Sex-abuse priest took secrets to grave

[moobu2]

"It's unfortunate he wasn't exposed a long time ago, so that he had to live with the same sort of shame that you, as a victim of abuse, have to live with."

TODAY a woman will stand in a Catholic church in regional NSW and watch her niece being baptised.

Normally an occasion for joy and faith, the experience will be much different for Sarah (not her real name). Along with two of her older sisters, she was sexually abused for eight years, from the age of four, by the now-dead priest Denis McAlinden.

"I feel strange putting a little girl on the altar to become a member of the church when you've seen what the church has done to its members," said the woman, now in her 20s.


<snip>

The 2600-page report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, released last week, found rape was endemic and church officials shielded pedophiles from arrest in a culture of secrecy and disdain for "alleged victims".

It also found that an unknown number of perpetrators moved to Australia. One was Father McAlinden, who moved to Australia in 1949 and died in 2005, two years before sexual abuse allegations were made public.

link

[Maccagirl]

1. That POS Bill Donohue of the Catholic League

dismissed the victims as "delinquents" in an OP ED lat week-may he rot in the hell he believes in.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. There is something very wrong with an institution

that allowed this abuse to go on for so long. I know many Catholics who are trying to change their church from within, but also an equal number who have given up and changed to other churches and other faiths.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

3. The film, "Twist of Faith,"

which I watched yesterday, was about the best documentation of what these fuckers have done to people.

And still people flock to the Church.

I don't understand it. I do not understand it at all ..............

[imdjh]

4. Same as within the priesthood

If you sincerely believe in select aspects of the religion, then you believe in redemption and the power of God to right wrongs. Part of that belief, is having the faith to believe it can happen and the trust in God that it has or will happen. So, in the case of a priest, he confesses, he repents, and his devout superiors have an obligation of faith to believe that God will act.

We do something similar with criminals. We prosecute them, we imprison them, and then we release them back into the world of their victims with little in the way of a guarantee that they will live a decent and moral life. We are guided by our sense of justice in that we demand contrition, require penance, but we really can't see into the mind of the criminal. It would be immoral to imprison someone for life for most crimes, so we put ourselves and others at risk because releasing prisoners after what we consider to be appropriate punishment is the moral thing to do.

It's a paradox.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

7. I'm not sure I understand what you wrote her,

but if you're saying that the Church is doing the best it can by allowing pedophile priests to confess and then return to their duties, you're missing one huge aspect of the problem, and that is that these men are criminals and the Church did everything it could to cover up those crimes. Starting out as an accessory after the fact, it became an accessory before the fact, and, in my opinion, a co-conspirator.

That we imprison men and have them serve their punishments is, yes, what our society does to those who break our rules and get caught. Note that we do not simply relocate them and pretend they never did anything wrong. That's what Mother Church did with her pedophile priests, making it easier and easier for them to terrorize, traumatize, and destroy children.

It's hardly a paradox.

The Church is run by a bunch of self-serving, self-indulgent, arrogant thugs who have shown that they'll abandon injured children in the interests of keeping their scam going.

It's a shame people can't bring themselves to believe in their gods without having terribly damaged and dangerous moral men to show them how they're supposed to worship. Wasn't it Jesus Christ who said something about suffering the little children to come to him?

[Why Syzygy]

9. But we don't release child abusers

back into the society of children. Their locations are restricted.

[imdjh]

10. Right, but we're not priests.

i was trying to explain it from the church's angle. I wasn't saying that I approve. The church was also somewhat limited in how they handled these things by the parents of the victims who often didn't want the problem or solution made public. The interests of protecting the good name of the church and avoiding the "shame" of the family were considered to be interlocking.

As much as I despise the RC Church, I don't honestly believe that the hierarchy conspired to allow these statutory rapes, sexual misconducts, and child molestations to go on.

[Why Syzygy]

11. They only conspired to keep them secret. nt

[MADem]

5. Doesn't that baastid look tanned, rested and ready?

Soulless cretin.

[ejpoeta]

6. why is this woman involved in a church that would protect the abusers!!!

uggh. well, i believe in everyone having to answer for what they've done sooner or later. will this guy be allowed to be buried in a church cemetery??? are divorced people allowed to be buried in a church cemetery? just wondering.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

8. I'm sure he's safely interred in consecrated ground,

surrounded by his brother priests, many of whom probably also got away with the same sort of behavior.

Divorced people in the Church, if they get a civil divorce and do not remarry, are allowed to be received as good Catholics when they die, I believe, since the Church doesn't recognize civil law in their considerations of sacraments and rules...........