they would continue to protect the identities of rank-and-file brothers accused of abuse — men who were never reported to police, and instead were allowed to change jobs and keep harming children.

The Christian Brothers' leader in Ireland, Brother Kevin Mullan, said the organization had been right to keep names of even the most well-documented abusers out of Wednesday's report because "perhaps we had doubts about some of the allegations."

Yahoo! News