Pope being set up over Munich sex abuse case, says Vatican

[moobu2]

Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.

"It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses," Lombardi said. "To any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed."
The Vatican has been appalled in recent days by a flood of allegations of priestly sex abuse in Germany, Holland, Austria and even Italy.

Today, the pope's former diocese rushed out a statement to pre-empt a story in tomorrow's edition of the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. It said that when Joseph Ratzinger was the city's archbishop he had agreed that a priest from another diocese should undergo therapy at a rectory. The records suggested that "it was known then that this therapy should probably be carried out due to sexual relations with children". But instead of sending him for therapy, the statement said, the diocese's then vicar-general, Gerhard Gruber, assigned him to a parish where at least one child was subsequently abused.
"Gruber takes full responsibility for the wrong decisions," the diocese said.
The church's attempt to bury the affair was immediately challenged by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which tomorrow is holding "sidewalk vigils" in more than 30 US cities in support of European victims. David Clohessy, the network's national director, said: "As a high-ranking church official for decades, if Ratzinger knew of one reassigned paedophile priest, the odds are he knows of others, possibly dozens. German secular authorities should do in Munich what Irish secular authorities did in Dublin: launch a thorough secular probe of clergy sex crimes and cover-ups."
The latest front was opened in Austria where two newspapers reported cases of abuse among choirboys in Fügen and Vienna. Today a newspaper in the predominantly German-speaking Italian province of Bolzano-Bozen recounted the story of a then 15-year-old boy who said that in the 1960s he was coerced into providing sexual services to local friars.

The Guardian UK

[patrice]

1. One does wonder what the more extreme forms of these attacks might have to do with HCR.

The Catholic Church is not innocent, neither are many other Christian* denominations, so why the specially intense effort to damage Catholicism and more or less excuse others?

Could it be that a fundamental aspect of the split in the Republican Party has to do with genuine Pro-Life people separating themselves from FAKE Pro-Life people? And, hence, the Fake Pro-Lifers need to concretize what they have left of their base in order to destroy genuine Social Justice which recognizes that Economic Injustice CAUSES Abortions?

[DeSwiss]

4. "...so why the specially intense effort to damage Catholicism..."

The Church does enough damage to itself, so it's not damage that is sought, but rather its abolition. Why? Because it is the primary source of ALL this absurdity called Christianity. And the Catholic Church (among all the others) are the most dangerous as they try to run roughshod over our Constitution. All while remaining tax-free, I might add. I hope this answers your question.

- Oh, and the abolition of all the other silly religions as well while we're at it......

This Is What All
The Fuss Is About
http://www.archive.org/details/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft">

[patrice]

5. hmmmm . . . How very "Tao" of you.

[DeSwiss]

6. "Zeros and ones, baby.....

- nothing but "0"'s and "1"'s......

[patrice]

7. At the micro-level, perhaps, but we perceive and, hence, exist at macro-levels, which most

definitely are not simply this or that.

[DeSwiss]

8. There is no "perhaps" without a micro-level.

It's where everything begins. Yes, no.

To be, or not to. Be.

[patrice]

11. I believe that when we have to talk about not only excitation, but also inhibition, simply on or off

isn't adequate, except at the most observable level, i.e. is there or is there not an observable event of somekind.

And yes, it is where everything for us "begins".

To be, or not to be is a question that applies to all sorts of levels of organization. We should, nonetheless, be careful not to mistake the concept represented by the words be, being, been for the phenomena themselves.

[DeSwiss]

15. ..."be careful not to mistake the concept represented by the words....

...be, being, been for the phenomena themselves."


But that's the whole point. The mistake most people make is in not recognizing that the concepts (as you put it) ARE all the same -- be, being, and been.

But if we can't recognize the most simple aspect of reality, how can we ever expect to understand the complex? Or course this does explain why we human beings seem to have difficulty learning from our mistakes, as we seem to repeat the same illogical and destructive behaviors over and over. Even while the answer to the problems they generate are often staring us directly in the face.

These instances with the church and its pedophillac priests is a case in-point. As it is with the whole of religion itself -- which cannot stand up against the level of scrutiny which we demand of every other aspect of our lives. But we don't even entertain the idea of demanding any kind of "proofs" from religion over its veracity. Why? Because it isn't supposed to be true, but only a crucible in which we act out our plays of good vs. evil as a means of learning and growth.

- But they are all old plays. Plays that we should have tired of long ago. But the majority in this world are still much like children and their favorite movie, who must see it just one more time.

Ad nauseam.....

[patrice]

16. I'm not certain we are referring to the same thing here. I have a concern for how

there is a great deal of (more or less necessary) conflict over words that seems to forget that the words are not the same thing as that to which they only refer (and somewhat fuzzily at that). "The" "Catholic" "Church" is not the same thing as the catholic church.

Words only point to the phenomena themselves. This is one of the reasons that context is so essential.

The mistakes that we make about the relationships between words and reality are one of the reasons that religion, on an average, seems to have accomplished the opposite of its stated intent. It seems to have obscured the Truth. It has been substituted for Truth.

It is also those mistakes about the relationships between words and reality that drives my attention toward a more Phenomenological perspective, that of experience stripped of anything that is abstract, or manufactured and independent of the events known as consciousness (I know there's a tree falling in the woods question in there somewhere, but let's just let that go for now).

The nature of some human phenomenology is such that it can validly be represented by metaphors such as that found in the story of an itinerant teacher called Jesus Christ. In terms of recognized conventions on the subject, my perspective on that particular life is that of a Liberation Theologist, but I think those truths existed before JC, were manifest in him to a very high degree, and are encoded still in a significant minority of human phenomenology, independent of whatever label(s) we are using. It is the same or similar phenomena, no matter whose language or mythology you are referring to. This is one of the reasons that we should not be surprised that Atheists can be as moral and ethical as anyone (or perhaps even more so than most, since, for them the source of their moral behavior is significantly less driven by reward).

[patrice]

13. Not to mention, as the yin yang so clearly represent, the fact that it is an essential

characteristic of 0 that it is not 1 and it is an essential characteristic of 1 that it is not 0, IOW 0 would not be 0 without (the negation of) 1 and 1 would not be 1 without (the negation of) 0, so at heart it isn't at all as dichotomous as we commonly treat it.

Can't help but notice here some echoes of another reference elsewhere to excitation and inhibition.

[rrneck]

9. The Catholic Church

is a top down organization with a highly visible management structure and an even more visible "CEO". That makes it a handy target. That and the fact that priests have been molesting children all over the world.

Protestant religions (Southern Baptist Convention etc.) seem to be more like franchise operations. It's harder to embarrass the entire organization when a scandal happens. They can just replace the pastor or mid level manager and go on. If the particular church in question is really embarrassing to the organization, I guess they could just bulldoze it and turn it into a park like McDonald's did after that mass shooting several years ago.

[DeSwiss]

10. Excellant anaylsis.

- And there are even efforts now to draw the various strains pedophilia, along with the other related uses of the religious-authoritarian power dynamic for sexual favors -- even among the "franchise" Southern Baptists: http://stopbaptistpredators.org/index.htm">StopBaptistPredators.org.

They have a pretty good headcount going over there as well:

[patrice]

12. That is the thing that is conventionally referred to as "The Catholic Church". There is another aspe

ct of church that has more to do with where the concept originated, that is Community. Things can be called church without being real community (in fact they often are) and other things can be community without being referred to as church.

It is the phenomenological fact of organic community based on one set of shared manifestations of certain values that **HAPPEN** to have become **labeled** as "Christian" that I defend. One aspect of this set of phenomena which have suffered the further misfortune of acquiring the label "Catholic" IS indeed closer to the original meaning of that word, i.e. Universal, than some others and also despite the errors about that which are so common amongst some who claim that identity.

[Sanity Claws]

2. This misses the point

It seems to imply that the pope really was not involved with the protection of pedophile priests when he was archbishop. That does not free the Vatican and the Church from taint. The Church has protected pedophiles at the expense of children for centuries. Whether or not this particular pope was directly involved is irrelevant. The whole Church, the entire institution, is to blame for what it has done.

[DeSwiss]

3. Set up? Why yes! If by "set up" he means......

...disclosure if Pope RatBoy's role and involvement in the hiding of criminal acts. And furthering his criminal acts by moving the priestly pedophile out of harm's way so that he can evade the law.

- That is indeed a set up. Set up for justice.

This Is What All
The Fuss Is About
http://www.archive.org/details/biblemythsandthe00doanuoft">

"Strange..... a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!" ~ Mark Twain

K&R

[patrice]

14. Doesn't matter much. We don't need no stinking pope, anyway!

[ChadwickHenryWard]

17. Shocked, shocked, I tell you!

They seem awfully surprised about the most recent rash of allegations. They're the only ones.