Trouble in Camp.

[Kitosdad]

Tremendous uproar in the Catholic churches in Germany the last couple of days.
Ten priests have been openly accused of physical and sexual abuse of choristers.

The biggest eye-opener is the fact that the guy in charge is;
THE BROTHER OF THE POPE.

The boys were traded with other church leaders. Naked pictures of the boys were posted on the Internet.

The Pope's brother admitted that he had beaten boys with clothes hangers, but only as a form of punishment, never sexual! Really!!
He personally didn't know that sexual abuse was taking place. Really!!
It was his job to be aware of what was happening in his church.

Police and churchgoers are so enraged that all parents have been asked to question their sons for any information as to the guilty parties.

Meanwhile, I imagine the Pope is sitting with his head in his hands.

Here in Germany we have to pay a Church tax. (Another fiddle.) Many people are now stating that this should be withdrawn.

IT has hit the fan, and investigations are taking place all over Germany. Wide TV and newspaper coverage. More arrests imminent.

Many prayers being offered up on high no doubt.

Don't you just love it?

Kitos.
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Keep it simple ... Keep it interesting.

[Kitosdad]

In spite of the uproar that these revelations have brought about, I am surprised not to have seen any comments in English newspapers.

I wonder why that is?
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Keep it simple ... Keep it interesting.

[Ralf]

If you ask anybody who's not in a state of fuzzy-headed catholic delusion you'll hear that celibacy is wrong, against human nature and completely obsolete.

I had a look on the Irish Independent website and searched the word "priests". The outcome is quite shocking:

http://www.independent.ie/search/?q=priests
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[Political Lurker]

Before you say anything - Im Catholic

The Catholic Church has been plunged into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.

Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg.

Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions – but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its attitude to the investigation, accusing Catholic institutions of a policy of secrecy.

"In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence," said Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a prominent critic of the church. She pointed to a Vatican directive from 2001 which required that even the most damaging allegations should be first investigated internally and then reported to the authorities. A church spokesman called her criticisms "absurd".

A separate sex scandal has also enveloped the Catholic Church in the Netherlands after three people said they were abused at a boarding school run by priests in the 1960s. Since the allegations were published on Friday more than 200 people have come forward to a designated helpline claiming that they were also abused by monks and priests.

The new allegations are a source of major embarrassment to the Vatican, which had been hoping to draw a line under child abuse. Over the past decade the issue has enormously damaged the church's reputation and finances.

The allegations in Germany first surfaced last month when investigators began looking into a series of Jesuit schools, but the scandal broadened out over the weekend into the heart of deeply Catholic Bavaria. The allegations coming out of the Regensburg diocese are particularly awkward because the Pope and his brother spent much of their careers in senior positions there, which will inevitably raise questions as to whether they ever encountered or heard about clergy who sexually abused minors.

Throughout the 1970s Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Regensburg. His older brother Georg took over the Regensburger Domspatzen in 1964 and, over the next 30 years, helped turn the male-only choir into one of the best in the world.

But he says that he never heard of any abuse in his time with the choir. Asked by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica whether he would talk to German officials, the 86-year-old Mgr Ratzinger replied: "Obviously I'd be ready to do so, but I am not able to provide any information on any deed that could be punished, because I don't have any – I never knew anything about it."

Any abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen, he said, occurred before he took over. He did admit that pupils at the school were subjected to a climate of "discipline and rigour" but added that this was necessary in order to reach "a high musical, artistic level".

But Franz Wittenbrink, a German composer who lived at the school until 1967, described the school as being run by "a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust". He was also quoted by Der Spiegel as saying that it was "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother knew nothing of what was happening.

The new sex scandals have emerged just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI gave Ireland's bishops a public dressing down for failing to deal with child abuse which he described as a "heinous crime". He also called on Catholic bishops to tackle allegations with "honesty and courage". But, while the Vatican has given its backing to a full investigation of the allegations, the Pope has so far remained personally silent on the matter.

We Are Church, a prominent Christian support network for abuse victims, has now called on the Pope publicly to declare whether he knew of any abuse allegations when he was a bishop.

"He must answer the question about what he knew and what he did about it," said Christian Weisner, the group's German spokesperson.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/popes-brother-georg-ratzinger-linked-to-child-abuse-claims-14711806.html#ixzz0hhisJINp



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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

[Kitosdad]

You are 48 hours late with this news Jamie. I posted it two days ago.

They have now found a document from the Pope saying it is OK to do what you are doing, but don't let anyone outside the church know about it. So what did his stupid brother do? Posted pics on the Internet!! You couldn't make it up!!!!
_________________
Keep it simple ... Keep it interesting.

[Ralf]

It's still happening everywhere.

Dutch church orders inquiry into sex abuse allegations
The Catholic Church is facing a new scandal in the Netherlands

Dutch religious leaders have ordered an independent inquiry into alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8558311.stm
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[Political Lurker]

[Political Lurker]

Chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth says Devil is in the Vatican
Richard Owen in Rome
Don Gabriele Amorth is the chief exorcist at the Vatican

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican", according to the Holy See's chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican's chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as "cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon".

He added: "When one speaks of 'the smoke of Satan' [a phrase coined by Pope Paul VI in 1972] in the holy rooms, it is all true – including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia."

He claimed that another example of satanic behaviour was the Vatican "cover-up" over the deaths in 1998 of Alois Estermann, the then commander of the Swiss Guard, his wife and Corporal Cedric Tornay, a Swiss Guard, who were all found shot dead. "They covered up everything immediately," he said. "Here one sees the rot".

RELATED LINKS
German Church to investigate abuse allegations
Abuse scandal may be Pope's defining moment
Pope's brother: I hit choirboys
A remarkably swift Vatican investigation concluded that Corporal Tornay had shot the commander and his wife and then turned his gun on himself after being passed over for a medal. However Tornay's relatives have challenged this. There have been unconfirmed reports of a homosexual background to the tragedy and the involvement of a fourth person who was never identfied.

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Father Amorth had "gone well beyond the evidence" in claiming that Satan had infiltrated the Vatican corridors.

"Cardinals might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of God," he said. Some Vatican officials were more pious than others, "but from there to affirm that some cardinals are members of satanic sects is an unacceptable distance."

Father Amorth told La Repubblica that the devil was "pure spirit, invisible. But he manifests himself with blasphemies and afflictions in the person he possesses. He can remain hidden, or speak in different languages, transform himself or appear to be agreeable. At times he makes fun of me."

He said it sometimes took six or seven of his assistants to to hold down a possessed person. Those possessed often yelled and screamed and spat out nails or pieces of glass, which he kept in a bag. "Anything can come out of their mouths – finger-length pieces of iron, but also rose petals."

He said that hoped every diocese would eventually have a resident exorcist. Under Church Canon Law any priest can perform exorcisms, but in practice they are carried out by a chosen few trained in the rites.

Father Amorth was ordained in 1954 and became an official exorcist in 1986. In the past he has suggested that Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were possessed by the Devil. He was among Vatican officials who warned that J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels made a "false distinction between black and white magic".

He approves, however, of the 1973 film The Exorcist, which although "exaggerated" offered a "substantially exact" picture of possession.

In 2001 he objected to the introduction of a new version of the exorcism rite, complaining that it dropped centuries-old prayers and was "a blunt sword" about which exorcists themselves had not been consulted. The Vatican said later that he and other exorcists could continue to use the old ritual.

He is the president of honour of the Association of Exorcists.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7056689.ece
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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

[Expatcat]

[Political Lurker]

#
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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

[Foah]

[Political Lurker]

My own theory is
Priests at the end of the day are just men and another form of Power within a group
This is a quotation from Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Acton was preceded by William Pitt the Elder, who voiced a similar thought in a House of Lords speech in 1770:

"Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins."
http://www.voxfux.com/features/bush_child_sex_coverup/WashingtonTimes.htm
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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.