CATHOLIC JOURNALS

From THE WANDERER, 6/5/97. The cavalier attitude of some priests in the Catholic Church was demonstratedon February 27 at Houston's St. Mary's Seminary. Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa. delivered a speech on "inclusive language."

Bishop Trautman noted that in the present Ordination promise the priest promises to serve "all men." Emphasizing "all men", Trautman joked that young priests make take this as a calling to become pedophiles.

SECULAR JOURNALS

From THE ORLANDO SENTINEL, 11/8/86. "An attorney for three teenaged boys who say they were sexually molested by a Catholic priest over four years said Friday he expects the cases to be tried in Brevard County (FL) by April."

From THE MIAMI HERALD, 1/3/88. "The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has been forced to pay millions of dollars in damages to families who contend that their children have been sexually abused by priests. In spite of that, the problem has grown so severe that many lawyers and victims say the church ignores and covers up such cases.

"Church officials insist that a notorious 1985 Louisiana case in which a priest molested at least 35 boys has taught them to deal firmly with the problem.

"A three month investigation by The San Jose Mercury News reveals that in more than 25 of the 185 dioceses across the country, including Florida, church officials were guilty of at least one of the following: failing to notify authorities of abuse complaints, transferring molesting priests to other parishes, ignoring parental complaints and disregarding the potential damage to child victims - before, during and after the Louisiana case."

From SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS, 12/30/87. "At a time of heightened national awareness of the problems of child abuse, the Catholic Church in the United States continues to ignore and cover up cases of priests who sexually molest children, according to court records, internal church documents, civil authorities and the children themselves.

"Millions of dollars in damages already have been paid to victims and their families, and one 1986 church report estimated that the church's liability could reach $1 billion over the next decade.

"`The sexual molesting of little boys by priests is the single most serious problem we've had to face in centuries,' said Father Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest and canon lawyer who tried for two years to force the U.S. Catholic Conference to deal with the issue.

"(California church officials) acknowledged two South Bay cases in recent years. A Fremont priest resigned in 1982 after being accused of fondling eight girls and before 1981, an unidentified Santa Clara priest was sent away for psychiatric treatment for sexual attraction to children and since has returned to the San Jose diocese.

"In Florida, the father of a 12-year-old girl fondled by a priest in 1983, was outraged by testimony that the same priest had been accused of fondling two other girls six years earlier. "Their attitude toward a child molester is, if he's not causing a problem - by that they mean a public relations problem - they do nothing. If he's causing a problem, they move him to another parish.'

"When the actions of such dioceses come to light, church officials often lash back at their accusers as being anti-Catholic. But the complaining parents are almost always Catholics themselves, and often so are the lawyers, prosecutors and the police officers who investigate.

"The Church has established treatment centers to deal with cases of priests who repeatedly commit molestations. The Servants of the Paraclete order in New Mexico added a wing for pedophilic priests to its hospital.

"Dr. John Mooney of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wrote, `Like any other institution that prohibits or prevents ordinary heterosexual relationships, the church not only encourages homosexual expression, but also becomes a magnet for youths who enter the priesthood having already recognized their sexual status as ... homophelic pedophiles attracted exclusively to younger boys.'"

From ORLANDO SENTINEL, 6/24/93. "Vatican: Society shares blame for abuse by priests.

"The Vatican Wednesday said a permissive society had to share the blame for child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests. Chief Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls spoke out after Pope, John Paul II wrote to U.S. bishops about a scandal that has cost the U.S. church a reported $400 million in damages and severely tarnished its image.

"'One would have to ask if the real culprit is not a society that is irresponsibly permissive, hyper-inflated with sexuality (and) capable of creating circumstances that induce even people who have received a solid moral formation to commit grave moral acts,' Navarro-Valls said."

CHRISTIAN COMMENT

We see the spirit of moral perversion is evident throughout the apostate element of Christianity. It has always been evident in THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, with its wicked forced "celibacy." The history of Roman Catholicism reads like something out of the pages of a Sodom and Gomorrah chronicle. Large numbers of the popes, even, were morally perverse, and countless Catholic priests were given over to homosexuality. Even Roman Catholic histories admit this, and they are usually less than forthright about the moral failure of the "mother church." The widespread perversion continues to this day.

The Catholic Church in America has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in fines because of lawsuits won against homosexual priests. The November 13, 1989, issue of Time magazine contained an article titled "The Battle Over Gay Clergy" which reported that there may be some 10,000 homosexual Roman Catholic priests in the United States alone. In Australia, a code of conduct was recently recommended which would forbid Catholic priests to be alone with children. The Catholic Church there has admitted its priests have abused hundreds of children.

A report produced in New South Wales this year highlighted the homosexual problem among the "clergy." The report said that many of the priests thought "their celibacy vow concerned only heterosexual relations and did not address indecent acts with boys or adolescent males" (Religious News Service, Sept. 25, 1997). In other words, they knew there were forbidden to marry a woman, but they did not understand that they were forbidden to have sexual relations with boys! Examples of the moral perversion among Catholic priests could be given for country after country.

PEDOPHILIA

by Bill Jackson

Webster defines it as "sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object." When most Americans hear the word, they think, "Priests and altar boys."

A friend from Florida sends me all the clippings of Catholic interest from The Orlando Sentinel. It is startling to see how many of the clippings have to do with pedophilia and the lawsuits resulting from it.

Derry O'Sullivan, a missionary friend in Ireland, tells me that almost nightly on the Dublin TV news is an incident regarding priests and altar boys. Many Dublin women are forbidding their boys to become altar boys - and this in a culture where having a son as an altar boy was second only to having a son as a priest.

Psychologists differ as to whether the Roman Catholic law of priestly celibacy is adding fuel to the fire. Others think the anti-feminist mind conditioning that usually occurs in Roman Catholic seminaries may be one of the chief causes.

However, the answer is simple. It is sin rooted in the heart of man, uncleansed by the Blood of Christ, that is at fault. God said, "It is not good for man to be alone," and (excepting some cases of spiritual celibacy) this is the rule man should follow. There will be sex urges in the holiest of men, and given the frustration of normal sexual release, alternate measures are sought for. In their innocence and high regard for the priest, altar boys are a natural object.

Our Roman Catholic friends sometimes point out that 1 in 12 (over 8%) of Christ's apostles was false, and we should not be surprised that some priests fail. The percentage is up for grabs.

On the Phil Donahue show, homosexual priests claimed that 1/3 of all priests were homosexual. A homosexual priest in Philadelphia admitted his sexual preference, but said he did not practice homosexuality because he was celibate.

The cavalier attitude that seems to pervade Romanism regarding sexual problems was illustrated by the New York Catholic Diocese magazine some time ago. They referred to Bishop Casey, the respected primate who "suddenly" found out he had a teen-aged son in Connecticut.

In a tongue-in-cheek response to this problem, the paper said Casey was sent to Manila to do penance. Coming into the confessional presided over by Cardinal Jaime Sin, Casey said, "Bless me, Sin, for I have fathered."

This starts to pin-point what we might regard as the place to put the blame. Unsaved men cannot be expected to act saved, and the pedophilic priest very apparently does not have the life-transforming work of the Holy Spirit in his life. So while we despise his sin, we understand the reasons for it.

The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church - this should be investigated as a possible culprit. Does the church screen her priestly candidates sufficiently? Several years ago, a Roman Catholic religious order recruited priests in an advertisement in Playboy.

Has the Church been involved in cover-up? Most decidedly yes - but we read articles like the one by Bishop Dorsey in The Orlando Sentinel, 10/1/95. He stated that the Church is working to end sex abuse. It probably is. The question would then have to be:

Are they working because of the sinfulness of pedophilia or because public outcry forces them to?

We are dealing with a system of religion that has the middle name "duplicity." Historic examples - give a safe conduct to John Hus and then murder him in Constance. Pretend to be Bible-lovers in an age of ecumenism, when in an age of total religious control Bibles were burned.

Pedophilia will continue to be one of the most vicious of crimes. Priests will continue to be pedophiliacs. The Catholic Church will mount an effort to change this, and will pay millions in reparation. "As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man."