Norway Sues Catholic Church for 'Fraud'

via Naharnet.com:

Norway is claiming 4.6 million euros ($5.1 million) compensation from the Catholic church for exaggerating membership numbers to obtain more state aid, the Oslo diocese said Monday. The diocese, its bishop and the financial officer are suspected of fraudulently registering thousands of people on its membership lists between 2010 and 2014, which enabled it to obtain 50 million kroner (more than $6.0 million or 5.8 million euros) in state subsidies. Norway's church denies engaging in fraud but has admitted its past methods were "unsatisfactory."

In Norway, a predominantly Protestant country, the state provides subsidies to organized religions, the size of which is determined by the number of members. The Dagbladet daily, which first broke the story, said the diocese had received a letter from the administration on Monday calling for the 40.6 million krone overpayment to be refunded. A spokeswoman for the diocese, Lisa Wade, confirmed the contents of the letter. She told AFP that the church would not be paying the sum and would take the matter up with the culture ministry. We have a very different understanding of the law," she said. "It's complex. It's not like it's a clear-cut case."

Norway's Roman Catholic minority had 140,000 registered members in 2014, more than double the number in 2010.

To explain the jump, the Church has claimed it benefited from a large wave of Catholic immigrants, notably Poles, who practiced their religion but did not register with the Church, which in turn cost the Church more but did not result in increased state subsidies.

Their names have now been removed from the list. More than 21,000 other cases have yet to be clarified. Police raided the Catholic Church's offices on February 26 on suspicions of "aggravated fraud."

Catholic church complicit in First Nation genocide

via Telesur TV:


In Canada’s residential schools, many Indigenous children were beaten, tortured, raped, medically experimented on, and killed. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) just released its Executive Summary Report on their inquiry into Indian Residential Schools finding that in Canada’s dealings with Indigenous Nations, it had engaged in a form of genocide and made 94 recommendations for action. The TRC’s mandate came from the class action litigation (and subsequent settlement) by survivors of the residential schools who wanted Canadians to have a true understanding of what happened in those schools. The Summary Report represents over six years of historical research, investigation, and the documentation of the stories of over 6,750 survivors. The final report is expected to be at least six volumes. Indian residential schools were boarding schools created and designed by the federal government to eliminate the “Indian problem” in Canada – not unlike the Indian boarding schools created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in the United States. The federal government, in partnership with churches of various denominations (primarily Catholic), apprehended Indigenous children from their communities and forced them to live in residential schools under the guise of civilizing them with education. Instead of receiving an education (most never received more than a grade 6 education), most were starved, beaten, tortured, raped, and medically experimented on. In some schools, upwards of 40 percent of Indigenous children never made it out alive. Nationally, the death rate for these children was 1:25 - higher than the 1:26 death rate for WWII enlistees – and that was war.

While some have characterized the Indian problem as the desire by Canada to erase cultural difference, the reality had far more to do with power and economics. The oft-quoted Duncan Campbell Scott, the deputy superintendent of the Department of Indian Affairs, appears to claim that the objective is one of assimilation: “I want to get rid of the Indian problem … Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic.” However, when presented with the alarming death rates in the residential schools by his chief medical officer, Dr. Peter H. Bryce, Scott decided that the deaths of Indian children was in line with departmental objectives which he characterized as “the final solution.” “Indian children … die at a much higher rate [in residential schools] than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards a final solution of our Indian problem,” said Scott. So the central question seems to be what exactly was the Indian problem? Was it truly a desire to rid Indians of their cultures – or was it more about eliminating Indians? Canada’s record, considered on the whole, would seem to suggest that the Indian problem was more about Indians refusing to die off, than maintaining different languages and cultures. Colonial governments didn’t issue bounties on Mi’kmaw scalps because of their culture – they did so because Mi’kmaw people refused to give up their land. Canada didn’t forcibly sterilize Indigenous women and girls without their consent to stop them from speaking their languages – they did it to eliminate the population. By the United Nations definition – that is genocide.

It doesn’t matter whether Canada ever agrees that its actions amounted to genocide – very few nation states ever admit to committing acts of genocide. What happened in residential schools were crimes back then, just as they are today. It was always against colonial and Canadian law to assault, rape, torture, starve, and murder children. Despite the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the federal government, and church officials all knowing what was happening in those schools, everyone with the power to stop it allowed it to continue. That is why residential schools had grave yards instead of playgrounds.

Moving forward, the biggest mistake that could come from this report would be for Canadians to historicize what happened. Indian policy is not a sad chapter in our history – it is a lethal reality for Indigenous people today. Today, there are more Indigenous children in state care than during the residential school era. Nationally, there are 30-40,000 children in care and in some provinces, like Manitoba, Indigenous children represent 90 percent of all kids in care. Canada’s current policy of purposefully underfunding essential human services on Indian reserves like food, water, sanitation, housing, health and education, leads to the premature deaths of Indigenous peoples by 7-20 years. Indigenous peoples are overrepresented in prisons by 10 times the national rate, and the problem is getting worse. In the last decade, the Indigenous inmate population has steadily increased by more than 56 percent. In the last 30 years, there have been over 1,200 cases of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls and little action from Canada to protect them. None of this is because they practice different cultures, but because they are Indians – impediments to unfettered land access, development, and resource extraction.

It’s long past the time that Canada live up to the spirit and intent of the treaties signed with Indigenous Nations (now constitutionally protected) and work towardsa new policy which reflects the promises of mutual respect, mutual benefit and mutual protection. The vision of the treaties was always to share these lands. Despite all the horrors of residential schools, Indigenous Nations kept their treaty promises.

This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Canada-Was-Killing-Indians-Not-Cultures-20150608-0018.html. If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english

Women imprisoned for miscarriage in El Salvador

via Truth-out:

Seventeen women, ages 19 to 30 years old at their sentencing, remain in prison in El Salvador as international pressure rises to exonerate them. The women were all convicted on the charge of "aggravated homicide" of a newborn. At least one of them underwent a psychiatric evaluation and exhibited intellectual disabilities. Most of them suffered miscarriages, premature births or stillbirths; all of them were poor and without access to prenatal care or obstetrical services; and the majority of them have been sentenced to - and are serving - 30 years in prison. According to Julia Evelyn Martínez, university professor of economics in El Salvador and social advocate, these women have been wrongly accused and convicted of the crime of murder.

"One needs to understand that all of these cases deal with women who have lived and continue to live in situations of extreme financial need, without social support networks or access to quality health services," Martinez said. "Most of them had obstetrical problems during their pregnancies and suffered miscarriages or went through childbirth without either health or medical care. They arrived at public hospitals unconscious, bleeding, in search of assistance, at which point, in flagrant violation of professional ethics, they were reported, tried and sentenced, first for abortion and then for aggravated homicide, forcing them out of hospital and into prison." Martínez goes on to describe the legal maneuvering that led to these women's convictions and is keeping them in prison.

… These women are not accused of abortion, but of aggravated homicide, and therefore are not eligible for pardon. But what they disingenuously forget to say is that all of these women were first accused of abortion, and that in the process of their trial, prosecutors and/or judges made the decision to change the charge to aggravated homicide, in case the prosecution could not present convincing evidence that the deaths of these newborns were intentionally caused by the women.

Abortion is completely banned in El Salvador, no matter what the circumstances. The Constitution was modified in 1999 to include the recognition of life at the moment of conception. According to the Feminist Collective for Local Development in El Salvador (Colectiva Feminista para el desarrollo local de El SalvadorColectiva Feminista para el desarrollo local de El Salvador):

Presently - thanks to the powerful lobby of the Catholic Church, prolife groups and the conservative political right - Salvadoran lawmakers have eliminated all exceptions that would allow a woman to resort to an abortion. Article 133 of the Penal Code in force strenuously condemns any type of abortion. Under the current law, a person who carries out an abortion with the consent of the carrier or a woman who induces an abortion may be condemned to prison with sentences from 2 to 12 years.

Under the law, there is no legal separation between miscarriage or spontaneous abortion and abortion that is induced. So all types of pregnancy interruptions that result in the death of the fetus are potentially considered as homicides. Again from the Collective:

"In addition to the illegality of abortion is the lack of a clear legal definition of what is an abortion and/or pregnancy interruption. Spontaneous abortions and premature deliveries of advanced pregnancies that result in the death of the fetus are considered to have been provoked by the woman and are, therefore, homicides."

In fact, there are many more women in prison for abortion than these 17. According to the Free the 17 Association (Plataforma Libertad para las 17), more than 125 women are imprisoned for that "crime," serving sentences ranging from 11- 40 years.

But for these 17 women, the particulars of their cases and the fact that they were so egregiously mishandled in court should make them eligible for pardon, even under the country's draconian antiabortion laws. The question remains whether the legal switch to accusations of murder can be overcome as well.

Libertad para las 17 and the Feminist Collective have spearheaded the campaign to release the women in El Salvador. In March, they presented a petition to the government requesting a pardon. They call their campaign, "A Flower for the 17" (Una flor por las 17).

‘The murder of infants’? Symphysiotomy in Ireland, 1944–66: updated

via History Ireland magazine:

In 1944 the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) in Dublin pioneered the use of the symphysiotomy operation (see sidebar) as the procedure of choice in certain cases where the woman’s pelvis was deemed too small to permit a normal birth (termed ‘disproportion’). The NMH was Ireland’s leading Catholic-identified maternity hospital. NMH doctors were motivated by the perceived need to avoid the practice, common among non-Catholic doctors in Britain and elsewhere, of recommending sterilisation to women after a third Caesarean section (CS). The resurrection of symphysiotomy was controversial; one British obstetrician, Chassar Moir, speaking at a Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland meeting in 1951, called it ‘the murder of infants’. Despite evidence of a high infant mortality rate and other problems, the NMH experiment lasted until 1966. Dublin’s Coombe Hospital also adopted the procedure from 1950 onwards. The Rotunda did not adopt NMH practice, although the Draft report on symphysiotomy notes that, although ‘rarely used,’ symphysiotomy was employed there occasionally, mainly as a post-CS procedure.

Motivation for revival of symphysiotomy

Symphysiotomy was thought to permanently enlarge the pelvis, and therefore, when carried out in a first pregnancy, it might remove the necessity for a woman with ‘disproportion’ to face repeated CS in future pregnancies. This was a particular problem for Catholic doctors. Contraception was practised in most developed countries, making repeat problem pregnancies less common, and non-Catholic doctors advised sterilisation after three CS. Irish Catholic doctors were unable or unwilling to do this. They were aware of criticism by colleagues who believed that Catholic religious strictures disadvantaged patients. In the same period, research had been undertaken in the NMH on pregnant women with heart disease, intending to prove that it was not medically necessary to offer them information on contraception, sterilisation or abortion. One author of that research noted, in a telling phrase, that it ‘proves that good morals and sound medical advice are compatible’.


more from The Journal.ie:

Symphysiotomy victims tell the UN about cruel and barbaric childbirth operations

SYMPHYSIOTOMY WAS EFFECTIVELY banned in France in 1798. The procedure – now described as barbaric, torturous and brutal – was carried out in Ireland until 1987. Young women (and, in some cases, teenage girls) were subjected to the surgery which involved having their pelvises unhinged before, during or after childbirth.
“Their arms held down by midwives, their feet manacled in stirrups, high and wide in the lithotomy or ‘stranded beetle’ position, many recount how they screamed and struggled to get free as they were being operated upon, wide awake, in the height of labour, in front of a large audience of generally male students,” reads a 50-page submission to the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT)...The Survivors of Symphysiotomy’s (SOS) complaint to UNCAT, submitted today, outlines how 24 hospitals and maternity homes across Ireland favoured the procedure over Caesarean Section, long after the practice had been discontinued in other developed nations. According to the advocacy group, the State failed abjectly in its duty to prevent “dangerous and maverick medical practice”.

“The performance of these mutilating childbirth operations in the absence of medical necessity and without patient consent constituted torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Ireland has violated its obligations under international law,” says SOS chairperson Marie O’Connor,” says SOS chairperson Marie O’Connor on the publication of the document, which identifies hospitals and doctors – including the now infamous Michael Neary ...Most of the women left hospital not knowing their pelvises had been broken during childbirth. The majority found out decades later – through the media – after a lifetime of chronic pain, walking difficulties, incontinence, sexual difficulties, PTSD and other associated problems. “In every case,” reads the submission to the UN, “the injuries inflicted by medical practitioners were compounded by their failure to treat them as surgical patients and this negligent care served to maximise the opening of the pelvis.

“Indeed, the success of the surgery in ensuring future vaginal births was premised on the partial recovery of the patient....The operations did not actually deliver a baby. They merely sundered the pelvis and made labour much more severe...

Influence of the Catholic Church

Women who had undergone symphysiotomies and pubiotomies (a variant of the operation which sunders the public bone and results in a compound fracture of the pelvis) were not treated as surgical patients. Often, they were forced to walk on their broken pelvises within a day or two of delivery. Survivor groups contend that the operations were carried out by doctors because of “religious zealotry”. They say that because C-Sections were associated with sterilisation and contraception, doctors hostile to birth control sought to widen the pelvis to enable future childbearing without limitation....Pregnant women were used as “clinical material for training purposes” in the three main Dublin maternity hospitals and the IMTH in Drogheda, according to SOS. For those medical experiments, the young, healthy women on their first child were the preferred choice and historical writings and hospital clinical reports show the selection was quite deliberate.. “At the IMTH, women suspected of disproportion, many of whom were of small stature, were routinely allowed to go over their due dates so that their babies, inevitably, grew bigger and more difficult to birth, thereby testing the potential of symphysiotomy more fully.”

Complaint to the UN

SOS says the performance of symphysiotomy and pubiotomy constituted torture under Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture as severe pain and suffering, both physical and mental, were intentionally inflicted on women and girls, for reasons based on discrimination – but for the fact that they were pregnant, they would not have had these abusive surgeries perpetrated upon them...“These acts were deliberately and knowingly perpetrated – without patient consent – by ‘persons acting in an official capacity’ – consultant obstetricians and midwives – with the consent or acquiescence of public officials (in the Department of Health),” the group writes...About 250 legal actions are due to be heard in the High Court in the coming years.

Here is more information about Michael Neary via Wikipedia:

Michael Neary is a retired Irish consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist. He gained notoriety when it was discovered that he had performed what was considered an inordinate number of caesarian hysterectomies during his time at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, County Louth. He was suspended by the Irish Medical Council in 1999 pending their investigations, and then struck off the Register of Medical Practitioners in 2003. As a result of the Medical Council's investigation, which discovered a number of alarming aspects to the case, an inquiry was set up in April 2004 by the then Minister for Health and Children, Micheál Martin to investigate the matter....During the inquiry, Judge Harding-Clarke's offices were broken into at least three times, she has said....The Inquiry found that Dr. Neary carried out 129 of 188 peripartum hysterectomies carried out in the hospital over a 25-year period, some on very young women of low parity. The average consultant obstetrician carries out 5 or 6 of these operations in their entire career. The judge also found that numerous patient files had disappeared from the hospital, obviously removed by people sympathetic to Michael Neary, she wrote. She was unable to find out who removed the files but believes the person to be female. She criticised the 'Catholic ethos' of the hospital at the time. Sterilisation was forbidden, contraception was unavailable, but she reported that 'secondary' sterilisations were commonly and sympathetically carried out on women who did not want more children but were forbidden to use contraception by the Church...A junior consultant pathologist at the hospital in the early 80s asked his senior colleague why a perinatal uterus specimen he received seemed to have nothing wrong with it. The senior consultant replied "that's Michael Neary for you".

Amnesty International calls abuse of tens of thousands in Catholic reformatories an act of torture

via: Catholic News Service

Credit is due the Catholic News Service for exposing this appalling problem. Here the wide gulf in ethical legitimacy between the laity and much of the clergy is made evident. As always, it is necessary to distinguish between Church as an expression of the people and Church as an expression of hierarchy, because the former invariably holds a greater claim to the roots of Christian charity and compassion, and where corrupt, impractical doctrines are maintained, those precepts are largely disregarded, even where lip service is given. This pattern is displayed here most obviously, where Pope Benedict's numerous attempts to keep information about pedophilia in the Church from legal authorities have thankfully been ignored.


VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The abuse of children in Irish institutions amounted to torture and represents an enormous human rights failure, Amnesty International Ireland said.

Based on evidence revealed by a number of independent commissions, "children were tortured. They were brutalized, beaten, starved and abused," said Colm O'Gorman, executive director of the Ireland office of the human rights organization..."At every turn, Irish people kept their mouths shut out of deference to state, system, church and community," she said.

She said, "We must create a society in which no-one is afraid to speak. In which no-one is afraid to challenge authority and power, because deference to the powerful is a guaranteed way to help that power corrupt." more:

Pope accused of crimes against humanity by victims of sex abuse

via:The Guardian

Victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have accused the pope, the Vatican secretary of state and two other high-ranking Holy See officials of crimes against humanity, in a formal complaint to the international criminal court (ICC)...It includes individual cases of abuse where letters and documents between Vatican officials and others show a refusal to co-operate with law enforcement agencies seeking to pursue suspects, according to the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a US-based organisation that represents the claimants...Megan Petersen, from Minnesota, is one of two named US victims whose cases have been included in the complaint to the ICC. Petersen was awarded $750,000 (£500,000) last week in a civil claim against Crookston diocese, in which she alleged that a priest, Joseph Jeyapaul, had raped her repeatedly as a child.

Speaking at The Hague, where the complaint was being launched, Petersen said of Jeyapaul: "He was a man of God and I was very devout. I wanted to be a nun. I trusted him.

"Part of why I'm here is to protect kids. My perpetrator is still serving among kids and vulnerable adults, despite there being criminal charges against him. Ratzinger is the head of this organisation and these are his sheep, his flock. I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen to another child." more...

Opus Dei member argued for total abortion ban in El Salvador

I recently came across this NYTimes article about abortion in El Salvador, which is a unique country, legally speaking, because not only are total bans on abortion in place, even including when the life of the mother is in jeopardy, the ban is enforced by police and medical spies. Predictably, since the law was passed the maternal death rate has since reached a high of 1 in 350. This is probably a good time, yet again, to post a link about Queen Anne's Lace, an herbal implantation inhibitor that can cause a fertilized egg to leave the body painlessly, typically within 72 hours after conception. Again, this may be a bit of a tangent but I thought it was somewhat relevant

since it highlights the moral bankruptcy of covert organizations like Opus Dei, which was involved in enforcing the ban. Here are some choice quotes from the article.





The pope's appointment of Lacalle 11 years ago brought to the Archdiocese of San Salvador a different kind of religious leader. Lacalle, an outspoken member of the conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, redirected the country's church politics. Lacalle's predecessors were just as firmly opposed to abortion as he was. What he brought to the country's anti-abortion movement was a new determination to turn that opposition into state legislation and a belief that the church should play a public role in the process. In 1997, conservative legislators in the Assembly introduced a bill that would ban abortion in all circumstances. The archbishop campaigned actively for its passage.



There are other countries in the world that, like El Salvador, completely ban abortion, including Malta, Chile and Colombia. El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal.



Julia Regina de Cardenal runs the Yes to Life Foundation in San Salvador, which provides prenatal care and job training to poor pregnant women. She was a key advocate for the passage of the ban. She argued that the existing law's exception for the life of the mother was outdated. As she explained to me, "There does not exist any case in which the life of the mother would be in danger, because technology has advanced so far."...In January 1999, as the issue headed toward the second vote in the Assembly, Pope John Paul II visited Latin America. "The church must proclaim the Gospel of life and speak out with prophetic force against the culture of death," he declared in Mexico City."May the continent of hope also be the continent of life!"..."At the hospital they asked me what I had. I didn't want to say. I said I felt bad. They did tests on my urine, blood and lungs and found I had a severe respiratory infection. They did an ultrasound and found my kidneys, lung and liver were infected. And the ultrasound showed something else. They asked me: "Why do you have a perforated uterus? What have you done?" Then they did a vaginal exam, and it was the most painful thing for me in the world. They put something in me, and I cried out. They had two doctors holding me down. They said they knew I had had an abortion because my uterus was perforated and big and they would have to operate immediately. All I remember was going to the operating room, and then I don't remember anything because for the next six days I was in a coma"...



"Back-alley abortion" is a term that has long been part of the abortion debate. In the United States, in the years since Roe v. Wade, it has come to seem metaphorical, perhaps even hyperbolic, but it happens to conjure precisely D.C.'s experience. And it's easy in El Salvador to find plenty of evidence that D.C.'s story is neither isolated nor the worst case. A report by the Center for Reproductive Rights offers this grim list of tools used in clandestine abortions: "clothes hangers, iron bars, high doses of contraceptives, fertilizers, gastritis remedies, soapy water and caustic agents (such as car battery acid)."...when a woman might face jail time for an abortion, she's less likely to discuss her pregnancy at all. According to a study on attempted suicide and teen pregnancy published last year by academics at the University of El Salvador, some girls who poison their wombs with agricultural pesticide (its efficacy being a Salvadoran urban legend) would rather report the cause of their resulting hospital visit as "attempted suicide," which is not as felonious a crime nor as socially unbearable as abortion. "They don't want to be interviewed about abortion," Irma Elizabeth Asencio, one of the study's authors, explained to me. "They know they have committed a crime."...



Abortion as it exists in El Salvador today tends to operate on three levels. The well-off retain the "right to choose" that comes of simply having money. They can fly to Miami for an abortion, or visit the private office of a discreet and well-compensated doctor. Among the very poor, you can still find the back-alley world described by D.C. and the others who turn up in hospitals with damaged or lacerated wombs..."When we get a call from a hospital reporting an abortion," said Flor Evelyn Tópez, "the first thing we do is make sure the girl gets into custody. So if there is not a police officer there, we call the police and begin to collect evidence." Tópez is a prosecutor in the district of Apopa in San Salvador...Wandee Mira, an obstetrician at a hospital in San Salvador, told me that she had seen "a young girl handcuffed to her hospital bed with a police officer standing outside the door." "Yes, we sometimes call doctors from the Forensic Institute to do a pelvic exam," Tópez said, referring to the nation's main forensic lab, "and we ask them to document lacerations or any evidence such as cuts or a perforated uterus." In other words, if the suspicions of the patient's doctor are not conclusive enough, then in that initial 72-hour period, a forensic doctor can legally conduct a separate search of the crime scene. Tópez said, however, that vaginal searches can take place only with "a judge's permission."...Doctors in El Salvador now understand that it is their legal duty to report any woman suspected of having had an abortion.



A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube — which is no bigger around than a pencil — and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.



According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law." Valdés estimated that her hospital treated more than a hundred ectopic pregnancies each year. She described the hospital's practice. "Once we determine that they have an ectopic pregnancy, we make sure they stay in the hospital," she said. The women are sent to the dispensary, where they receive a daily ultrasound to check the fetus. "If it's dead, we can operate," she said. "Before that, we can't." If there is a persistent fetal heartbeat, then they have to wait for the fallopian tube to rupture....



One doctor, who asked to remain anonymous because of the risk of prosecution, explained that there are creative solutions to the problem of ectopic pregnancies: "Sometimes when an ectopic pregnancy comes in, the attendant will say, 'Send this patient to the best ultrasound doctor.' And I'll say, 'No, send her to the least-experienced ultrasound doctor.' He'll say, 'I can't find a heartbeat here.' Then we can operate."



In the United States, this conundrum is only beginning to emerge, as it did on "Meet the Press" in October 2004, when Tim Russert, the host, asked Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican representative then in the middle of what turned out to be a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate, to explain his position in favor of a total ban on all abortion procedures. DeMint was reluctant to answer Russert's repeated question: Would you prosecute a woman who had an abortion? DeMint said he thought Congress should outlaw all abortions first and worry about the fallout later. "We've got to make laws first that protect life," he said.

Dutch priest belonged to paedophile club

courtesy of Cryptogon:
The head of a Catholic religious order in the Netherlands has confirmed one of his subordinate priests served on the board of an organisation that promotes paedophilia.

Herman Spronck, head of the Dutch arm of the Salesian order, said in a statement Friday the priest served on the board of the "Martijn" organization, which is widely reviled but not illegal.
More...

Vatican Told Irish Bishops Not to Report Abuse to Police

via CBS:

"Mandatory" Reporting of Child Sex Abuse Claims Conflicted with Canon Law, Archbishop Said

A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of cover-up.

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. It instead emphasizes the church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments, in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."

Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the church — "must be meticulously followed." He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the "highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome.

Catholic officials in Ireland and the Vatican declined AP requests to comment on the letter, which RTE said it received from an Irish bishop.

Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter should demonstrate, once and for all, that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them.

"The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere," said Colm O'Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Joelle Casteix, a director of U.S. advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, described the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for."

Casteix said it was certain to be cited by victims' lawyers seeking to pin responsibility directly on the Vatican rather than local dioceses. She said investigators long have sought such a document showing Vatican pressure on a group of bishops "thwarting any kind of justice for victims."

"We now have evidence that the Vatican deliberately intervened to order bishops not to turn pedophile priests over to law enforcement," she said. "And for civil lawsuits, this letter shows what victims have been saying for dozens and dozens of years: What happened to them involved a concerted cover-up that went all the way to the top."

To this day, the Vatican has not endorsed any of the Irish church's three major policy documents since 1996 on safeguarding children from clerical abuse. Irish taxpayers, rather than the church, have paid most of the euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) to more than 14,000 abuse claimants dating back to the 1940s.

In his 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics condemning pedophiles in the ranks, Pope Benedict XVI faulted bishops for failing to follow canon law and offered no explicit endorsement of Irish child-protection efforts by the Irish church or state. Benedict was widely criticized in Ireland for failing to admit any Vatican role in covering up the truth.

O'Gorman — who was raped repeatedly by an Irish priest in the 1980s when he was an altar boy and was among the first victims to speak out in the mid-1990s — said evidence is mounting that some Irish bishops continued to follow the 1997 Vatican instructions and withheld reports of crimes against children as recently as 2008.

Two state-commissioned reports published in 2009 — into the Dublin Archdiocese and workhouse-style Catholic institutions for children — unveiled decades of cover-ups of abuse involving tens of thousands of Irish children since the 1930s.

A third major state-ordered investigation into Catholic abuse cover-ups, concerning the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne, is expected to be published within the next few months documenting the concealment of crimes as recently as 2008.

Irish church leaders didn't begin telling police about suspected pedophile priests until the mid-1990s after the first major scandal

of a priest, Brendan Smyth, who had raped dozens of children while the church transferred him to parishes in Dublin, Belfast, Rhode Island and North Dakota — triggered the collapse of the entire Irish government. That national shock, in turn, inspired the first victims to begin suing the church publicly.

In January 1996, Irish bishops published a groundbreaking policy document spelling out their newfound determination to report all suspected abuse cases to police.

But in his January 1997 letter seen Tuesday by the AP, Storero told the bishops that a senior church panel in Rome, the Congregation for the Clergy, had decided that the Irish church's policy of "mandatory" reporting of abuse claims conflicted with canon law.

Storero emphasized in the letter that the Irish church's policy was not recognized by the Vatican and was "merely a study document."

Storero warned that bishops who followed the Irish child-protection policy and reported a priest's suspected crimes to police ran the risk of having their in-house punishments of the priest overturned by the Congregation for the Clergy.

The 2009 Dublin Archdiocese report found that this actually happened in the case of Tony Walsh, one of Dublin's most notorious pedophiles, who used his role as an Elvis impersonator in a popular "All Priests Show" to get closer to kids.

Walsh in 1993 was kicked out of the priesthood by a secret Dublin church court — but successfully appealed the punishment to a Vatican court, which reinstated him to the priesthood in 1994. He raped a boy in a pub restroom at his grandfather's funeral wake that year. Walsh since has received a series of prison sentences, most recently a 12-year term imposed last month. Investigators estimate he raped or molested more than 100 children.

Storero's 1997 letter, originally obtained by RTE religious affairs program "Would You Believe?", said the Congregation for the Clergy was pursuing "a global study" of sexual-abuse policies and would establish worldwide child-protection policies "at the appropriate time."

Today, the Vatican's child-protection policies remain in legal limbo.

The Vatican does advise bishops worldwide to report crimes to police — in a legally nonbinding lay guide on its Web site. This recourse is omitted from the official legal advice provided by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and updated last summer. That powerful policymaking body continues to stress the secrecy of canon law.

The central message of Storero's letter was reported secondhand in the 2009 Dublin Archdiocese report. The letter itself, marked "strictly confidential," has never been published before.