More proof of the vast number of degenerates that make up what is probably the most corrupt organization on Earth; the Roman Catholic Church. How anyone can still support this gang of hypocrites and pedophiles defies logic. It speaks to the power that religious belief has over the minds of the weak and ignorant masses who need a crutch to lean on. I suppose the promise of eternal life is too big a lure for the overwhelming amount of nit-wits that make up the human race. It is only the truly intelligent individual, and there are relatively few of us no doubt, who do not believe all the fairy tales and nonsense that religions have to offer.
The irony of the whole thing is that the very priests who supposedly believe, and preach, that those of us who are worthy of God’s grace are going to heaven, and those who aren’t are going to hell, would (by their actions) all wind up in hell. Obviously there are no such places as heaven and hell, so it’s all pointless. It just makes one wonder though; what percentage of the Catholic clergy really and truly believe what they preach? TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
BRUSSELS (AFP) – A Belgian Catholic Church-backed commission Friday published a report revealing hundreds of cases of alleged sexual abuse of minors, in nearly every congregation in the country.
“We can say that no congregation escapes sexual abuse of minors by one or several of its members,” the report’s authors wrote.
The commission said it had received 475 complaints in the first six months of this year, mostly related to paedophilia allegations committed in the 1950s through the late 1980s by Catholic clergy, but also by teachers of religion and adults working with youth movements.
The 200-page report which contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous “survivors” — as the victims of the alleged abuse are called — reveal that the sexual abuse for most victims began at age 12, although one was two years old, five were aged four, eight aged five and ten aged seven, the report said.
While the description of the alleged sex abuser is often imprecise, where verification had been made 102 were found to have been members of some 29 religious orders, the report said.
Two-thirds of the alleged victims were male, it also noted.
The commission headed by a psychiatric specialist in paedophilia, Peter Adriaenssens, said it received most of its testimony after the forced resignation in April of the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe, who admitted having sexually abused his nephew between 1973 and 1986.
A woman in the report testified that she was abused at age 17 by a priest and tried to seek help from a bishop in 1983.
“I told him ‘I have a problem with one of your priests’. He told me: ‘Ignore him and he will leave you alone’,” she said.
The commission concluded that the victims deserve “a courageous Church which is not afraid to confront its vulnerability, to recognise it, to cooperate in finding fair responses.”
The commission members resigned en masse in June after their files were seized in raids by Belgian judicial authorities.
Judges subsequently struck off from admissible evidence the fruits of that search in June at the offices of the church commission.
On Thursday a Belgian appeals court deemed raids on the church headquarters in Brussels and at the home of its former top cardinal disproportionate, and ordered that the material seized be returned with prosecutors unable to use it.
The country’s current archbishop, Andre-Joseph Leonard, said after the decision was made public that “it is in everyone’s interests that the fundamental rules of law are respected.”
