Many Catholics that I have spoken to, including the clergy, have grown weary of those who claim they were victimized by a priest decades ago and are still not satisfied with the Church’s response.
Almost every thing he says drips with evil. “Those who claim”? what does that mean? Did the church give up millions to kids that were not raped. Whoa, the poor catholic church is being picked on!
No matter what the Church does—doling out millions, providing endless counseling and therapy, mandating training sessions for every employee to guard against abuse—it’s never enough.
Bill, when it stops and the rapists are removed, we can talk.
It’s time for some straight talk: these people don’t want to move on, and that’s because they have too much invested in maintaining their victim status.
Holy FUCK! Talk about hanging on the a victim status…. Bill…. That is your job. That is all you do. You are a professional victim for the catholic church. Check out this slime that came out of his mouth…
No institution, secular or religious, has a better record combating sexual abuse today than the Catholic Church
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The catholic church is filled with evil people that have no heart.
The New York Daily News reports that the parade has a new route next year and that it might disrupt services at a Catholic church.
“You know, you don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism,” Cardinal Francis George said last week.
Actually, it is the catholic church that is more like the KKK. If you don’t see the world the way they do, their “god” will punish you forever. Just a few years ago they would be out hunting down gay people. They only prove that they want the old ways back.
Gay activists were outraged and called for George’s resignation. Instead he defended his comparison, releasing a statement to the Chicago Tribune:
“Organizers [of the parade] invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church. One such organization is the Ku Klux Klan which, well into the 1940s, paraded through American cities not only to interfere with Catholic worship but also to demonstrate that Catholics stand outside of the American consensus. It is not a precedent anyone should want to emulate.”
Well, they do stand outside of the American consensus and it is time for their gang to be shut down.
is post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Süddeutsche Zeitung.
VIENNA — There is open rebellion among the clergy of Austria’s Catholic Church. One highly placed man of the cloth has even warned about the risk of a coming schism as significant numbers of priests are refusing obedience to the Pope and bishops for the first time in memory.
Wow! A split for the catholic church?
The 300-plus supporters of the so-called Priests’ Initiative have had enough of what they call the church’s “delaying” tactics, and they are advocating pushing ahead with policies that openly defy current practices. These include letting nonordained people lead religious services and deliver sermons; making communion available to divorced people who have remarried; allowing women to become priests and to take on important positions in the hierarchy; and letting priests carry out pastoral functions even if, in defiance of church rules, they have a wife and family.
Gasp! A Family? The horror!
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Vienna’s Archbishop and head of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference, has threatened the rebels with excommunication. Incidentally, those involved in the initiative are not only low-profile members of the clergy. Indeed, it is being led by Helmut Schüller — who was for many years vicar general of the archdiocese of Vienna and director of Caritas — and the cathedral pastor in the Carinthian diocese of Gurk.
Excommunication is for people that can think for themselves. One of the worst crimes ever. gOd does not want you to think. If you do, he will vanish in a puff of smoke!
The issues that supporters of the initiative want addressed may be revolutionary, but they are by no means new: they constitute basic questions that have been around for a long time but have never been addressed by church officials.
The initiative’s supporters are demanding that parishes openly expose all things forbidden by the church hierarchy, thus putting a stop to hypocrisy and allowing authenticity of belief and community life to emerge. The appeal for “more honesty” made to the world’s youth by Pope Benedict XVI in Madrid last week left a sour taste in many mouths in Austria, where some say that honesty is a quality the church hierarchy has more of a tendency to punish than reward.
Open Pressure and Disobedience
Particularly affected are some 700 members of an association called Priester ohne Amt (Priests Without a Job) who wish in vain to practice their ministry because they have a wife and children and stand by them. Priests who break ties with loved ones, on the other hand, are allowed to continue working.
According to the initiative’s founder Schüller, only openly disobedient priests and pressure from both priests and laity can force the hierarchy to budge. Although the problems have been out there for decades, he says, the church keeps putting off doing anything about them. Schönborn stated that the critics would have to “give some thought to their path in the church” or face unavoidable consequences. On the other hand, Anton Zulehner, a priest who is one of the most respected pastoral theologians in Austria, believes that this time the church is not going to get away with diversionary tactics.
Twenty years ago, Austria, nominally at least, was 85% Catholic. Today, in the city of Vienna, Catholics account for less than half the population while rural parishes are melting away. Various scandals have rocked the Catholic Church in Austria, among them child-abuse charges against former Vienna Archbishop Hans-Hermann Groër and the nomination of a series of reactionary priests to the rank of bishop.
“Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity,” the pope said after recalling the story of Christmas. “Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.”
Do as I say – not as I do!
The 84-year-old pope, presiding over his seventh mass as pontiff, also conjured up an image of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, explaining that visitors must bend down to enter its low opening, drawing a tie to what followers of Christ must do to find their faith.
“If we want to find the God who appeared as a child, then we must dismount from the high horse of our ‘enlightened’ reason,” he said. “… In this spirit let us celebrate the liturgy of the holy night, let us strip away our fixation on what is material, on what can be measured and grasped.”
If the only way to find god is by giving up reason – you can keep you sky daddy.
Bill Donohue is a professional victim. He makes the whiny christians that have shown up here look like bench warmers.
He wants his members to reach out to atheists.
“We want atheists to realize that there may be Christians in their community…”
Are you kidding me. They are everywhere – all we want is for them to keep there noses out of our business and keep their hands off of our laws. Instead he is asking his follower to go out and bother atheists.
We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area…
He would be crying persecution if I was to suggest something like this. I would be able to hear him cry from here.
…letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them.
Like a puppy? A lost little puppy that need the love of his master? Maybe they put a nice leash on us and take us for a walk to the local church. Then take us inside and offer us a little wafer for our hunger and a little cheap ass wine to quench our thirst.
They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.
In Phoenix, it’s a battle between Bishop Thomas Olmstead and the city’s oldest hospital, St. Joseph’s, whose staff includes a respected nun.
It began in November 2009, with a pregnant 27-year-old mother of four who, in her 11th week, was admitted with severe pulmonary hypertension. Her doctors say it was dramatically worsening because of the pregnancy.
“The hormonal changes of pregnancy, the changes in blood flow in this patient created a situation where her heart began to fail,” said Dr. Charles Alfano, St. Joseph’s chief medical officer. “And that failure, despite the efforts of the physicians, progressed to the point where she was very near death.”
Modern medicine presented two equally grim options: Terminate the pregnancy and save the mother, or lose both mother and child.
“And as a result we made the difficult decision, but the decision that we had to make, to terminate the pregnancy,” said Dr. Alfano.
“No matter [what] you guys would have done, the child would have died?” asked Petersen.
“Correct,” said Dr. Alfano.
Save one life or let both die – tough choice. However, they made the correct choice.
Before moving forward, doctors consulted the hospital’s ethics committee, which included Sister Margaret Mary McBride. The committee approved terminating the pregnancy, which doctors did … saving the mother’s life, losing the fetus.
In the months following, word of events at St. Joseph’s reached Bishop Olmsted, whose role includes being the moral leader of Catholics in his diocese, and he began his own inquiry, speaking with – among others – Sister Margaret.
The Bishop ultimately found that officials at St. Joseph’s “had not addressed in an adequate manner the scandal caused by the abortion,” and for that he decreed, “St. Joseph’s Hospital is no longer Catholic.”
I am torn. I am glad that their is one less catholic hospital but really?
As for Sister Margaret, Bishop Olmsted informed her that she’d been excommunicated.
In the long run she will be better of but that is so rude!
Father Thomas Doyle, who specializes in church law and once worked for the Vatican’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., said, “The excommunication of the sister, I thought, was an extremely cruel act. I can’t describe it in any other way.”
Let me see…. rape 100′s of kids and get moved to a new crop of kids, save a life and get kicked out! So, only sick and messed up people are allowed to stay. If you are still a member of this evil cult – get out now!
Father Doyle is now an outspoken critic of the church, and says what happened in Phoenix points to an unfolding trend within the church.
“It tells me that within the hierarchy, there is a great deal of fear, that there is almost an obsession with control, that there’s an inability, I think, to deal with the 21st century.”
Father Gabriele Amorth, who for years was the Vatican’s chief exorcist and claims to have cleansed hundreds of people of evil spirits, said yoga is Satanic because it leads to a worship of Hinduism and “all eastern religions are based on a false belief in reincarnation”.
I love that they said “claims to”. Can we trust anyone that believes in this stuff.
Reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books is no less dangerous, said the 86-year-old priest, who is the honorary president for life of the International Association of Exorcists, which he founded in 1990, and whose favourite film is the 1973 horror classic, The Exorcist.
The Exorcist? OMG. Is this from the Onion? (Hint: NO)
The Harry Potter books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide, “seem innocuous” but in fact encourage children to believe in black magic and wizardry, Father Amorth said.
Funny! You teach people to believe in magic.
“Practising yoga is Satanic, it leads to evil just like reading Harry Potter,” he told a film festival in Umbria this week, where he was invited to introduce The Rite, a film about exorcism starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as a Jesuit priest.
“In Harry Potter the Devil acts in a crafty and covert manner, under the guise of extraordinary powers, magic spells and curses…”
Just like jebus!
“Satan is always hidden and what he most wants is for us not to believe in his existence. He studies every one of us and our tendencies towards good and evil, and then he offers temptations.”
Or….“Yahweh is always hidden and what he most wants is for us to believe in his existence. He studies every one of us and our tendencies towards good and evil, and then he offers temptations.” Of course, you put any god in that statement – it is meaningless.
Yoga poses could create a feeling of well-being in the body but it was erroneous to confuse that with “the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit…”
Actually, sounds like implicit support for yoga…
Father Amorth has previously said that people who are possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and pieces of iron and have such superhuman strength that even children have to be held down by up to four people.
So… several hundreds of times he and his lackeys have held down innocent children by force….. oh yeah… catholic.
He has also claimed that the sex abuse scandals which have engulfed the Catholic Church in the US, Ireland, Germany and other countries was proof that the Anti-Christ is waging a war against the Holy See.
Once again the church admits that it has no real power. They can’t even win a fight against the shit they make up.
The pope opens his mouth and stupid comes out. He has pissed off the people of Ireland – again. Ireland already closed their embassy at the vatican and now the pope says that child porn is normal.
Victims of clerical sex abuse have reacted furiously to Pope Benedict’s claim yesterday that paedophilia wasn’t considered an “absolute evil” as recently as the 1970s.
In his traditional Christmas address yesterday to cardinals and officials working in Rome, Pope Benedict XVI also claimed that child pornography was increasingly considered “normal” by society.
So says the pedophile.
“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.
NO! it was not.
“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”
Huh? If there is no evil then can everyone stop giving money to these clowns?
The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.
Again he is only worried about the “church” what about all of the raped kids!
“We cannot remain silent about the context of these times in which these events have come to light,” he said, citing the growth of child pornography “that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society” he said.
The church claims that they are superior except when they mess up. When this happens, they blame society. So, if the church is no better than society they should close down and give all of their money to the poor.
Angry abuse victims in America last night said that while some Church officials have blamed the liberalism of the 1960s for the Church’s sex abuse scandals and cover-up catastrophes, Pope Benedict had come up with a new theory of blaming the 1970s.
“Catholics should be embarrassed to hear their Pope talk again and again about abuse while doing little or nothing to stop it and to mischaracterise this heinous crisis,” said Barbara Blaine, the head of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests,
Agreed!
“The Pope insists on talking about a vague ‘broader context’ he can’t control, while ignoring the clear ‘broader context’ he can influence — the long-standing and unhealthy culture of a rigid, secretive, all-male Church hierarchy fixated on self-preservation at all costs. This is the ‘context’ that matters.”
…the clothing company was forced to pull one of its images from its new ‘Unhate’ campaign.
Why? It is so sweet – world peace and all….
The Italian firm withdrew the photograph featuring Pope Benedict XVI kissing a senior Egyptian imam on the lips after the Vatican denounced it as an unacceptable provocation.
Well, if the vatican does not like it – it must be good. We all know the pope would never kiss someone….. over the age of 15!
Benetton had claimed its ‘Unhate’ campaign, which was launched today, was aimed at fostering tolerance and ‘global love’ but would have known how much trouble they were likely to stir up.
Of course they knew it would cause a stir. That is what Benetton ads do!
Polaris Financial Planning LLC, is a “fee-only” registered investment advisor and is committed to supporting the growing secular movement in the United States and donates at least 10% of all revenue to support this cause.
Polaris has already sponsored these major events:
Skepchicamp Chicago 2010 Skepticon 3 2011 American Atheist Convention JREF in the classroom (Polaris is the first corporate sponsor) Skepticon 4 Corporate sponsor for Atheist Nexus. Skepticamp Chicago 2012 Reason Rally – 2012 2012 American Atheist Convention Skeptics of OZ – 2012 Madison Freethought Festival – 2012
