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The Abuse Scandal In France

This news didn’t get nearly enough coverage so I am sharing it here. It seems like there is some fatigue around these stories but it isn’t something that should be forgotten.


French clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years, a major investigation released on Tuesday found, and its authors said the Catholic Church had turned a blind eye to the ‘scourge’ for too long.

The church had shown “deep, total and even cruel indifference for years,” protecting itself rather than the victims of what was systemic abuse, said Jean-Marc Sauve, head of the commission that compiled the report.

Most of the victims were boys, he said, many of them aged between 10 and 13.

“Faced with this scourge, for a very long time the Catholic Church’s immediate reaction was to protect itself as an institution and it has shown complete, even cruel, indifference to those having suffered abuse,” the report said.
That is just the ones we know about. Given the nature of the crime, typically a sexual assault against a young pre-adolescent boy, it is understandable that many of the victims will never speak of what happened. A young boy being molested by an adult and a priest, especially at that age, is unspeakable and many of the victims would feel shame, although they have nothing to be ashamed of. So it is certain that those numbers are widely underreporting the real figures. 
Also that is just one country. Imagine what the real numbers are like across Europe and then in developing nations in places like South and Central America, Africa and Asia where there is even more social pressure to keep quiet. The number of victims across the world certainly number in the millions if there are nearly a quarter million that we know of just in one country.
As bad as the abuse itself, although in a different way, is the way that the Catholic Church covered up these crimes which they knew about for decades, in essence and in fact becoming complicit in the abuse by enabling these pedophile priests to escape justice and then simply moving them to a different parish where it started all over again. 
The abuse was almost inevitable. For most of the existence of the Catholic Church, the vows of celibacy taken by the clergy have been a joke. The various and sundry sexual escapades of their clerics from the Popes on down, is well documented including brothels for priests, cardinals with mistresses and Popes with illegitimate children. Somewhere along the line the Catholic clergy seemed to shift away from heterosexuals getting some tail on the side to becoming overwhelmingly homosexual, by some estimates to the tune of 80% of Catholic priests being fags, and this homosexuality being studiously ignored by the hierarchy. It is also well known that many, likely most, male homosexuals were abused as children and that they in turn repeat that abuse with children. Take men with a developed sexual degeneracy, put them in a situation where they cannot have normal sexual relationships and then place them in a trusted position with access to children and what do you get? Millions of abused children. 
On the other hand, we have a local priest who just in the last few weeks was arrested for molesting two young women, one David Huneck. The 31 year old Huneck apparently invited two teen-aged girls, aged 17 and 19 at the time, to his home to celebrate his birthday. Inexplicably these two girls went to his house and then voluntarily drank with him, with the good priest getting sloshed and grabbing one of the girl’s breast. They helped him into bed and he pulled one in with him and pawed at her. The girls left and he apologized for his behavior. Then they both went back to his house where he, shockingly, groped one of the girls again and exposed himself. Didn’t see that coming. Not to blame the girls here as he is an adult and a clergyman but what the hell were two late teen girls, one a legal adult, doing going not once but twice to a man’s home, drinking booze with him and returning to his home after he groped one of them on the prior visit? 
Father Grabbaboob

The Catholic Church, for all its high minded rhetoric about being the primary earthly manifestation of the Christian faith, is no different from any other institution, being primarily concerned with self-preservation. It is necessary to distinguish lay Catholics, many of whom are deeply faithful people, from the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy. As with many organizations, especially religious ones, the further you go up the hierarchy, the more corrupt they tend to get. The last few decades have been very difficult for lay Catholics, between the child abuse scandal and the cover-up by their church and then the elevation of an outright Bolshevik to be “Pope” has left many wondering if their church is even legitimate anymore.
If you are Catholic and this offends you, allow me to say: tough shit. Far too many people are more concerned about the damage to the reputation of the church and not nearly enough about the children who have been scarred for life. 
My intent here is not to bash Catholics but rather to make sure to reinforce that this suffering is the result of institutional self-protection, something we see in all sorts of institutions from religious organizations to businesses to the government. It is especially egregious when it happens in a religious setting where people place a great deal of the self-identification. If the Catholic Church had taken decisive action when these abuse charges first started, the scandal would have been much milder but decades of cover-ups made the whole thing immeasurably worse.
Rampant child abuse plus sexual degeneracy with a huge amount of institutional ass covering should make anyone wonder why they place their faith in an organization like that.

10 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    And once again, removing the celibacy requirement for priests would at least give them some permissible way to vent their human sexual urges. Just sayin'. Tractorguy

  2. Jim Wetzel

    "It is necessary to distinguish lay Catholics, many of whom are deeply faithful people, from the Catholic priesthood and hierarchy."

    Ain't that the truth. I know a bunch of Catholics, and most of the guys on my one-day-a-week volunteer job are Catholic, and they are really solid guys. But the Catholic church, with its wild corruption and boy-bothering, its laughable theological oddities here and there … I do not envy the lay Catholics for the heavy burdens they bear. I don't see why they don't just drop those burdens at the roadside, and never pick them up again.

  3. Arthur Sido

    I don't envy them either, and most of my extended family and in-laws are Catholic but you can tell it is wearing on them because they certainly are a lot less devout than when I was a kid.

  4. George True

    This did not happen by accident. Nor was it the celibacy requirement that caused it. Back in the 1930's,1940's and 1950's, it was recognized by the Soviet Union that the Church was one of the biggest obstacles to the spread of International Communism. It was thus decided to subvert that institution, and the way chosen to do it was homosexuality. The Soviets and other InCom agencies in Europe and the Americas actively recruited hundreds of deep cover agents whose assignment was to become priests, and as they gradually moved up in the Church hierarchy, to recruit only homosexuals to be priests. Over decades, homosexuals became a critical mass of priests, and eventually a majority. Not only would they recruit other homosexuals, but they would also drive heterosexual priests out by making life very difficult for them. This decades-long gambit was so successful that today, even the leadership in the Vatican, including Bergoglio himself, are mostly homosexuals.

    Look at it from the individual young homosexual man's perspective. By becoming a priest, he gets instant respect in the community. He has a guaranteed job for life with free room and board, and is never required to do anything that is all that difficult. And most of all, he has sexual access to young boys for life.

    People in general, and especially younger people, simply do not understand how literally and fundamentally evil Communism is. Karl Marx and his mentor Friedrich Engels were big-time Satan worshippers. In their private writings to each other, they openly discussed how the entire Communist Manifesto was utter and complete lies and nonsense, but it was necessary for them to create it in order to sell Communism to the masses. The real purpose of Communism, as acknowledged in their own words, was to unleash Satan upon the world. In one of his letters to Engels, Marx said his most fervent wish was to drag as many men to Hell with him as he possibly could. All of the inner circle of the Soviet Politburo, as well as the inner circle of every Communist country in the world have always been Satanists.

    Their ultimately successful goal of subverting the Catholic church is a prime example of how Communism operates. They take over institutions, public and private, secular and religious, from the inside out. They play the long game, and it typically is a decades-long operation. And at its heart, it is spiritual warfare being waged. It is literally Satanists behind International Communism, purposefully attacking and subverting anything that is wholesome, good or holy.

  5. Arthur Sido

    Recommended is a strong word. Paul commends celibacy but he does not command it and in fact understands that normal humans have sex drives and should therefore marry (see 1 Corinthians 7). Christ nowhere commands people not to marry.

    On the other hand, the Bible says that most of the apostles were married, including Peter who was allegedly the first Pope, as were the brothers of Jesus, which also negates the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary:

    Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 1 Cor 9:5 

    Also that same Paul says that elders/bishops should be married

    The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? (1 Timothy 3:1-5)

    Again, it is normative in the Bible for church leaders to be married, and celibacy is the exception. A forced requirement for celibacy keeps normal men out of the priesthood and instead attracts degenerates who don't follow the celibacy rules anyway.

    This isn't my first rodeo on these issues, I wasted many years arguing about theology.

  6. Arthur Sido

    The Catholic Church was riddled with sexual degeneracy for centuries before Marx, while I don't deny that some of this was intentional, I also maintain that the extra-Biblical requirement of celibacy carries much of the blame and is contrary to what the Bible teaches.

  7. Mike Austin

    "The Catholic Church was riddled with sexual degeneracy for centuries before Marx." Was there one human institution that was not?

    "I also maintain that the extra-Biblical requirement of celibacy carries much of the blame and is contrary to what the Bible teaches." Extra-Biblical? Not according to Christ and Paul.

    I am a Latin Mass Orthodox Catholic. I could go on and on, but this is not the place for it. It is enough for me to tell you that the problems of the "Church Militant"—what Catholics call 'the Church in the world"—are far worse than any Protestant or pagan could ever understand. Probably 90 percent—yes, 90 percent—of the Catholic hierarchy are practicing sodomites. See the writings of "Father" James Martin if you can stomach them.

    Your claim that the "requirement of celibacy carries much of the blame" for the obvious sexual degeneracy of Catholic cardinals and bishops shows you do not really understand the issue. The issue is homosexuality. It is not women that these priests, bishops and cardinals crave; it is teenage boys.

    So why do I not abandon the Church? Easy answer: Because I am not Judas.

  8. Anonymous

    Yes, it would be much better if the title read " The HOMOSEXUAL abuse scandal in France." I can tell you that this issue is much more painful, infuriating, humiliating and frustrating for faithful Catholics than for any outside observer. I also point out that the vast majority of abuse was against the sons of faithful Catholics.

    If one enjoys seeing the Catholic church taken down, just wait. God is planning on cleansing His Church, and it will probably be done within the next five years. It is gonna be nasty and very sad, with the good and the bad combined.

    But I admit that it is overdue.

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