^ More relevant: Christoterrorists desecrate Hindu Temple in Kerala (news from 18 May 2009).
Over 2 posts.
1. http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/05/dai...eriment-in.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->i do love this quote. so appropriate. reminds me of the hatchet-faced young 'father' kappan who was defrocked for buggering little boys at the school i went to.
(Naturally the christopriest=paedophile only got defrocked. Not excommunicated, of course. After all, priests will never be excommunicated for such things as paedophilia, as per the christo-rite of elevation to the priesthood - which states that once they are a catholic priest they are always a priest. See point 3 below.)
Alfred Hitchcock, the great movie director who specialised in frightening people, was once driving in Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." It was a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy's shoulder.
Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted, "Run, little boy! Run for your life!"
[...]
Posted by nizhal yoddha at 5/18/2009 09:57:00 PM 0 comments<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. Anyway, what I came to post:
http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?P...712&SKIN=W
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> 'The Catholic church failed me. I despised myself and lost all confidence'
20/05/2009 08:33:37Â
 An inquiry into child abuse by Catholic priests is published today. Its impact will be seismic, says victim and author of new book, Colm O'Gorman.
Few men have made such an extraordinary personal journey. Raped and abused in his early teens by Father Sean Fortune, one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles, Colm O'Gorman ran away from home when he was 17 and lived rough on the streets of Dublin. It was the Seventies, when both church and state were in full-blown denial that any priest could be guilty of sexually abusing a child, and Colm felt only shame and fear. His future could not have been bleaker.
Yet, with effort and determination he fought back, spoke out about the abuse, and in 2002 even tried to sue the Pope arguing that, by moving paedophile priests like Fortune to different parishes and deliberately concealing their actions from the local authorities, the Vatican had failed to protect children like him. He was outraged when the <span style='color:red'>Pope claimed diplomatic immunity</span> <b>but, undaunted, continued to campaign that the authority of the Irish church should not be above that of the State.</b>
(The Popes used to have unquestioned diplomatic immunity before. But of course they still get that now.)
Read Full Report at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...confidence.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Comment:Â
Sanesh
20/05/2009 19:51:04Â "Pope's damaging Africa" - says Runi
Go to 20th May 2009 Times of India news on page 20.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Archive/ski...W=1242873945265
One more news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4081276.stm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...onfidence..html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'The Catholic church failed me. I despised myself and lost all confidence'</b>
An inquiry into child abuse by Catholic priests is published today. Its impact will be seismic, says victim and author of new book, Colm O'Gorman.
By Angela Levin
Last Updated: 10:42AM BST 20 May 2009
Colm O'Gorman
In his autobiography, Colm O'Gorman courageously describes being abused by a Catholic priest Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY
Few men have made such an extraordinary personal journey. Raped and abused in his early teens by Father Sean Fortune, one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles[/b], Colm O'Gorman ran away from home when he was 17 and lived rough on the streets of Dublin. It was the Seventies, when both church and state were in full-blown denial that any priest could be guilty of sexually abusing a child, and Colm felt only shame and fear. His future could not have been bleaker.
Yet, with effort and determination he fought back, spoke out about the abuse, and in 2002 even tried to sue the Pope arguing that, by moving paedophile priests like Fortune to different parishes and deliberately concealing their actions from the local authorities, the Vatican had failed to protect children like him. He was outraged when the Pope claimed diplomatic immunity but, undaunted, continued to campaign that the authority of the Irish church should not be above that of the State.
Related Articles
  *
   The Right Reverend Hugh Lindsay
  *
   Tony Blair accused of using faith foundation to 'sabotage' law
  *
   Pope apologises to native Canadians over boarding school abuse
  *
   The Pope investigates hardline Catholic order
  *
   Vatican 'damaged' by row over rape victim aged 9
Today, nearly 30 years since he was abused, Colm's hour has finally come with the publication of a long-awaited inquiry into child abuse by Roman Catholic priests. [/B]The investigation has taken nine years, during which time it has heard the testimony of thousands of former residents of state schools and orphanages over more than 60 years in the Irish Republic.
A second report, due to be published in the summer, is expected to criticise the handling of <b>sex-abuse complaints in cases involving up to 500 priests.</b> Colm believes the result of the inquiry will be "seismic."
<b>"It will show that the state has an obligation of care to those who live in the country and can no longer declare that religion and politics don't mix, or that the abuse of children by Catholic priests was not a matter for the state."</b>
(Imagine a christian India. Catholic Ireland sounds like it was a medieval mainland Europe: one where catholic power was absolute and 'secular' power was subordinated to it.)
The report coincides to the day with the publication of his extraordinary autobiography, in which Colm courageously describes the lows and highs of his remarkable life â a life that has included founding a charity for victims of sexual abuse, becoming a Senator, making a documentary for the BBC called Suing the Pope, and being appointed Ireland's director of Amnesty International.
"At the centre of my book is my own dreadful experience and its impact," he says. "But I also wanted it to cover wider issues. I don't want people to assume that when they see someone in a doorway they know who they are, where they have come from and where they are headed. I also wanted to address the importance of the relationship between father and son and how redeeming it is."
Colm, the second of six children, had a distant relationship with his own father, Sean, a farmer turned councillor, when he was a boy, and the two men only became close a year or so before his father died of cancer in his early sixties.
I have interviewed several sufferers of systematic sexual abuse, but Colm, almost uniquely, doesn't come across as a victim. Nor is he self-conscious or bitter. He fixes you with his eyes as he speaks and seems totally at ease with himself as we talk in a smart central London café.
Did he make a conscious decision not to be a victim? "There wasn't a moment when I thought I won't allow this to happen," he replies. "But I didn't dare address my feelings until I was in my early thirties. Until then, I only reacted to the external world, not my internal one. I believe you are only a victim because you are powerless to be anything else, and that being a survivor of sexual abuse is a positive thing to be."
Colm grew up in Adamstown, County Wexford, and was 14 when he first met Father Sean Fortune, then in his late 20s. Fortune cynically groomed the former altar boy and his mother, Josie, now 72, flattering them both and asking Colm to help him with a youth group in his parish a few miles from the seaside resort of Fethard-on-Sea, in the south-west of the county.
When Colm agreed, he drove him to his home and raped him. Colm was too scared to tell anyone. "He made it seem as though it was my fault and I knew it would be my word against his," he says. Colm was then ruthlessly abused for almost two years. The effect was devastating.
"I despised myself, lost all my confidence and any plan I had for my life, such as university and a career, went out of the window. I remember on one occasion when I was 15 and Fortune came to collect me, trying desperately to tell my mother what was happening so that I didn't have to be with him. But I was unable to find the words and, not knowing the truth, she made me go. As I got into his car, I felt absolute hopelessness."
When Colm was 16, his mother decided to leave Ireland and moved to an ashram in India, taking three of her six children with her. Colm and two other siblings stayed with their father. The marriage was effectively over, and a few months later, in February 1984, Colm ran away to Dublin. He had no money and for seven months allowed men to have sex with him in return for a night's sleep in a bed and a hot shower.
Gradually he hauled himself out of the gutter by working first as a waiter, and then fund-raising for a charity. He was reunited with his family when he was 18, confiding then to his sister, Barbara, and his father about the abuse. "My father apologised to me for not knowing what was happening. It was a tremendous thing because I had spent all my life terrified of what would happen if he found out."
His shocked father had no idea what to do and Colm let the matter rest, moving to London in 1986 where he trained as a therapist.
It was only in 1995, however, that Colm found the courage to go to the police. "It was 14 years after I was first abused, but I couldn't have done it before. I went because I was concerned others might be suffering as I did, and that the Church was condoning it by not doing anything. My statement to the detective took me two days to make and was the first time that the truth of what Fortune had done to me began to emerge.
"In the months that followed, others came forward, which was both shocking and a comfort for me because it meant I wasn't alone. It took another 18 months before I began to realise that the Church had received earlier complaints about Fortune, and that they knew that he may have abused boys before he was even ordained. But that they did nothing."
The knowledge made Colm determined to bring the priest to justice. Fortune's trial was set for March 2, 1999 when he faced 66 charges of abusing children. Eleven days into the trial, he killed himself with whisky and prescription drugs, denying his many victims their first chance to be heard.
Colm is neither vindictive, nor forgiving. "Forgiving him isn't in my gift," he says. "My understanding of forgiveness is based on a Catholic model of confession and absolution and I can't absolve him. But I have forgiven myself."
<b>Colm went on successfully to sue the Catholic Church and received a payment of 300,000 euros and a historic public apology in court. "As for the Pope ducking out," he says, "I think it is an obscenity and I remain outraged by the failure of the Vatican. They are not responsible for what (Father Sean) Fortune did but they should take responsibility for what they did, in concealing the issue.
"With the stroke of a pen, Benedict XVI could make a law demanding high standards of child protection across the Catholic world and do more to protect the welfare of children than any other human being, but he hasn't done it."</b>
Meanwhile Colm's life has moved on. He has returned to Ireland and for the past 10 years has lived with Paul Fyffe, an IT teacher. They are joint guardians of two children aged 12 and 10, whose mother has died, and who live with them.
"I love family life," he says. "I am now a very happy man personally, but also <b>delighted that there is a major change in Ireland and that people are no longer reluctant to question the authority of the Church."</b>
<b>Beyond Belie' (Beyond belief?)</b> by Colm O'Gorman (Hodder & Stoughton) is available from Telegraph Books for £11.99 + £1.25 p&p. To order, call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3. On: Why there's no excommunication of christopriests for their paedophilia. (Do christo-nuns get excommunicated for their paedophilia though? Don't know.)
http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/excom.html
via http://freetruth.50webs.org/D1.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â Â Crimen Sollicitationes was quietly approved on March 16, 1962, by the so-called "good pope" John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), revered for bringing together the Second Vatican Council which for better or worse has opened the Church to the light. Issued by the Supreme and Holy Congregation of the Holy Office â now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and formerly known as the Holy Inquisition â it contains the procedures to be used in the cases of priests accused of soliciting sex while hearing private confessions.
  This is not a new problem, but one with which the Church has struggled since confession became a private ritual.
  Everything is spelled out in technical language with rigorous detail and absolutely all testimony is to be kept as a "secret of the Holy Office." Oaths are to be taken from all involved under the pain of automatic excommunication which the Pope alone can forgive. Likewise any person propositioned by a priest in confession who "knowingly" did not denounce that priest to the bishop within a month of the incident, was likewise automatically excommunicated.
  <b>Unlike such dire offenses as scattering pieces of the consecrated Host upon the ground or striking the Pope himself, none of these crimes merit excommunication. And indeed, as far as I know, not one, not a single priestly predator has ever been excommunicated for their crimes.</b> No matter how notorious, they may have been laicized under pressure but still only at their own request. Yet laicization only removes the legal right, but not the power or ability, to perform the sacraments. <b>Removing the priestly power, like the "indelible mark on the soul" made by baptism, cannot be done according to Catholic doctrine. "Thou art a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek," the ordination ritual proclaims, and the clerics take it seriously.</b>
  Apologists for the Church claim that Crimen Sollicitationes is not a "smoking gun" demonstrating a church-wide cover-up of clergy abuse. Rather, they declare that the concern over secrecy is related to the all-important secrecy of the confessional. Further, they say that these laws are only the laws of the Church, that these procedures in no way forbid seeking civil and legal remedies before going to the Church.
  Further, the document itself is secret. There is some question, in fact, if most bishops even knew of it, though canon lawyers certainly did as they continued to discuss its provisions until recently, when it was superceded by new norms.
  <b>Since all was to be kept secret, victims who speak out later give scandal to the Church, and should be thus automatically excommunicated as well. No wonder they have been treated so poorly. Victims are treated as enemies by the Roman Church</b> because that is how the hierarchy sees them. ...Moreover, the bishops were required to keep the policy secret as well under the pain of excommunication. So they have lied, and lied, and continue to lie, under the direct orders of the Vatican.
Link http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/excom.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Paedophile priests don't get excommunicated, but victims who come forth will:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The World Uncovered: Sex crimes and the Vatican - BBC, October 21, 2006</b>
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_c...asp?pageid=2892
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â Â A secret document which sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is examined by Panorama.
  .... Crimen Sollicitationis was written in 1962 in Latin and given to Catholic bishops worldwide who are ordered to keep it locked away in the church safe. It instructs them how to deal with priests who solicit sex from the confessional. It also deals with "any obscene external act ... with youths of either sex." It imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witnesses. Breaking that oath means excommunication from the Catholic Church.
  Reporting for Panorama, Colm O'Gorman finds seven priests with child abuse allegations made against them living in and around the Vatican City.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
See the translated document <b>Crimen Sollicitationes</b>. http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/CrimenS...tiones.pdf
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â Â This [the document Crimen Sollicitationes] shows that the Church considered itself above secular law even well into modern times. <b>In order to keep these cases secret, excommunication could be invoked on victims, witnesses, participants and the accused.</b>
  At last, there may be an explanation of why bishops have so consistently lied â they were just obeying orders from Rome, under penalty of eternal damnation.
Link http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/pd-index.html#archive<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Over 2 posts.
1. http://rajeev2004.blogspot.com/2009/05/dai...eriment-in.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->i do love this quote. so appropriate. reminds me of the hatchet-faced young 'father' kappan who was defrocked for buggering little boys at the school i went to.
(Naturally the christopriest=paedophile only got defrocked. Not excommunicated, of course. After all, priests will never be excommunicated for such things as paedophilia, as per the christo-rite of elevation to the priesthood - which states that once they are a catholic priest they are always a priest. See point 3 below.)
Alfred Hitchcock, the great movie director who specialised in frightening people, was once driving in Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen." It was a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy's shoulder.
Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted, "Run, little boy! Run for your life!"
[...]
Posted by nizhal yoddha at 5/18/2009 09:57:00 PM 0 comments<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
2. Anyway, what I came to post:
http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?P...712&SKIN=W
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> 'The Catholic church failed me. I despised myself and lost all confidence'
20/05/2009 08:33:37Â
 An inquiry into child abuse by Catholic priests is published today. Its impact will be seismic, says victim and author of new book, Colm O'Gorman.
Few men have made such an extraordinary personal journey. Raped and abused in his early teens by Father Sean Fortune, one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles, Colm O'Gorman ran away from home when he was 17 and lived rough on the streets of Dublin. It was the Seventies, when both church and state were in full-blown denial that any priest could be guilty of sexually abusing a child, and Colm felt only shame and fear. His future could not have been bleaker.
Yet, with effort and determination he fought back, spoke out about the abuse, and in 2002 even tried to sue the Pope arguing that, by moving paedophile priests like Fortune to different parishes and deliberately concealing their actions from the local authorities, the Vatican had failed to protect children like him. He was outraged when the <span style='color:red'>Pope claimed diplomatic immunity</span> <b>but, undaunted, continued to campaign that the authority of the Irish church should not be above that of the State.</b>
(The Popes used to have unquestioned diplomatic immunity before. But of course they still get that now.)
Read Full Report at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...confidence.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Comment:Â
Sanesh
20/05/2009 19:51:04Â "Pope's damaging Africa" - says Runi
Go to 20th May 2009 Times of India news on page 20.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Archive/ski...W=1242873945265
One more news
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4081276.stm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics...onfidence..html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>'The Catholic church failed me. I despised myself and lost all confidence'</b>
An inquiry into child abuse by Catholic priests is published today. Its impact will be seismic, says victim and author of new book, Colm O'Gorman.
By Angela Levin
Last Updated: 10:42AM BST 20 May 2009
Colm O'Gorman
In his autobiography, Colm O'Gorman courageously describes being abused by a Catholic priest Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY
Few men have made such an extraordinary personal journey. Raped and abused in his early teens by Father Sean Fortune, one of Ireland's most notorious paedophiles[/b], Colm O'Gorman ran away from home when he was 17 and lived rough on the streets of Dublin. It was the Seventies, when both church and state were in full-blown denial that any priest could be guilty of sexually abusing a child, and Colm felt only shame and fear. His future could not have been bleaker.
Yet, with effort and determination he fought back, spoke out about the abuse, and in 2002 even tried to sue the Pope arguing that, by moving paedophile priests like Fortune to different parishes and deliberately concealing their actions from the local authorities, the Vatican had failed to protect children like him. He was outraged when the Pope claimed diplomatic immunity but, undaunted, continued to campaign that the authority of the Irish church should not be above that of the State.
Related Articles
  *
   The Right Reverend Hugh Lindsay
  *
   Tony Blair accused of using faith foundation to 'sabotage' law
  *
   Pope apologises to native Canadians over boarding school abuse
  *
   The Pope investigates hardline Catholic order
  *
   Vatican 'damaged' by row over rape victim aged 9
Today, nearly 30 years since he was abused, Colm's hour has finally come with the publication of a long-awaited inquiry into child abuse by Roman Catholic priests. [/B]The investigation has taken nine years, during which time it has heard the testimony of thousands of former residents of state schools and orphanages over more than 60 years in the Irish Republic.
A second report, due to be published in the summer, is expected to criticise the handling of <b>sex-abuse complaints in cases involving up to 500 priests.</b> Colm believes the result of the inquiry will be "seismic."
<b>"It will show that the state has an obligation of care to those who live in the country and can no longer declare that religion and politics don't mix, or that the abuse of children by Catholic priests was not a matter for the state."</b>
(Imagine a christian India. Catholic Ireland sounds like it was a medieval mainland Europe: one where catholic power was absolute and 'secular' power was subordinated to it.)
The report coincides to the day with the publication of his extraordinary autobiography, in which Colm courageously describes the lows and highs of his remarkable life â a life that has included founding a charity for victims of sexual abuse, becoming a Senator, making a documentary for the BBC called Suing the Pope, and being appointed Ireland's director of Amnesty International.
"At the centre of my book is my own dreadful experience and its impact," he says. "But I also wanted it to cover wider issues. I don't want people to assume that when they see someone in a doorway they know who they are, where they have come from and where they are headed. I also wanted to address the importance of the relationship between father and son and how redeeming it is."
Colm, the second of six children, had a distant relationship with his own father, Sean, a farmer turned councillor, when he was a boy, and the two men only became close a year or so before his father died of cancer in his early sixties.
I have interviewed several sufferers of systematic sexual abuse, but Colm, almost uniquely, doesn't come across as a victim. Nor is he self-conscious or bitter. He fixes you with his eyes as he speaks and seems totally at ease with himself as we talk in a smart central London café.
Did he make a conscious decision not to be a victim? "There wasn't a moment when I thought I won't allow this to happen," he replies. "But I didn't dare address my feelings until I was in my early thirties. Until then, I only reacted to the external world, not my internal one. I believe you are only a victim because you are powerless to be anything else, and that being a survivor of sexual abuse is a positive thing to be."
Colm grew up in Adamstown, County Wexford, and was 14 when he first met Father Sean Fortune, then in his late 20s. Fortune cynically groomed the former altar boy and his mother, Josie, now 72, flattering them both and asking Colm to help him with a youth group in his parish a few miles from the seaside resort of Fethard-on-Sea, in the south-west of the county.
When Colm agreed, he drove him to his home and raped him. Colm was too scared to tell anyone. "He made it seem as though it was my fault and I knew it would be my word against his," he says. Colm was then ruthlessly abused for almost two years. The effect was devastating.
"I despised myself, lost all my confidence and any plan I had for my life, such as university and a career, went out of the window. I remember on one occasion when I was 15 and Fortune came to collect me, trying desperately to tell my mother what was happening so that I didn't have to be with him. But I was unable to find the words and, not knowing the truth, she made me go. As I got into his car, I felt absolute hopelessness."
When Colm was 16, his mother decided to leave Ireland and moved to an ashram in India, taking three of her six children with her. Colm and two other siblings stayed with their father. The marriage was effectively over, and a few months later, in February 1984, Colm ran away to Dublin. He had no money and for seven months allowed men to have sex with him in return for a night's sleep in a bed and a hot shower.
Gradually he hauled himself out of the gutter by working first as a waiter, and then fund-raising for a charity. He was reunited with his family when he was 18, confiding then to his sister, Barbara, and his father about the abuse. "My father apologised to me for not knowing what was happening. It was a tremendous thing because I had spent all my life terrified of what would happen if he found out."
His shocked father had no idea what to do and Colm let the matter rest, moving to London in 1986 where he trained as a therapist.
It was only in 1995, however, that Colm found the courage to go to the police. "It was 14 years after I was first abused, but I couldn't have done it before. I went because I was concerned others might be suffering as I did, and that the Church was condoning it by not doing anything. My statement to the detective took me two days to make and was the first time that the truth of what Fortune had done to me began to emerge.
"In the months that followed, others came forward, which was both shocking and a comfort for me because it meant I wasn't alone. It took another 18 months before I began to realise that the Church had received earlier complaints about Fortune, and that they knew that he may have abused boys before he was even ordained. But that they did nothing."
The knowledge made Colm determined to bring the priest to justice. Fortune's trial was set for March 2, 1999 when he faced 66 charges of abusing children. Eleven days into the trial, he killed himself with whisky and prescription drugs, denying his many victims their first chance to be heard.
Colm is neither vindictive, nor forgiving. "Forgiving him isn't in my gift," he says. "My understanding of forgiveness is based on a Catholic model of confession and absolution and I can't absolve him. But I have forgiven myself."
<b>Colm went on successfully to sue the Catholic Church and received a payment of 300,000 euros and a historic public apology in court. "As for the Pope ducking out," he says, "I think it is an obscenity and I remain outraged by the failure of the Vatican. They are not responsible for what (Father Sean) Fortune did but they should take responsibility for what they did, in concealing the issue.
"With the stroke of a pen, Benedict XVI could make a law demanding high standards of child protection across the Catholic world and do more to protect the welfare of children than any other human being, but he hasn't done it."</b>
Meanwhile Colm's life has moved on. He has returned to Ireland and for the past 10 years has lived with Paul Fyffe, an IT teacher. They are joint guardians of two children aged 12 and 10, whose mother has died, and who live with them.
"I love family life," he says. "I am now a very happy man personally, but also <b>delighted that there is a major change in Ireland and that people are no longer reluctant to question the authority of the Church."</b>
<b>Beyond Belie' (Beyond belief?)</b> by Colm O'Gorman (Hodder & Stoughton) is available from Telegraph Books for £11.99 + £1.25 p&p. To order, call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
3. On: Why there's no excommunication of christopriests for their paedophilia. (Do christo-nuns get excommunicated for their paedophilia though? Don't know.)
http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/excom.html
via http://freetruth.50webs.org/D1.htm
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â Â Crimen Sollicitationes was quietly approved on March 16, 1962, by the so-called "good pope" John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli), revered for bringing together the Second Vatican Council which for better or worse has opened the Church to the light. Issued by the Supreme and Holy Congregation of the Holy Office â now known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and formerly known as the Holy Inquisition â it contains the procedures to be used in the cases of priests accused of soliciting sex while hearing private confessions.
  This is not a new problem, but one with which the Church has struggled since confession became a private ritual.
  Everything is spelled out in technical language with rigorous detail and absolutely all testimony is to be kept as a "secret of the Holy Office." Oaths are to be taken from all involved under the pain of automatic excommunication which the Pope alone can forgive. Likewise any person propositioned by a priest in confession who "knowingly" did not denounce that priest to the bishop within a month of the incident, was likewise automatically excommunicated.
  <b>Unlike such dire offenses as scattering pieces of the consecrated Host upon the ground or striking the Pope himself, none of these crimes merit excommunication. And indeed, as far as I know, not one, not a single priestly predator has ever been excommunicated for their crimes.</b> No matter how notorious, they may have been laicized under pressure but still only at their own request. Yet laicization only removes the legal right, but not the power or ability, to perform the sacraments. <b>Removing the priestly power, like the "indelible mark on the soul" made by baptism, cannot be done according to Catholic doctrine. "Thou art a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek," the ordination ritual proclaims, and the clerics take it seriously.</b>
  Apologists for the Church claim that Crimen Sollicitationes is not a "smoking gun" demonstrating a church-wide cover-up of clergy abuse. Rather, they declare that the concern over secrecy is related to the all-important secrecy of the confessional. Further, they say that these laws are only the laws of the Church, that these procedures in no way forbid seeking civil and legal remedies before going to the Church.
  Further, the document itself is secret. There is some question, in fact, if most bishops even knew of it, though canon lawyers certainly did as they continued to discuss its provisions until recently, when it was superceded by new norms.
  <b>Since all was to be kept secret, victims who speak out later give scandal to the Church, and should be thus automatically excommunicated as well. No wonder they have been treated so poorly. Victims are treated as enemies by the Roman Church</b> because that is how the hierarchy sees them. ...Moreover, the bishops were required to keep the policy secret as well under the pain of excommunication. So they have lied, and lied, and continue to lie, under the direct orders of the Vatican.
Link http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/excom.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Paedophile priests don't get excommunicated, but victims who come forth will:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The World Uncovered: Sex crimes and the Vatican - BBC, October 21, 2006</b>
http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_c...asp?pageid=2892
<!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â Â A secret document which sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse scandals within the Catholic Church is examined by Panorama.
  .... Crimen Sollicitationis was written in 1962 in Latin and given to Catholic bishops worldwide who are ordered to keep it locked away in the church safe. It instructs them how to deal with priests who solicit sex from the confessional. It also deals with "any obscene external act ... with youths of either sex." It imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witnesses. Breaking that oath means excommunication from the Catholic Church.
  Reporting for Panorama, Colm O'Gorman finds seven priests with child abuse allegations made against them living in and around the Vatican City.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
See the translated document <b>Crimen Sollicitationes</b>. http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/CrimenS...tiones.pdf
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Â Â This [the document Crimen Sollicitationes] shows that the Church considered itself above secular law even well into modern times. <b>In order to keep these cases secret, excommunication could be invoked on victims, witnesses, participants and the accused.</b>
  At last, there may be an explanation of why bishops have so consistently lied â they were just obeying orders from Rome, under penalty of eternal damnation.
Link http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/pd-index.html#archive<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->