Catholic leaders shirked duty in sex abuse cases

via:The American Statesman

Here is an excerpt from a powerful article about clergy abuse written by a Catholic and former seminarian, documenting his own history of abuse which was handled in the typical pattern of collective denial and victim blaming by Church hierarchy ...

Whenever priest abuse happened in the seminary, it was covered up. One professor was a serial abuser. He just disappeared one night. Rumor had it he was transferred to New Mexico for therapy and then to a parish, as was the custom. Perhaps. The point is, the authorities never told us anything, never counseled us, never worked with us to understand the enormity of the transgression and its effects on victims. Nor did they ever tell us of any adverse consequences to the priest. We assumed there were none.

This was the same when I finally had the courage to report my abuser, who even stalked me. It was frightening, but I feared I would pay a price for reporting him. Others had experiences much worse than mine, but the officials' reaction was always the same and typical. The message they telegraphed was not the message they should have taught: Don't do it, and, if you do, there are consequences for the abuser and for the victim.

more...

Pope's brother linked to new claims of child abuse by clergy

For the context necessary to understand the significance of this article, refer to CatholicMonarchy, a site dedicated to exposing the close connection between priest pedophilia cases and US military trauma-based brainwashing programs. In order to raise awareness of this issue, the site owner has organized a benefit CD featuring 21 Chicago area bands doing renditions of traditional Catholic hymns. Please purchase a CD if you are able to, so that this information, including interviews with survivors, can reach a wide audience and promote healing for those who have been harmed by the abuse.

Here are some choice quotes from the article:
via:The Independent

"Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger..."In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence," said Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a prominent critic of the church. She pointed to a Vatican directive from 2001 which required that even the most damaging allegations should be first investigated internally and then reported to the authorities...Franz Wittenbrink, a German composer who lived at the school until 1967, described the school as being run by "a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust". He was also quoted by Der Spiegel as saying that it was "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother knew nothing of what was happening."