ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson on making Revelation and coming face to face with two of the Catholic Church’s worst serial paedophiles

ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson on making Revelation and coming face to face with two of the Catholic Church’s worst serial paedophiles

By Backstory editor Natasha Johnson

YouTube: Revelation is a ground-breaking documentary featuring interviews with a convicted paedophile priest and religious brother, survivors of clergy abuse and senior figures in the Catholic church.

Sarah Ferguson spends her working life wading through murky waters, tackling difficult, confronting and harrowing stories but none has tested her like the project that consumed her for the past year: Revelation — a three-part documentary investigation into child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, in which she comes face to face with two of Australia’s most notorious serial paedophiles.

“I’m used to intense projects but this one has been more intense and more challenging than anything I have ever done,” says Ferguson.

“Throughout the long-running scandal of clerical abuse in Australia, there was one voice we hadn’t heard and that was the perpetrators.

“I wanted to ask them how they led their double lives and how the church enabled them, but how do you interview men whose crimes are so vile and disturbing, who’ve committed crimes against vulnerable children?

“It was a struggle not to let my revulsion at their crimes drag me off course.”

Ferguson preparing for her interview in prison with convicted paedophile Bernard McGrath. (ABC News)

In a series of television firsts, Revelation (airing weekly from Tuesday, March 17 at 8:30pm on ABC TV and iview), features in-depth interviews with an ordained priest and a religious brother convicted of historical child sexual abuse, and, with unprecedented access granted by the courts, films their trials as they unfold.

“Apart from an excellent US documentary in 2006, as far as I know, this is the only time it’s happened in the world — certainly, long interviews with child-abusing priests still in the priesthood we have never seen. And this is the first time we have seen their trials on camera,” says Ferguson.

Former Catholic brother Bernard McGrath is serving 39 years in jail. (ABC News: Revelation)

One of the interviews was done behind bars in a maximum-security prison where Bernard McGrath, a former St John of God brother, teacher and headmaster in residential schools in Australia and New Zealand, is serving 39 years for crimes against children.

“A prison warden brought McGrath into a secure room where we’d set up the cameras and he tried immediately to draw me into a whispered private conversation,” recalls Ferguson.

“I was prepared for this because one of his team had warned in court that he would try to manipulate me.

“I moved backwards on my stool, making him lean in and shifting the power balance.

“I was apprehensive, not because of who he was but because of the professional challenge of drawing him out.”

Ferguson also interviewed Vincent Ryan, a priest of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese who became known in the media as a monster.

He’d already spent 14 years in prison and was facing trial on new charges from men who had been altar boys in his church in the 1970s and 1980s.

Vincent Ryan is a Catholic priest who served 14 years in jail. (ABC News: Revelation)

“The interview went for hours across two days because the material was exhausting to both of us,” says Ferguson.

“Ryan looked at me at one point and said whatever we thought of him, he was sure of God’s forgiveness.

“I am not easily offended because it obscures critical thinking, but this outraged me.

“Not because it wasn’t possible according to his faith but because he had not earned it.

“He was so far from understanding the effect of his crimes that he was nowhere near forgiveness.

“They were both really difficult interviews because the nature of child abuse is something that perpetrators need to cover up — they’ve spent many years practised in deception, both deceiving themselves and other people.

“So even though they have been convicted, they don’t want to talk about what they did except on their own terms, they don’t want to talk about how the church enabled them, there is still a strong sense of solidarity towards the church.

“They told us more than they intended but their allegiances remain.

“After the interviews I was physically and mentally drained.”

Throughout filming, Ferguson was conscious of the confronting nature of the material and the impact on the audience.

“There is a risk in putting criminals like this on camera and the material has to justify the affront and I had to ensure the interviews had meaning,” Ferguson says.

“You have to be very conscious of what the effect will be on the viewer of hearing and watching a paedophile priest talking about his life, that’s right on the edge.

“But the moment of seeing the person themselves, the person who actually perpetrated these crimes, in their ordinariness, it is a revelation.

“It’s dark but it’s compelling and the experience of the few people who have seen the series is you can’t take your eyes off it, but it also leaves a lot to think about afterwards.

“This is this ultimate double life — you are standing up in church on Sunday preaching about morals and committing heinous acts before and after, sometimes immediately before and immediately after.

“How is someone capable of leading a life like that?”

Investigating child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has been the toughest story Ferguson has done. (ABC News)

Finding a suitable case, an accused — let alone two — willing to take part in the documentary, and navigating the legal hurdles to get cameras into court was an enormous task for Ferguson and the production team, particularly executive producer Nial Fulton, working with principal cinematographer Aaron Smith and researchers Sophie Randerson, Kate Wild and Alison McClymont.

“Finding priests or brothers willing to have their trial filmed was extremely difficult,” says Ferguson.

“In America there’ve been cameras in court for a long time, but not much in Australia, although that’s changing.

“But this was a new frontier, filming sexual assault trials.

“We had the support of the Chief Judge of the NSW District Court, Derek Price, and the Chief Judge of the County Court in Victoria, Peter Kidd, who, to their immense credit, got the arguments to bring into the public domain how these cases go through the system.

“They made it possible.

“The DPP in NSW and Victoria and three trial judges were all crucial parts of the process, along with barristers and solicitors.

“These are heavily protected cases.

“There is great concern in the system to protect the victims of child sexual abuse going to court, there are individuals you can’t identify but we found a way to tell the stories.”

Ferguson and crew filming in Rome. (ABC News)

Ferguson has also spoken to a number of survivors, including those who were abused by Ryan and McGrath.

She travelled to Ireland and the Vatican to interrogate church leaders and the final episode reveals the story of a man who has kept a shocking secret for decades.

The access the Revelation team secured is extraordinary but when you consider how reviled paedophiles are, how dreadful their crimes, and how adept they’ve been at concealing those crimes, it’s hard to comprehend why they’d agree to such intense public exposure and scrutiny of their actions.

“People will say that paedophiles often display narcissistic traits, I’m not a psychiatrist so I can’t say if that’s right or wrong, but perhaps that narcissism makes them want to talk about it,” says Ferguson.

“They say they want to make some kind of amends for what they’ve done by adding to the sum of human knowledge, you can believe it or not as you watch and decide if there is any truth in that.

“Over the years, though, I have found that some people want to talk about things they’ve done, even very bad things.”

Over her career, Ferguson has witnessed and reported on dreadful things — mass death from the Boxing Day tsunami, the suffering of abused women and children escaping domestic violence, the exploitation of the people smuggling trade, cruel treatment of cattle sent for live export.

All have left a mark, but none like Revelation.

“The experience of making this series has scored deep lines of sadness and understanding in me, of the crime, of the complicity of a powerful, self-serving institution and above all the ruinous consequences of child abuse on an innocent being who is ripped from childhood in that moment,” she says.

“I’ve spent my professional life understanding power and trying to give succour to the weak when abused by power but nothing before this took me so deep into human selfishness and suffering.

“But I believe that understanding is our best defence against a repeat of these crimes in the future.”

Revelation airs weekly from Tuesday, March 17 at 8:30pm on ABC TV and iview. Read more behind-the-scenes stories on ABC Backstory.

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Report: Pope Francis Refuses To Punish Pedophile Priests

Report: Pope Francis Refuses To Punish Pedophile Priests

A new report reveals Pope Francis is quietly making the Catholic church a safe space for pedophile priests.

The Associated Press reports that Pope Francis is reducing sanctions against pedophile priests, and even refusing to defrock priests found guilty of sexually abusing children, all in the name of mercy.

In one particularly egregious case, Francis let off one notorious pedophile priest, Rev. Mauro Inzoli, with just a lifetime of prayer for abusing five young boys.

The Associated Press reports about the Pope’s leniency towards pedophile priests:

One case has come back to haunt him: An Italian priest who received the pope’s clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against children as young as 12. The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him, The Associated Press has learned.

The Inzoli case is one of several in which Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canon lawyers and a church official told AP. Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.

The report notes that by refusing to punish pedophile priests Francis is going against the recommendations of his advisers in an attempt to show “mercy.”

In an attempt to justify the Pope’s refusal to fully punish pedophile priests in the name of “mercy,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said:

The Holy Father understands that many victims and survivors can find any sign of mercy in this area difficult. But he knows that the Gospel message of mercy is ultimately a source of powerful healing and of grace.

In other words, no justice for victims, no justice for the children raped and abused by Catholic priests, but mercy for the pedophile priests who rape children.

Bottom line: Pope Francis, like the Catholic church he leads, is morally bankrupt.

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Unholy family: The psychopath who was the fifth paedophile priest sent to town

HE WAS a paedophile, a psychopath and a thief who despised women, had a fetish for children and a sneering hatred for the locals of the tiny community.

The creepy Father Peter Searson, who wore his yellow fingernails long and manicured, liked dressing up in an army uniform and carried a pistol he sometimes pointed at parishioners.

He stole $40,000 from the parish finances, killed or tortured animals in front of children and showed them a dead body in a coffin.

He got children to touch his penis, made them kneel between his legs, loitered around the children’s toilets and audio-taped primary schoolers in the confessional box when their admissions became “hot”.

Searson was the fifth child-molesting priest sent by the Catholic Church to the working class community of Doveton, 31km southeast of Melbourne.

With his four predecessors — Father Thomas O’Keeffe, Father Wilfred Baker, Father Victor Rubeo and another priest — Searson gave Doveton’s Catholic Holy Family congregation a 35 year period of sexual abuse.

But as letters from desperate locals show, it was Searson that tore Doveton apart.

Within just two years of his appoinment as parish priest, Doveton’s parishioners and parents were so desperate to rid their community of Searson’s vile presence, they mounted a petition to remove him.

Father Peter Searson (above) who wore his yellow fingernails long and manicured, carried a pistol and left a trail of broken lives in his wake.Source:Supplied

The Holy Family Church at Doveton where Searson abused children and tore the community apart with his divisive nature. Picture: GoogleSource:Supplied

This parent said she had taught her daughter to treat Father Searson as “Danger stranger” and asked what priest made children kneel between his legs and ask them about undressing. Picture: Royal Commission.Source:Supplied

One parent wrote to the church complaining that Searson had criticised mothers who worked and demoralised anyone who did not put $5 or $10 in the church plate weekly. Picture: Royal Commission.Source:Supplied

Dozens of handwritten notes and letters of complaint written to church authorities reveal shocking details of his abuse and Doveton locals’ anguish at his continuing presence.

The letters, tendered in evidence at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse, lay bare a harrowing period in Doveton’s history.

But the letters and the petition were all in vain. Searson remained at Holy Family for 13 years until he was finally ousted for assaulting two boys.

By then, Searson’s sexual abuse and divisive nature had left a trail of broken lives.

Doveton was little more than two decades old when Searson arrived to lead the Holy Family church as its parish priest.

Established in the 1950s, the post World War II suburb was a disadvantaged, low socio-economic public housing estate settled by migrants.

It was on January 21, 1984, that Searson turned up at the church next door to Doveton’s Holy Family Primary School.

He already had a disgraceful record with children and a reputation for hating women.

Complaints about the then 61-year-old stretched back to when he had worked at the St Paul’s School for the Blind at Kew in Melbourne a decade before.

Peter Searson was the fifth paedophile sent to Doveton, following on from Victor Rubeo (right) pictured with one of his victims, Paul Hersbach.Source:Supplied

Paul Hersbach (above) in 2014 after giving evidence at the Royal Commission about how Father Rubeo molested both himself and his father. Picture: Alex Coppel.Source:News Corp Australia

Originally from Adelaide, and a latecomer to the priesthood, Searson received his first formal complaint of sexual abuse in 1974, 12 years after his ordination in Rome.

By 1978, he had been moved to Our Lady of Mount Carmel in the northwestern Melbourne suburb of Sunbury.

Apart from claims of sexual abuse, Searson caused “deep and bitter resentment … and hurt” among parishioners, according to a letter tendered at the royal commission.

Written by his assistant priest at Sunbury, Phil O’Donnell, to the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne in 1982, it describes how Searson’s “utter humiliation of women has to be seen to be believed. He revels in reducing people to tears”.

Father O’Donnell said Searson had driven parishioners away with his open nastiness, had savaged normally “tough” parish nuns, making them cry, and launched bitter recriminations at members of the congregation he did not feel had put enough in the church plate.

A 1983 letter from the principal of St Anne’s Catholic School in Sunbury to the local bishop highlights a shortfall in a church loan.

Letter from parishioners to the Archbishop complaining that Searson had delivered a sermon on pornographySource:Supplied

“Made from the school’s Provident Fund in 1978 for a library and resources area, the loan was for $90,000 and the cost shown is only $57,927. I wonder what the balance was used for,” the principal wrote.

The headmaster at the next school Searson was to be transferred to, Graeme Sleeman, would later tell the church hierarchy he had proof that Searson had stolen $40,000 from school funds.

But Mr Sleeman’s pleas fell on deaf ears in the church hierarchy.

Searson’s transfer from Sunbury to Doveton set off a flurry of complaints.

One handwritten letter, from a group of parishioners, expressed their “disgust at the way” Searson had conducted a Mass for children taking their first communion. with a sermon “based on pornography/censorship”.

The litany of grievances about Searson include his abuse of the school’s tuckshop ladies, padlocking the school gates to keep children out, and punishing children if their parents lodged complaints.

Searson allowed his dog, Rex, described by one assistant priest as Searson’s “only friend”, to urinate and defecate around the tuckshop,

Searson had also “pointed a handgun at a couple” of parishioners and was “turning people, especially teenagers and children … away from the church”.

Two years after his arrival in Doveton, parishioners and parents petitioned for his removal, but they were to suffer his abuse for 11 more years. Picture: RC.Source:Supplied

Searson had also berated parishioners for not leaving at least $5 to $10 in the church plate because they were “not below the poverty line”.

And “people employed at the school have been threatened by Father with their jobs if they disagree with him”.

Letters between church and school officials note that when Searson was asked about complaints he demanded to know the names of the parents who had reported on him.

TAPING CONFESSIONS

In November 1985, Catholic nun Sister Joan Powell wrote to a church superior to complain that Father Searson was audio taping children’s confessions.

She wrote that Searson had told the Grade Five teacher that, referring to the children’s confessions “when it starts to hot up I’ll start the tape”.

Concerns were raised about Father Searson’s behaviour. Picture: Royal Commission.Source:Supplied

In the letter to Father Doyle, Sister Powell wrote: “There is one girl in the Grade 5 class whose parents have already asked that their daughter not go to Fr. Season for confession because she was so upset after Father made her kneel between his knees.

“Two other girls in the class do everything possible to avoid F. Searson as he always cuddles them.”

The letters regarding Searson show the distress parents felt at his insulting snobbery — like the family he told them their house “wasn’t good enough” for a home mass because it didn’t have carpet — to their despair when the church did nothing about his sexual abuse.

Parent’s letter to the Vicar General of the Catholic Church complaining about Searson’s sexual abuse of young girls during reconciliation.Source:Supplied

Written to the Archbishop, bishops, the Vicar General of the Church, they complain about Searson holding hands with children during confession, and asking young girls is “they looked at themselves when undressing”.

Many letters declare that both teachers and parents had advised children not to go alone to Father Searson’s office.

In July, 1987, schoolteacher Faye Chandley wrote a file note about a pupil who had “asked to leave classroom and speak with me” and had “sat in chair shaking and crying too ashamed to tell about what had happened to her”.

The girl, named Julie Stewart would later give evidence to the Royal Commission about what Searson had done to her as third-grader.

In Faye Chandley’s note, Julie tells her about Searson coercing her with dolls and wanting to “put his penis at the top of her thighs … talked of ejaculation — white stuff came out — wanted her to hold his penis”.

The abuse “went on for a couple of years” and caused problems for Julie at home.

Ms Stewart told the Royal Commission that Searson would force her to sit on his lap during confession and indecently assault her.

“He would say to me: ‘Do you love father?’ And I said ‘yes’. He would ask me to kiss him on the lips. I did,” she told the inquiry.

During her last confession she said Searson lifted her onto his lap and pushed her against his erect penis.

Note by teacher Faye Chandley about Julie Stewart confessing that Searson had sexually molested her during confession.Source:Supplied

Julie Stewart was molested as a nine-year-old by Father Searson told her ‘the Lord forgives you’. Picture: ABC TV.Source:ABC

List of grievances by teachers and parents against Father Peter Searson when he worked at Holy Family Catholic Church in Doveton. Picture: Royal Commission.Source:Supplied

“He whispered in my ear: ‘You are a good girl. The Lord forgives you’.”

The nine-year-old snapped and ran screaming out of the confessional and was taken to the principal, Graeme Sleeman’s office.

Mr Sleeman, who also gave evidence at the inquiry, told how he resigned his post in 1986 at the school because of the abuse.

Parents launched a petition to get him back and to try and oust Searson, but nothing happened.

Searson would also belittle parents born abroad whose English was not up to his standard.

He also regularly made statements in his homilies saying that children whose mothers didn’t work should feel loved, while those who had working mothers must “feel unwanted”.

Despite the torrent of letters to Catholic leaders in Victoria, Searson endured at Doveton until March 14, 1997.

He was removed for an accusation of physical rather than sexual assault against boys.

Ms Stewart attempted suicide as a teenager, and received a $25,000 payment from the church which she said just “retraumatised” her.

The church paid a total of $291,000 to three of Searson’s victims via the Melbourne Response program.

Peter Searson died in 2009 before facing any child sex charges. One bishop and 15 priests paid their respects at his funeral in Melbourne.

The letters from parents and teachers about Searson are available on the Royal Commission’s web page.

If you or anyone you know need any help, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

A parent’s letter complaining about Searson pointing his pistol at young boys in the church. Picture: RC.Source:Supplied

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“Divine Totalitarianism”

“Divine Totalitarianism”

 Via Ekaterina Mishina

In recent years, religion and the state in Russia have tended to be closely intertwined, with the state using the church as an instrument of manipulation. This is evidenced by the recent conflict over the staging of Tannhӓuser at the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater. IMR legal expert Ekaterina Mishina analyzes the relationship between the government and the church in today’s Russia and draws parallels with totalitarian and fascist regimes of the recent past.

 

Orthodox activists have been demanding resignations of Boris Mezdrich, director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater, and Timofey Kulyabin, stage director of Tannhӓuser, for a long time. In late March, the activists held the so-called “standing in prayer for protection of religious feelings” in Novosibirsk. Photo: RFE/RL

In 2003, Free Inquiry magazine published an article by political analyst Lawrence Britt titled “Fascism Anyone?” that defined 14 characteristics of a fascist political regime. The article evoked all kinds of reactions, ranging from positive to extremely negative. Particularly harsh criticism was offered by an anonymous commenter who wrote under the pseudonym “Fascist Heart.” Brimming over with enthusiasm, Fascist Heart (here referred to as “he” for ease) tried to tear to pieces both the article itself and its author. His main point was that Britt was an unpleasant and suspicious person because he was not a doctor of political science, but a former manager at such companies as Allied Chemical, Mobil, and Xerox Corp. According to Fascist Heart, no one could be interested in a former manager’s opinion on fascism and its characteristics, because that opinion would by definition be wrong. Apparently, if Britt had worked for some time as a dictator in some small fascist state and gained some experience there, the harsh critic would have approved of his conclusions.

Meanwhile, there are many examples to prove that you can be an outstanding political scientist even without a formal political education: Dmitry Oreshkin, for one, graduated from the Department of Geography at Moscow State University, with a Ph.D. in geography, while Vladimir Pastukhov was trained as a lawyer. I see no reason to dismiss Britt’s views just because he studied business, not political science—especially because the characteristics of a fascist regime defined by Britt generally do not contradict the definition of fascism outlined in the constitutional law of many countries.

According to Britt, fascism has the following features:

• Powerful and enduring nationalism
• A disregard of universally recognized human rights
• A tendency to look for enemies and use the idea of atoning sacrifice as a unifying framework
• A dominant position in society of the armed forces
• Strong gender-based discrimination, homophobia, and condemnation of abortion
• The exertion of state control over the media
• A maniacal obsession with national security
• The merging of religion and state
• Protection of corporations
• Harassment of trade unions
• A contempt for intellectuals and the arts that results in the freedom of artistic expression coming under attack
• An obsession with the idea of crime and punishment, often leading to the police having almost-unlimited powers
• Rampant nepotism and corruption
• Rigged elections

That said, Britt does not mention the following characteristics of fascism:

• A fundamentally different political meaning of the concept of head of state as a result of the dramatic expansion of that role’s actual authority
• Abandonment of the concept of electivity of the head of state, even under a republican form of government
• The existence of only one legal political party (in Nazi Germany, the German National Socialist Workers’ Party; in Italy, the National Fascist Party; and in Spain, the Falange of traditionalists and nationalist-syndicalist juntas), with the head of that party (Fuhrer, Duce, Caudillo) usually having full state power
• An open merger between the dominant fascist party and the state apparatus, resulting in the party becoming the core of a dictatorship
• A dramatic reduction in the role of the parliament, with the parliament either being abolished (as in Italy, once the fascist regime stabilized) or degenerating into a purely decorative institution, deprived of any features shared by parliaments of democratic states (as in Germany or Portugal until 1974)¹

In the constitutional law of many countries, fascism is defined as the most blatant, cynical, and severe form of totalitarianism.² Therefore, some of the attributes set forth by Britt are common to the majority of fascist as well as a number of totalitarian regimes. One such common feature is the merging of religion and state. As Britt explains this concept, “fascist states use religion as an instrument to control public opinion. State leaders resort to religious rhetoric and terminology even when the basic principles of the religion are completely opposite to the actions or policies of the government.”

Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini was a pioneer in building meaningful dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the fascist state and the church. In 1929, Mussolini and Cardinal Pietro Gaspari, who represented the Holy See, signed three documents (the Conciliation Treaty, the Financial Convention, and the Concordat) that went down in history as the Lateran Treaty. This treaty stated that Roman Catholicism was the only state religion of Italy, that the Supreme Pontiff was sacred and inviolable, and that “any attempt against his person or any incitement to commit such attempt” was “punishable by the same penalties as all similar attempts and incitements to commit the same against the person of the king. The Concordat defined a wide range of rights and privileges of the Roman Catholic Church, and Article 1 of the Financing Convention provided for generous payments to the Holy See in exchange for ratification of the Conciliation Treaty.

The recent conflict surrounding the production of Tannhäuser has revealed a new dimension of the relationship between religion and the state in today’s Russia. It clearly demonstrates that if, contrary to the expectations of the state, the church does not act with sufficient toughness, Orthodox activists can be used to manipulate public opinion.

In his book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe, David Kertzer writes that Pope Pius XI worked closely with Mussolini for more than a decade, giving the fascist regime the institutional power and moral legitimacy of the Roman Catholic Church. According to Kertzer, this alliance was particularly remarkable because of the fact that Mussolini was a staunch supporter of secularism. However, the deal turned out to be beneficial for both sides.³

When, on April 1, 1939, the nationalist leader Francisco Franco came to power in Spain and the Second Republic fell, the winner turned out to be primarily the Catholic Church, which had suffered heavily during Republican rule in the 1930s. Article 3 of the Constitution of 1931 separated the church from the state and declared that there was no official religion in Spain, thus putting an end to the centuries-old power of the church in that nation. Article 26 of the Constitution introduced a series of harsh restrictions on religious communities. In particular, organizations considered to pose a threat to national security were abolished and their property nationalized. Once in power, Franco immediately banned all the reforms of the Second Republic that had had an extremely negative impact on the spiritual and social role of the church in Spain. The church regained its privileged status immediately after the end of the civil war: in June 1941, the rights of the church were formally recognized in an agreement between the Vatican and the government of Franco and then finally formalized in the Concordat signed in August 1953. The church fully adapted to the conditions of the Franco dictatorship, with Cardinal Goma, the Archbishop of Toledo, coining the famous phrase “divine totalitarianism.”

Soviet-style totalitarianism, by contrast, was not so kind to the clergy. The first conflict emerged in December 1917, when the decrees “On Civil Marriage, on Children and on Keeping Civil Registry Books” and “On Divorce” made marriage and family relations exempt from the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Soviet Criminal Code of 1922 clearly demonstrated the attitude of the Bolsheviks to the church. It criminalized the “use of religious prejudices of the masses to overthrow the workers’ and peasants’ government, or to incite resistance against its laws and regulations” (Art. 119); “commission of fraudulent acts to incite superstition among the masses of the population, as well as to benefit in such a way” (Art. 120)“; “teaching religious beliefs among minors in public or private educational institutions and schools” (Art. 121); and “practicing worship in public institutions and enterprises, as well as placement of any religious images in such buildings” (Art. 124).

It wasn’t until the post-Soviet period that the relations between the Russian authorities and the church started to warm up, and gradually this relationship morphed into something that is very reminiscent of the “merging of religion and state.” In this sense the Pussy Riot case is symbolic. Instead of being prosecuted under Article 5.26, part 2, of the Code of Administrative Offenses for “insulting religious feelings of citizens or desecration of articles, marks and emblems relating to the world outlook symbols thereof,” members of the punk group were convicted of criminal offenses under Article 213 of the Criminal Code (hooliganism). The conviction of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina is a classic example of the genre of selective enforcement. Apparently, in order to avoid accusations of religiously based prosecution, Russian lawmakers decided to create a respectable legal framework to prosecute those who offend the religious feelings of citizens. On June 29, 2013, Article 148 of the Criminal Code, which until then had modestly criminalized “illegal obstruction of the activity of religious organizations or of the performance of religious rites,” was expanded to include new provisions. The revised article criminalized “public actions expressing obvious disrespect for society and committed to insulting the religious feelings of believers,” as well as the commission of such acts “in places specially designated for worship and other religious rites and ceremonies.” It thus became much easier and more convenient for the state to protect the feelings of the faithful.

The recent conflict surrounding the production of Tannhäuser has revealed a new dimension of the relationship between religion and the state in today’s Russia. It clearly demonstrates that if, contrary to the expectations of the state, the church does not act with sufficient toughness, Orthodox activists can be used to manipulate public opinion. After all, except for Metropolitan Tikhon, who filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office, none of the hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church called for any action to be taken against the director of Tannhäuser or the director of the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theater. On the contrary, on March 5, the official website of the Russian Orthodox Church published an explanation by Vladimir Legoyda, head of the Synodal Information Department, in connection with the situation. His words were correct and encouraging: any believer or priest, he wrote, who notices something in the public sphere that he considers blasphemous or insulting to his feelings should not immediately rush to the Prosecutor’s Office. “A sinner is not only the one who blasphemes God, but also the one who falsely accuses someone of blasphemy,” claimed Legoyda. However, these words were ignored by Orthodox activists. A prayer event held in the center of Novosibirsk on March 29 looked quite menacing. Slogans like “Down with American quasi-occupation” did not make this rally look like something peaceful, and appeals to “protect the sacred and save Russia” sounded very much like the infamous “Kill the Jews and save Russia.”

In today’s Russia, the government actively uses religious communities to manipulate public opinion, even though religion and state are legally separated in accordance with Article 14 of the Constitution. Protection of religious feelings is increasingly being used as an argument to justify harassment and escalate criminal persecution. It could also come in handy for officials seeking to justify the reintroduction of censorship.

 

References:

1. See. А.А. Мишин, Конституционное (государственное) право зарубежных стран. Москва, “Статут”, 2013, pp. 149–157.
2. Ibid, p. 150.
3. David I. Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe (New York: Random House, 2014).

 

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Catholic Leaguer gloats over killing anti-child abuse bill: It was an attempted ‘rape’ of the church

Catholic Leaguer gloats over killing anti-child abuse bill: It was an attempted ‘rape’ of the church

Via Brad Reed

 

Fanatic Catholic League president Bill Donohue (Screenshot)

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Fanatical Catholic League President Bill Donohue on Monday gloated after he successfully helped kill a bill in the New York legislature that would have made it easier for sex abuse victims to bring cases against their accusers.

As The New York Daily News reports, Donohue sent out an email to supporters after the defeat of the Child Victims Act, an act that he said was designed “to rape the Catholic Church.” The bill would have extended the timeframe that victims can bring forward cases by five years and would have opened up a six-month period for victims to revive older cases.

“The bill was sold as justice for the victims of sexual abuse, when, in fact, it was a sham,” Donohue wrote in an email obtained by The New York Daily News. “[It was] a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.”

Donohue’s accusation that the bill would have “raped” the church certainly seems in poor taste given that the bill was meant to help people who had been raped by Catholic priests.

Then again, Donohue is used to being intentionally provocative, such as when he suggested both Islamist radicals and murdered cartoonists both bore equal blame for the Charlie Hebdo massacre, or when he ripped Pope Francis for the grave sin of accepting the science behind climate change.

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Pro-Choice Movement Takes on Catholic Fascist Theocrats, Women Turn Their Backs on the Catholic Church

Pro-choice movement in Poland is taking on church and state

Why are so many Polish women turning their backs on the Catholic Church?

Beth Holmgren

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People protest in Gdansk against Polish government plans to tighten anti-abortion laws. Photograph: Michal Fludra/Gallo Images Poland/Getty Images

 On April 3rd, the Middle Ages engaged in an unusual skirmish with the 21st century in cities across Poland. During Sunday Mass in this overwhelmingly Catholic country, priests read their congregations a letter from the Polish episcopate calling for an unconditional ban on abortion.

Scores of women then walked out in protest, their exodus filmed in famous churches such as St Mary’s Basilica in Gdansk and St Anne’s Church in Warsaw.

Outside, thousands of women gathered on city streets and squares, listening to pro-choice speakers and holding up signs that flashed their opinions: “Hands off my uterus,” “No to torturing women,” “I’ll have a child when I want to.” They brandished coat hangers, an implement of dangerous self- induced abortion first politicised by American feminists in the 1960s.

These actions mark an extraordinary nationwide moment for Polish women and Polish Catholicism. I have been studying Polish culture since the 1980s, when the Catholic Church strived to be the true ally of the working class in a communist state. The 1978 election of a Polish pope, John Paul II, bolstered the rise of Solidarity, an independent trade union that eventually engendered several political parties in post-1989 Poland. The church produced martyrs for the people’s cause.

Compromise

The church wielded even greater authority over Polish society after the fall of communism, though that authority remained deeply patriarchal, with liberty and justice for some, not all. John Paul II stood tough against a corrupt communist system and initiated an important rapprochement between Catholics and Jews, but a campaign for women’s reproductive rights lay beyond his religious belief. This Polish pope subscribed fully to the Catholic doctrine that human life begins at conception. Abortion had been legal in communist Poland. In post-communist Poland, the church helped push through a “compromise” in 1993 – a law that allowed women to have abortions only in the case of rape, incest, severe foetal impairment and risk to the mother’s life.

Poland’s abortion law is one of the most restrictive in the world, yet was not ameliorated even after the country’s admission into the European Union in 2004.

Why, then, have so many Polish women turned their backs on the church in recent weeks? For six months, huge numbers of Poles have taken to the streets, protesting against an ever more repressive government. The conservative Law and Justice party, which won a clear majority in parliament last October, wasted no time pushing its nationalist agenda. It has defied the authority of the extant Polish constitution and the constitutional tribunal, placed a “leftist” public media under government control, distanced itself from the socially liberal policies of the EU and tarnished as traitors those who disagree with its anti-pluralist stance on virtually every issue ranging from sexuality to national self-criticism.

Now members of the Committee in Defence of Democracy, which numbers in the hundreds of thousands, march en masse in Polish cities almost every week, carrying signs and giving speeches.

Anti-abortion protests

Their efforts have provoked opposition, with anti-abortion protests springing up as well. Backed by the church, those protesters have called for a tightening of the abortion laws to allow abortion only when the woman’s life is in danger.

Polish Catholic women did not decide to walk out of church on April 3rd until the episcopate ordered priests to endorse Law and Justice legislation during Mass. The line separating church and state was expediently erased. A supposedly independent lobbying committee, Stop Abortion, collected the 100,000 signatures required to present the abortion ban Bill to parliament; only the church could approve such a Bill; and the all-Catholic Law and Justice party could only obey the church. Lest there be any opposition, the church enlisted its local representatives to tell the faithful how to vote.

This church-party strategy backfired, provoking rather than pre-empting opposition. A non-partisan group, Women for Women, formed on Face- book, gathering 100,000-plus members and organising protests and church walkouts. The opposition has picked up steam and plenty of left-wing political support, generating a new committee, Let’s Save Women, which proposes more radical legislative and educational reform.

Let’s Save Women has three months to collect the 100,000 signatures needed to propose its Bill “in support of women’s rights and informed parenting” – specifically, legalised abortion for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, Poles’ guaranteed access to contraceptives without a prescription, and mandatory sex education in the schools. Supporters of Let’s Save Women insist they will not accept a church-run government – the result being a contentious battle between theocracy and secular democracy in 21st-century Poland.

Beth Holmgren is a professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at Duke University

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How the Vatican Manipulates the American Democratic Process

How the Vatican Manipulates the American Democratic Process

By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH

Editor’s note: The following has been adapted from Chapter 4 of our chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford’s book, American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security (1984). This book is available on Kindle here.

The Abortion Movement

In 1980, Federal Judge John Dooling, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, declared that the Hyde Amendment, which prevented Medicaid payment for abortion, was unconstitutional. (Copies of Judge Dooling’s 328-page decision in McRae vs. HEW are rare. During a recent conversation with the Brooklyn United States District Court, I was told that their copy had disappeared and, for this reason, they were not in a position to reproduce it.) Judge Dooling had spent a year gathering evidence and studying the anti-abortion movement, and his findings showed that the anti-abortion movement was essentially a Roman Catholic movement with a little non-Catholic window dressing.[8] The amendment, says Dooling bluntly, was a ploy by anti-abortion congressmen frustrated in their attempt to pass a constitutional amendment that would override the Supreme Court’s 1973 pro-abortion decision; its purpose was quite simply to circumvent the Court’s ruling and prevent as many abortions as possible. Dooling, a practicing Catholic, makes short shrift of the anti-abortionists’ pretensions to be a spontaneous grass-roots movement that owes its political victories to sheer moral appeal. He confirms that the right-to-life’s main source of energy, organization, and direction has been the Catholic Church, and he describes in detail how the movement uses one-issue voting to put pressure on legislators, candidates, and the party organizations that nominate them—a tactic that gains influence far out of proportion to its numbers. Please see appendix one for excerpts from Judge Dooling’s decision in McRae vs. HEW.

What is most significant in this extract is Judge Dooling’s finding that the anti-abortion movement’s main source of energy, organization, and direction has been the Catholic Church. The bishops’ Pastoral Plan prompted the creation of the Moral Majority. Richard A. Viguerie, a Catholic, is the man most responsible for the development and success of the New Right, and he will be the first to claim that honor. He was also involved in the original discussions that led to the creation of the Moral Majority and, as its fundraiser, can be credited with its financial success. Paul Weyrich, a Catholic, claims credit for originating the idea for the group and the name itself. In their search for an attractive front man for the organization, they chose Jerry Falwell, who, according to intimates, has an insatiable lust for power—and, thus, Moral Majority, Inc., was born.[9]

It is inconceivable that these Catholic laymen were not responding to the bishops’ Pastoral Plan. Much went into avoiding public disclosure of the role of the Catholic Church in the creation of the Moral Majority. Maxine Negri, in “A Well-Planned Conspiracy,” exposed involvement of the Catholic hierarchy in the Moral Majority.[10] Then, the June 21, 1982, issue of U.S. News and World Report noted:

At the heart of Moral Majority is a direct-mail operation…. Membership claims … put the number of Moral Majority’s active supporters at roughly 4 million Roman Catholics, Protestant fundamentalists, and orthodox Jews. The organization says its “hardcore contributors,” numbered at more than 400,000, include a cadre of 80,000 priests, ministers, and rabbis organized into fifty autonomous chapters.

This claim of autonomy should not be taken seriously. What is described here is exactly the organization described in the Pastoral Plan of Action down to the details.

None of us who has ever worked extensively with fundamentalist churches or lived among fundamentalists ever took the claim that the Moral Majority was a fundamentalist organization seriously. One characteristic common among fundamentalists is a keen sense of individualism, and individualists are often fundamentalists because of this trait. There is self-selection. They strongly resist the “herding” that characterizes other major denominations such as the Catholic Church. It is very difficult to organize two or three local fundamentalist churches to carry out even a local short-term civic activity. Organizing much beyond this is inconceivable. In contrast, the Catholic Church, with its keen sense of organization acquired over a two-thousand-year history, found the “organization” of the fundamentalists a relatively simple task by providing with few exceptions the entire organization infrastructure, including the organization of the fifty autonomous state chapters and the organizations in the 435 congressional districts.

The far more experienced and autocratic Catholic Church found the fundamentalists easy prey. They created “leader” Jerry Falwell and they sought out for other visible positions others who also had an insatiable lust for power. These fundamentalists toe the line of the Catholic Church to maintain their newly acquired visibility and their sense of power. And, of course, the purse strings of the Moral Majority are controlled by those who collect the money—represented by Richard Viguerie. As the old adage goes, “he who controls the purse strings, controls the organization.”

The Family-Planning Movement

There is little doubt that virtually all opposition to the family-planning movement is Roman Catholic. The anti-family-planning movement’s main source of energy, organization, and direction clearly has been the Roman Catholic Church. Most people outside the family-planning field are not aware that this anti-family-planning movement continues to score major victories, such as preventing the U.S. sale of Depo-Provera, the birth-control injectable given every three months, a method which all available data indicate is safer than birth control pills. Depo-Provera is used by tens of millions of women around the world and is now approved by over one hundred countries, including most European countries, WHO, and other prestigious groups. Other victories include successfully laying roadblocks that prevent tens of thousands of women from receiving sterilization operations when they want them, roadblocks which result in thousands of unwanted births yearly. Far more important are the successes of the Church in minimizing U.S. assistance to family-planning efforts in developing countries.

Many of these victories for the Church come under the heading “Administrative Areas” in the bishops’ Pastoral Plan of Action. Two recent examples of Catholic Church activity are the mandatory notification of parents of teens who seek contraceptives at federally funded clinics and the banning of federal funds for family-planning clinics which provide abortion.

The ERA Movement

The Equal Rights Amendment died June 30, 1982. I am certain that its failure was the result of the success of the Catholic hierarchy’s bold efforts to defeat it. As with the anti-abortion movement, the main source of energy, organization, and direction of the anti-ERA movement is the Roman Catholic Church.

In June 1978, I received a Planned Parenthood Washington Memo which contained an article entitled “U.S. Bishops Block Pro-ERA Statement.” In part, it read:

The Roman Catholic hierarchy, in early May, refused to permit issuance of a subcommittee’s statement supporting the Equal Rights Amendment, indicating that the fight against legal abortion takes precedence as its preeminent concern.

The pro-ERA statement was supported by the bishops’ six-member Ad Hoc Committee on Women in the Church and Society, which took pains to separate support for ERA from any connotation of accepting abortion. Furthermore, they sought only to issue the statement in their own behalf and had reportedly consulted with the Family Life section of the bishops’ Department of Education, which apparently approved their conclusions “that the ERA will not threaten the stability of marriage in family life.”

According to a report of the National Catholic News Service, acceptance of the statement had been urged by ninety-four employees of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the U.S. Catholic Conference, but advance disclosures about the issue also generated heavy mail from the “right to life” groups opposing the ERA. The NCCB’s forty-eight-member administrative board, which sets policy for the 345 U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, rejected the pro-ERA document during an early May meeting in Chicago, contending that it could hurt anti-abortion efforts.

It is now apparent that this move by the bishops was a brilliant ploy. The Church not only evaded taking a positive stand on an important social justice issue which threatens its power but it has worked diligently to defeat the ERA by using the very same political action organization used to combat abortion!

In my home state of North Carolina, one of the last hopes of the ERA movement, we saw statewide polls in May 1982 show that two-thirds of our citizens favored the amendment, and, in June 1982, we saw two-thirds of our lawmakers vote to defeat it. Clearly, a vast superior organization killed the ERA in North Carolina, a finely honed and skillful operation, one two thousand years in the making—the same one continuing to fight legalized abortions in our fair state.

Actions Taken by the Church

What actions has the hierarchy taken to counter the abortion, family-planning, and ERA movements?

In 1980, Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, a Canadian Roman Catholic professor of sociology at the University of Montreal, published a book entitled Papal Power: A Study of Vatican Control Over Lay Catholic Elites.[11] This is a study of the techniques intensively used by the Vatican in many countries to control Catholic laypersons in Italy over the past one hundred years. In 1875, the Vatican created a system of local parish committees of at least five members each, called Catholic Actions. These committees were created to organize laypersons to assist the Vatican in seizing control of local, state, and national political machinery. Over the years, the Church gained considerable experience in organizing these committees and in ensuring obedience and a very high degree of responsiveness to the chain of command by the committees. These committees and their more recent counterpart, civic committees, are highly effective in mobilizing Vatican efforts. Vaillancourt places the role of the committees in proper perspective by discussing

a famous open letter presented to the Pope in 1968 by dissatisfied Catholics from France and elsewhere. The letter severely criticized the Vatican’s excessive attachment to wealth and power, stressing the idea that Church authorities are too repressive and manipulative:

“The whole Church apparatus is organized for control: the Roman Curia controls the bishops, the bishops the clergy, the clergy controls the laity … and the lay Christians control (what an illusion!) mankind. Hence a multiplication of secretaries, commissions, structures, etc., with their programs and rules…. Underhand influences have suffocated the openness which had manifested itself at the lay conference in Rome, a congress which had very little communication with the bishops who were then meeting in a synod.”

After this attack on the abuses of social and legal power by church authorities, the letter goes on to describe three of the favorite techniques of control used by the Vatican: secrecy (there are secret files even against bishops), spying and informing, and repression (used even against some of the most respected theologians).

Secrecy can be classified as either a legal or a social method of control, depending on whether it is used as an administrative-legal procedure or as a simple social defense mechanism. Spying and informing would clearly be instances of social power, since they entail the use of social processes. Finally, repression, as discussed in the open letter, refers to a mixture of legal, coercive, and even remunerative power. Concretely, it includes the habitual recourse by Church officials to excommunications, censures, condemnations, demotions, and the removal or firing of offenders from their ecclesiastical jobs.

In researching Papal Power, Vaillancourt studied Vatican control over lay Catholic elites for years, spending a large part of his time at the Vatican. To effect this control, Vaillancourt has found that the Vatican exercises eight kinds of power—all of which have been used and have proved effective in opposing social issues in the United States.

ECOLOGICAL POWER, based on the physical control of material environmental conditions. An example of this is the use of territory, buildings, or real estate to control people through the domination of their environment.

REMUNERATIVE POWER, based on material or nonmaterial rewards or compensations. An example of this is the way the Pius XII Foundation uses its funds to support some lay activities and not others.

COERCIVE POWER, based on physical or psychic violence. Examples of this are burning at the stake, torture, imprisonment, banishment, blackmail, removal from office, denouncement.

SOCIAL POWER, based on the use of structural-organizational or psycho-sociological mechanisms such as Catholic Action congresses, peer-group pressures, rumors, co-optation, social ostracism, socialization, use of mass media, nepotism, and selective recruitment. An example of social power is “conditioning.” …

LEGAL POWER, juridically founded, or simply based on bureaucratic and administrative norms, procedures, and maneuvers. An example of this is the rule of secrecy which affects, under the pain of “grievous sin,” the affairs of the Secretariate of the Pope and the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church in their relations with Vatican diplomats and other high-ranking prelates. Another example is censorship, through the nihil obstat and imprimatur.

TRADITIONAL POWER, based on the use of traditional symbols, rituals, ideas, and sentiments. The cementing of loyalty through a mass of torch-lit procession during a congress would be an example of this kind of power. Appeals to practices (for example, speaking Latin) and documents popular or prevalent in previous times are also instances of the use of traditional power.

EXPERT POWER, based on professional, technical, or scientific or purely rational arguments. An example of this is the recourse to commissions of experts in theology or the social sciences to bolster one’s position. Pius XII’s speeches to numerous groups on a multitude of topics was also an effort to control through expert power.

CHARISMATIC POWER, based on exemplary or ethical prophecy. Examples of this are calls for social justice and equality (used extensively in recent years) or the giving away of some of the Church’s possessions for certain causes (for example, a ring in a Brazilian slum). In a less prophetic vein, the replacement of personal charisma of office and the routinization of charisma are other examples of the use of this kind of power.

The Vatican with one hundred years of experience in controlling nations through these lay Catholic organizations, has chosen to export this highly developed mechanism for control of lay Catholics and democratic processes to the United States. In 1975, the Church launched its Pastoral Plan of Action. The “committees” discussed in this plan are the same “committees” discussed by Vaillancourt that are used to control lay Catholics and to serve as political machinery. These “committees” which make up anti-abortion organizations are openly being used by the Vatican to manipulate the American democratic process. This includes the Moral Majority organization, as unsuspecting Protestants lend their support. For those who have figured out that they are being used, the lust for power or attention given them is enough to keep them in the fold.

The Pastoral Plan of Action was supposedly initiated by the Vatican because “the will of God and the law of reason” demanded an unrelenting fight against abortion. However, by 1978, it became apparent that the Vatican had simply seized upon a golden opportunity to mobilize Catholic America into a political party using its “right-to-life committees”—including the Moral Majority. Some observers began to recognize that these very same “committees” were being used to fight the other “enemies” of the Catholic Church: the ERA, family planning, the environmental movement, illegal immigration control, and support for the Global 2000 Report. I am now convinced that abortion was simply an excuse to politically mobilize the American Catholic Church and create, de facto, an American Catholic Political Party. The same techniques and tactics developed and used by the Church one hundred years ago to manipulate local, state, and national governments on other continents are exactly the same techniques and tactics seen in America today!

In 1977, victory for the ERA movement seemed almost certain. Few Americans realize the fantastic amount of organization and mobilization of human resources, funds, and commitment it took on the part of the Vatican to turn apparent victory for the ERA into defeat. Phyllis Schlafly, a Catholic, and the “organization” she headed, got more help from the Vatican and the American bishops than most Americans can possibly imagine. Judge Dooling found the anti-abortionists’ claim that they were a grass-roots movement to be spurious; the belief that the anti-ERA forces are also a grass-roots movement is ridiculous.

As serious observers study the opposition to the family-planning movement, the environmental movement, illegal immigration control, and the Global 2000 Report, they recognize just how sophisticated the opposition is—the amount of energy, organization, and direction each has—and that the opposition is all the same people, the same committees.

Conclusion

This is not an abstract theory. Such organization has been effective in Italy and other countries and was described by Vaillancourt before it got underway in earnest in the United States. Until those of us who are concerned about these social justice issues are willing to confront the Catholic hierarchy, there will be no significant advances in these areas of social justice. So long as the Church can act “undercover,” it will continue to be effective in thwarting significant advances. Our willingness to permit the Church to act in secrecy in America vastly enhances its power. It is absolutely essential that our silence be shattered. If not, then no matter which of these causes is “our cause” it’s a lost cause. Just as important, the strength of a threatening Vatican-controlled political party in America will continue to grow. American Catholics who are seriously concerned about social justice must take the pope and the Vatican at their word when they say that they do not intend to change their course. Catholics must be aware that the pope and the Vatican are choosing their social justice issues very selectively. In the 1970s, Cardinal Leo Suenens proposed that the position of pope and the Vatican, as we know it, be eliminated and that four “mini-pope” positions be created; this is consistent with Catholic teachings. He insisted that this is feasible. Perhaps it is time for socially responsible American Catholics to break the American Church away from the control of the Vatican. Otherwise, they as individuals stand to be accused of the same hypocrisy practiced by their Church hierarchy.

---

[8] D. J. Dooling, decision in McRae vs. HEW, New York: U.S. District Court. See, Appendix 1 for a more complete extract from Judge Dooling’s decision.

[9] P. D. Young, “Richard A. Viguerie: The New Right’s Secret Power Broker,” Penthouse (December 1982), p. 146.

[10] Maxine Negri, “A Well-Planned Conspiracy,” The Humanist (May/June 1982), 42:3:40.

[11] Jean-Guy Vaillancourt, Papal Power: A Study of Vatican Control Over Lay Catholic Elites (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

Dr. Stephen Mumford is the founder and President of the North Carolina-based Center for Research on Population and Security. He has his doctorate in Public Health. His principal research interest has been the relationship between world population growth and national and global security. He has been called to provide expert testimony before the U.S. Congress on the implications of world population growth.

Dr. Mumford has decades of international experience in fertility research where he is widely published, and has addressed conferences worldwide on new contraceptive technologies and the stresses to the security of families, societies and nations that are created by continued uncontrolled population growth. Using church policy documents and writings of the Vatican elite, he has introduced research showing the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as the principal power behind efforts to block the availability of contraceptive services worldwide.

In addition to his books on biomedical and social aspects of family planning, as well as scientific articles in more than a score of journals, Dr. Mumford’s major works include: The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1996); The Pope and the New Apocalypse: The Holy War Against Family Planning (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1986); and American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1984).

Professor Milton Siegel, who for 24 years was the Assistant Director-General of the World Health Organization, speaks to Dr. Mumford in 1992 to reveal that although there was a consensus that overpopulation was a grave public health threat and would be a major cause of preventable death not too far in the future, the Vatican successfully fought off the incorporation of family planning and birth control into official WHO policy. This video is available for public viewing for the first time. Read the full transcript of the interview here.

The Fascist Vatican

Empire – The Vatican: A Wholly Roman Empire?

 

 

 

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Conspiracism

Conspiracism

It is very effective to mobilize mass support against a scapegoated enemy by claiming that the enemy is part of a vast insidious conspiracy against the common good. The conspiracist worldview sees secret plots by tiny cabals of evildoers as the major motor powering important historical events; makes irrational leaps of logic in analyzing factual evidence in order to “prove” connections, blames social conflicts on demonized scapegoats, and constructs a closed metaphysical worldview that is highly resistant to criticism.^~1

When conspiracist scapegoating occurs, the results can devastate a society, disrupting rational political discourse and creating targets who are harassed and even murdered. Dismissing the conspiracism often found in right-wing populism as irrational extremism, lunatic hysteria, or marginalized radicalism does little to challenge these movements, fails to deal with concrete conflicts and underlying institutional issues, invites government repression, and sacrifices the early targets of the scapegoaters on the altar of denial. An effective response requires a more complex analysis.

The Dynamics of Conspiracism

The dynamic of conspiracist scapegoating is remarkably predictable. Persons who claim special knowledge of a plot warn their fellow citizens about a treacherous subversive conspiracy to attack the common good. What’s more, the conspiracists announce, the plans are nearing completion, so that swift and decisive action is needed to foil the sinister plot. In different historical periods, the names of the scapegoated villains change, but the essentials of this conspiracist worldview remain the same.^~2

George Johnson explained that “conspiratorial fantasies are not simply an expression of inchoate fear. There is a shape, an architecture, to the paranoia.” Johnson came up with five rules common to the conspiracist worldview in the United States:^~3

“The conspirators are internationalist in their sympathies.

“[N]othing is ever discarded. Right-wing mail order bookstores still sell the Protocols of the Elders of Zion…[and] Proofs of a Conspiracy [from the late 1700’s].

“Seeming enemies are actually secret friends. Through the lens of the conspiracy theorists, capitalists and Communists work hand in hand.

“The takeover by the international godless government will be ignited by the collapse of the economic system.

“It’s all spelled out in the Bible. For those with a fundamentalist bent, the New World Order or One World Government is none other than the international kingdom of the Antichrist, described in the Book of Revelation.

Conspiracism can occur as a characteristic of mass movements, between sectors in an intra-elite power struggle, or as a justification for state agencies to engage in repressive actions. Conspiracist scapegoating is woven deeply into US culture and the process appears not just on the political right but in center and left constituencies as well.^{~4 There is an entrenched network of conspiracy-mongering information outlets spreading dubious stories about public and private figures and institutions. They use media such as printed matter, the internet, fax trees, radio programs, videotapes and audiotapes.~5}

---

 

If you want to jump out of this article, try these related pages:

The Conspiracism Collection:

• Conspiracism as a Flawed Worldview An Introduction with Links
• Dynamics of Conspiracist Scapegoating Part of a longer article {You are here}
• 9/11: General Conspiracist Views Shortly After the Attack An Archive
• 9/11: Conspiracism Post 9/11
  • Further discussion of post-911 conspiracism

The Sucker Punch Collection

• The Sucker Punch Series – Introduction
• Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, & the Reform Party
• Lenora Fulani and the Politics of Opportunism
• Right Wing Populism
• Right Wing Anti-Globalism
• Conspiracism as a Flawed Worldview An Introduction with Links

Spain Charges 10 Priests in Country’s Largest Known Pedophilia Case

Spain Charges 10 Priests in Country’s Largest Known Pedophilia Case

Agence France-Presse

Pope Francis (AFP Photo / Filippo Monteforte)

Spain’s Catholic Church, which has long been accused of silencing cases of priests sexually abusing children, is starting to take a hard line against offenders, spurred by Pope Francis.

A judge in the southern city of Granada on Tuesday charged 10 priests and two Catholic lay workers with sexually abusing altar boys in their care, or being complicit in such acts, from 2004 to 2007.

It is the biggest and most serious paedophilia case involving members of the Catholic Church known so far in Spain.

The case was brought to light by a former altar boy, now 25 and a member of the Catholic institution Opus Dei, who wrote to the pontiff to say he had been molested.

Pope Francis called the unidentified man to offer the Church’s apology and in November the pontiff said he had ordered a church investigation into the case, saying it had caused him “great pain”.

The young man who wrote to the pope “never imagined the issue would take on the significance that it did,” his lawyer, Jorge Aguilera Gonzalez, told AFP.

“If it wasn’t for the pope’s intervention, it would still have been an important issue, but just one of many.”

Pope Francis has taken a tough stance on clerical child abuse since taking over in 2013 from Benedict XVI, calling it “the shame of the Church”.

The Catholic Church had huge influence in Spain during Francisco Franco’s 1939-75 dictatorship and for decades victims kept quiet about abuse “due to social pressure, the power of the Church”, said Jose Manuel Vidal, head of religious news website Religion Digital.

That explains why, unlike in Germany, Ireland, Mexico or the United States, until now no major cases of paedophilia involving priests have come to light in Spain even though abuse took place.

Nine percent of all sexual abuse suffered by boys between 1950 and 1970 was carried out by priests, according to a 1994 study by University of Salamanca psychology of sexuality professor Felix Lopez for the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The abuse often took place in boarding schools, as depicted in Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almodovar’s 2004 film “Bad Education”.

– Social change –

Spain has become an increasingly secular society since the country returned to democracy after Franco’s death in 1975.

Of Spain’s 33 million who declare they are Catholics, 61 percent say they are non-practising, according to a November survey by the state Sociological Research Centre (CIS).

“Now some bishops have changed, they have turned towards Pope Francis’s new era,” said Vidal.

“Others are lagging behind what the pope is asking for, which is total transparency and that paedophilia be considered by bishops themselves not just as a sin, as it has been up until now, but also as a crime,” he added.

While priests accused of abuse have often remained in their posts, the Archbishop of Granada, Francisco Javier Martinez, removed several priests linked to the case from their duties as soon as the scandal broke.

Still some voices, even within the church, called for Martinez himself to step down.

“Given that every day the opinion grows that he acted to cover up the alleged paedophiles, we think he should be removed,” Catholic group Comunidades Cristianas Populares de Andalucia said in a statement.

The archdiocese of Granada denied any cover-up and the priests accused over the alleged sexual abuse say they are innocent, according to their lawyer.

After the scandal broke in Granada, other victims of abuse have come forward with complaints and bishops have responded with a tough stance.

At the end of November, a 45-year-old man alleged he was abused in 1982 at a seminary in Tarragona in northeastern Spain when he was 11 years old.

After living with the secret his entire life, the man said he was encouraged to come forward by the paedophile case in Granada.

The Archbishop of Tarragona immediately launched an investigation, informed the Vatican and encouraged all victims to file criminal complaints.

The following month the diocese of Tui-Vigo in northwestern Spain abolished a religious order after its founder was accused of sexual abuse and detained by police.

“Things are changing,” said Juan Pedro Oliver, the president of children’s rights association Prodeni.

“But it is because of the attitude of the pope. I think if it was up to the Spanish Church hierarchy this would not be the case.”

Christianity Is A Sick Death Cult

Christianity Is A Sick Death Cult

Christopher Hitchens

Christianity is often criticised as a death cult, with its preoccupation with suffering, torture, death, relics (human remains) and hell. Its most central doctrines concern the torture and death of a man-god, and Roman Catholics still purport to eat his (real) flesh and drink his (real) blood. Its main emblem, the cross, worshipped like a holy saint, is an instrument of torture and death. In churches around Europe you can find the miraculously preserved miracle-working relics of thousands of Christian martyrs and other saints. At least that is what devout Christians will tell you. According to many Christians, saints’ bodies do not decay like ordinary human bodies. They miraculous stay fresh and sweet indefinitely. One of the most curious aspects of this is that all of the remains shown off as “perfectly preserved” are at best mummified, and more often decomposed. Many of these “perfectly preserved” remains are skeletons with padded cloths, furnished with shoes, gloves and face masks.

St Theodosius, Basilica of Waldsassen

On Catholic websites you can easily find accounts of these perfectly preserved remains, moving, smiling and requiring regular attention for their hair and nails which continue to grow.

The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 decreed that every altar should contain a relic, and this requirement remains part of Church Law, in Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Detractors say that these relics – often but not always the remains of dead people – are one of the main manifestations of necrophiliac practices, which appeal to a disturbingly large number of Christians. Dressing up dead bodies in gold and jewels and putting them on public display seems as best macabre, and at worst confirmation that Christianity is a cult of death with disturbing sexual overtones, evidenced by the strangely excited states of some devotees. Other Christian devotees even pay the dead-bodies money to do supernatural favours for them.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the cult of saints is the dismemberment of bodies for the members to be preserved or sometimes eaten by the devout. When Bishop Hugh of Lincoln chewed on a bone of Mary Magdelene preserved at Fecamp he was challenged by the guardians of the precious relic, and defended his action by saying that if he could eat Christ’s body [in the Catholic mass] then he could certainly chew on the Magdalen’s arm.

Devout and noble people often had their hearts removed after death, and those who cut them out often noted that these hearts had pictures engraved upon them, generally representing the things most dear to them in life. Sadly none of these pictures have survived on the perfectly preserved hearts of any of the saints, for whom this miracle was claimed. (So our only surviving reminder of the phenomenon is the often quoted claim of Bloody Mary that the word “Calais” would be found written on her heart after her death.

The question of whether relics have ever worked properly attested miracles is covered at Miracles, Revelation & Faith, but it is worth noting where many relics come from.

According to the Catholic Church many came from the Christian catacombs under Rome, and this is true as far as it goes. The Roman catacombs had been abandoned as burial sites and largely forgotten by the sixth century. They were rediscovered in 1578 by vineyard workers. This looked like a God-send as the Catholic Church was engaged in the Counter-Reformation and keen to promote the cult of relics. One of the areas of concern of the Council of Trent was affirming the efficacy and belief in relics against attacks by Protestant detractors. The bones in the catacombs were a treasure trove. The remains in the catacombs dated from the second to fifth centuries AD so it was possible, for Churchmen to imagine the bones as belonging to famous early Christian saints and martyrs. They correctly saw the cache of bones as the perfect tool to promote their power and wealth. The bones were removed, sold to willing buyers, dressed in gold, silver and jewels, and put on public display to attract the faithful.

Skull Cathedral in Otranto

What the Church is more reticent about is how we know whose remains they are. There was no way of knowing if they belonged to Christians or to pagans who had not been cremated (some but not all pagans were cremated). To find out who the bones belonged to Priests used psychic mediums, or acted as mediums themselves, or even used the services of psychic popes. The practice continued until the mid-19th century.

Churches in the German-speaking Alps, vied to obtain the sanctified skeletons, in mass quantities. The Diocese of Konstanz accumulated 120 of them in the 17th and 18th centuries. The pose and decoration of the bones was left to local churches, who used familiar methods to decide on poses and the extent of decoration – they simply asked the bones, again relying on psychic powers. Priests, nuns and other mediums communed with the bones, and the bones told them how they preferred to be posed and what they would like to wear. At St Gallen Monastery a team of nuns, prayed over the [second set of] remains of St Pancratius until they were rewarded by details of his preferred articulation, dress and jewels, though he neglected to mention that he had died at the age of 14 and was not, as they thought, a soldier. Sometimes the bones were more compliant. At the Basilica at Waldsassen, according to local records, the skeleton of St Maximus helpfully positioned itself. For some reason, Catholic writers were reluctant to give specifics about psychically communing with bones in the catacombs, but SI Mahoney, a Catholic priest who left the Church, wrote an account of the process. He said that periodic trips were made to the catacombs, to augment the supply of relics. No one knew the identity of the skeletons, or even if the skeletons were those of Christians – hence the need for psychic communications.

Bone Monstrance, The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: Kostnice v Sedlci) a Roman Catholic chapel, beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. A monstrance or ostensorium is a vessel used in Roman Catholic churches to display the consecrated Eucharistic host, during Eucharistic adoration or Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.

Mahoney mentions that Pope Gregory XVI would descend into the catacombs accompanied by priests. There he would invoke the Holy Ghost, and read a prayer, “by which Divine assistance, and directions from on high, is sought for the performance of this… solemn duty. The Pope then casts his eyes around the confused mass of mouldering skeletons, and, as the whim may take him, calls this the body of saint such-a-one, another, the body of ‘Virgin some-other-one’ – and so on, till he is warned by his attendants that enough are now baptized… to serve for the present occasion. The rotten bones are then carefully collected, and, having been sprinkled with holy water, are placed in a chest prepared for that purpose, and carried in procession to the Vatican.” [SI Mahoney, Six Years in the Monasteries of Italy, and Two Years in the Islands of the Mediterranean and in Asia Minor, New York, 1836, pp261-262.]. Such exercises were immensely profitable, as the holy relics were then sold to the devout rich.

The psychic abilities of priests and popes were not always reliable. They identified bones as belonging to Christians they had heard of, but who had died and been buried elsewhere, or whose miracle-working skeletons were already being venerated, sometimes in several different places. Constantine the Great, for example, was buried in Constantinople, yet the bones of his second body were identified in the catacombs and are now working their miracles in Rott-am-Inn, a parochial church in Germany. The Church of St Nicholas in Wil in Switzerland, possesses skeleton of the third-century martyr St Pancratius, taken from the catacombs in the 17th century, even though the saint’s relics were already in the Basilica San Pancratio in Rome. The remains of St Deodatus declared their identity to a papal secretary in 1688, even though he had several other dead bodies already being venerated and working miracles elsewhere in Italy. Perfectly preserved saintly bodies are becoming ever less accessible to the public, and even to the faithful. They can still be seen in a few traditionalist areas of Europe, most notably at the Papal Basilica of Waldsassen (Stiftsbasilika Waldsassen) – though it is notable that such locations have ceased to be widely advertised.

Mummy at Santa Maria della Grazie, Comiso, Sicily By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com/

The Catholic Church is still keen on the cult of the dead, celebrated at the beginning of November in pre-Christian times. According to the current Catholic Enchiridion of Indulgences, one can apply a plenary indulgence to a departed soul by the “visitation of a cemetery” from November 1st to the 8th.:

13. Visit to a Cemetery (Coemeterii visitatio)

An indulgence, applicable only to the Souls in Purgatory, is granted to the faithful, who devoutly visit a cemetery and pray, even if only mentally, for the departed.

The indulgence is plenary each day from the 1st to the 8th of November; on other days of the year it is partial.

Most of this website is closely reasoned, but for the rest of this page, the pictures can speak for themselves. Catholics are encouraged to visit and venerate not just ordinary graves, but dead bodies and dismembered body parts.

Saint Ambrose, Milan – not quite perfectly preserved despite his great holiness

The perfectly preserved remains of St Francis Xavier in Goa in 2004 (The body is rumoured to be that of a Buddhist Monk dressed up, Francis Xavier’s body having been buried as sea) No DNA tests to establish the truth have been permitted

The perfectly preserved remains of St Francis Xavier in Goa (His missing toes were bitten off by enthusiastic Christian pilgrims)

Chapel of Bones. Royal Church of St. Francis. Portugal

St Wenceslas at the Basilica in Stara Bolesav, outside Prague

Christians offer money to skulls to answer their prayers The Sedlec Ossuary beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com/

Painted Skulls. Hallstatt Ossuary. Hallstatt, Austria

St Maximus, Basilica of Waldsassen

Chiesa dei Morti, Urbino, Italy The body of Pope Celestine V – his badly decomposed state concealed by gloves and a wax mask Pope Celestine V again – note the wax mask and badly stuffed papal glove. St Clemens, Church of SS Peter and Paul, Rott-am-Inn, Germany

The conveniently labelled and miraculously preserved skull of one of the many saints called St Valentine

The remains of John Neumann inside the glass altar of St. Peter of the Apostle Church in Philadelphia, USA His skull is covered with a face mask. Evidently he is regarded as a suitable playmate for young children.

Monastery of Santa Maria della Concezione. Rome, Italy By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com/

Another death cult – this is supposed to be the Skull of St Mary Magdelen kept at La Sainte Baume, Diocese of Frejus-Toulon, Southern France. It attracts thousands of pilgrims each year, and is sometimes taken on world tours

The Death mask of Martin Luther along with casts of his hands. Lutherans and other protestants do not recognise the veration of relics, so these gruesome artefacts are kept in a museum, not a Church.

The Ossuary of St. James’ Church. Brno, Czech Republic

The body of Cardinal Schuster in the Duomo, Milan

The perfectly preserved bodies of two virgins Chapel of the Virgins, Monastery of Santa Maria della Pace, Palermo

The perfectly preserved hand of St James, kept in St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Marlow, England

These skeletons were recovered from the Roman catacombs, and identified as Christian martyrs by psychic Roman Catholic priests – and so might well not even be the skeletons of Christians at all Basilica of Waldsassen

The perfectly preserved remains of Pope Paul XXIII His skull is fitted with a wax mask

The Dead Lovers by Matthias Grünewald (1470 – 1528)

St Theodosius, Basilica of Waldsassen

Relics of St. Theodore of Tyro (known as St. Theodore of Amasea in the West) Brindisi Greek Orthodox Church dedicated to St. Nicholas of Myra.

The Czermna Skull Chapel. It is situated in Klodzko County, near Kudowa Zdrój, in the Lower Silesia, Poland.

The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: Kostnice v Sedlci) a Roman Catholic chapel, beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.

The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: Kostnice v Sedlci) a Roman Catholic chapel, beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.

Schwarzenberg Coat-of-Arms. The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: Kostnice v Sedlci) a Roman Catholic chapel, beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.

The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: Kostnice v Sedlci) a Roman Catholic chapel, beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints, in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic.

Ossuary chapel (Capela dos Ossos), Campo Maior, Portugal By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com/

Chiesa di San Bernardino alle Ossa

Ossuary (Osario), Custoza, Italy By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com/

The skull of Pope Pius X, covered with a face mask

Teresa of Avila was cut into pieces by priests and bishops. Here two nuns kiss her hand, preserved as a miracle-working relic.

The wax figure of St Victoria under the St Margaret Mary Altar at St. Mary’s Church in Kilkenny City, Ireland

Charnel house (Beinhaus = “bone-house”), Leuk, Switzerland) By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com/

Family group in the catacombs,Santa Maria della Pace, Palermo, Sicily Readers with stronger stomachs than the webmaster can look up the name “Rosalia Lombardo” on Google for more about the death-cult at Santa Maria della Pace By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com

Paris Catacombs By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com

Mummy Chiesa dei Morti (Church of Death), Urbania, Italy By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com

The remains of Pope Pius IX (d 1878) – acclaimed by the Church as being “almost perfectly conserved”

Saint Valerius, Weyarn, Germany By kind permission © Paul Koudounaris http://empiredelamort.com

The body of the (fictitious) Saint Celia (or Celia) was so well preserved that it has been replaced by replicas. One is in plain marble, by Stefano Moderno (1599) in the Church of St. Cecilia, Trastevere, Rome. The other, a polychrome replica, is shown below.

St Pancratius, Church of St Nicholas in Wil, Switzerland. you can see his perfectly preserved body within his specially designed armour

Bible illustration by Gustave Dore, The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14)

The Transi de René de Chalon, ou Monument du cœur (Monument of the Heart), a sculpture by Ligier Richier, carved around 1547. Today in the Church of Saint-Étienne de Bar-le-Duc

The perfectly preserved relics of Saint Anthony of Padua, displayed in the Relics Chapel of the Basilica in Padua, Italy

Relics in the Church of St. Anselmo, Nin, Croatia. Less impressive relics are often kept in gold and silver containers shaped like the part of the saint’s body they allegedly contain

St Therese’s relics on tour in Britain, being venerated in Westminster Cathedral, London, in October 2009

An example of Catholic “art”

Chiesa dei Morti, Urbino, Italy

Sacrifical and bleeding lambs are also popular

The perfectly preserved “Holy Right” hand of King Stephen I, St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, Hungary

Saint Philip Neri, Chiesa Nuova, Rome

One of the many miraculously preserved heads of St. John the Baptist This one is kept in the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Amiens

Santa Muerte Pieta

St. Valentin (Bad Schussenried, Germany)

The Kiss of Death Statue at the Old Graveyard of Poblenou in Barcelona

Saint Vincent de Paul, Chapelle Saint-Vincent-de-Paul (Paris, 6ème arrondissement)

Mourning Jesus, or mourning a normal family life?

St. Valentinus (Waldsassen, Germany)

St. Benedictus (Berg am Laim, Munich, Germany)

St. Deodatus (Rheinau, Swizterland)

St. Albertus (Burgrain, Germany)

St. Valerius (Weyarn, Germany)

St. Felix (Gars am Inn, Germany)

St. Vincentus (Stams, Austria)

St. Deodatus (Roggenburg, Germany)

St. Konstantious (Rorschach, Switzerland)

St. Maximus (Bürglen, Switzerland)

Familia de esqueletos (Family of Skeletons), c. 1800, José López Enguídanos (Valencia, 1760 – Madrid, 1812)

Perfectly preserved nun?

Faith-Based Politics: Kinship Between National Socialism and Roman Catholicism

Faith-Based Politics: Kinship Between National Socialism & Roman Catholicism

 

In Christian Nations, Christians Rationalize the Blending of Religion, Politics

By Austin Cline

It’s common for Christians to assume that Christian churches resisted Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany. The truth is that not only did few even go so far as to voice criticism, much less overtly and publicly resist, but some actually made serious arguments for the idea that Christianity and Nazi ideology were totally compatible. Such arguments for compatibility could either focus on the ideologies’ specific teachings, on their general approaches to life and society, or both.

Fusing Christianity & National Socialism

A focus on the “essence” of Christianity and National Socialism was probably more common, and Christians who did this also tended to discover that both were inherently more compatible with the German character. The idea that there was something essentially “German” about “true” Christianity might seem bizarre today, but it’s not that different from Christians in America acting like Christianity is especially compatible with American politics, American market capitalism, the American character. Just how often do we see Americans behaving as though they believe their god singles out America for special blessings and favors?

Protestants in Nazi Germany, not unlike their counterparts in modern America, tried to fuse Christianity with their contemporary politics much more than Catholics, but Nazi Catholics were able to rely on the fact that their own church is so authoritarian. If authoritarian control is acceptable within the church, it’s hard to argue that it’s unacceptable for the government.

There were certainly Catholics who believed that Nazi ideology was contrary to and incompatible with their Catholicism, but there were also plenty who just as sincerely believed that Nazi ideology was compatible with their Catholicism. I’m not arguing that the latter were more right than the former, but rather that the latter were just as sincere as the former and could offer serious theological and historical arguments to back their case.

Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany

In Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany, Robert A. Krieg describes the five points offered by Catholic theologian Joseph Lortz when he argued that “the basic kinship between National Socialism and Catholicism” was becoming evident to all Christians in Germany:

(1) like the church, “National Socialism is essentially an opponent of Bolshevism, liberalism, [and] relativism.” It affirms what popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII explicitly taught: authentic civil authority is much more than the will of “the majority.”
(2) like the church, “National Socialism is the declared opponent of the atheist movement and also of the lack of ethics in society.” Building on this healthy formation, the church can address “the great task of the present age: the creation of a new ‘Catholic human being’ who will replace the Sunday Catholic.” As Lortz saw it, this kind of cooperation between church and state occurred in Italy, where Pius XI and Mussolini initiated in 1931 collaboration between the Catholic youth organization and the state.
(3) National Socialism and Catholicism affirm “the natural order of creation.” National Socialism is intent upon leading Germans back to their cultural and ethnic origins so that they may once again flourish as a people. Since Catholicism believes in the complementarity of nature and grace, it can endorse Nazi efforts in this regard and simultaneously build on this foundation while it focuses on the spiritual realm.
(4) National Socialism and Catholicism hold that a society is not merely an association of individuals but rather a social unity in which individuals participate. Pius XI himself called for a corporatist society in his encyclical Quadragesimo Anno.
(5) National Socialism and Catholicism aim at overcoming modernity’s “spiritless intellectualism.” Both emphasize the “spiritual life” that undergirds intellectual inquiry.
Finally, these five points indicate at National Socialism and Catholicism share a “kinship of essence.” For this reason, in relating to the Nazi state, the church should “work for the fulfillment of the genuine essence of National Socialism.”

Many may be surprised at attempts to draw such detailed parallels between Nazi ideology and Catholicism, but this happens in many other cultures with many different political and economic systems. Everywhere you turn, you can find people trying to argue that “true” Christianity already anticipated or is most compatible with whatever political and economic systems they happen to be living in and we need to realize that neither will be entirely fulfilled until they are blended with other. We can find such arguments with communism and capitalism, democratic and authoritarian politics, liberalism, and conservatism, and so forth.

So Joseph Lortz wasn’t doing anything unusual — it’s just that he was doing it with a political and social ideology which everyone has come to realize is evil. No one who tries to blend Christianity with market capitalism or liberal politics wants to think that their project shares anything at all with what Christians like Lortz were doing, but ultimately they are all far more similar than they are different. Particularly significant here is the fact that as a professional theologian, Lortz can’t be dismissed as not being a “real” Christian — a common response from Christians when faced with stories of fellow believers whose political and social beliefs led them in a different direction.

Naturally the lesson here is not limited to Catholicism alone, or even just Christianity alone. Protestants and adherents of other religions engage in very similar behavior, though in my experience it seems to happen more often in the context of Christianity than other religions. I’ve never read about anyone trying to blend capitalism with Hinduism, or democratic politics with Buddhism. The ability of Christianity to blend with a variety of cultures, politics, and social systems has been part of what has made it so successful.

At the same time, though, it has led Christians to forget the degree to which contingent political ideologies, cultural traditions, and other external factors have become enmeshed with their faith. It might be wise for them to care about this and avoid actions which could serve to embed aspects of contemporary politics or economics into their religion. That’s one possible consequence of current faith-based politics which seeks to encourage greater political activism that is motivated by religious belief.

United Nations Challenges Vatican on Magdalene Asylums and Forced Adoptions

United Nations Challenges Vatican on Magdalene Asylums and Forced Adoptions

Virtual slaves at a Magdalene Asylum

As I have noted before, the Oscar nominated movie Philomena is a must see. Not only is the acting superb but the movie is based on a true story and in the end is a staggering indictment of the Roman Catholic Church. Now, the United Nations is demanding accountability and more importantly records on the Church’s Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and the manner in which young women were forced to relinquish their babies to adoption – often for a fee paid to the religious order running the horrid institutions. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the Vatican is trying to claim that it had and still has no control over these orders and institutions located outside of the Vatican. It’s the same disingenuous approach that has been taken by the Vatican in seeking to shirk blame for the worldwide sex abuse scandal. Here are highlights from Religion Dispatches:

In addition to calling Archbishop Silvano Tomasi and Bishop Charles J. Scicluna to account for a decades-long, worldwide epidemic of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, in violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Committee conducting this historic proceeding in Geneva last week also demanded responses to questions concerning the church’s trampling on girls’ reproductive health and rights.

Chairwoman Kirsten Sandberg and others wanted to know what the church was doing about uncovering the whereabouts of the children born to young, unmarried women who were essentially enslaved in Ireland’s Magdalene Asylums or Laundries and forced to relinquish their babies to adoption, a situation brilliantly dramatized in the film Philomena, with Oscar-nominated Judi Dench playing the real Philomena Lee.

“The position of the Holy See,” pronounced Tomasi, the Vatican’s Geneva representative to the UN, “is that the state has already taken its responsibility and is proceeding…through the courts….It is the responsibility of local institutions.” In other words, it’s not our job— the same position the Vatican officials took, repeatedly and disingenuously, on their refusal to act on local clergy sex abuse crimes.

Charging that the policy of the church institutions that ran the Laundries has not been to turn over their records, a blunt Sandberg issued a challenge: “I trust that you will ask the local churches to do that.” Neither Tomasi nor Scicluna, formerly the Vatican’s top sex abuse prosecutor, said that they would.

The chairwoman also brought up the story from Brazil of “the nine-year-old girl who had an emergency life-saving abortion after rape by her stepfather,” followed by the excommunication of mother and doctor, “with no measure taken against the father,” aka, the rapist. “Explain this,” Sandberg said. In that case, regional archbishops Jose Cardoso Sobrinho astonishingly admitted that the rapist had “committed an extremely serious crime,” but that “abortion is even more serious.”

Soon after, another committee member, Hungary’s Maria Herczog, brought up a situation from Nicaragua, where the Catholic Church vigorously supports a ban on all abortions. The situation involved “a ten-year-old girl forced to give birth after being raped, with the full support of the Catholic Church and the local community.

The church’s recent history worldwide is replete with stories of priests forcing the women they impregnated to have abortions; of nuns impregnated by priests being thrown out of their convents while the men remain priests in good standing; of mothers of priests’ children being forced to sign confidentiality agreements to get any support at all.

These issues—forcing children to bear children, forced child relinquishment, abandonment of children by Catholic priests—were not the main subjects of this hearing, but that they were mentioned is noteworthy because the church’s history of child abuse has taken many forms. And that history is tied intimately to the hierarchy’s history of secrecy, hypocrisy on the sexuality of its own clerics, misogyny which denies women’s moral authority, and gender apartheid, which relegates women to second-class status and surely enabled those all-male power brokers in clerical collars to callously dismiss the desperate mothers of molested children who came to them for action.

There is more to the piece that deserves a full read. The bottom line is that as an institution the Roman Catholic Church – and most certainly its hierarchy from the Pope on down – is morally bankrupt and unworthy of any respect, at least by decent moral people. Those who continue to attend mass and contribute to the Church monetarily are complicit in the horrors done by the hierarchy and the predators that it protects. Catholics need to open their eyes to the truth and walk away. The Vatican and the hierarchy will only change if and when the Church’s survival is seriously threatened by a mass exodus of members and a shutting off of the money spigot
.

Obama Is Closing The Vatican Embassy; and Other Right Wing Fairytales

No, Obama Is Not Closing The Vatican Embassy

BY JUDD LEGUM

CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

The internet is ablaze with some fairly shocking news: Obama is closing the Vatican embassy! “Obama’s call to close Vatican embassy is ‘slap in the face’ to Roman Catholics,” proclaims the Washington Times, in an article that has attracted more than 2700 comments and was prominently featured on the Drudge Report. “OBAMA ‘INSULTS’ CATHOLICS IN VATICAN-EMBASSY SHUTDOWN,” reports WND. The Daily Caller piles on with “Catholics furious over Obama plan to close Vatican embassy site.” Breitbart reports that “the Obama administration is trying to diminish and discredit the Vatican’s role in the world because it’s pro-life, pro-family, and pro-religious freedom values is at odds with the Regime’s pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage stance.”

So you might be surprised to learn that, in fact, Obama is not closing the embassy — or diminishing U.S. diplomatic relations with the Holy See in any way.

There are no embassies for any country in Vatican City itself — there is simply no room. All countries locate their embassies in the city of Rome. The United States has decided to move its embassy from its current location — an unremarkable converted residence — to the same compound as the U.S. Embassy to Italy. It will have it’s own separate building and a separate entrance on a different street. The new building is actually a tenth of a mile closer to the Vatican than the old one. There will be no reduction in staff or activities.

This hasn’t stopped 5 former U.S. envoys to the Vatican — including James Nicholson, the former chair of the Republican National Committee — from protesting. Nicholson characterized the move as “a massive downgrade.” Raymond Flynn, the first ambassador under Clinton, told the National Catholic Review that “It’s not just those who bomb churches and kill Catholics in the Middle East who are our antagonists, but it’s also those who restrict our religious freedoms and want to close down our embassy to the Holy See.” Flynn “described the move as part of broader secular hostility to religious groups.”

The plans for the move actually started under President Bush, whose administration purchased the buildings adjacent to the U.S. Embassy to Italy.

The State Department says the move, which will actually occur in 2015, will save $1.4 million per year and allow for greater security.

Related articles

• Former Ambassador Compares Obama To People Who ‘Bomb Churches And Kill Catholics’ (thinkprogress.org)
• Fact Check: Obama is not planning ‘to close the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican’ (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
• No, Obama Isn’t Shutting Down the Embassy to the Vatican (phillymag.com)
• Jeb Bush – the ‘Smart One’ – Tweets Crazy Falsehood About the U.S. Embassy at the Vatican (thedailybanter.com)
• Republicans More Offended By Vatican Embassy ‘Closure’ Than The Vatican (talkingpointsmemo.com)
• Right-wing noise machine says Obama plans to close Vatican embassy (blogs.e-rockford.com)

Jewish Sex Abuse Victim From New Square Speaks Out

Jewish Sex Abuse Victim From New Square Speaks Out

 

 

Jewish religious community defends a paedophile.

Says that ‘he is the best’ and ‘a nice guy’.

Still working with the kids.

Yossi, who prefers to use only his first name, says he wants to speak out about his ordeal in the hope that other victims of abuse will come forward. (8/29/13)

NEW SQUARE – A shroud of secrecy surrounds the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community of New Square. Many of the residents shun the outside world and keep to themselves.

However, a sex abuse victim from the community has spoken exclusively to News 12.

Yossi, who prefers to use only his first name, says he wants to speak out about his ordeal in the hope that other victims of abuse will come forward.

Yossi claims that Herschel Taubenfeld, a teacher in his community, inappropriately touched him three times a week for four months.

The teen asked for help from the head rabbis of New Square who had just set up their own sex crimes unit called the VAAD. The agency told him to see a therapist.

Two months later, Yossi reported the abuse to the Ramapo police. He says that his friends stopped talking to him and treated him like he didn’t exist.

Yossi says his attacker admitted to the crimes, but religious leaders in the community sent Taubenfeld to Israel to obtain his rabbinical ordination. He also says he was offered  $100,000 to keep quiet about the situation, which he refused.

In December 2011, one month after Yossi reported the abuse, Taubenfeld turned himself in. He was charged with 30 misdemeanor counts of forcible touching, endangering the welfare of a child and third-degree sex abuse. However, the rabbi avoided jail time in exchange for six years probation.

According to students, Taubenfeld is still teaching at one of New Square’s largest religious schools.

Related articles

• Jewish Orthodox Religious; Disturbing, Horrific Video Of Camp Dora Golding Child Sex Abuse (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• How Many More ‘Pious’ Sex Abusers Are There? (jewishpress.com)
• Orthodox Rabbi Arrested For Alleged 1st Degree Child Sex Abuse (failedmessiah.typepad.com)
• New Baruch Lebovits Revelation As Retrial Nears (privateinvesigations.blogspot.com)
• Disturbing, Horrific Video Of Camp Dora Golding Child Sex Abuse (failedmessiah.typepad.com)
• Judaism’s Fundamentalism Problem (failedmessiah.typepad.com)

Religious Families Regularly Beat Their Children; Abuse Study

GERMAN CHURCHES UP IN ARMS OVER ABUSE STUDY

by R.L. Stollar 

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Jennifer Stahl’s blog Yeshua, Hineni. It was originally published on November 25, 2013.

German Bible. Photo by J. Stahl.

In following the story of the Twelve Tribes, I had become aware of a study on religious families and their children, tendencies towards abuse and such being carried on within Germany. I had heard about the study. But not being registered to either the Evangelical, Free Evangelical or local Catholic Churches, we were not polled for the study, though we are a religious household.

I am somewhat curious as to what was in the survey itself. It seems rather revealing that the Free Evangelical churches are showing many of their members do, in fact, regularly beat their children.

For those who do not know, this is illegal to do in Germany.

One of my many concerns within the homeschooling movement and the greater German church community (especially after coming out of this environment in the United States) is to get away from the punitive and corporal punishment mindset, seeing children as sinful inconveniences unless they’re perfectly behaving like little adults and back to what the Bible actually teaches; namely love and parenting being a job of parent and child to do together.

My second major concern was finding on Amazon.de teachers such as: Michael and Debi Pearl (To Train Up A Child is now removed, but No Greater Joy volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3 remain); Ted Tripp has three books represented (this remains, and as does this also); James Dobson‘s harmful books; Bruce Ray’s Withhold Not Correction (also a Spanish edition!); Gary Ezzo‘s books; Elyse Fitzpatrick’s; Tim Kimmel‘s (there is a second book here), and a couple other religious punitive-based child training manuals can be found.

Finding those books means that there is a market here in Germany. That, as someone who was raised so punitively, terrifies me. It terrifies me because this means there are other children being raised this way, who will not know a day in their lives where just being children is not a sin.

I had heard that some time back, that one branch of the Evangelical Churches in Germany had made statements against corporal punishment and other punitive discipline methods, which created some shock when I saw the results of this study: 45,000 students from 9th grade forward and about 11,500 adults were polled (so over 50,000 individuals) and they found that one in six very religious children are smacked by their parents or given other punitive disciplinary methods against their undesirable behavior(s).

In the Catholic and other Protestant students, the rate is considerably lower, if not rare.

The results of the study were published here, and does run through Google Translate in a mostly discernible manner into English. The name of the study is “Christian religiosity and parental violence. A comparison of familial socialization of Catholics, Protestants and Members of the Free Churches.”

More on the study and why everyone’s up in arms:

With parents from free churches that have no academic training, but declared themselves as “religious” or “very religious”, the trend is even more pronounced: More than a quarter of the surveyed children from these families has at some juncture suffered massive violence in their household. The study’s authors also provide a possible explanation: There is “a Christian tradition of parental driven beating as discipline for children.”
NDR – Freikirchen wehren sich gegen Gewaltstudie

The findings in the survey are quite shocking to me. I’ll post some of the figures below for those of you who don’t have time to sift through a pages long PDF:

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

Source: http://www.ndr.de/regional/niedersachsen/freikirchen109.pdf

Now, these are in order, but without all of the information behind what makes this all so shocking. What I want to point out is that this is consistent with studies done in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere as it pertains to parental violence towards children and its affects on the children involved. One study paper that someone had pointed me towards a couple of years ago was “The Long Shadow: Adult Survivors of Child Abuse.” Psychology Today has several articles about this phenomenon as well. One that stands out in my memory is “The Lingering Trauma of Child Abuse.” (Note: My list is not exhaustive, but just to give an example of what one will find on the subject.)

Articles referenced within this NDR article and the PDF are as follows:

…in the late 90s the German Parliament had established a Study Commission to look at so-called sects and mind-control groups. The study found that in fundamentalist Christian communities there is a widespread “…significant advocacy for physical punishment…”
NDR – Kinder schlagen im Namen Gottes 21.12.2011

NDR.de: Critics say the national church must be clear in distancing themselves from such fundamentalist positions. Shouldn’t you make it clearer that you do not agree with such  positions [about corporal punishment being biblical]?

[Kerstin] Gäfgen-Track: In the case of these parenting books and this position, I can speak for the national church, because we draw a very clear line of demarcation. We have nothing to do with such, so we want to continuing having nothing to do with such. We wish to strongly condemn such counselors. [Ted Tripp and so on]  
NDR:  “Wir verurteilen das aufs Schärfste” 21.12.2011

…as they contradict the law and [Christian Beliefs], there is a secret culture of spanking among devout Christians… Parents who follow these beliefs belong to denominations such as those [found in the] Evangelical Free Churches and the Jehovah’s Witnesses who are apt to taking the Bible literally, and consider doubts about the Word of God as whisperings of Satan.
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Liebe geht durch den Stock 30.9.2010

…It is striking that the violence of evangelical parents seem to have a lasting effect on their young. With [such] systemic beatings, it may be that parents seek to break the will of children so that they would assimilate the beliefs of adults; warn psychologists..
Süddeutsche Zeitung: Schläge im Namen des Herrn  17.10.2010

There was a study published in April of this year (2013) by infoSekte in Zürich, Switzerland entitled “Erziehungsverständnisse in evangelikalen Erziehungsratgebern und -kursen.” (Yes, this too can be run through Google Translate!) It is 61 pages long, detailing “Problematic trends such as corporal punishment or psychological violence arising in connection with certain child rearing methods … [and] possible effects of certain parenting styles.” Also explained in the document is how Switzerland signed and ratified the UN Rights of the Child in 1997; and such parenting styles are incompatible with such an agreement.

The UN Rights of the Child is the very same document that many Christians in the United States have pushed for a refusal to ratify since the 1990s.

(The US has signed, but not ratified as of this date in time.) Also something to note; Michael Farris has really pushed home-schoolers into a frenzy over it as taking away parental rights to discipline punitively and claim it is “biblical.” (For the uninitiated, Michael Farris is the head of Patrick Henry College, The Homeschool Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and loosely affiliated with Schuzh, which defends many German home-schoolers in court. You may have recently seen Michael Farris in the news pushing against the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

If you get a chance, please do read this study. I understand that 61 pages is awfully long, but it is worth it. There is a serious problem when familial violence becomes an accepted piece of one’s culture and religious upbringing — when we normalize it to the extent that no one is shocked at all.

Issues brought forward by the Twelve Tribes in Germany are not at all shocking in many parts of the United States because such methods have become so normalized.

So many people believe it is the right thing to do. Anything contrary is “unbiblical.” That is not to say that there are not Christians, like myself, who believe that corporal punishment is actually what is contrary to the Bible.

If one wishes to claim that the Bible teaches beating their children, I would have to recommend you go back and actually investigate those claims for yourself as this is not understood to be the case within the Jewish community; and from whom we get the proof-text “spanking”/”smacking” passages from. It is a purely Christian phenomenon that came into place some time in the middle ages, as far as I can find at this juncture. Before, corporal discipline was for adult members of the faith who wished to submit themselves to flagellation.

One book that discusses this phenomenon and suggests a better way is Samuel Martin’s Book, Thy Rod And Thy Staff They Comfort Me: Christians and the Spanking Controversy.  I have others, should you wish to peruse them, but they are not free.

There are wonderful articles referenced here in an older post on my blog and I also have a ton on my Pinterest parenting boards, should you have an account there.

If you don’t know about the Pearls and their harmful teaching, I’d be happy to throw you more than the recommendation to read Hermana Linda’s Blog and this review of the Pearl’s ministry.  I would also like to mention that any court willing to speak with me personally is more than welcome to discuss punitive upbringing, homeschooling, corporal punishment proof-texts, etc.  I’m not an expert, but I’ve lived through it and am working to change things with my children and advocating for others to the best of my abilities.

Update: Michael and Debi Pearl and critiques about them and information on the Hana Williams case were on CNN last night via Anderson Cooper. If you still doubt the methods this couple advocates, look no further.

I would like to leave with a closing message by Robbyn Peters. It is “Violence: A Family Tradition.” For those who are still unconvinced, I ask that you please consider Robbyn’s words and investigate for yourself.

Related articles

• German Churches Up in Arms over Abuse Study (homeschoolersanonymous.wordpress.com)
• The Sick Biblical Literalism That Puts Children at Risk of Abuse and Even Death (new.exchristian.net)
• Faith Healing: Religious Freedom vs. Child Protection (sciencebasedmedicine.org)
• More religion as child abuse: Parents get stiff jail time for beating their child to death using Christian guidelines (whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)
• Little-known Statistics About Child Abuse in the United States (pediatrics.answers.com)
• Being Good for Goodness’ Sake: Why Operation Christmas Child Is Wrong (huffingtonpost.com)
• Catholic Teacher Accused of Boy’s Molestation (vaticancrimes.us)

PM Tony Abbott; Personally and Politically Rooted in Fascist Catholicism

Abbott and Santamaria’s undemocratic Catholicism

by Paul Collins

I grew up surrounded by the Democratic Labor Party, the ‘Movement’, Jesuit Father Harold Lalor and the Labor split. My parents distributed how-to-vote cards for the DLP. My uncle edited the Richmond News for the federal member for Yarra, Stan Keon, one of the Labor MPs who defected to the Anti-Communist Labor Party. That same uncle worked full-time for the Movement and was later Victorian country organiser for the right wing Clerks Union.

My parents eventually abandoned the DLP because of its extremism, and when Bob Santamaria attacked me in 1986 over my book Mixed Blessings my uncle severed all contact with him. So I don’t look back with nostalgia to either Santamaria or the Movement. I experienced the toxic divisiveness.

Apparently unlike Tony Abbott who, at the January 2007 launch of Santamaria’s Selected Letters said, ‘I was lucky to know B. A. Santamaria for the last 22 years of his life, to have attended diligently to his writing and speaking.’ Santamaria, he says ‘left Australian Catholicism more intellectual and less politically tribal’, by which he presumably means there are now Catholics in Coalition as well as Labor ranks.

Santamaria’s influence on Abbott’s policies has been much discussed lately by The Australian‘s Paul Kelly, Labor’s Maxine McKew, John Warhurst in Eureka Street, Gerard Henderson in the Sydney Morning Herald and Robert Manne in The Monthly. Reference has been made to Abbott’s close relationship to Cardinal George Pell, another self-proclaimed disciple of Santamaria.

But more important than the influence of particular policies is the ‘type’ of Catholicism Santamaria represented and the subtle, even unconscious influence this might have on Abbott.

Essentially Santamaria embraced a form of theological integralism which sees everything in the world as tainted unless it is ‘integrated’ or brought into the orbit of Catholicism. Integralism assumes that the Church has an unchallengeable, complete and accessible body of doctrine that gives guidance in every possible eventuality — social, political, strategic, economic, familial and personal.

Integralism defines Catholicism in a particularly narrow, aggressive, ‘boots and all’ way, and argues that Catholic action involves influencing and if possible controlling state policy. Thus Catholics are obliged to do all in their power to ensure that all legislation is in keeping with church doctrine.

As Santamaria said in 1948: ‘the most important objective of Christians … [is that they] should be capable of formulating or willing to follow a distinctively Christian policy on every social and public issue.’

But what is a ‘distinctively Christian’ (for ‘Christian’ read ‘Catholic’) policy? For Santamaria this was not a problem. He identified Catholicism with his own vision of faith. He refused to recognise that there were other equally sincere Catholics who had other theological ideas about the relationship of the church to the world and the state, people like Archbishop Justin Simonds, Dr Max Charlesworth, the YCW and the Catholic Worker group, who were influenced by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain and the Belgian Cardinal Joseph Cardijn.

Integralism has much in common with Italian Fascism, Franco’s Spain or Salazar’s Portugal. It is also at odds with the Vatican II Declaration on Religious Freedom: ‘Freedom means that all are to be immune from coercion … in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs.’

It is a real threat to democracy and to the freedom that Catholics have to make their own decisions on a whole range of issues, particularly political.

Nowadays Santamaria is praised for being an agrarian socialist and anti-capitalist. While this has made him popular with some aging secular leftists, they forget that these movements are romantic, backward-looking, authoritarian and linked with high immigration rates and the mantra ‘populate or perish’ with its racist overtones.

So what does this have to do with Abbott? I think it would be worrying if this kind of integralist Catholicism infected contemporary public life. It has no place in a pluralist, democratic state. It is also the manifestation of the kind of Catholicism that was abandoned by serious, mainstream Catholics five decades ago.

Abbott is wrong to suggest that it has made Australian Catholicism ‘more intellectual’. It is, in fact, a form of doctrinaire conformism that is the death of thoughtful commitment and is the antithesis of a faith seeking to base itself in reason and understanding.

I am not claiming that Abbott consciously follows Santamaria’s integralism. But there is always the danger of osmosis, of absorbing attitudes without realising it. If I were a politician — or an archbishop — I’d want to put considerable distance between myself and the most divisive man in the history of Australian Catholicism.

Author and historian Paul Collins is a former specialist editor — religion for the ABC.

Related articles

• Abbott’s brazen Gonski backflip (smh.com.au)
• Brief Review; New Australian PM signifies further right-wing shift (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• An Open Letter to Abbott voters (victoriarollison.com)
• An Open Letter to Laurie Oakes (theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com)
• Double Gonski backflip just brazen politicking (theage.com.au)
• J.R.R. Tolkien biopic in works, but will it explore author’s Catholicism? (examiner.com)
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• Is Tony Abbott a sociopath? (progressivesteaparty.wordpress.com)
• CATHOLIC FASCISM

10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week

10 Deranged Dispatches From the Right-Wing Wackosphere This Week

Holier than the Pope himself, Palin and Buchanan take Francis to task.

Photo Credit: Jennifer A. Walz/Shutterstock.com 

It’s been a busy week for all manner of charlatans, religious and otherwise.

1. One-woman parade of idiocy, Sarah Palin: The Pope is too liberal; social programs are similar to slavery.

Sarah Palin was on book tour this week, telegenically spewing some of the stupidest nonsense we’ve heard since she announced she could see Russia from her house. We’d like to ignore her, but the fact is she’s hugely popular among a certain segment of the population, and her book about the “war on Christmas,” Good Tidings and Great Joy, is destined for best-sellerdom. Just don’t wish her “Happy holidays!” That is waging war, my friend.

As Christian as she is, though, during an interview with CNN, Palin complained about Pope Francis. She’s taken aback by his liberal attitudes, she says. Taken aback by his unwillingness to go after the LGBT community and atheists, we suppose, and his sympathy for the lonely elderly, and unemployed youth. As Bill Maher said, Palin’s really going to be shook up when she finds out what Jesus said. Be sure to have tranquilizers available when she encounters the Sermon on the Mount.

Palin hopped right on that highly offensive bandwagon of equating the social safety net with slavery. “Our free stuff today is being paid for today by taking money from our children and borrowing money from China,” she said. “When that note comes due — and this isn’t racist so try it anyway, this isn’t racist — but it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due, right? We are going to be beholden to a foreign master.”

Insisting that you are not being racist when you’re comparing slavery to something far more benign is always a really convincing way to make people believe that you are in no way racist.

2. Pat Buchanan: The Pope is bordering on moral relativism. The horror!

Pat Buchanan is another conservative who is very upset that the Pope is not willing to use the Catholic Church to bully people anymore. Specifically, he misses license to bully atheists, women who use birth control and have abortions, and gay people. In his refusal to berate or convert atheists, and tell LGBT people that they are going to hell, Pope Francis is bordering on— cue music of dread — moral relativism.

Two of the statements that upset Buchanan the most: Pope Francis describing the attempt to convert people to Christianity as “solemn nonsense,” and saying that Christians should spend less time lecturing people than listening to them to “discover new needs.”

Why, that dastardly Pope Francis even acknowledged that people can be good no matter what their religious belief, or lack thereof. And he committed the cardinal sin (sorry, pun intended) of stressing helping the poor, rather than focusing on distractions like the gay lifestyle. As Buchanan wrote at Townhall on Friday, Pope Francis is leading “the Catholic Church to a stance of non-belligerence, if not neutrality, in the culture war for the soul of the West.”

A non-belligerent church?! What the hell?

3. Pat Robertson: Ask your gay son if he has been molested.

Ever the dispenser of sound parenting advice, 700 Club host, evangelical bigot par excellence Pat Robertson advised a caller to be “understanding” when talking to her gay son. By being “understanding,” he meant asking her son if the reason he is gay is because he was molested. Because that is always how people become gay.

“Is there a biological thing going on or has he been influenced — has a coach molested him?” Robertson asked the viewer who called in.

Either way, of course, the mother must immediately enroll her son in one of those gay conversion therapies; yes, the abusive form of pseudo-counseling that even ultra-conservative New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was forced to acknowledge should be illegal.

(h/t Right Wing Watch)

4. Sandy Rios: Gay-waiter-refused-tip story just a clever ruse to help ENDA.

No doubt you’ll remember the story two weeks ago of the Kansas City waiter who, in lieu of a tip, received a note from his oh-so-considerate Christian customers saying that, despite his superb service, they couldn’t let him share in their riches because they, and god, disapproved of his lifestyle. That story went viral, and even Bill Maher picked up on it, suggesting that if you want to be selfish and cheap, just do it. Don’t claim it’s for the worker’s own good.

Unfortunately, the behavior has spread, with another family refusing a tip this week to a server they assumed was a lesbian. They were even less nice about it, treating her rudely from the start, racking up a sizable bill and gleefully stiffing the hardworker, who happens to be an ex-Marine, out of her gratuity.

But wait, back up, this just in: Sandy Rios of the American Family Association says the first story was a ruse — a hoax staged by the tricky LGBT community to drum up sympathy for ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) to pass in the Senate.

“I smell a rat in this story,” Rios said. “I don’t believe a Christian couple wrote this note, I think it was a ruse because it was the week ENDA was being voted on.”

If only progressives were as willing to engage in dirty tricks and outright deception as ultra-conservatives. If only… hatred was something that was merely stagecraft.

5. Rafael Cruz: Atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.

Ted’s dad. At it again. Downloading his unique combo of spurious lies, bile and nonsense.

This week, speaking at a gathering of a group we must look into joining, OK2A, described on its website as “Oklahoma Premiere Second Amendment advocacy group,” Rafael Cruz said, straight up, that atheism leads to sexual abuse of children.

Here is the logic he laid out to the assembled gun-toting crazies: “If there is nothing, if there is no God, then we are ruled by our instincts.”

Atheism leads to moral anarchy, he said. “Do we know any politicians that have done that?” he asked the crowd.

“Hitler!” answered Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, who, coincidentally, was in the audience.

“Oh, we don’t have to go that far, Larry,” Cruz chummily replied. “Just go to Washington. Just go to the White House.” From there, it’s a short hop to sexual immorality, perversion and sexual abuse, Cruz concluded.

Follow?

6. Faux “Historian” David Barton: True Christian soldiers wouldn’t have PTSD.

Atheism is apparently a problem in the military, too. Because if soldiers were true Christians, they would not feel bad about killing enemies and sometimes non-combatants. They would not come home traumatized and have all these psychological problems.

Christian “historian” David Barton, the one who blamed Typhoon Haiyan on women having legal abortions, celebrated Veteran’s Day by criticizing veterans who feel at all guilty for what they do on the battlefield. If they read their Bible, he and televangelist Kenneth Copeland agreed on Believer’s Voice of Victory, they’d read in Numbers 32 that soldiers “shall return and be guiltless before the Lord” and that means that they wouldn’t have PTSD.

“You don’t take drugs to get rid of it, it doesn’t take psychology; that promise right there will get rid of it,” Copeland said.

When you go to war God’s way, Barton chimed in, “not only are you guiltless for having done that, you’re esteemed.”

So, get it together veterans!

(h/t: Right Wing Watch)

7. Rand Paul: Obamafascists are coming for your donuts.

This is truly terrifying. Right-wing libertarian wackadoodle Rand Paul took to the microphone this week to warn Americans that the federal government is targeting donuts. That’s what he said: “They’re coming after your donuts!”

Way to scare people. First, Madam Dictator Michelle Obama tries to get kids to eat more vegetables and exercise; now, the FDA is banning trans fats. Give me obesity or give me death! Or both, as the case may be.

You know who libertarian Paul is not so libertarian about? Gubb’mint employees.

“I say we should line every one of them up. I want to see how skinny or how fat the FDA agents are that are making the rules on this,” he said in his rousing donut hysteria-invoking speech.

Donuts, as Esquire’s Charles Pierce pointed out, don’t need trans fats to be delicious. The two largest donut purveyors, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts are making pretty tasty round pastries without them.

Credit where due, though: There’s no indication, yet, that Paul’s recent call to arms was plagiarized.

8. Rush Limbaugh makes deranged comments on Obamacare.

There have been a lot of deranged comments on Obamacare this week, including from theNew York Times when it idiotically compared the bumpy rollout of healthcare.gov to Bush’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. Hmmm, website = hurricane. Thousands dead = millions potentially getting health insurance. Yep, that analogy works.

Actually, all kidding aside, it’s monstrous.

While arguably Rush Limbaugh is less influential than the Times, and perhaps a tad more right-wing, he was not to be outdone in the crazy Obamacare hysteria that ran rampant this week. Rush, of course, does not like women, or sluts as he calls them, who use birth control. And Obamacare making it easier for them to do so is one of the healthcare act’s greatest evils in his view. Because he cares so much about millennials and their virtue, Rush took it upon himself to warn them on Wednesday’s show not to fall into this trap. What Obamacare is really advocating is not safer sex, he says—it’s prostitution.

“If you like being promiscuous, you can keep on being promiscuous,” Limbaugh, friend of the young, said. “If you like being a prostitute, then have at it!”

And summing up for emphasis:

“If you like your risky, promiscuous lifestyle, you can keep it. That’s what Obama is promising.”

Wait, that sounds kind of good, Rush. Thanks!

(h/t: Media Matters)

9. Phyllis Schlafly: Calling all border agents—be on the lookout for polygamist Muslims.

In a world that made any sense, conservative mouther-offer Phyllis Schlafly would have long ago faded into irrelevance. Frankly, we had assumed she was dead by now, but she’s alive and kicking, and still getting airtime to broadcast her ignorance.

While the Eagle Forum founder has long been preoccupied with fighting feminism, she also wants to make sure that those really sexist Muslims with multiple wives are not being let into our country. Yes, immigration, the changing complexion of America, and what that means for the welfare rolls is very much on Schlafly’s increasingly enfeebled mind these days.

She expressed these concerns on a radio show called “Crosstalk” the other day, saying:

“I would like to know if our immigration authorities are letting in people who believe in polygamy. Polygamy is against our law. We’ve brought in thousands of Muslims — I want to know if they made them sign a pledge to assure they’re not bringing in a bunch of wives who will now go on our welfare. Nobody can answer that question; I can’t get any answers to that question.”

Luckily, a caller to the show had an answer. He asserted without an iota of doubt that the Obama administration was bringing in 40 to 50 million Muslims and that they will destroy our constitution and implement Sharia law.

On the bright side, Phyllis: feminism and Sharia law do not go well together. Time to make friends with the enemy of your enemy?

10. Louisiana official: Close the libraries so those Mexicans can’t learn English; build a jail instead.

Most immigration hardliners also believe that anyone who comes to this country damn well ought to learn English. No bilingual education, no chance of Americans ever rubbing elbows with people who don’t speak Amurrican.

But Lindel Toups, who sits on the Lafourche Parish City Council, is upset that Mexicans are trying to learn English, and he’d like to divert funding from libraries to a new jail because of that fact. Toups played down the importance of libraries in recent comments to the Tri-Parish TimesandBusiness News, by pointing out that the Spanish-language Biblioteca Hispana section helps Spanish-speakers learn English.

“They’re teaching Mexicans to speak English,” Toups said “Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico.”

Libraries are apparently a great source of evil. “There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with… Them junkies and hippies and food stamps [recipients] and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps [on the Internet]. I see them do it.”

The citizens of Lafourche Parish are voting this week on whether to keep $800,000 in the library system or put it toward the $25 million needed for a new jail. That way, they might be able to avoid an increase in taxes.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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The Devil Comes to Town | Crackpot Christians Hallucinating Again

Battle of believers: witches accused of bringing devil to Wedderburn    

By Emma-Jayne Schenk            

• 
• SPIRITUAL: White witches Jacquie Stallinga and Gaye Washington are fighting for what they believe in. Picture: Brendan McCarthy
• 
• SPIRITUAL: White witches Gaye Washington and Jacquie Stallinga. Picture: Brendan McCarthy
• 
• BOOTS: A witch’s boot. Picture: BRENDAN McCARTHY
• 
• METAL:  A medal marked in Latin. Picture: BRENDAN McCARTHY
• 
• SPIRITUAL: Gaye Washington. Picture: BRENDAN McCARTHY
• 
• CONFRONTED: Pastor Maxine Tonkin. Picture: BRENDAN McCARTHY
• 
• CONFRONTED: Pastor Maxine Tonkin. Picture: BRENDAN McCARTHY
• 
• CONFRONTED: Pastor Maxine Tonkin. Picture: BRENDAN McCARTHY

A town stands divided and tensions run high as matters of faith take control.

TWO self-proclaimed witches have been accused of “bringing the devil to Wedderburn” by outraged Christians.

Witches Jacquie Stallinga and Gaye Washington are organising the inaugural New Age Festival in Wedderburn, which will feature witchcraft, tarot card readings and crystal education.

Ms Stallinga said “anyone remotely involved in the festival has been attacked and accosted by the local church sector, for brainwashing the community with devil beliefs”.

And while the churches deny making these statements, they say they have “prayed to God to sort out the festival”.

Wedderburn Gold Seeker Christian Church, the Uniting Church, the Church of Christ and the Anglican Church held a meeting this week to stand united against the festival. The Wedderburn Catholic Church did not attend.

Gold Seeker Christian Church Pastor Maxine Tonkin said the churches were simply “standing up for their beliefs”.

“This is a Christian community here and there has been a clash of beliefs,” she said.

“We certainly don’t promote the festival. We think it’s important to have a presence there. There’s a lot more I could say but I won’t. We don’t fear them but we have concerns. ”

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The Mafia Has Higher Standards Than the Catholic Church

Non-theistic State Senator Says the Mafia Has Higher Standards Than the Catholic Church

By Hemant Mehta

Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers is one unique politician. After being the longest-serving senator in the state’s history (serving for 38 years, starting in 1970), he was term-limited out and left office in 2008. This past November, he was eligible to run for office again and took advantage of that opportunity, winning his race fairly comfortably.

 

Chambers is one of the few non-theistic, high-ranking politicians in the country. He’s also African-American and a powerhouse legislator.

He’s making headlines again for filibustering a bill that would “expand a prison work program.”

How is that news? Well, his filibuster included lots of unrelated remarks about religion:

 

Then, while burning up time trying to talk [Sen. Mark] Christensen’s bill to death, Chambers talked about attending a fundamentalist church where, as a child, he claimed children were terrorized and made to feel they were headed for Hell. He called Bible stories “fairy tales” that he outgrew.

Chambers sounded more like a preacher — albeit an unconventional and blasphemous one — than a senator, but he blamed the Legislature for that, too, noting that the body “invites religion into the chamber every morning” with a prayer. He said preachers who enter the legislative chambers are entering “my territory” to “do their damage.” He accused senators of not heeding those preachers’ calls to “do the right thing,” which he said “brings condemnation on you.”

While on the subject of Christianity, Chambers noted that Jesus “looked more like me than you all.” Despite his claims he doesn’t believe in God (though he sued God once), Chambers demonstrated that he knows the Bible (which he derisively calls the “Holly Bibel”) well, telling his fellow senators that you can judge a society by how it treats its children, elderly and enemies.

…

Finally, Chambers said the Mafia has higher standards than the Catholic Church hierarchy because if their members were “raping children, they’d off them.”

After three hours of talking on Wednesday, the Legislature closed up shop for the day. But Chambers is expected to continue where he left off this Monday.

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All Children are Born Atheists

All Children are Born Atheists

Anyone who understands the definition of atheism must acknowledge that all children are born atheists, including those born to Christian parents. Atheism is nothing more than the lack of acceptance of the theistic belief claim (i.e., some god or gods exist). A theist is one who believes that god(s) exist; an atheist is one who does not share this belief. The newborn child cannot even entertain such possibilities and thus lacks theistic belief. Atheism is the default position, and this is where we all begin.

In order for Christians to argue against the reality that all children are born atheists, they must distort the meaning of atheism. They must convince themselves and their audience that atheism is a religion, a philosophy, or a worldview. They claim that atheism is an explicit repudiation of religion and that it involves faith that no gods exist. Such distortions in the meaning of atheism allow them to claim that children cannot be born atheist because atheism requires the same sort of deliberate choice required by religious belief.Atheism is not a belief system but lack of acceptance of one particular belief. It requires no faith; it is the absence of faith. It is the null hypothesis, the default condition, the natural starting point for each of us.

But why must Christians distort the meaning of atheism at all? Why should they even care if their children are born atheists, especially when it is likely that they will begin brainwashing them at an early age? There are many reasons, ranging from a need to see the child as connected to them through the manner they consider most important (i.e., religion) to the harsh implications of infant mortality to their belief system.

To expand on this latter point, consider the Christian parent whose child dies before the child is capable of forming the cognitions necessary to comprehend theistic belief. According to this parent’s own Christian doctrine, this child is likely destined for hell. This is where non-believers go, and this child is clearly a non-believer. The Catholics toyed with limbo as a way out, but the evangelical Protestants now engaging in America’s “culture wars” never really warmed to this idea. Even theism will be insufficient for such a parent, as a personal relationship with Jesus is thought to be the only vehicle for salvation.

It should be remembered that Christians have created this doctrine for themselves and should be solely responsible for unraveling the many conundrums it presents. Distorting atheism is not an acceptable way out of the mess they have made.

http://www.atheistrev.com/2008/03/all-children-are-born-atheists.html

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Outrage Over US Catholic Sex Abuse Cover-up

Outrage over US Catholic sex abuse cover-up

        Photo:       Cardinal Roger Mahony featured prominently in the published documents. (Reuters)

Victims of child sex abuse by Catholic clerics in the US have voiced anger after newly released records showed church leaders discussing how to cover up priests’ alleged crimes in California in the 1980s.

Prosecutors said they wanted to study the previously confidential records, including memos by then Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahony – although experts said the statute of limitations would likely prevent any legal action.

Excerpts from the documents were published by the Los Angeles Times, including exchanges between the now retired Cardinal Mahony and a top aide talking about how to conceal paedophile priests from law enforcement.

The records include secret memos between Cardinal Mahony and Monsignor Thomas Curry – his top aide on sexual abuse cases – about how to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to the church that they had abused young boys.

Specifically, Monsignor Curry suggested stopping suspected priests from seeing therapists who might alert authorities about alleged abuse, or keeping them outside of California to avoid police investigations, the Times reported.

One such was Monsignor Peter Garcia, who admitted abusing children in mostly Spanish-speaking parishes for decades. He was sent to a New Mexico treatment centre, and Cardinal Mahony ordered that he stay outside California.

“I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese, we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors,” Cardinal Mahony wrote in July 1986.

“There are numerous – maybe 20 – adolescents or young adults that Peter was involved with in a first-degree felony manner,” Monsignor Curry wrote in May 1987.

Joelle Casteix of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said “we were shocked and disgusted to see these documents”.

“[Cardinal Mahony] and other high-ranking [LA clergy]… worked diligently to ensure that men who hurt children, who abused children and who destroyed communities were never going to see a day behind bars,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the LA District Attorney’s office said prosecutors “will review and evaluate all documents as they become available to us” in remarks reported by the Times.

But former DA Steve Cooley, who led a five-year probe into Catholic sex abuse, said a three-year statute of limitations meant that there was little prospect of successful prosecutions.

AFP

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Priests and Other Catholic Sadists | “Black-collar crime” — List of names

“Black-collar crime” — List of names
Here are some Catholic priests and religious brothers in Australian cases, researched by Broken Rites

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Main Page Contact Us Our top stories Black Collar Crime Current court cases What’s new Donations		This page of Catholic cases was compiled by Broken Rites Australia researchers and was last updated on 24 Janauary 2013. Broken Rites Australia helps victims of church-related sex abuse to obtain justice. Our complete database of Broken Rites cases is NOT available on the internet. On this web page, we give merely a few examples of Broken Rites cases. This webpage is divided into sections: A: Criminal court cases B: Out-of-court civil cases C: Currently before the criminal courts D: Church people failed to help the police E: Court cases ending with no conviction F: Lay teachers in church schools If a particular offender is not listed on this webpage, this does not mean that this person is not an offender. Many church-abuse victims remain silent for years or forever. Only a few victims have consulted the police; some victims eventually contact Broken Rites; and some victims (often unwisely) merely tip-off the church’s internal Professional Standards Office (also called “Towards Healing”), whose main purpose is to protect the church and the perpetrator. It is a wise move to contact Broken Rites first, for advice about options for obtaining justice. Section A: Criminal prosecutions, researched by Broken Rites Here are some examples of criminal prosecutions, researched by Broken Rites Australia (since 1993), involving Catholic priests and religious brothers. Broken Rites Australia gives support to victims, either before or after the prosecutions. The actual court proceedings are handled by specialist police from sex-crime investigation squads. This list is confined to Broken Rites cases. Fr Michael Aulsebrook In the Melbourne County Court on 22 August 2011, Father Michael Scott Aulsebrook (a member of the Catholic religious order Salesians of Don Bosco) was sentenced to two years’ jail (with 15 months suspended, serving nine months behind bars) for indecent assaults of a boy, aged 12, at Salesian College “Rupertswood” (a boarding school) in Sunbury, Victoria, in 1983. This boy was not Aulsebrook’s only victim. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Wilfred Baker After action by Broken Rites, Father Wilfred James Baker (also known as Father Bill Baker or Fr Billy Baker), Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to 4 years jail (eligible for parole after 2 years) for offences against boys. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Charlie Barnett Charles Alfred Barnett, who ministered for the Vincentian order in Catholic parishes around Australia for 20 years until the mid-1990s, was sentenced in South Australia in August 2010 to at least four years for sexual offences against boys in that state. He is also facing complaints in other Australian states. See more from Broken Rites here. Father Roger Michael Bellemore This Marist priest was sentenced in Tasmania in 2006 to five years’ jail (with parole after 3 years) for offences against schoolboys. After he had spent nine months in jail, the appeal court granted him a re-trial. In February 2008, another jury found Bellemore guilty and he was sentenced to four years’ jail.  See the Broken Rites story here. Br Robert Best Christian Brother Robert Charles Best (also known as Brother Bob Best) was convicted in Melbourne in 1996 for sexual offences committed against one of his schoolboy victims. On 8 August 2011, after being convicted again for multiple offences (including buggery) against some more of his victims, he was sentenced (at the age of 70) to 14 years and nine months (eligible for parole after serving 11 years and three months). See the Broken Rites story here. Warren Booth     Warren Douglas Booth was training to become a priest when he sexually assaulted a 12-year-old boy in the showers at a public pool in Campbelltown in Sydney’s south-west. Booth was sentenced in 1996 to 12 months jail. Fr Tom Brennan, Newcastle, NSW In August 2012, police charged Father Thomas Brennan (of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese) with 10 counts of sexually assaulting a young male while Brennan was the parish priest (in the early 1980s) at Waratah, in Newcastle, north of Sydney. He was also charged with having failed to report the sex-crimes (in the 1970s) of another priest who was under Brennan’s supervision. Brennan was ordered to appear in court on 25 September 2012 on all these charges but he failed to appear and he died five days later. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Desmond Brown Father Desmond Joseph Brown, Redemptorist order, Victoria and NSW,  non-custodial sentence, for indecent assault of a female. Fr Rex Brown Father Paul Rex Brown (once a senior priest in the Lismore Catholic diocese in New South Wales) was convicted in Queensland in 1996 for possessing child pornography. Police could have charged Brown with serious child sexual-assault offences but he chose to plead guilty to the lesser charge of child pornography. See the Broken Rites full story here. Fr Neil Byrne In Brisbane on 7 March 2012, the Very Rev Dr Neil Joseph Byrne was sentenced to nine months in jail (suspended for two years) after he pleaded guilty to possessing and making child-exploitation material. As a lecturer in a seminary, Byrne has been involved in the training of Australian Catholic priests. See more from Broken Rites here. Gerard Vincent Byrnes Gerard Byrnes (born in 1948) originally trained as a Christian Brother before becoming a lay teacher in Catholic schools in Queensland and New South Wales. On 4 October 2010, he was jailed for 8-10 years after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting girls at a Catholic primary school in Toowoomba, Queensland. He was the school’s designated “child protection officer”. See more from Broken Rites here. Brian Cairns, former Christian Brother Brian Dennis Cairns taught primary students (as Brother Cairns) at Catholic schools in Brisbane until 1974. Then, after becoming a lay teacher, he taught at other Brisbane Catholic schools (as Mister Cairns) until 1984. In 1985, he was jailed for seven years for committing serious sexual offences against schoolboys over several years. Brian Dennis Cairns’s name has sometimes been mis-printed as “Brian David Cairns”. See more from Broken Rites here. Br Greg Carter, Marist Brother Gregory James Carter (born 4 July 1957) was sentenced in Queensland in 1997 to 18 months jail (with release after six months served) after pleading guilty to multiple charges of indecent treatment of a 15-year-old boy who was a boarder at St Augustine’s Marist Brothers’ College in Cairns, north Queensland. See our story here. Fr Richard Cattell Father Richard St John Cattell, of the Parramatta diocese, NSW, was sentenced in 1994 to 3 years jail (2 years minimum), after pleading guilty to five counts of indecently assaulting a boy. The boy had gone to Cattell to complain about having been molested by a teacher. Cattell, who was the vicar-general of the diocese, was the administrator whose role it was to receive  complaints about sexual abuse in the diocese. See more about Cattell in a Broken Rites story about the Parramatta diocese here. Fr Peter Chalk This priest (a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart religious order) ministered in Melbourne in the 1970s (around Croydon, Park Orchards and Warrandyte). Melbourne police later accumulated evidence which could enable them to prosecute Father Peter Gerard Chalk for sexually abusing children (as young as 12) in Melbourne. But Chalk’s religious superiors allowed him to stay out of Australia (and out of reach of the Australian police), working in Japan, where he changed his surname to a Japanese one. In 2010, Chalk suddenly died (in Japan), thus closing the Melbourne police file. See more here. Br Bob Chambers, Queensland The Brisbane Courier Mail has reported that in the Brisbane District Court on 10 October 2002, Christian Brother Robert George Chambers (then aged 60) pleaded guilty to assault occasioning bodily harm on a boy, aged 12, in 1968 while Chambers was teaching at  St Joseph’s Christian Brothers College in Rockhampton, central Queensland. Brother Chambers, who was standing at a window in the Brothers’ residence, fired an air rifle at the boy in the school yard, hitting him twice in the back of his legs as the boy drank from a water fountain. Judge Julie Dick placed Chambers on a $100, six-month good-behaviour bond. The prosecutor said that the Crown had elected not to proceed with another charge against Chambers. In the 1980s, Brother Chambers taught at Ignatius Park College in Townsville. Br David Christian Marist Brother David Austin Christian (born 3 December 1942), formerly principal of Marist Brothers’ Newman College, Perth, Western Australia, pleaded guilty to multiple counts of aggravated indecent assault against two boys (aged 10 and 11) in the principal’s office. When charged in 1994, Br Christian had been teaching at Port Hedland, W.A. In 1995, Christian was fined $10,500 ($1,500 per incident) but the Marist Order said it would pay the fine for him. Brother Christian moved to live with the Marist Brothers in Templestowe, Melbourne. According to Marist websites (accessed in 2011), Brother David Christian continued to be accepted by his superiors and colleagues as a member of the Marist order. Christian Brothers, Goulburn NSW. In the Goulburn Local Court in southern New South Wales in 1989, a Christian Brother was convicted (and was given a suspended jail sentence) for sexually abusing a boy at St Patrick’s College, Goulburn (this school later became Trinity College, Goulburn). Other victims of this Brother did not contact the police but they later demanded (and obtained) an apology from the Christian Brothers Order. Despite his offences. this Brother continued to be accepted as a member of the Christian Brothers (in an office position). See more here. Fr Bob Claffey Father Robert Claffey, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, was given a non-custodial  sentence after pleading guilty to offences involving boys. See our story here. Fr Patrick Cleary Father Patrick Joseph Cleary, Brisbane archdiocese, 5-15 months jail for offences against boys.  See our story here. Fr Bryan Coffey Father Bryan Desmond Coffey, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, was sentenced to 3 years jail (suspended) for offences against children, mostly boys. See our story here. Gregory Coffin (alias Coffey) Gregory Vincent Coffey (birth-name Coffin) was originally a priesthood trainee in the Salesian order. Brother Greg Coffin taught at Salesian College (“Rupertswood”), Sunbury, Victoria, in 1969-1970, and at St Mark’s College, Port Pirie, South Australia, in 1971. In February 1972, he was sentenced to 12 months jail (suspended) for sexual abuse of a boy at the Port Pirie school. Despite this, he was still accepted as a lay teacher (Mr “Coffey”) in Catholic schools. Coffey was sentenced to a 2-year good behaviour bond in Victoria in 1994, plus 30 months jail (suspended) in Victoria in 1997 for offences against boys at Redden College, Preston, Melbourne, in the 1970s.  See our story here. Fr Peter Colley Father Peter James Colley, of the Ballarat diocese in Victoria, pleaded guilty in the Moonee Ponds Magistrates Court, Melbourne, on 11 March 1993 to two charges — one indecent assault of an adult male in a public toilet at Moonee Ponds and one charge of escaping from legal custody. Court records gave Colley’s occupation as “priest”, living in at an address in Morriss Road, Warrnambool West, which is the address of the St Pius X Catholic presbytery. Colley was sentenced to a 12-months good behaviour bond. Peter Colley was born in Melbourne on 12 April 1948 and went to school at Parade Christian Brothers College, Melbourne. Originally he worked as a layman with the Pallottine religious order, including (he has said) among Aboriginals at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. In the early 1970s he was living at Pallotti College, Millgrove, Victoria, seeking to be accepted as a Pallotine lay Brother  but did not complete the training. Also in the 1970s, he is believed to have spent time at a Redemptorist seminary in Galong, south-western New South Wales. During the 1970s, Colley applied to Bishop Ronald Mulkearns of Ballarat to sponsor him as a Ballarat candidate for the priesthood. Thus, Colley was ordained at St Paul’s Seminary for Late Vocations in Sydney in 1979 and then joined the Ballarat diocese, where his parishes included Terang, Horsham, Bungaree (near Ballarat) and Warrnambool East. In early 2000, when his court appearance was becoming known, Colley left the Ballarat diocese and his name then disappeared from the annual Australian Catholic Directory. Fr Peter L. Comensoli In 1994, Father Peter Lewis Comensoli (then aged 55, of the Wollongong diocese, south of Sydney) was sentenced to a minimum of 18 months jail after pleading guilty to indecent assaulting altar boys. Comensoli’s abuse was reported to the Wollongong diocese in 1989 but the church authorities allowed him to continue ministering. Finally, two victims got him convicted. Despite this, Comensoli was not laicized or defrocked. As late as 2008, Father Peter L. Comensoli was still listed as a “supplementary priest” of the Wollongong diocese “on leave” or “retired”. See more from Broken Rites here. This Father Comensoli is not to be confused with another clergyman, Auxiliary Bishop Peter A. Comensoli. Fr Doug Conlan Father Douglas Conlan began ministering in Western Australia’s Bunbury diocese in the 1970s. In 1999, aged 52, he was sentenced to 3 years jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences of gross indecency committed (in 1976) against a 16-year-old male. The court was told that the boy’s family trusted the priest who took the boy on a trip for services in country parishes. The offences occurred during an overnight stay in church accommodation. Fr Paul Connolly Father Paul Anthony Connolly, Hobart archdiocese, was sentenced in 2001 to eight months jail (suspended after serving four months) for multiple indecent assaults of a girl aged about 14. After the jailing, the Hobart archdiocese continued to list Connolly as a “supplementary” priest of the archdiocese. See our story here. Fr Kevin Nicholas Cox A Sydney jury convicted  this priest of sexual crimes against a girl aged 11 to 13. Church leaders and priests then submitted “good-character” references for Cox, asking the court for a lenient sentence. A judge imposed a part-time jail sentence but church lawyers appealed to a higher court against the conviction and won the appeal on technical grounds. Privately, a church leader later apologised to the girl’s family for what Cox had done to her. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Neville Creen Father Neville Joseph Creen molested young girls while he served as a priest at Mount Isa, north-west Queensland (in the Townsville diocese), from 1973 to 1981. In Brisbane District Court in 2003 and 2004, Creen admitted to  indecently dealing with 20 girls under the age of 13. One girl was aged just five when Creen abused her at a youth camp and later at the home of her grandparents. Creen was sentenced to three-and-half years’ jail (suspended after 14 months). Judge Ian Wylie said Creen had used his position as a priest and his standing in the community to intimidate the girls into remaining silent about their ordeals. See our story here. Fr David Daniel In July 2000, Melbourne Catholic priest Father David Daniel was sentenced to six years’ jail, with parole after 4.5 years, for offences against four boys, a girl and an adult male. This priest’s last parish was St Brigid’s, Healesville. See our story here. Chris D’Astoli, former priesthood trainee Press and radio and TV news reports in May 1994 stated that a former trainee Catholic priest, Christopher D’Astoli, appeared in Oakleigh Magistrates Court (Melbourne) on 25 May 1994. D’Astoli (aged 50 in 1994) pleaded guilty to gross indecency and indecent assault against a 13-year-old Catholic school boy in the Oakleigh area in 1969-70, when D’Astoli was completing six years as a trainee priest at the Melbourne Catholic seminary (Corpus Christi College in Glen Waverley). The court was told that the boy reported the assault to his school and D’Astoli left the seminary a few days before he was due to be ordained. However, the court was told, the boy’s school (Salesian College, Oakleigh) persuaded the boy not to tell his parents or the police, and the police did not learn about the matter until 23 years later. Magistrate Susan Blashki placed D’Astoli on a three-year good-behaviour bond, and ordered him to pay $750 into the court fund. The information for this case was prepared by Sergeant Brendan Harper of Oakleigh Criminal Investigation Branch. Father Albert Davis This Catholic priest (a member of the Dominican Fathers, the Order of Preachers) was charged in 2006 with 17 incidents of indecent assault involving seven boys at Blackfriars Priory School (conducted by the Dominican Fathers) in Prospect, Adelaide, between 1956 and 1960. A magistrate ruled that there was enough evidence for a jury to convict Davis. The magistrate committed him to stand trial in the Adelaide District Court. But Davis died in Canberra in March 2007 before the trial could be held. See our story here. Monsignor John Day, Victoria A detective gathered enough evidence to prosecute Monsignor John Day, who sexually abused many boys and girls in the Mildura parish in north-western Victoria. Influential church people blocked the prosecution. In 1997, after Broken Rites exposed the cover-up, the church authorities reluctantly admitted Day’s offences and apologised to his victims. See the Broken Rites story here. Father Adelrick D’Cruz This priest, aged 78, was convicted in the Victorian County Court at Shepparton on 22 May 2008 after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting a teenage girl in a north-eastern Victoria parish 24 years previously. D’Cruz had ministered in the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria and later did freelance ministry in the Anglo-Indian community in Melbourne. See our story here. Fr Ray Deal Father Raymond Deal, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to four months jail (suspended) for an offence against a male who was under his supervision. See our story here. Fr John Denham On 2 July 2010 Father John Sidney Denham, of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese, was sentenced to a 19 years and 10 months in jail (with parole possible after 13 years and 10 months) for offences (including buggery) committed against boys in the 1970s and 1980s. See a comprehensive background article from Broken Rites here and the judge’s sentencing remarks here and another family’s complaint here. Fr Francis Derriman Francis Edward Derriman was sentenced in Brisbane in 1998 to 12 months jail (suspended after serving four months) after being found guilty of indecently dealing with a teenage girl while Father Derriman was a priest in Brisbane in 1968. The court was told that Derriman left the priesthood in 1970, became a social worker and moved interstate. In the 1990s, the victim went to the church’s “Towards Healing” program in Brisbane, expecting some “healing”, but she later told Broken Rites that church officials at “Towards Healing” in Brisbane were evasive and dismissive towards her. Br Gerard Dick In 1995, Christian Brother Gerard William Dick (then aged 67) was sentenced to three and a half years jail in  Perth, Western Australia, after pleading guilty to ten incidents of indecently dealing with boys aged eight to ten at a Christian Brothers orphanage, Castledare, in W.A. in the 1960s. Dick was just one of many Christian Brothers who abused boys in W.A. orphanages but most of the others were never brought to justice. Br Edward Dowlan Christian Brother Edward Vernon Dowlan (known as Ted Dowlan), Victoria, 1996, was jailed in 1996 with an eventual sentence (after appeal) of 6.5 yrs jail (with parole after 4 yrs) for offences against boys. See our story here. Br “David” Down Christian Brother Graeme James Down (known in the Christian Brothers as “Brother David Down”) indecently touched boys aged 10-12 from St Mark’s College in Bedford, Western Australia, in the 1980s; he left the Christian Brothers in 1999; was convicted in 2007 (pleaded guilty); received a 30-months jail sentence, with parole after one year. Later in 2007, Broken Rites received further complaints about Brother Down at the same school in the 1980s. This resulted in Down being given additional jail time in 2008. See our story here. Fr Reginald Durham Father Reginald Basil Durham, Rockhampton diocese, Queensland, 4-18  mths jail (for indecent assault of a girl at Neerkol orphanage). See our story here. Br John Dyson Marist Brother John Desmond Dyson (born 21 March 1950), who taught at Assumption College, Kilmore, Victoria, was sentenced to 12 months jail after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting three boys, aged 12 to 14. The sentence was served in community work. See our story here. Fr Anthony Eames Father Anthony Eames, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to six months jail (suspended) for offences against girls. See our story here. Fr Michael Endicott On 25 June 2010 in Brisbane, Father Michael Ambrose Endicott was given a one-year jail sentence (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecent treatment of a schoolboy. See more from Broken Rites here. Br Rex Elmer Christian Brother Rex Ignatius Elmer, Victoria, was sentenced in 1998 to five years jail (with parole after 3 years 4 months) after pleading guilty to indecent assault of 12 boys at St Vincent’s Boys’ Home in South Melbourne. See the full Broken Rites story  here. Br Michael Evans, New South Wales By December 1994, New South Wales police had gathered sufficient evidence to charge Christian Brother Michael Evans with multiple sexual crimes against Catholic schoolboys. But Evans committed suicide, thereby evading the justice process. His victims included pupils at Edmund Rice College (Wollongong) and St Patrick’s College (Strathfield, Sydney). The Christian Brothers Order has apologised to Evans’s victims. Fr Paul Evans, Boys’ Town, NSW On 3 October 2008 Father Paul Raymond Evans (born 20 October 1951) was sentenced to 15 years’ jail (with parole possible after nine and a half years) after a Sydney jury found him guilty of multiple sex offences against boys in the 1970s and 1980s, while he was a dormitory master at Boys’ Town (a Catholic institution for troubled teenagers) in Engadine, south of Sydney. After 1988, Evans worked in parishes in the Broken Bay diocese in Sydney’s north. See our story here. Br Stephen Farrell, Christian Brother Brother Stephen Francis Farrell (a member of the Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers) was a teacher at St Alipius Catholic primary school in Ballarat East, Victoria, in 1973-74 but later left the order. In the Ballarat Magistrates Court on 17 January 1997, Farrell (then aged 45) pleaded guilty to nine counts of indecently assaulting two boys at St Alipius. He was sentenced to two years’ jail, suspended for two years. After leaving the Christian Brothers, Farrell married three times. Jesuit Father Michael McGirr, who conducted Farrell’s third wedding, gave character evidence in court for Farrell. This Stephen Farrell is not to be confused with a Marist Brother of the same name. Fr Nazzareno Fasciale, Melbourne Victoria Police charged Father Nazzareno Fasciale (pronounced “Fah-SHAH-Lay”) with numerous indecent assaults of boys and girls. Fasciale admitted these crimes in a police interview which was to be tabled in court. He was absent from his first scheduled court appearance and died before the second scheduled court date. The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese has since apologised to Fasciale’s victims. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Gregory Ferguson Father Gregory Laurence Ferguson, of the Marist Fathers, was sentenced on 15 May 2007 to two years jail (eligible for parole after 12 months), for offences in 1971 against two boys aged 13 at Marist College, Burnie, Tasmania.  On 13 December 2007, he was sentenced to an additional three years’ jail for offences against a third boy, making a total of five years’ jail (but he can apply for parole after two and half years). See our story here. Fr James Fletcher Father James Patrick Fletcher, Maitland-Newcastle diocese, NSW, 7.5 years to 10  years jail for sexual penetration of an altar boy. Fletcher died in jail.  See our story here. Br Michael Folli In the New South Wales District Court, after lengthy proceedings (including an appeal by the accused), Marist Brother Michael Anthony Folli (born 4 January 1945) has been sentenced to four and a half years’ jail for sexual offences against two boys during four years from 1980 to 1983 when the boys were aged 12 to 15. The prosecution said the two siblings met Brother Folli through their Marist Brothers school at Auburn, in Sydney’s west.  Folli befriended the family and became a frequent visitor to their house, where the alleged incidents occurred. Br Raymond Foster Marist Brother Raymond Sidney Foster (born 26 November 1931) was originally called “Brother Celestine“. He taught at Catholic schools in Queensland and New South Wales.  In 1999, police interviewed Foster (then aged 67) at a Marist Brothers retirement home in Mittagong, NSW) and charged him with indecent assaults against boys, committed at Chanel College, Gladstone, Queensland, in the 1970s. On 23 March 1999 he was found, hanged, just hours before he was due to appear in a New South Wales court to be extradited to Queensland. Fr Rob Fuller Father Robert Macgregor Fuller, 54, a priest of the Sydney Catholic archdiocese, was jailed in February 2010 for seeking to procure a child under the age of 16 via internet chat sites. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Des Gannon Father Desmond Laurence Gannon, Melbourne archdiocese, was jailed in 1995 for 12 months, plus suspended sentences in 1997, 2000 and 2003, and was sentenced in 2009 to another 14 months behind bars, for offences against boys. See the full story from Broken Rites here. Br Terry Gilsenan, In 2001, Marist Brother Terence Joseph Gilsenan (born 18 October 1955) was sentenced to three years jail (with parole after 21 months) after pleading guilty to one incident of homosexual intercourse and three incidents of gross indecency, committed against a 12-year-old boarder, from a country area, at St Gregory’s College, Campbelltown, New South Wales. The offences occurred in 1987-89 when Gilsenan, then in his early thirties, was the assistant boarding supervisor, a trainee brother and a teacher at the college. Gilsenan is still a Marist Brother. He should not be confused with a Christian Brother who has a similar (but not identical) name. Brother J.G. Gladwin In 1998, Queensland detectives were ready to prosecute Gladwin for committing sexual crimes against schoolboys while he worked (as Christian Brother Gerard Gladwin) in Queensland in the 1960s and ’70s. But, before court proceedings could begin,  Gladwin (aged 65) was found dead, gassed in his car, near Brisbane. He left a suicide note. Thus, he avoided the justice process. Brother Gerard Gladwin’s schools included: a school in Gympie between 1957 and 1962; St Mary’s College, Toowoomba in the 1960s; St Joseph’s Nudgee College, Brisbane, in 1970-71; and St Columban’s College, Brisbane, in the mid 1970s.  See more from Broken Rites  here. Fr Michael Glennon Father Michael Charles Glennon, Melbourne archdiocese, was jailed in 1978, again  in 1991 and 2003, serving a total of 10.5 years minimum to 14.5 years  maximum for multiple offences (including rape and indecent assault), mostly against boys. He committed many of his crimes while on bail awaiting trial for other sex offences. See our story here. Paul Goldsmith Former trainee priest Paul Ronald Goldsmith, Tasmania, was jailed for six and a half years (with parole possible after four years) for  offences against 20 boys, aged 13 to 16.  See our story here. Fr Terence Goodall Father Terence Norman Goodall, Sydney archdiocese, pleaded guilty to indecent assault of a Catholic layman and was placed in custody until the rising of the court. See our story here. Br Brian Gordon Marist Brother Brian Robert Gordon (born 15 December 1942) sexually abused boys while teaching at a Marist Brothers primary school in Dundas, Sydney, in 1969-71. The Marists kept quiet about Gordon’s behaviour and he eventually became the Brisbane diocese’s deputy directory of Catholic Education. In 1998 he was sentenced to a minimum of  12 months jail for eight sexual offences committed in 1969-71 against four boys, aged about 11, at the Sydney school.  See our story here. Br Thomas Grealy Brother Thomas William Grealy, alias Brother “Augustine”, of the  Patrician Brothers order, was sentenced in 1997 to seven years jail (parole after four years) after pleading guilty to repeated indecent assaults of two young boys while he was the principal of the primary section of a Patrician Brothers school in Grimwood Street, Granville, in western Sydney, in the 1970s. Before molesting a boy in his office, Brother Augustine would cover a statue of the Virgin Mary with a raincoat to hide his shame. See more from Broken Rites here. Monsignor Philip Green Monsignor Philip Richard Green, Hobart archdiocese, was sentenced to three months jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting a young man who was mourning the death of a sibling. See our story here. Fr Jack Gubbels On 18 August 1995, Victorian detectives went to Queensland to arrest Father Jack William Gubbels for sexual crimes crimes against Melbourne boys. But, expecting the arrest, Gubbels was found dead in bed. Thus he avoided the justice process. Gubbels had worked as a priest in the Melbourne and Townsville (Queensland) dioceses. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Barry Gwillim Father John Barry Gwillim, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to 32 months jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences against a boy. See our story here. Fr John Haines In the Victorian County Court on 4 November 2008, Father Edmund John Haines (of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese, based in the Geelong district) was sentenced to four years and three months jail (with a non-parole period of two years six months) after he pleaded guilty to six counts of an indecent act with a boy under 16, procurement of a minor for child pornography and possessing child pornography. Haines was previously a priest in Papua New Guinea. See our story here. Br “Malcolm” Hall Marist Brother Philip Stanley Hall (born 12 November 1925, alias Brother Malcolm) worked in Catholic schools in Mount Gambier (Sth Aust.), Parkes and Forbes (NSW) and Warragul (Victoria). In 1998, police arrested him (and gave him a summons to appear in court) for sexual crimes against boys and girls in Victoria. But he died just before the scheduled court date, so the court case had to be cancelled. See more from Broken Rites here. Bede Hampton, Queensland, ex-Marist Brother In December 2010 a former Catholic Marist teaching brother, now living in Australia — Bede Hampton, aged 62 — was sentenced in New Zealand’s High Court to jail for two years and six months for indecent assaults committed against boys in a New Zealand Catholic boarding school (St Joseph’s College in Masterton) in the early 1970s. Hampton left the Marist Brothers when he was 29. He has become an interior decorator based in Queensland. One of his victims now also lives in Australia. See more from Broken Rites here. Phillip Hardy, trainee priest In 1990, Phillip John Hardy began training for the Catholic priesthood with the Divine Word Missionaries at Box Hill in Melbourne but he did not reach ordination. In Sydney District Court in 1995, aged 41, he was sentenced to 11 years’ jail (with a minimum of seven years before parole) for sexual offences committed against a boy during an eight-year period, in 1978-1986, when the boy was aged from 8 to 16. During the time of the offences, Hardy was teaching at Marist Brothers College, Eastwood, Sydney, where he was in charge of “religious studies”. Br Francis Hesford Marist Brother Hesford (born 1 February 1914), formerly of Assumption College, Kilmore, Victoria (later moved to  Western Australia), was given a non-custodial sentence in 1997 after pleading guilty to offences against two girls at Kilmore. The offences were committed in 1970, when Hesford was aged 56. See our story here and another story here. Fr Ted Hewitt Father Edward Patrick Hewitt, of the Perth diocese, Western Australia, pleaded guilty in a Perth court on 2 April 1996 to a charge of wilful exposure. The prosecution alleged that Hewitt (then aged 50) had stood naked in the back yard of his home, exposing himself to children as they walked past, through an adjoining park, on their way to school. At the sentencing, in May 1996, the court fined Fr Edward Hewitt $1,000. Br Bill Hocking 0n 31 October 1992 Christian Brother William Hocking was sentenced to 150 hours of community service  after being convicted of sexually assaulting a teenage boy at a Catholic Church youth refuge, “Eddy’s Place”, in Wollongong, New South Wales. Ronald Hopkins Ronald William Hopkins originally trained to be a Christian Brother but ended up as a lay teacher in Catholic schools. In 2005, Hopkins pleaded guilty to offences (five counts of unlawful sexual intercourse by a teacher, five of indecent assault and one of gross indecency) against  five schoolboys, aged 12 to 16, between 1975 and 1991 while he was a teacher at two Adelaide schools — St Bernadette’s in a suburb called St Mary’s and Blackfriars Priory School at Prospect. In the S.A. Supreme Court in 2006, Hopkins (then aged 70) was sentenced to ten years’ jail. See our story here. Fr Dan Hourigan, Victoria On 18 September 1995, Victoria Police charged Father Daniel Dominic Hourigan, (of the Sale diocese) with sexual crimes against boys. Three days later, he died unexpectedly, thereby avoiding a court appearance. Thus the court case had to be cancelled. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr John Houston, visiting New South Wales A Catholic priest, John Charles Houston (born 3 March 1955), has appeared in a court near Newcastle in New South Wales, accused of filming boys showering during a surf lifesaving carnival. The magistrate ordered that Houston be supervised by mental health workers, continue to take his medication and not loiter near public pools or beaches. See more here. Fr Kevin Howarth Father Kevin Howarth, Sandhurst diocese in north-eastern Victoria, sexually abused young girls and was sentenced to three months jail. The sentence was to be served in community work. See our story here. Fr Bill Irwin William Stanley Irwin was originally a Brother (and then a priest) in the Catholic Vincentian order. A Sydney court heard how the church authorities protected Irwin, concealing his criminal behaviour in a church file marked “Strictly Confidential”. In 2011 a jury found Irwin guilty of two incidents of gross indecency against a youth whom he was “counselling”. The judge imposed two six-months jail sentences, which were suspended upon Irwin undertaking a six-months good-behaviour bond. See more here. Br Fabian Jordan Christian Brother John Joseph Jordan (alias Brother “Fabian” Jordan, born 23 October 1927), worked at St Augustine’s boys home and St Vincent’s boys’ home in Victoria; he later left the Christian Brothers and retired to South Australia. In 1999 he was sentenced to a 12-months good behaviour bond for indecent assault (i.e, touching) of a 13-year-old boy at St Augustine’s in the early 1960s. This was not the only complaint about Jordan. Fr John Keane, western Victoria The Adelaide Advertiser reported on 6 January 1990 (page 2) from Melbourne: “A Catholic priest pleaded guilty in Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday to offensive behaviour in a public toilet. John Keane, 52, who gave his address as St Michael’s Church, Wycheproof, was given a 12-month good behaviour bond. The prosecutor said plainclothes police saw Keane expose himself on April 13 last year.” Frank Keating De La Salle Brother Frank Terrence Keating (alias Brother “Ibar” Keating) was sentenced to 8 to 36 months jail in Victoria in 1998, plus 12 months jail (suspended) in Queensland in 2000, all for multiple indecent assaults of boys in Catholic schools. Keating also taught in Western Australia and South Australia. See our story here. Fr Terrence Keliher Father Terrence Thomas Keliher, aged 62, was sentenced in Brisbane in 2000 to 30 months jail (eligible for parole after 8 months) for indecently dealing with a girl, aged about 11. Keliher was friendly with the girls’ parents, who were intellectually impaired, and he had officiated at the parents’ wedding. In 1999 the victim phoned Broken Rites, which put her in contact with the Queensland Police child-protection unit. Fr Vincent Kiss Father Vincent Keiran Kiss belonged to the Wagga Wagga diocese (NSW) but also worked and played in other areas, including Melbourne and the Philippines. In Sydney in 2002, then aged 70, he  was sentenced to ten and a half years in jail (eligible for parole after seven years) for sex crimes against four teenage boys.  He pleaded guilty to three charges of buggery and ten of indecent assault. See our story here. Fr Frank Klep Father Frank Gerard Klep, of the Salesian order, Victoria, 5 years 10 months jail, with parole after 3 years 6 months (after an appeal by the prosecution on behalf of the victims, April 2006, replacing previous sentence in 2005 of 1-3 yrs jail); also had a 9-months jail sentence in 1994, which he served in community work.  See our story here. Marist Brother Kostka In the Australian Capital Territory Supreme Court on 23 June 2008, Marist Brother John William Chute (born 13 June 1932), whose religious name is “Brother Kostka” (in honour of a 16th Century saint), was jailed after pleading guilty to sexually molesting four students when they were aged 13 and 14 at Canberra’s Marist College in the 1980s. See our story here. Michael Lannen, ex-trainee priest Michael William Lannen spent two years in the 1980s as a trainee priest at the Catholic seminary in Banyo, Brisbane. He later became a senior psychologist for Queensland’s prison system. In 1996, aged 49, he was sentenced to four years jail after being found guilty of corruptly intimidating prisoners into engaging in oral sex with him in return for favourable reports regarding the prisoners’ future. The prosecution said that Lannen held considerable power over the prisoners, regarding their early release or whether they were given leave of absence or home detention or were accepted into work-release schemes. Lannen’s conviction relates to a period after he ceased being a trainee priest but the conviction is being included in this list, as a matter of public record, for the information of anybody who encountered Lannen in a church-related situation. Fr Leo Leunig, Father Leo St Clair Leunig, then aged 66, of the Perth diocese, Western Australia, was sentenced to six years jail in 1994 after pleading guilty to 46 offences against three young boys between 1965 and 1969; and he was sentenced in 1995 to another 12 months jail for offences against another boy. The offences included indecent touching, oral sex and sodomy. The church authorities had known since 1979 about Leunig’s criminal behaviour, but they retained him in the ministry and merely moved him from a one-parish appointment to a multi-parish role as a relieving priest. This meant that he had access to boys in the new parishes where he would be relieving. While he was relieving, Leunig lived for many years at the South Perth presbytery, which is adjacent to a primary school, but the church authorities did not warn the school’s principal or parents about him. While Leunig was serving his jail sentence (and also after he was released), the Perth diocese defiantly continued to list him for years in the annual Australian Catholic Directories as a “supplementary” (relieving) priest of the Perth diocese. Fr Bruce Little In the Southport District Court (Queensland) on 2 February 1996, Father Bruce Francis Little (then aged 50) was fined $750 after pleading guilty to engaging in an indecent act in a public place. Little admitted to having oral sex performed on him by a man in a public toilet block at Pizzey Park, Miami, on the Queensland Gold Coast. The court was told that police arrested Little one afternoon as they patrolled the park, a popular playground for children. (Case reported in the Brisbane Courier Mail, the Gold Coast Bulletin and the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin, 3 February 1996.) Little, who was then a priest of the Brisbane archdiocese, later transferred to the Rockhampton diocese. Br “Nestor” Littler Marist Brother John Aloysius Littler (alias Brother “Nestor”, born 17 June 1926) worked at St Vincent’s boys’ home, Westmead, in  Sydney’s west, from 1955 to 1964. In Sydney District Court in 1993, Littler pleaded guilty to three charges of indecently assaulting a boy, aged 15, at St Vincent’s in 1962. Judge Phelan sentenced Littler to a $500 five-year good behaviour bond. Judge Phelan said he was taking into account that, as a Marist Brother, Littler had a “high standing” in the community. In 1997, Littler (then aged 71) was committed for trial on 29 counts of sexual assault (including buggery) of five other boys at St Vincent’s in the 1950s and ’60s but he eventually managed to get the trial cancelled on health grounds. Brother “Nestor” is also believed to have taught at the Marist Brothers’ St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, Sydney, in 1965-70. The name “Nestor”, which was the religious alias adopted by Littler when he joined the Marist Brothers, was the name of an ancient “saint”. Br Ray Logan De La Salle Brother Raymond Logan (alias Brother Pius Bernard), NSW,  W.A. and Victoria, was sentenced in 2000 to three years jail (to be served as periodic weekend detention) for offences against boys. See our story here. Kevin Lynch Kevin John Lynch was originally a Christian Brother, teaching in Catholic schools in Queensland. One of these schools is believed to have been St Brendan’s College, Yeppoon. After leaving the Christian Brothers, he worked as a school counsellor at Brisbane Boys’ Grammar School (Anglican) in the 1980s and at St Paul’s School (Anglican), Bald Hills, Brisbane, in the early 1990s. In 1997, police charged him with committing sexual crimes against boys while working as a counsellor. During prosecution, he committed suicide, thereby failing to clear his name. Fr Daniel Lyne, CP In 2002, New South Wales police were about to prosecute Father Daniel Lyne in court for sexual offences against young males but suddenly he died and the court case could not proceed. Lyne (born 1937) was a Catholic priest in the Congregation of the Passion religious order (the Passionist Fathers). Originally, Father Lyne had taught in a Passionist “juniorate” at St Ives, Sydney (this was a secondary school for boys who were “aspiring” to become priests in the Passionist order). He later worked in Africa and India. See more from Broken Rites here. Br Edward Mamo, MSC religious order A Catholic former religious Brother, Edward Mamo (born in 1944), has pleaded guilty to having committed multiple sexual offences against boys at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school, at Hamilton, Victoria, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mamo also worked at Chevalier College (Bowral, NSW) and in accommodating Vietnamese refugees in Sydney. See more from Broken Rites here. Br William Marchant Christian Brother William Edwin Marchant, Tardun Boys’ Home, Western  Australia, non-custodial sentence. Fr Denis McAlinden This Irish-born priest belonged to the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales, where he molested girls and women. This diocese then lent him to other dioceses around Australia (and in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea), keeping him out of the reach of the police as he committed to commit offences. Police accumulated evidence to prosecute McAlinden in court but when they finally caught up with him in 2005, he was in a church-run aged-care centre in Western Australia, where he died one month later. Since then, the Maitland-Newcastle diocese has been paying compensation to some of McAlinden’s victims. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Michael McArdle, Father Michael Joseph McArdle, of the Rockhampton diocese in Queensland, was sentenced in 2003 to six years jail (with parole possible after two years) after pleading guilty to 62 incidents of indecent dealings against 14 boys and two girls between 1965 and 1987. McArdle told a journalist that the church was aware of his offences but it never alerted police or parishioners. Fr Charles McCann A young woman made a sworn statement to Victoria Police in 1993 that Fr Charles McCann, of St Kevin’s parish, Templestowe, in Melbourne’s north-east, had invasively mauled her breasts while she was asleep in bed in her family home when she was a teenager in 1983. McCann, who was a friend of the girl’s family, was making a “home visit”. Police interviewed McCann in 1993 and, as a result, of this interview, they gave him a summons to appear in court in March 1994 to answer a charge of indecent assault. However, the girl’s parents and grandparents feared that the case would embarrass the church, so they pressured the young woman to withdraw the charge, threatening to disinherit her if she proceeded. Feeling defeated, the young woman withdrew the charge two days before the court hearing. The church authorities then felt justified in retaining McCann in the priesthood until he retired nine years later, in 2003. Br Bernard McGrath St John of God Brother Bernard Kevin McGrath was jailed in New Zealand in 1993, was jailed in Sydney in 1997, and was in jail again in New Zealand from 2006 to 2008. Any Australian victims of McGrath should have a chat with the Lake Macquarie detectives office in New South Wales, telephone 02-49429909. See the Broken Rites story about McGrath and the St John of God Brothers here. Fr Ron McKeirnan Father Ronald McKeirnan, of the Brisbane archdiocese, was sentenced to three years jail (one year minimum) in 1998, plus 3 yrs jail (suspended) in 2003, for offences against boys. See our story here. Fr Paul McLachlan Father Paul McLachlan, of the Brisbane archdiocese, was sentenced to 3 yrs 8 months jail in 2000, plus 18 months jail in 2001, for offences against boys. McLachlan was formerly the head of Brisbane’s Catholic Media Office for 19 years and appeared on television religious programs. See our story here. Br Gerard McNamara Marist Brother Gerard Joseph McNamara (born 9 March 1938) was sentenced in Melbourne to three years jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting six boys. McNamara, who taught mainly in Victoria, was originally known as “Brother Camillus” (not to be confused with another Marist Brother “Camillus” in Sydney). See the Broken Rites report here. Br “Ossie” McNamara Marist Brother Hugh Michael McNamara (born 7 March 1933) taught at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill in Sydney as Brother “Oswald” McNamara until about 1978. He ceased being a Brother and then taught as a lay teacher at the Marist Brothers college at Ashgrove in Brisbane, where he  was jailed in 1995 for indecently dealing with a boy. In Sydney in 1999, he was convicted of physical assault of a boy at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in 1970; and a charge of indecently assaulting the same boy was dismissed because of lack of witnesses. Rick McPhillamy, cathedral acolyte In 2011, Richard John McPhillamy (who has been an acolyte at the Bathurst Catholic Cathedral and who is a former assistant dormitory master at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst) was sentenced to a minimum of 12 months jail after he was found guilty of sexual crimes against two boys while he was working as an assistant housemaster at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst in the mid-1980s. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Terence Merivale Father Terence Michael Merivale was a priest in the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese but left the priesthood. Later, in 2000, he was sentenced to six months jail after pleading guilty to seven charges of indecent assault (including one of digital penetration) on three young  girls when he was ministering in St Bernard’s parish, Belmont, Geelong, between 1969 and 1975. Fr Murray Moffat In August 2010, Father Murray Alexander Moffat, of Brisbane, was sentenced to 18 months jail, with the first three months to be spent behind bars and the remainder suspended for three years. He pleaded guilty to indecent treatment of a 12-year-old girl between 1977 and 1981. See the Broken Rites story here. Br Rodger Moloney This member of the St John of God Brothers has worked in Australia and New Zealand. In August 2008 in New Zealand, Rodger William Moloney, 73, was jailed for sexually abusing educationally-disadvantaged boys in Christchurch, N.Z., in the 1970s. He was released from jail in September 2009. The court was told that, after completing his sentence, he would be deported to Australia.  Any Australian victims of Moloney should have a chat with the police sexual offences units in Australia. See our Moloney story here. And see our background story about the St John of God Brothers in Australia here. Br Terry Mulligan Marist Brother Terence Mulligan was sentenced in Sydney in 2000 to 6 months periodic detention for indecent assaults against two boys. Mulligan met the two siblings through their Marist Brothers school at Auburn, in Sydney’s west. He assaulted the boys in the family’s house. One of the victims, “Ricky” (aged 32 in 2000), said outside the court that the sexual abuse devastated his personal development. His life became a blur of drugs, alcohol and rage. Ricky’s wife said the effect of the abuse was being felt by her and the whole family. Fr Gerard Mulvale Father Gerard Joseph Mulvale, born 17 July 1948, from Western Australia, jailed 18-36 mths in Melbourne 1995 while he was a priest in the Pallottine order.  See our story here. Br Lawrence Murphy Christian Brother Lawrence Denis Murphy worked in Catholic boys’ orphanages at Tardun, Castledare and Clontarf in Western Australia in the 1940s and ’50s. In May 1997, he was arrested in Adelaide and extradited to Western Australia on charges of unlawful carnal knowledge and indecent dealing at the orphanages. In 1998 a West Australian magistrate ruled that there was indeed sufficient evidence for a jury to convict Murphy (then aged 80) but Murphy died before the the trial could be held. Monsignor James Murray In June 2000, Monsignor James William Murray, Geelong, Victoria (Melbourne archdiocese), was convicted and fined $500 after pleading guilty to having indecently assaulted a 25-year-old woman who had requested his pastoral care. See our story here. Fr “Max” Murray After Father Magnus William Murray committed child-sex offences in New Zealand, he was transferred to Sydney, where he was allowed to minister in the Woollahra parish in 1972-76. His past was concealed from Sydney parishioners. He later returned to New Zealand, where he was sentenced in 2003 to five years jail after pleading guilty to ten representative charges of committing indecent assaults and indecent acts on four boys in New Zealand between 1962 and 1972. The Sydney archdiocese now denies that it breached its duty of care in allowing Murray to minister in Australia because (it claims) Murray was New Zealand’s responsibility, not Sydney’s. Br Ross Murrin On 10 March 2008, Marist Brother Ross Francis Murrin (born 10 June 1955) was sentenced to 39 months’ jail, with a non-parole period of 18 months, after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting Catholic primary school boys in the 1970s. In February 2010, he received additional jail time after pleading guilty to sexually abusing another boy at a later school. See our story here. Brother Robert John N***** This former De La Salle Brother, received a ten-year jail sentence in NSW in February 2002 (when aged 55), eligible for parole after 6 yrs (the judge granted the offender a name-suppression order). See our story here. Fr Ross O’Brien In Glen Innes Local Court in New South Wales in May 1993, Father Thomas Ross O’Brien (then aged 57) was charged with indecent assault of a hitch-hiker, whom he had picked up between Lismore and Casino on 22 October 1992. Magistrate Chris Bone found the offence proved and placed Father O’Brien on a $100 good-behaviour bond for 18 months. (Reported in the Glen Innes Examiner  28 May 1993 and mentioned again in the Sydney Sunday Sun-Herald 19 March 2000.) Father O’Brien belongs to the Armidale diocese. When in court in 1993, he was ministering at the Glen Innes parish. He was later located at the Armidale Cathedral and then in the Quirindi parish. In several editions of the annual Australian Catholic Directory (e.g., the editions from 1997 to 2004), he was listed as the contact person for the “Continuing Education of Clergy” in the Armidale diocese — that is, he has been involved in the training of priests. Br Damien O’Dempsey In Brisbane in 1994, Christian Brother Damien John O’Dempsey (then aged 46) was sentenced to 18 months’ jail (with parole after four months) after pleading guilty to six counts of indecently dealing with a 15-year-old boy at St Mary’s Christian Brothers College, Toowoomba, Queensland, in 1987. In 1998, O’Dempsey was summoned to a magistrates’ court again, facing 22 charges (indecent dealing and carnal knowledge) involving another boy at a Townsville school in 1981-84. The magistrate ordered O’Dempsey to stand trial, which was listed for 1999. However, a tragedy occurred in the family of the alleged victim and the trial was abandoned. See the Broken Rites report here. Fr Kevin O’Donnell Father John Kevin O’Donnell, Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to 15 months jail for offences against children, mainly boys. Broken Rites helped O’Donnell’s victims to obtain justice. See our story here. Fr John O’Regan This priest ministered with the Catholic order of Oblate Fathers, in Queensland and Western Australia and possibly elsewhere. In September 1998, Queensland detectives began investigating O’Regan regarding indecent assaults of girls at Nazareth House girls’ home, Wynnum North, Brisbane, in the 1950s and ’60s. But O’Regan died during this prosecution process. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Paul Pavlou On 29 June 2009, Melbourne diocesan priest Father Paul Pavlou (then aged 50) pleaded guilty to committing an indecent act with a 14-year-old boy and another charge of possessing child pornography. He was given an 18-months jail sentence (suspended) plus a two year community-based sentence (to be served by doing community work). See the full Broken Rites report here. Pending. Matter appealed – further investigation. Fr Dave Perrett Father David Perrett, who was a “chaplain” to Aborigines in the Armidale diocese in northern New South Wales, pleaded guilty in Orange District Court to indecent assault of two young Aboriginal boys at the Walgett parish and another Aboriginal boy at the Guyra parish. On 1 November 1996, Judge Shillington sentenced Perrett, then aged 59, to a three-year good-behaviour bond.  The Catholic directories continued to list Perrett as a priest of the Armidale diocese (“on leave”) until his name was removed in 2001. Another complaint against Perrett was aired on ABC-TV’s “Four Corners” on 11 November 2002. The program featured a statutory declaration by a young Aboriginal named Edward, who said he was raped by Perrett at Walgett; however, this complaint never reached a court. Edward, who had an intellectual disability and was partially deaf, had a traumatic adolescence. He ended up in jail, where he committed suicide. Fr Kevin Phillips In Sydney on 21 April 2011, Fr Kevin Francis Phillips (of Mackay in the Rockhampton diocese in Queensland) was jailed after pleading guilty to offences against a boy at St Stanislaus College (a boys’ boarding school) in Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1990. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Ron Pickering For years, Father Ronald Dennis Pickering was protected by the Melbourne Catholic hierarchy. In late 1993 he suddenly fled from Australia to England, fearing that one of his victims would talk to police. The police eventually obtained enough evidence for a prosecution but were discouraged by the problem of locating Pickering in England (although the Melbourne archdiocese secretly knew his England address) and also the problem of extraditing him to Australia for the court proceedings. The Melbourne Catholic Archdiocese, which had long known about Pickering’s liking for boys, admitted that Pickering was an offender and it made civil settlements with some of his victims, so as to limit the church’s financial liability. See the full Broken Rites article here. Fr Terry Pidoto On 17 September 2007, Father Terrence Pidoto, of the Melbourne archdiocese, was sentenced to seven years and three months’ jail (with a minimum of five years before becoming eligible for parole) on charges of buggery and indecent assault against boys. See our story here. Priest #1, Adelaide In Adelaide in 1989, Catholic Church authorities tried to conceal a priest’s court case. In Holden Hill Magistrates Court, Adelaide, on 21 July 1989, this diocesan priest and another man were found guilty of indecent behaviour and were each fined $100. Late on a summer’s night, police had found the pair lying under bushes near Walkerville oval, engaging in sexual activity. The priest also was originally charged with giving a false name and address. Church lawyers persuaded the court to prohibit the media from publishing the priest’s name but media lawyers contested this application. The Supreme Court lifted the suppression order and the case was reported fully, with names, in the Adelaide “Advertiser” and “Sunday Mail” during July 26-30, 1989. Archbishop Leonard Faulkner wrote in a letter to all priests on 7 June 1989: “In reflecting my decision that [this priest] continue his ministry at [his parish], I remembered my own shortcomings and those of a number of our brother priests.” The priest is still in charge of an Adelaide parish. Priest #2, Adelaide and northern Sydney This priest was a mature-age entrant to the priesthood. He was recruited by (and was trained for) the Adelaide diocese, where he worked in parishes in the 1970s and ’80s. While visiting Cairns, Queensland, he was caught wilfully exposing himself on a beach. In a Cairns court on 27 July 1987, he pleaded guilty and was fined $100. After this, the church authorities transferred him to the Broken Bay diocese, in the northern suburbs and outskirts of Sydney, where he was put in charge of parishes, including parish schools. In February 1995, the Cairns court case was revealed in the “Manly Daily”, Sydney (circulating in the Broken Bay diocese), in an article headed “Shock of priest’s past: Parents stunned at exposure case”. The priest verified this report. Fr “Joseph” Pritchard Father Peter Harold Pritchard (alias Fr “Joseph” Pritchard), of the St Gerard  Majella religious order in the Parramatta diocese, NSW, was sentenced in 1997 to 6 years jail (four years minimum) after pleading guilty to charges of buggery, intent to commit buggery, and indecent assault involving seven trainee Brothers and another young male, all aged 16 to 21, over a 19-year period. See our story here. Fr David Rapson Father David Edwin Rapson (born 30 July 1953), who was then a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, was sentenced in 1992 to two years jail after pleading guilty to five incidents of indecently assaulting a 15-year-old boy at Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, in Sunbury (in Melbourne’s north-west), where Rapson was a vice-principal. In a newspaper report in 1992, Rapson’s name was given (apparently wrongly) as David Edward Rapson. See more here. Fr Michael Reis, MSC religious order Father Michael Francis Reis (known as Mick Reis), who has taught at Monivae College in Victoria and Downlands College in Queensland, was sentenced in Brisbane on 6 November 2008 to 18 months jail (with a minimum of six months) for offences against two young girls in the 1980s and 1990s. See our story here. Fr Gerry Ridsdale Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a total of 40 children (comprising 39 boys and one girl). He is serving a jail sentence of 19 years (minimum), with parole possible in the year 2013. See our story here. Br Gregory Riley Christian Brother Francis Riley (known as Brother Greg Riley), New South Wales, was sentenced in 1999 to three years jail after pleading guilty to 17 counts of indecent assault against boys. Fr Stephen Robinson In 1998, Father Stephen Joseph Robinson (then aged 51), who was then a Catholic priest in the St Gerard Majella order in the Parramatta  diocese, NSW, was sentenced to a minimum of 18 months’ jail for acts of indecency on two trainee Brothers.  See our story here. Fr Victor Rubeo Father Victor Gabriel Rubeo, Melbourne archdiocese, pleaded guilty in 1996 to having indecently assaulted two boys in a previous parish (Laverton in the 1960s). On 28 October 2011, Rubeo appeared in court again, charged with additional incidents from the 1960s and was ordered to re-appear on 16 December 2011 for a full hearing but he died (aged 78) before this next hearing date. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Paul-David Ryan Father Paul David Carl Ryan, Ballarat diocese, Victoria, was sentenced in 2006 to 18 months jail (12 months minimum) for offences against boys. See our story here. Fr Vince Ryan Father Vincent Gerard Ryan, of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, NSW, was sentenced in 1996-97 to 16 years (minimum of 11) for offences against boys. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Peter Searson This Melbourne diocesan priest pleaded guilty in a magistrates’ court in 1997 to physically assaulting a 12-year-old altar boy. The police also had evidence of sexual abuse committed by Searson, but Searson chose to plead guilty to the physical abuse, thereby ensuring a more lenient sentence. The court ordered Searson to observe a good-behaviour bond. Also in 1997, the Melbourne archdiocese’s Commissioner on Sexual Abuse investigated certain other allegations about Fr Searson, involving a number of women, boys and girls. See the Broken Rites report here. Fr Kelvin Sharkey On 29 April 2010, Father Kelvin Gerald Sharkey (a priest of the Wollongong Catholic Diocese in New South Wales) was sentenced to a minimum 15 months in jail after pleading guilty to buggery and indecent assault of an altar boy. See the Broken Rites story here here. Jack Shea John Rowan Shea was originally a priesthood trainee in Melbourne archdiocese and was later a prominent layman in Melbourne parish affairs and in the St Vincent de Paul Society. In 1996, aged 73, he was sentenced to three years jail (minimum of one year) for offences against boys in his “care” in the 1970s. Shea’s conviction relates to a period after he ceased being a trainee priest but the conviction is being included in this list, as a matter of public record, for the information of anybody who encountered Jack Shea in a church-related situation. Br Terence Simpson, former Christian Brother Terence Simpson, Brisbane, was sentenced to two years jail (suspended) for offences against boys. See our story here. Fr Michael Slattery On 9 August 2007 a Catholic priest from Western Australia, Father Michael Slattery, was sentenced in Sydney District Court to an 18-months jail sentence (suspended, with a good-behaviour bond) after he pleaded guilty to committing three acts of indecency (masturbation) in the presence of a schoolgirl, who was aged 14 to 15. The offences occurred in 1981-82 while Slattery was a lay teacher at a North Sydney Catholic girls school before becoming ordained as a priest for Western Australia. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Brian Spillane On 19 April 2012, a Sydney court sentenced Brian Joseph Spillane to nine years jail (with parole after five years) for indecently assaulting three young girls when he was working as a Catholic priest (in the Vincentian religious order) in New South Wales in the 1970s and ’80s. He is awaiting  further court proceedings for alleged sexual offences against boys. See the Broken Rites story here. Br Peter Spratt Marist Brother Peter Richard Spratt (born 2 August 1937) used to work at Marist College in Canberra. In 1996 he pleaded guilty to two acts of indecency against a 14-year-old boy from the school. The incidents occurred in 1979 at a Marist Brothers’ residence at Wategoes Beach, Byron Bay, NSW, and at a holiday centre in Jindabyne, NSW. A magistrate at Cooma Local Court placed Spratt on a $2,000, two-year good-behaviour bond. Brother Spratt also taught at Marist Brothers, Pagewood, Sydney. It is believed that in the 1960s he taught with the Marist Brothers at Lismore, NSW. In those years he was probably known by a “religious” name, rather than his real name. It was common for Marist Brothers to adopt a “religious” name such as Bartholomew, Ignatius, Aloysius, Xaverius, etcetera. Br Gregory Sutton Marist Brother Gregory Joseph Sutton (born 19 March 1951) taught in the 1980s at Catholic primary schools in New South Wales, where he has admitted committing numerous serious offences, including rapes of young girls and indecent assaults of young boys. He fled to the USA, where he became  principal of a Catholic school. He was extradited back to Australia, where he was jailed in 1996 for a maximum of 18 years (with parole possible after 12 years). See our story here. Fr John Sweeney Father John Gerard Patrick Sweeney, St Gerard Majella order, Parramatta  diocese, NSW, 18-27 months jail.  See our story here. Fr Tadeusz Swiatkowski Father Tadeusz Swiatkowski, of the Society of Christ (a Polish religious order in Australia), appeared in a Brisbane court in 1994 for soliciting a prostitute (he later moved to Mayfield West, Newcastle, NSW). Alan Swingler Alan Edward Swingler (born in September 1941) was originally a Marist Brother but left the Marist order and became a lay teacher of religious studies at St Joseph’s Christian Brothers’ College, Geelong, Victoria, where he stayed for 18 years. In 1996 Swingler, aged 54, was sentenced to seven years jail (minimum of five years) on one incident of buggery, three incidents of gross indecency and nine of indecent assault of boys. Outside the court, the mother of one victim said that, even after the family complained to the school about the crimes, the school kept Swingler on its staff. Br Colgan Taylor In Brisbane District Court on 29 November 2002, Marist Brother Colgan Taylor (then aged 80 and living in Sydney) was sentenced to 18 months’ jail after pleading guilty to four counts of indecent dealing with two young girls in central Queensland between 1979 and 1983. One girl was aged five or six when abused. The second victim was intellectually disabled and aged between eight and 11 when abused. The abuse was not reported until the youngest victim came forward in May 2002. Taylor was ordered to serve four months of the sentence, with the remainder suspended. Br George Taylor, De La Salle After one of his victims finally contacted the police, Albert Matthew Taylor (known as “Brother George“) pleaded guilty in the Sydney District Court on 8 August 1995 to two incidents of indecently assaulting an 11-year-old boy. The assaults occurred in 1967 at De La Salle College, Revesby, Sydney. Taylor, aged 79 in 1995, was placed on a three-year good behaviour bond. Taylor’s other schools included De La Salle College, Orange, NSW. See the Broken Rites story here. Br Peter Toomey Christian Brother Peter John Toomey pleaded guilty in 2005 to offences against 10 boys at Trinity Regional College in Brunswick, Melbourne, in the 1970s. He was finally sentenced to  4 years 3 months jail, with parole after 2 years 6 months. Originally the sentence was 27 months jail (with parole after six months) but this was increased after an appeal by the prosecution, on behalf of the victims. See our story here. Fr John Treacy Father John Leslie Treacy (born 30 October 1943) was ordained on 19 May 1972 and belongs to the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria, where his original parishes included Tatura, Beechworth, Tallangatta, Wodonga and Rushworth. In 1993 he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a boy from one of his parishes and was given a non-custodial sentence (good-behaviour bond). The Sandhurst diocese later arranged for Treacy to move to Queensland, where Queensland bishops accepted him to minister in parishes and as a hospital chaplain, while he continued to be officially listed as a priest of the Sandhurst diocese. Fr Adrian Van Klooster Father Adrian Richard Van Klooster, Western Australia and NSW, was sentenced in 2003 in W.A. to 8 yrs jail for offences against boys and girls. He is eligible for parole but no minimum period was specified. See our story here. Paul Van Ruth, a former Brother On 4 March 2011 Peter Paul VAN RUTH, of Adelaide, was jailed after he pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two boys in 1969 while he was a religious Brother at Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, Sunbury, Victoria. See the Broken Rites story here. Br Geoffrey Veness Marist Brother Geoffrey Sydney Veness (born 30 September 1953) was sentenced to 12 months  jail (suspended) after pleading guilty to offences against a boy who was a pupil at St Augustine’s College, Cairns, Queensland. Br Keith William Weston Christian Brother Keith William Weston, Melbourne, was sentenced to 30 months jail (suspended) for offences against boys. See our court story here. Also, see an article by a Weston victim here. Fr Leo Wright Father Leo Daniel Wright, Brisbane archdiocese, was jailed for 3 yrs (1995) and 18 months (1997) for offences against girls and a boy. See our story here. The above list is confined to Broken Rites cases — that is, criminal prosecutions in which Broken Rites Australia gives support to victims either before or after the court proceedings. For civil out-of-court cases, see Section B, below. And Sections A and B are confined to priests and religious brothers (including trainees). For lay teachers in church schools, see some examples in Section F, at the bottom of this page.Section B: Out-of-court civil cases, researched by Broken Rites As well as the above-listed criminal prosecutions (conducted by the police), a victim can take out-of-court civil action against the Catholic Church authorities for having inflicted the offender upon the victim. This can force the church to acknowledge the harm that has been done to the victim’s life (including harm done by the church’s tradition of cover-up). This can give the victim a sense of empowerment. Sometimes this action can force the church to give a written apology to the victim. Perhaps, the church might even offer to reach a private settlement with the victim, as the church often regards this as a cheap way of protecting the church’s public image and its assets. Here are a few examples of cases (researched by Broken Rites), in which victims could tackle the church authorities for justice. Fr Bert Adderley In February 2005, the Bunbury diocese in Western Australia admitted that it was dealing with complaints that Reverend Dr Bertram Richard Adderley, Ph.D., B.A, sexually abused boys in the 1960s and ’70s. According to Broken Rites research, Bertram Adderley had been a lay teacher at the Christian Brothers’ Aquinas College in Perth in the 1950s before entering the priesthood. He served as a priest in the Bunbury diocese from 1959 to 1974. In the early 1960s (after working as a priest at the Narrogin parish), Dr Adderley oversaw Catholic education in the Bunbury diocese but in 1965, following complaints about sexual abuse, he was relegated, out-of-sight, to parishes at Mannup and Manjimup. In 1975, he left parish ministry, “on leave”. One alleged victim from Manjimup says that Adderlely persisted in seeing him after 1975, visiting him at his Catholic high school and taking him on excursions (including nude bathing) until 1979. Brother Pascal Alford Christian Brother Donald Paschal Alford worked at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong Victoria. See our story here. Fr David Anderson After action by Broken Rites, the Lismore Catholic diocese in northern New South Wales has apologized to two families who complained about sexual abuse committed by Father Clarence David Anderson (also known as Fr David Anderson). One complaint concerned two brothers, aged 14 and 9, who encountered Anderson while he was ministering in Macksville, including Nambucca Heads (on the mid-north coast), in 1966-68. The boys’ father had died, so their mother allowed this priest to “befriend” the boys, because the boys “needed a father”. Another complaint concerned two brothers, aged 9 and 15, who encountered Anderson when he ministered in the Tweed Heads parish (near the Queensland border) in 1969. These latter two brothers, likewise, were from a fatherless family; and they, too, were “befriended” by Anderson. Fr John Ayers, Salesian order The Catholic religious order of Salesian Fathers has  made an out-of-court settlement with a former schoolboy who encountered Father Jack Ayers while attending Salesian College, “Rupertswood”, near Melbourne, when aged 12 to 13. See more here. Fr Herbert Balding In 1997, after consulting Broken Rites, a Melbourne woman (Noreen) complained to the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese about a hospital chaplain (Father Herbert Balding, a member of the Jesuit order). In 1978, when she was a married woman aged in her thirties, Father Balding targeted Noreen sexually while she was in a vulnerable state, seriously ill, as a in-patient at Melbourne’s Mercy Hospital. The abuse disrupted her recovery and her later life. The archdiocese complaints commissioner (Peter O’Callaghan, QC) accepted the complaint and ruled that Noreen had indeed been sexually abused by Balding. Br Bede (St John of God order) Former inmates of four homes operated by the Hospitaller Order of St John of God have complained to police or the Catholic Church and/or Broken Rites that they were sexually assaulted by Brother Bede Donnellan (real name John Joseph Donnellan). Separate complaints came from four locations — Chelthenham, Greensborough and Lilydale (all in Melbourne) and the Granada Hostel in Ashgrove (Brisbane). Bede Donnellan died in 1995. See more about the St John of God order here. Br. C. Beedon, Melbourne Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother C. Beedon, who taught in the late 1960s and early 1970s at St Mary’s boys’ parish primary school (next-door to Christian Brothers College) in East St Kilda, Melbourne. Br Luke Beltram, De La Salle Two families (one in Victoria and one in New South Wales) have complained about Brother Luke Beltram, a religious teacher in the Catholic order of De La Salle Brothers. Luke Francis Beltram was born about 1947. His teaching appointments included De La Salle schools at Dandenong VIC, Dubbo NSW, Malvern VIC, East Bentleigh VIC and (finally) Castle Hill NSW. He died on 10 March 2000, aged 53. See our story here. Br Benildus, De La Salle order The Catholic order of De La Salle Brothers has accepted and settled  complaints by former students (now elderly) who were sexually abused by “Brother Benildus” at De La Salle’s Oakhill College in Castle Hill (north-west of Sydney) in the 1950s. This senior Brother was born as Laurence de Moulin but adopted the religious name “Brother Benildus Joseph” in emulation of a 19th century “Saint Benildus”. At Oakhill (a boarding school), he taught primary-school boys at Year Six level or thereabouts, and he supervised the boarders, including in their dormitory. Benildus later worked at St Bernard’s Junior College, “Clairvaux” (which was then a boarding school in Katoomba NSW), where (according to former pupils) he was again sexually intrusive. Br “Bertinus” In 2010, Australian Marist Brothers held a ceremony to “praise and congratulate” six long-serving Brothers — including a one who was formerly known as Brother “Bertinus”.  A few months earlier, the Marists’ Australian administration had apologised to three ex-pupils for an encounter which each of them allegedly had with Brother “Bertinus” many years ago in their school days. See the Broken Rites report here. Fr Tony Bongiorno The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese commissioner on sexual abuse, Mr Peter O’Callagahan, QC, has upheld complaints that Father Anthony Salvatore Bongiorno sexually abused boys who were under his supervision. Fr Anthony Bongiorno was the Parish Priest in charge of St Ambrose’s parish, Brunswick, Melbourne, in the 1980s and early ’90s. See our story here. Fr Glenn Boyd, Wagga Wagga diocese In 2004, Father Glenn Boyd left the priesthood of  the Wagga Wagga Catholic diocese in southern  New South Wales after issues had been raised  about aspects of his youth work. See more here. BoysTown (De La Salle Brothers, Queensland) In 2011 the Catholic religious order of De La Salle Brothers agreed to offer an out-of-court settlement to a former pupil, who lived in the 1960s at BoysTown (a Catholic institution for disadvantaged boys) in Beaudesert, Queensland. Similar complaints have come from others who were there in later decades. See more here. Fr John  Byrne, S.J. The Catholic Jesuit order in Australia has acknowledged that a Jesuit priest, Fr John Byrne, engaged in “problematic behaviour” against pupils while he was teaching  at Xavier College, Melbourne, in 1971. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Joseph Caldwell Two women, who do not know each other, have complained in Western Australia about being molested by Father Joseph Caldwell. He was a member of the Salvatorian order of Catholic priests, which is also known as the Society of the Divine Saviour. One complainant said she was abused in 1977, aged 8, and the other said she was abused in 1984 and 1985, aged 9 and 10. Both women told Broken Rites that the abuse (and the secrecy about it) adversely affected their personal development into their adolescence and adulthood. Born in Ireland, Caldwell had worked as a priest in many countries before coming to  Australia. His parishes in Western Australia in the 1970s and ’80s included Greenmount, Dampier, Wickham and Midland. In 1980-81 he served in Western Australia’s Bunbury diocese. West Australian police have ascertained that Caldwell left Australia in the late 1980s and later died in Ireland. Br Brendan Carroll In 2005 and 2006, after action by Broken Rites, the Australian head of the De La Salle Brothers apologized to two women for sexual abuse by Brother Brendan George Carroll when they were young girls. See our story here. Fr Tom Carroll, Melbourne Broken Rites is researching Father Thomas Carroll, of the Melbourne archdiocese, after complaints by former altar boys who were at Caulfield South (Holy Cross parish) in the 1960s. Carroll’s earlier parishes included Mansfield and Epping, etc. He died in 1975. Fr Dermot Casey, Brisbane Broken Rites is researching Father Dermot Casey, who has ministered in the Brisbane archdiocese. His parishes included Cannon Hill, Beenleigh and Salisbury. See more from Broken Rites here. Chevalier College, Bowral, NSW Some ex-pupils of Chevalier College (a Catholic high school near Bowral in southern New South Wales) are still recalling allegations that a Catholic priest behaved indecently towards young boys at the school in the late 1980s. This school is owned by a religious order, the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. See more here. Br Cleophas Broken Rites is researching Marist Brother Cleophas Simmons (born on 26 March 1926), whose real name was John Edward Simmons (known to his family as Eddie). He became a trainee Brother at age 16 and spent his whole working life as a Marist Brother: at North Fitzroy, Bulleen, Templestowe and Sale in Victoria; Mount Gambier in South Australia; and Forbes, Leeton and Griffith in New South Wales. Br Colmcille, Trappist monk, Melbourne Born in Ireland as Thomas Clifford, he adopted the Gaelic “religious” name Colmcille (pronounced Kollum-Kill) in honour of an ancient Irish missionary, Saint Columba (in Gaelic, also spelt as Colum Cille). Until 1974, Colmcille lived at Tarrawarra Abbey in Yarra Glen, east of Melbourne. This is the Australian address of the Cistercian  Monks — also known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.) or the order of Trappist monks. Two women, who do not know each other, have complained (separately) that they were digitally raped, at the age of nine, by Brother Colmcille when their families (and others) used to visit this monastery about 1969-1970. Brother Colmcille later returned to Ireland, leaving damaged victims in Australia. The Cistercian order has apologised for harm done by   Colmcille. Fr Ernie Conlan, MSC order A Tasmanian family has recently learned that three of its daughters were sexually abused by Father Ernest Conlan, a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MSC), when they were young girls between 1958 and 1963. Conlan was then the parish priest at Kings Meadows, near Launceston. As Conlan was a “friend” of the family, the young girls felt that they could not tell their parents about the abuse at the time, but they have disclosed the abuse in recent years, five decades after the events. In 1965, Conlan went to Adelaide (at the Sacred Heart parish, Hindmarsh). In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a chaplain at St Vincent’s Boys’ Home, Westmead, in western Sydney. Monsignor Joseph Conway The Port Pirie Catholic diocese, which includes the northern parts of South Australia, has acknowledged that Monsignor Arthur Joseph Conway sexually abused boys. Conway, who was evidently called by his middle name (Joseph), died in 1975 but victims are still feeling the hurt. Conway was given an elaborate grave and victims protested about this. Monsignor A.J. Conway’s later years were spent around Quorn, Orroroo and Carrieton (all east of Port Augusta). Ronald Conway, Catholic psychologist This Melbourne therapist was highly regarded by Catholic Church leaders and he received many of his clients through Catholic hospitals and other Catholic agencies. He allegedly touched some of his young male clients sexually. These clients have grounds for demanding, at least, an apology from the church authorities. Ron Conway also acted for the church authorities in “screening” men who wished to become trainee priests in Victoria. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Peter Creede, CM Broken Rites Australia is investigating Father Peter Philip Creede, of the Catholic Vincentian order (the “Congregation of the Mission”). Born in Ireland (with seven siblings who became nuns or priests), he was ordained in Sydney. He worked at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst (New South Wales), followed by parishes in Southport and Wandal (Queensland), Ashfield (NSW) and Malvern (Victoria). Fr Pat Cusack, Canberra After action by Broken Rites, the Canberra-Goulburn archdiocese admitted that Father Patrick Cusack sexually assaulted primary school girls in St Matthew’s parish in Page, a Canberra suburb, in the 1970s. See our story here. Fr Denis Daly This Irish-born priest belonged to the Sydney archdiocese, but after he got into trouble with Sydney police, the church transferred him to Western Australia and then allowed him to roam the world, thereby putting more children at risk. One boy victim in Ireland died by suicide. See our story here. Fr Bernard Day Father Bernard Maxwell Day, of the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese, lived in 1961-63 in a flat at St Catherine’s girls’ orphanage (conducted by the Sisters of Mercy) in Geelong, where he acted as the “chaplain”, giving the girls “sex education”. Some of these women are still trying to repair their damaged lives. See our story here. Br Wilfred De Cruz The Catholic religious order of De La Salle Brothers has made amends with two former pupils of a De La Salle secondary school at Scarborough, Queensland (now called Southern Cross Catholic College). The ex-pupils have complained about being indecently assaulted by Brother Wilfred D’Cruz. See our story here. Fr Mark Devoy A number of women, now in mature age, have provided evidence that Fr Mark Devoy SM (from the Society of Mary religious order) committed sexual assaults on them when they were young school girls in the 1950s and 1960s. These victims lived in different parts of Australia; they did not know each other; and the attacks happened in various parishes. Devoy was protected by the Society of Mary while he worked in their parishes in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth (and also, previously,  in New Zealand). One woman says some of the assaults occurred during Confession. Br Richard Doheny, Sydney Broken Rites Australia is investigating this member of the Catholic order of Patrician Brothers in New South Wales. He was born (real name John Doheny) on 3 September 1935 in Ireland (at Balingarry, Thurles, County Tipperary), the third youngest of twelve children. He became a Patrician Brother in Ireland (becoming “Brother Richard”) and arrived in Australia in 1956, aged 21. He lived and worked (at primary and junior secondary levels) in Patrician Brothers schools in western Sydney (at Fairfield, Blacktown and Granville) until 2009. Fr Patrick Doherty, Armidale Diocese, NSW The Catholic Church’s professional standards office in New South Wales has received a complaint from an elderly man who says he is still upset about having been sexually abused by Father P.G. Doherty when the complainant was a schoolboy in the Armidale diocese (in north-western NSW) in 1944-49. The boy was attending a Catholic parish primary school (aged seven to twelve) in Bundeera (between Armidale and Inverell). This school is closed now and the Bundeera parish (St Mary of the Angels) is administered now from Uralla. In 2008, when this complaint was being considered by the Armidale diocese, the diocese was acting evasively, which is a frequent response from church authorities. Father Patrick Doherty’s other parishes included Walcha, Bingara, and Warialda.  This priest died in the 1950s and is said to be buried in the Armidale cemetery. It is common for a church victim to be still upset by childhood abuse many decades many years after the original cover-up, as shown by a similar case here. Fr Frank Donovan, Redemptorist priest The Catholic Church’s Professional Standards Office in New South Wales has “accepted the veracity” of two complaints about Father Francis Donovan, a priest of the Redemptorist Fathers (also called the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer). Two women, acting separately, had complained that Donovan molested them when they were young girls in the late 1970s in buildings attached to  the Sacred Heart parish church in Campbell’s Hill, Maitland. See our story here. Fr Rex Donohoe In 2007, after action by Broken Rites, Archbishop Adrian Doyle of Hobart gave a written apology to a former altar boy of Fr Rex Donohoe. The archdiocese accepted a complaint that Donohue abused this victim in the Kingston parish in Tasmania in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Donohue specialised in the “training” of altar boys and this victim says that he was not the only altar boy who was abused by Donohoe. Donohoe established the Australian “Guild of St Stephen”, an organisation for altar boys. Donohue was later at Tasmania’s Lenah Valley parish and was also the Hobart diocesan master of ceremonies. Fr Bob Drake Broken Rites is researching Father Robert Drake, of the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria. In the 1970s his parishes included Wangaratta and Wodonga in Victoria’s north-east. After that, he worked outside the diocese — at a seminary in Papua New Guinea in the 1980s and at the Banyo seminary in Brisbane, Queensland, in the 1990s. Back in Victoria again, he was at the Chiltern parish in 1998 and at St Joseph’s parish, Quarry Hill (in Bendigo) from 1999 to 2006. Br K.E. Duckworth, Melbourne Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother Keith Evin Duckworth, who touched boys inappropriately at the  Parade College junior campus  (for years 7 and 8) in Alphington, Melbourne, in the 1970s. Fr Aidan Duggan A Sydney man (“John”) contacted Broken Rites and also lodged a formal complaint with the Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” office in 2002. He was a 14-year-old altar boy in the Bass Hill parish (near Bankstown) in Sydney in 1975, when he became a victim of Fr Aidan Duggan. Duggan, a priest of the Benedictine order, had previously been in Scotland. He was recruited by the Sydney archdiocese to work in Sydney parishes. John said Duggan sexually abused him (including oral and anal incidents) frequently throughout his adolescence. The abuse convinced John that he (John) was naturally homosexual and it was many years before he realized that he was really heterosexual. This confusion, he said, disrupted his adolescent development and adversely affected his two marriages. This led to a psychological crisis and the loss of his high-profile job. In 2002, through Towards Healing, the archdiocese offered John an out-of-court settlement of $30,000. John decided, instead, to sue the archdiocese in the New South Wales Supreme Court for a much larger sum for damages to cover his loss of his considerable professional earnings. In 2006 the Supreme Court granted permission for John’s case to proceed in court, but the archdiocese successfully appealed to the NSW Court Appeal. In May 2007 the Appeal Court stopped John’s legal action and ordered him to pay the church’s legal costs. The church paid massive fees to its lawyers to win this legal victory over John but the church regarded these fees as money well spent, expecting that this precedent would help to demoralise other church-abuse victims. According to Broken Rites research, Fr Aidan Duggan’s later parishes in Sydney included Gymea, Camperdown and Drummoyne before he retired in 1995. He died in 2004. John believes that he was not Duggan’s only victim. Archbishop James Duhig Three women, who do not know each other, have complained to Broken Rites that they were sexually abused in Queensland by Archbishop James Duhig when they were young. For example, one woman said she was assaulted by Duhig when she was living in the Brisbane Cathedral parish in 1941 aged six. James Duhig was Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane for 50 years until 1965. Br Wayne Duncan After action by Broken Rites, the Marist Brothers in New South Wales have apologised to a victim of Brother Wayne Duncan. The victim, then aged 12, was a border at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, in Sydney. Duncan (born in 1956) taught there from 1982 to 1989. Duncan targeted this boy while knowing that the boy was estranged from difficult parents. Duncan’s abuse seriously disrupted the victim’s later life. Duncan taught previously at Marist Brothers in Parramatta and later at Ashgrove (Brisbane), Canberra and Lidcombe (Sydney). Br Wilfred Eastmure Christian Brother Wilfred Eastmure worked at St Augustine’s orphanage and St Vincent’s orphanage in Victoria. See our story here. Br M.J. Esler Broken Rites is researching Brother Maurice Esler, from the Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers. Brother Eunan or “Union” The Catholic order of De La Salle Brothers has settled with some victims of Brother John McHugh, whose religious name was “Brother Eunan“, which some of his ex-pupils pronounce as yoon-yon as in “trade union”. (There was once a Saint Eunan in Ireland.) Born in Ireland, Eunan McHugh was one of a significant number of Irish-born religious personnel who surfaced in Australia. In the early 1950s, Eunan McHugh taught and supervised boys at two schools in Katoomba, west of Sydney: “Clairvaux”” (the junior school of St Bernard’s College, Katoomba); and St Canice’s parish primary school, Katoomba. At Clairvaux, a  boarding school, Brother “Union”  was in charge of a dormitory and he himself slept next to the dormitory. Later in the 1950s, he taught at De La Salle College in Cronulla, in Sydney’s south (and this school, too, had boarders). Br P.T. Farrell, St Virgil’s College, Hobart In 2006, the Christian Brothers made a civil  settlement with a former student of St Virgil’s College in Hobart, Tasmania. This ex-student had told Broken Rites in 1993 that, when he was a boarder at St Virgil’s (aged seven to eight) in the mid-1950s, he was sexually assaulted by Brother Patrick Timothy Farrell. This Brother, who was nicknamed “Jacky” Farrell at St Virgil’s, was in charge of the junior dormitory for several years until mid-1957. After that, he worked in various Christian Brothers institutions in Sydney. Marist Brother Stephen Farrell The Marist Brothers head office in Sydney has settled complaints about child-abuse involving Marist Brother Stephen Farrell who died in 2004, aged 81. He taught for many years in New South Wales and Queensland. See more here. “Father F“, New South Wales The church authorities covered up for “Father F” in the Armidale diocese (in northern New South Wales) from the early 1980s onwards after receiving complaints about him abusing children, and in 1989 the church authorised him to transfer to parishes in the Parramatta diocese (near Sydney), giving him access to more children. According to a church document, Father F has admitted that he committed sexual acts upon children. The church has paid compensation to two of these complainants for their damaged lives but the victims’ families are still feeling the hurt. The cover-up continued for 30 years until it was exposed by the media in 2012. Read more here. Br Fintan, De La Salle schools Brother Fintan Dwyer worked in De La Salle schools around Australia. Various ex-pupils have complained that Brother Fintan touched them sexually. His birth name was Louis Victor Dwyer. “Brother Fintan” was his “religious” name. Brother Fintan (not to be confused with a colleague, Brother Finian Allman) toured De La Salle schools, recruiting boys as future Brothers. He died in 1990. See our story here. Fr Gerry Fitzgerald, Melbourne Broken Rites Australia is researching Father Gerard Fitzgerald, who spent 51 years as a priest in the Melbourne Archdiocese before retiring in 2006. In one of his early parishes (Coburg in 1964), there was a police investigation into sexual offences against children. See more here. Fr Dominic Fitzmaurice After action by Broken Rites, the Australian head of the Dominican Fathers apologised to a woman for sexual assaults committed by Father Dominic Fitzmaurice in Our Lady of Graces parish at Carina in Brisbane in 1972, when she was aged 12. See our story here. Fr Bill Fleming, Boys Town, NSW, 1979 During the trial of Father Paul Raymond Evans in Sydney District Court in July 2008, one of Evans’s victims (from Boys Town school near Sydney) told the court that, after he was molested by Evans in 1979, the assault was reported to the school administration. The boy said he was later told by the school’s head, Father William Fleming (a member of the Salesian order) to forget about the incident because “men have urges”. The court heard that Father Fleming allegedly assaulted another boy, who had also made allegations against Evans. Fleming was the rector of Boys Town during the 1970s. Fr Leo Flynn The Melbourne archdiocese has apologized to a woman for sexual abuse committed by Fr Leo Flynn, a priest of the Jesuit order. At the time of the abuse, Flynn was working in a parish which the Jesuit Fathers were staffing on behalf of the Melbourne archdiocese. At first, the woman complained to the Jesuit order (the Society of Jesus) but the Jesuit administration ignored her.  Broken Rites then helped the woman to present her case to the Melbourne archdiocese. The archdiocese accepted the woman’s account and apologised (this was reported in the Melbourne “Herald Sun” on 8 May 2000). Br Greg Fogarty Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother Leo Gregory Fogarty (known as Brother GREG Fogarty) who worked at St Augustine’s boys’ orphanage (in Geelong, Victoria) from 1978 to 1985 inclusive; he became the superintendent there in 1979. See some background about St Augustine’s orphanage here. Fr Julian Fox In 2000, a Catholic order of priests in Australia (the Salesians of Don Bosco) made a  settlement with a Melbourne man (Luke, born in 1964). According to the settlement deed (of which Broken Rites has a copy), Luke alleged that “over a period of time between 1978 and 1979, whilst a student at Salesian College, Rupertswood, Sunbury [Melbourne], he was unlawfully sexually and/or physically assaulted by Fr Fox”. In 2006, six years after the settlement, Luke died, aged 42. Father Fox now has a position at the Salesian headquarters in Rome. See our story here. Fr Laurie Gallagher, Marist Fathers Broken Rites is researching Father Lawrence Gallagher, S.M. (a member of a religious order, the Society of Mary), who taught at Marist College in Burnie, Tasmania, in the 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1980s he was at St John’s College, Woodlawn, in Lismore New South Wales. He was also a relieving minister in parishes around Australia. For example, in 1991, he was the Parish Priest in charge of St Thomas More’s parish at Margaret River (in the Bunbury diocese) in Western Australia. It is believed that he formerly served as a missionary in Japan. This Laurie Gallagher is not to be confused with a former diocesan priest of the same name in Victoria. Fr Kevin Glover, Western Australia Broken Rites is researching Father William Kevin Glover (known as Kevin Glover) who worked in the Bunbury diocese in Western Australia from 1959 to 1979 (including parishes at Esperance in the 1970s and Margaret River in the 1980s). In the 1990s, he worked at a Catholic Mission on the Pacific Island of Niue, situated to the north of New Zealand. Fr Gerald Goss Women in several parts of Australia have complained to Broken Rites that they were indecently assaulted by this priest, who was a member of the itinerant Redemptorist order, visiting countless parishes throughout Australia. His victims included housekeepers in parish presbyteries, as well as women parishioners. Br Julian Hackett Christian Brother Vincent Julian Hackett was the superintendent of St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria. See more from Broken Rites  here. Br “Anselm” Hallam This member of the De La Salle Brothers was born as Tom Hallam and adopted the “religious” name Anselm (sometimes also spelt Anselem), which was the name of a medieval “saint”. “Brother Anselm” Hallam taught in the late 1960s at St Joseph’s parish primary school, Malvern, in Melbourne, and also taught middle-school students at the neighbouring De La Salle College. According to numerous victims, he was a notorious molester.  He invasively mauled the genitals of his pupils. He gave “sex lessons” (really just “dirty talk”), while masturbating under his clerical frock. A female teacher, who knew what Anselm Hallam was doing, complained to the school’s head Brothers but they were not interested. Anselm Hallam died in the early 1990s, aged 92. One of his victims, who became a successful professional, has contributed an interview to the oral history collection at the National Library of Australia about his own professional career, and he included an account of his experiences at the hands of Brother Anselm Hallam. Fr John Harcombe Broken Rites is researching Father John J. Harcombe, who was ordained, about 1972, from St Paul’s Seminary for Late Vocations, in Kensington, Sydney. He ministered in the Sydney archdiocese (and also in the Broken Bay diocese, north of Sydney) at parishes in Lewisham, Gosford, Auburn South, Lakemba, Epping, Asquith and Kincumber. Fr Guy Hartcher In March 1994, the Catholic order of Vincentian Fathers (officially called the Congregation of the Mission) signed a civil settlement with a former student of St Stanislaus College in Bathurst, New South Wales. This student was at the school in 1971, when he was aged 14. In the settlement Deed of Release, the Trustees of the Vincentian Fathers state that this agreement is “in full and final settlement” of all or any rights and actions that the ex-student may have “against the Trustees, Father Guy Hartcher or any servant or agent of the Trustees.” See our story here. Br Bernard Hartman A member of the Marianist religious order, Brother Bernard Hartman (born about 1939), has written an apology to an Australian woman (born 1964) who alleged that he sexually abused her when she was a child in Melbourne in the 1970s. In 1985 Hartman moved to the USA, where the Marianists have allowed him to remain in this religious order. Br Bernard Hayes A man, “Roger”, contacted Broken Rites in 2004, stating that he had been sexually abused by Brother Bernard Robert Hayes at the Christian Brothers College preparatory school in Alphington, Melbourne, in 1969. Roger described how the abuse had damaged his psychological development and wrecked his marriage. Broken Rites advised Roger about how to deal with the Catholic Church professional standards office (“Towards Healing”). After much evasiveness, the Christian Brothers’ Melbourne headquarters accepted a report by a church psychologist and  gave Roger a letter of apology and eventually (in 2006) signed a civil settlement with Roger. Brother Hayes’s previous schools were: St Monica’s Boys’ School, Moonee Ponds VIC, 1942-44; St Kevin’s College, Toorak VIC, 1944-55; Rostrevor College, Adelaide, 1955-60; and St Joseph’s College, Pascoe Vale VIC, 1960-66. When Roger was abused at Alphington in 1969, Brother Hayes was aged 47.  The Alphington campus, which comprised Grades 7 and 8, was a preparatory school for Parade College, Bundoora, Melbourne. Br P.R. Heslin, Melbourne The Christian Brothers have acknowledged sexual offences that were committed against boys by Brother Robert Heslin in Melbourne. Heslin’s various schools included: Our Lady of Mount Carmel College, Middle Park; St Joseph’s, Pascoe Vale; and St Bernard’s College, Essendon. Br “Callixtus” Hogan Broken Rites has helped three former schoolchildren (two males and one female)   to extract a settlement from the Marist Brothers regarding incidents that allegedly occurred in New South Wales in the 1960s while Brother Kevin “Calixtus” Hogan was the principal of St Francis de Sales College (in Leeton) and Red Bend Catholic College (in Forbes). See more here. Marist Br. “Crispin” Hopson Broken Rites is investigating Marist Brother Kevin Nicholas Hopson (religious name Brother “Crispin”, called after Saint Crispin). Born on 6 February 1933, he worked at Marist Brothers schools in Sydney (Mosman, Daceyville, Lidcombe, Hunters Hill and Kogarah), as well as at Marist College, Canberra. Marist Brother Edward Hosey at Coogee NSW The Marist Brothers in New South Wales have made a small civil settlement with a former pupil (“Max“), who was at Marcellin Junior College (a primary school for boys in years 5 and 6) in 1973. This campus, which was then at 160 Coogee Bay Road, Coogee (Sydney), was a feeder school for the secondary-level Marcellin College at Randwick. Max made a formal, signed statement to the NSW police on 24 June 2003, alleging that he was mauled sexually by Brother Edward (his mathematics teacher) almost daily during 5th Grade, when he was aged 10. Brother Edward John Hosey (born 4 February 1911) has died and therefore the police cannot charge him. Max says the corrupt circumstances of this church-abuse disrupted his education and his adolescence, leaving him with serious difficulties in adulthood.  In August 2003 the Marist Brothers promptly accepted Max’s complaint and arranged  a civil settlement, although this does not make up for the disruption to Max’s life. Other victims of Hosey have contacted Broken Rites. Fr Cuthbert Hoy, MSC In early 2002, a woman (“Anne”) contacted Broken Rites, complaining that, when she was aged six in 1963, she was sexually assaulted on several occasions by Father Cuthbert Hoy, in the sacristy of “Our Lady of the Sacred Heart” church at Henley Beach in Adelaide. Hoy was a priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order, which conducted the Henley Beach parish, plus some other parishes around Australia. By 1966, Hoy had moved to a Hobart parish, also conducted by the MSC order. Broken Rites advised Anne about preparing a case for the Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” process. The MSC order gave Anne a written apology and, in 2003, it made a settlement with her. Fr James Hughes This priest (also known as Fr Jamie Hughes or Fr Jim Hughes) was born in Ireland on 15 May 1920 and was ordained in 1946. Father James Hughes ministered briefly in Hobart in 1947-49 and then in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales from 1949 until 1990. In 1977-81, he was a chaplain at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Waratah (a suburb of Newcastle, NSW). In August 2002, a woman notified the New South Wales police that she had been indecently assaulted by Hughes while she was a patient at this hospital in March 1981. After beginning an investigation, detectives found that Hughes had died in 1996 and he therefore could not be prosecuted. Backed by Broken Rites, the woman then approached the Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” office. A private investigator, hired by the church, confirmed to Towards Healing that evidence “exists to support the complaint.” See our story here. Fr Kevin Johnston, Western Australia Born in Ireland, Father Kevin Daniel Johnston served as a priest in Western Australia’s Bunbury diocese from 1959 until 1997, when he retired to Ireland. The West Australian newspaper (February 16 and 26, 2005) revealed that Johnston was facing child-sex allegations. A man (Alan) alleged that at the age of nine or 10 in the early 1970s, when he was serving as an altar boy in morning Masses at Bunbury’s St Patrick’s Cathedral, the cathedral parish priest Kevin Johnston indecently mauled him on several occasions  in a dressing room. The priest also allegedly forced the boy to indecently touch the priest. Unable to tell his devout parents, the boy became a grumpy and rebellious teenager, ending up with a hard-drug addiction. In his thirties, trying to mend his life, Alan finally complained to the Bunbury diocese. Fr Johnston then gave Alan a written apology, dated 26 August 1997, and soon retired to Ireland.  In November 2004, the Bunbury diocese offered Alan a small payout to settle the complaint but Alan rejected this amount as insufficient to help his recovery. After the February 2005 publicity about Johnston, two more men reported that they were molested by Father Johnston, one during confession and the other more than 20 times as he served as an altar boy at the Bunbury cathedral. Broken Rites research indicates that during the last stages of his career, from the mid-1970s to 1997, Johnston ministered in parishes at Boyup Brook, Manjimup, Narrogin and Leschenhault/Australind. Monsignor Penn Jones After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese apologised in 2005 to two men who were sexually abused by Monsignor Penn Harold Jones (of the Melbourne cathedral parish) while they were schoolboys in the 1960s. Jones, who was an accountant before entering the priesthood, became the Chancellor of the Melbourne archdiocese. See our story here. Fr Charles Joyce, OFM Broken Rites is researching Father Charles Joyce, a member of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans), who was working  at Padua College (a secondary school conducted by the Franciscan order) in Kedron, Brisbane, in the late 1960s. Fr Clem Kilby, Tasmania The Hobart Archdiocese has accepted and settled a complaint from a woman who said that she was sexually assaulted by Fr Clement Kilby. This priest had enjoyed a prestigious ranking in Tasmania. In the late 1970s, he worked in St Mary’s Cathedral parish in Hobart (where the priest in charge at the time was Rev. Geoffrey Hylton Jarrett, who eventually became the bishop of Lismore, New South Wales). Later, Kilby was given the rank of Episcopal Vicar for Welfare and was director of the Catholic Church’s Centacare Family Services in Hobart during the 1980s and 1990s. Ironically, Kilby also participated in a church committee that dealt with professional standards, including issues of sexual abuse — an obvious conflict of interest. He died in early 2009. Br Clim Kissane The Victoria-Tasmania province of the Christian Brothers has signed a civil settlement with a male former pupil of Brother Clim Kissane. Brother Kissane taught at various schools including: St Joseph’s College in Geelong;  St Virgil’s College in Hobart; St Joseph’s College in Pascoe Vale (Melbourne); Warrnambool Christian Brothers College (now called Emmanuel College) in Victoria; and St Joseph’s Technical College, South Melbourne. Br P.N. Lennox, Sydney In June 2012 the Christian Brothers organisation in Australia signed a settlement with a former pupil of Christian Brothers College, Manly (in Sydney), who attended this school as a 13-year-old boy about 1973.  According to the settlement deed, this ex-pupil alleges that he was “unlawfully assaulted by Brother Peter Norman Lennox, the principal of the school” and that consequently  he “has sustained loss, damage and injuries that may require specialist counselling and/or other therapy”. [The former CBC Manly is now called St Paul’s Catholic College, Manly.] Marist Br. Leon Mackey The Marist Brothers harboured “Brother Leon” (real name Noel Mackey, born on 31 July 1922) while he was sexually abusing Catholic schoolboys in Sydney and Newcastle until he suddenly left the Marist Order in 1955. He then went to Queensland and changed his surname. By 2012, the Marist Brothers had issued private apologies (plus financial settlements) to five of Brother Leon’s victims. Fr Bernard Mackin After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese has apologized to a female victim of this priest. She encountered the priest in the 1970s when she was 16. Marist Brothers Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW In 2011 the Marist Brothers signed a settlement with a former pupil who complained about sexual abuse by  Brother Leon in the junior classes at Marist Brothers Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW, in the early 1950s. Brother Leon (real name Noel Mackey, born 31 July 1922) left the Marist Order in late 1955, changed his name to Noel Desmond Dowling and worked in administration for Mount Isa Mines, Queensland, until 1983. Br “Norbert” Mathieson This Marist Brother (real name Joseph Eric Mathieson), who last taught at Marist schools in Parramatta and Eastwood (in Sydney), died in 1954 but, half a century later, former students still remember him as a sex-abuser. His victims were intimidated into silence but some of the victims (now elderly) have finally told their sons and daughters about this abuse. Thus, these sons and daughters are dismayed and angry that their fathers were secretly harmed in this way. See our story here. Fr Patrick Maye The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese promised to ban this priest after accepting sexual-abuse complaints from several women but it failed to enforce the ban on him completely. See more from Broken Rites here. Br L.C. McAllen Former pupils, now advancing in age, still feel the injustice of having been abused by Christian Brother L.C. McAllen at St Patrick’s College, Strathfield, Sydney, in the early 1960s. See more from Broken Rites here here. Fr Patrick McCarthy, Wollongong NSW, 1960s Broken Rites Australia is researching Fr Patrick Thomas McCarthy, who ministered in  the Wollongong diocese in New South Wales until the early 1970s. He was one of a significant number of Irish-born clergy who have surfaced, often unaccountably, in Australia. McCarthy’s parishes included: Corrimal (St Columbkille’s parish); Thirroul (St Michael’s parish), West Wollongong (St Teresa’s); and Helensburgh (Holy Cross parish). Fr John McCulloch, Sydney region Broken Rites is researching Fr John McCulloch, who ministered around Sydney (e.g., Katoomba parish in the 1980s). At Toukley and Gwandalan (on the coast, north of Sydney) he conducted “family camps for families in need.” Br Thomas McGee After action by Broken Rites, the Victorian province of the Christian Brothers has apologised to victims of Brother William Thomas McGee. Brother McGee worked at several Christian Brothers’ orphanages: in Bindoon and Castledare in Western Australia; St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria; and St Vincent’s boys’ home, South Melbourne. He also worked at St Vincent’s hostel, South Melbourne. See our story here. Daniel McMahon (Christian Brother, later a priest) Broken Rites has learned that the Catholic Church has made settlements with several former pupils who encountered Brother Daniel John Virgil McMahon while he was working with the Christian Brothers in Catholic boys’ schools in Western Australia (from the 1960s to the 1980s). In the early 1990s, Brother Dan McMahon was elevated to the rank of “Father” Dan McMahon and was allowed to minister as a priest in parishes in Tasmania. See more here. Br “Laetus” Mennie Former residents of St Vincent’s Boys’ Home at Westmead (in western Sydney), which was operated by the Marist Brothers, have complained about this Marist Brother (his birth name was Joseph Michael Mennie). Brother Laetus worked at this home in 1947-49 and was the director there in 1965-67. Fr Gerard Monaghan The Canberra-Goulburn Catholic diocese has been forced to apologise to a woman who was sexually abused by a priest (Fr Gerard Monaghan) immediately after the death of her husband. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Peter Moore, Wollongong NSW Broken Rites is researching Father Peter Moore, who was the vicar-general of the Wollongong Catholic diocese in New South Wales in the 1980s and 1990s, while he was also in charge of St John Vianney’s parish in Fairy Meadow. In the 1970s he had been at St Paul’s parish, Albion Park. Fr Brian Moran, Toowoomba diocese Two women, who do not know each other, have complained that, when they were young girls in the early 1960s, they were sexually abused by Father Brian Anthony Moran, of the Toowoomba diocese, which covers an extensive region in western Queensland. Father Brian Moran, who was born about 1929, was sometimes nicknamed Mick Moran. He ministered until 1995 throughout an area bounded by Toowoomba city, Dalby, St George, Cunnamulla, Mitchell and Miles. Fr John F. Moran, Rockkhampton & Sydney A man (“Tom”) reported to Broken Rites in 1994 that, as a 15-year-old in 1981, he was indecently assaulted by Father John Fabian Moran in the Sacred Heart parish at Yeppoon, in the Rockhampton diocese, in central Queensland. The boy’s parents were away from home and they understood that Father Moran would be supervising him. The parents had been led to believe that their child would be safe under the supervision of a Catholic priest. Father Moran visited the boy and took him on outings. After beginning with playful “wrestling”, Father Moran allegedly mauled the boy’s genitalia on several occasions, and Tom allegedly was required to masturbate the priest. The boy felt intimidated into silence and was not able to tell his Catholic parents about the assaults until he was aged 26 (he contacted Broken Rites at age 27). According to the Crimes Act, an adult who sexually mauls a young person is committing “indecent assault of a child” and the perpetrator is not allowed to claim, as a defence, that the child consented. This crime is regarded as being particularly aggravated when it is perpetrated by a person supposedly in a position of trust, such as a priest. Later in the 1980s and early 1990s, Fr John Moran was a chaplain at Rockhampton’s Emmaus College (a secondary school). About 1994-95, he was on the staff at St Paul’s Seminary for Late Vocations in Sydney and was a part-time school chaplain in Sydney. Fr Syd Morey Father Sydney Morey, a priest in the Ballarat diocese in western Victoria, sexually abused young boys in the 1960s and ’70s, including in the Horsham and Terang districts. However, the police are unable to do anything about Sid Morey now because he has died. Morey (born 9 August 1913) was originally a Marist Brother (in New South Wales) before becoming a priest. See our story here. Br. “Organ” Morgan, Monivae College, Victoria Leaders of a Catholic religious order — the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart — have apologised for sexual acts committed by Brother G.M. Morgan on boys at Monivae College at Hamilton in western Victoria in the 1960s. Students nicknamed this Brother as “Organ” Morgan because of his indecent assaults on boys’ genitals. Broken Rites possesses a written apology , which the MSC leadership gave to one ex-student, dated 22 February 1994. Morgan was not the only such offender on the Monivae College staff. Fr Gerald Moylan, northern Victoria Women have complained that Father Gerald Leo Moylan (of the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria) harassed them verbally about “sex” when they were schoolgirls in Wodonga, Victoria, in the 1960s (or when  women were interviewed by Moylan before a church wedding ceremony). In the 1970s and ‘80s, Moylan was in charge of the Numurkah parish and was appointed as the “spiritual director” of the Catholic Women’s League in the diocese. He was promoted to the rank of monsignor. Br Berchmans Moynahan Brother Martin Joseph Moynahan (alias Brother Berchmans), St John of  God order, died during prosecution (indecent assault at an institution  in Melbourne for boys with intellectual disabilities). See our story about the St John of God Brothers here. Fr Noel Murphy, Sydney The Sydney archdiocese has accepted a complaint from a woman about being indecently assaulted in 1974 by Father Nolan Joseph Murphy (known as Fr “Noel” Murphy), a Sydney-born priest, who was the parish priest in charge of St Augustine’s parish, Balmain, in inner-Sydney. Murphy was in that parish from the 1960s until 1988. Murrumburrah parish, NSW A man (“Peter”), born in 1961, made a lengthy, detailed written statement to a clinic of the  New South Wales Health Department in 2002, stating that in 1968-69 he was sexually assaulted by a senior parish priest (a Monsignor) in the “Our Lady of Mercy” parish at Murrumburrah, near Cootamundra, southern New South Wales (within the Canberra-Goulburn diocese). Shortly after the period of alleged abuse, the monsignor died in a road accident. Peter says his devout parents would not let him tell them that this Catholic clergyman had assaulted him. Forced into silence, Peter became estranged from his family. His later life was seriously affected. Peter is wondering if there were other victims in this parish in the late 1960s. Fr “Jerome” Myszkowski A South Australian woman (“Mandy”, born in 1945) says she is still feeling upset about having been sexually assaulted repeatedly by a Polish-born priest, Father Hieronim Myszkowski, when she was a young child in the St Francis Assisi parish in Newton, Adelaide, in 1950-54. This priest, who was known in Australia as Fr Jerome Myszkowski, was a member of the Capuchin Franciscan Friars (the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin). He befriended Mandy’s family and, from when the girl was aged 5, he made weekly visits for meals at their home, where (Mandy says) he would secretly touch Mandy’s genitalia (i.e., the crime of indecent assault). Mandy was unable to tell her parents because they believed that priests could do no wrong. Father Jerome also molested Mandy inside the church (while parishioners, including her father, were attending choir practice) and in his bedroom in the  presbytery. On the church premises, the sexual assaults of Mandy became more invasive and more criminally serious. The attacks continued for four years until Mandy was aged nine, in 1954, when Myszkowski left Adelaide to become a chaplain for the Brisbane Polish community, which was based at “Our Lady of Victories” parish in Bowen Hills, Brisbane. Mandy contacted Broken Rites in October 1993. She had written to the church authorities about Myszkowski but, she said, they were evasive. Broken Rites does not know if Mandy has achieved a successful outcome since then. Fr Martin Newbold Women in Western Australia and Victoria have complained that they were indecently assaulted by this diocesan priest when they were young girls. Newbold began in the Perth diocese but, strangely, was transferred to Melbourne, then to the Bunbury diocese in W.A., leaving victims in various parishes. Br Nicholas, Marist Brothers, 1948-50 A man (“Brian”, born in 1938) complained to the Catholic Church “Towards Healing” process in 2003 that he was sexually abused by a Brother “Nicholas” at a Marist Brothers school in Rosewater, South Australia, about 1948 when he was aged 10. Brian said he was forced to remain silent about the abuse at the time but he now realises that this code of silence was unfair, putting more children at risk. The Marist Brothers administration in Melbourne acknowledged to Brian that Brother Nicholas (real name Kevin Stanton, born 6 September 1922) taught at the Rosewater school in 1948, and he transferred to a Marist Brothers school in Thebarton (Adelaide) in 1949. In 2005, the Marist administration in Melbourne apologised to Brian for his unhappy experiences at the Rosewater school, and it made a relatively modest “ex gratia” payment to Brian to settle his complaint. Brian was not Nicholas’s only victim — in 1994 Broken Rites received a complaint from another man (“Daryl”, born 1942), saying that he was sexually abused by Brother Nicholas at the Marists’ Thebarton school, before Nicholas left there in 1950. The Marists say that Brother Nicholas left the Marist order in the early 1950s and has since died. Br Peter E. Noonan, Victoria The Christian Brothers Order has acknowledged that Brother Peter Eymard Noonan (born about 1949) used to sexually abuse young schoolboys who were in his custody. Despite this, it allowed Noonan to remain a Brother until he died in 2004, aged 55. This Noonan (not to be confused with other Noonans in the Order) was offending from the very start of his teaching career — at St Mary’s boys’ school, St Kilda (in inner-Melbourne) in the late 1960s. He later taught at St Kevin’s College (Toorak). In 1985 he went to CBC  St Kilda, where he became the headmaster in 1987. Fr John O’Callaghan, Adelaide After action by Broken Rites, the Adelaide Catholic diocese has made civil settlements with former altar boys of this priest. The incidents occurred in 1969-71 at St Monica’s parish, Walkerville, where O’Callaghan ministered from the mid-1960s till about 1981. Previously, O’Callaghan had been at Adelaide’s Salisbury parish. Fr John O’Callaghan, Melbourne Several people have complained about being abused (when they were youngsters) by Father John Ignatius O’Callaghan, of the Melbourne archdiocese. See more here. O’Callaghan was once a chaplain for the girls’ section of the Young Christian Workers (YCW) movement. He later worked in Melbourne suburban parishes and was a military chaplain.  Father O’Callaghan observed the church’s rule of priestly “celibacy” (that is, he did not get married to anybody); instead, in the 1980s, he had a private relationship with a woman, who gave birth to Father O’Callaghan’s two children. Fr Bill O’Connor, Parramatta diocese, NSW A woman (“Kerry”), born in the 1940s, has complained that she was sexually assaulted, aged 13, by Father William G. O’Connor (then an assistant priest in the Sydney archdiocese) in the presbytery at Springwood (St Thomas Aquinas parish) in the Blue Mountains in the late 1950s. The Catholic culture prevented the girl from telling her mother about having been sexually abused by a Catholic priest. All this disrupted the girl’s development, and Kerry is still suffering the damage today. Subsequently, O’Connor was the Parish Priest in charge of the Seven Hills parish (Our Lady of Lourdes) for thirty years to 1989. Springwood and Seven Hills were originally in the Sydney diocese but by 1989 they became a part of the new Parramatta diocese. William O’Connor rose in the church ranks in the 1970s and was given the title “Very Reverend”. Kerry went through the church’s Towards Healing process. At first the church officials behaved evasively but eventually they signed a settlement with her. Fr Thomas O’Keeffe After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese has apologized to former altar boys of Fr Thomas O’Keeffe (sometimes spelt as O’Keefe). He ministered at parishes in Sandringham (early 1960s), Preston East, St Kilda West and Brighton (late 1960s),  Doveton and Thornbury (1970s). See the Broken Rites story here. Br J. A. O’Neill The Catholic Church’s “Towards Healing” office has accepted some complaints about Christian Brother John Anselm O’Neill, who taught at Catholic schools including: St Gabriel’s school for the deaf, Castle Hill, NSW, in the 1950s; St Joseph’s primary school, Rozelle, Sydney, in the 1960s; and St Patrick’s primary school, Launceston, Tasmania, in the 1970s and 1980s. Br Theodore O’Shannessy The De La Salle Brothers have apologised to (and signed a settlement with) a victim of Brother Theodore O’Shannessy. This Brother, who was born about 1940 (real name Patrick O’Shannessy ), taught in De La Salle schools at Haberfield, Bankstown, Dubbo and Cootamundra (all in New South Wales) and Scarborough (in Queensland). Padua College, Kedron, Brisbane A former pupil of Padua College (a Catholic boys’ school at Kedron, Brisbane) has complained that he was sexually abused in the 1960s by a priest from the Franciscan order (the Order of Friars Minor — OFM). Brother Paschal, a Franciscan This Brother was in charge of the altar boys at the Mary Immaculate Catholic parish in Waverley, Sydney, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The parish, conducted by the Franciscans (the Order of Friars Minor), had a large number of altar boys, some of whom were pupils at the Christian Brothers’ Waverley College. In 2002 a former altar boy, “Pierre” (not his real name), notified the Catholic Church’s professional standards office (“Towards Healing”) in New South Wales that Brother Paschal used to touch Pierre’s genitals when he was aged from 8 to 13; and Brother Paschal used to make Pierre touch Brother Paschal’s genitals. Pierre said that he finally revealed the molestation to his parents when he was 22. Pierre said that three other young male relatives of his were also molested by Brother Pascal. Pierre said he was concerned that this child-abuse had occurred and that it had been hidden from parents and the public. The Franciscans’ Australian headquarters agreed to hold a mediation meeting with Pierre (who was then in his forties) to address his concerns. Brother Paschal’s real name was Ernest Joseph Bartlett. Paschal was his religious name (there was a “Saint Paschal” in the Franciscans in Spain in the 16th century). Paschal Bartlett died in Sydney on 27 April 1994. Br Mark Payne, a Marist Former pupils have complained about sexually abusive behaviour by Marist Brother Mark Donald Payne (born 5 December 1957) who taught at St Augustine’s College in Cairns, Queensland, about 1985. Fr Leo Perry Broken Rites is researching this priest in Australia and New Zealand. Originally, from 1948 to 1956, he was a member of the Jesuit religious order in New Zealand, where he taught young boys at high-school level in the Holy Name minor seminary (staffed by Australian Jesuits) at Riccarton, Christchurch. At this seminary, he invasively mauled the genitals of boys in their dormitory, in his private room and during car trips. In 1957 the church authorities covered up this problem by transferring Perry to the Townsville diocese in north Queensland, where he ministered (as a diocesan priest, not a Jesuit) in unsuspecting parishes: Mundingburra parish in the late 1950s; Ayr parish about 1960-61; and Townsville cathedral parish until 1967. Fr Dominic Phillips, Vincentian priest Some Australian adult women are still complaining about having been abused (when they were children) by Father Dominic Phillips, of the Vincentian Fathers order. See more from Broken Rites here. Br J.M. Podger, Sydney, 1953 Broken Rites is researching Brother Ronald John Podger (this surname rhymes with “Roger” or “lodger”) who taught at Christian Brothers Lewisham in 1952-53, using the religious name “John Maximus” Podger (called after an ancient “Saint” Maximus). Podger later left this religious order. A pupil (“Basil”, who was aged eleven in 1953) is still deeply concerned about Br Podger half a century later. The Christian Brothers have accepted (and settled) a complaint from Basil. Fr Peter Quirk, Maitland-Newcastle diocese Broken Rites is researching this priest (born 1 April 1957), who ministered from 1986 to 1991 at: Maitland cathedral; Toronto parish; and Taree parish. He targeted teenage boys. He died on 27 September 1991, aged 34. This Father Peter Quirk is not to be confused with any other priest of the same name in another diocese. Fr Graham Redfern The Melbourne Catholic archdiocese’s Independent Commission into Sexual Abuse found in November, 1997, that Father Graham Redfern had sexually abused a youth in 1976, after conducting the funeral of the youth’s mother. The then archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell, formally apologised in a letter to the complainant in May, 1998, for the “wrongs and hurt you have suffered at the hands of Father Redfern”. The archdiocese then signed a civil settlement with the complainant. See more here. Br Neil Richards, New South Wales After action by Broken Rites, the New South Wales province of the Christian Brothers has made a settlement with a former student, who had lodged a complaint about a Brother Richards.  The settlement deed identified the Brother as “Desmond Eric Richards“, but he was known in the Christian Brothers as Br Neil Richards. He taught in Catholic primary schools in Sydney and country New South Wales until he retired. Br Bernie Ring Broken Rites is researching Christian Brother Bernard Ring (born 22 May 1934). As a child, he lived at St Vincent’s boys’ home in South Melbourne (until 1951) and then, like some other orphanage boys, he became a Christian Brother. Brother B.A. Ring worked in schools at Geelong, Ballarat (St Patrick’s College), East Melbourne and Fiji, and at St Vincent’s boys’ home, South Melbourne. Fr Robert Rippin Broken Rites is researching Father Robert Frederick Rippin, a priest in the  Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order, who taught at MSC secondary schools around Australia: Chevalier College (Bowral, NSW), Downlands College (Toowoomba, Queensland) and Monivae College (Hamilton, Victoria). Fr A. Kevin Ryan, Melbourne In 2003, following action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne archdiocese’s commissioner on sexual abuse (Mr Peter O’Callaghan, QC) accepted a complaint by “James” (born in 1954) that Father Arthur Kevin Ryan (known as Fr Kevin Ryan) sexually abused him as an 11-year-old pupil at St Matthew’s parish school, Fawkner North, about 1965. Ryan’s other Melbourne parishes included Yarraville, Thornbury and Glenhuntly. Mr O’Callaghan ruled that “James” was also sexually abused by a prominent Catholic layman, Robert Charles Blunden (known as Bert Blunden), who lived at Fr Ryan’s Fawkner North presbytery. Br Innocent Schofield The Australian Christian Brothers have accepted a complaint from a man, now elderly, that he was sexually abused by Brother Aloysius Innocent Schofield at St  Augustine’s boys’ orphanage in Geelong, Victoria, in the late 1940s. Schofield adopted the “religious” name Aloysius Innocent when he joined the order (there have been “saints” with those names). Brother A.I. Schofield rose to become the principal of Christian Brothers schools in Queensland: Christian Brothers College in Warwick (1952-57); St Mary’s College in Toowoomba (1964-69); and St Edmund’s College in Ipswich (1972-77). Fr Peter Searson In 1997 the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese finally removed Father Peter Lloyd Searson from parish work, following years of complaints about him touching and sexually harassing boys, girls and women. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Bill Shanahan, Victoria, 1960s Broken Rites is researching Fr William Shanahan regarding one of his earliest parishes — St Joseph’s parish, Warragul (100km east of Melbourne), in the 1960s, when this priest was aged in his thirties. Fr Manny Spiteri, Sale diocese, Victoria The Catholic Church has settled a sex-abuse complaint involving a Maltese-born priest, Father Emanuel Joseph Spiteri, who spent 35 years ministering in the Sale diocese in the state of Victoria.  See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Patrick Stephenson, Jesuit Broken Rites is researching this priest, who worked at Xavier College, a Jesuit school for boys in Melbourne, in the 1970s and 1980s. Fr John Stockdale, Victoria Father John Peregrine Stockdale used to molest young boys in his parishes in the Sandhurst diocese in northern Victoria. On 31 December 1995, Stockdale died while celebrating New Year’s Eve in a sex-cubicle at a males-only club in Melbourne. See the Broken Rites story here. Br Loyola Sullivan, Sydney Broken Rtes is researching Marist Brother “Loyola” Sullivan, who worked at St Vincent’s Boys Home in Westmead, Sydney, in 1943-1948. He is still remembered by former residents of this institution. This Brother Loyola also taught at Marcellin College, Randwick. Fr Terence L. Sullivan, Sydney, 1960s This Father Terry Sullivan (not to be confused with other priests with a similar name) had numerous victims among boys in their early teens. Many have complained to Broken Rites and to the Catholic Church’s Professional Standards Office in New South Wales. The church has made civil settlements with a number of these victims who demonstrated that Sullivan (and the church’s harbouring of him) had disrupted their adolescent and adult development. Fr Terence Sullivan’s parishes included: Kingsgrove (Our Lady of Fatima parish) in the early 1960s; Penrith (St Nicholas’s parish) and Asquith (St Patrick’s parish) in the mid-1960s and Gosford (St Patrick’s) in 1967.  Sullivan targeted boys at Catholic schools, including De La Salle College at Kingsgrove, St Leo’s College at Wahroonga (this was then was a Christian Brothers boys’ school) and St Edward’s Christian Brothers school at Gosford. He left the ministry “on leave” about 1968 and never returned. Fr Joseph Sultana, Queensland A former altar boy has launched a civil lawsuit against the Catholic Church, alleging years of abuse by a priest, Father Joseph Emmanuel Sultana, in the Australian Catholic diocese of Cairns. See more here. Br Laurie Sweeney An order of Catholic priests, the Salesians of Don Bosco, confirmed in 2004 that it has made a civil settlement with two victims of Salesian Brother Laurence Sweeney — a boy and his sister, who have complained about being sexually abused by Sweeney at a Salesian club in Oakleigh, Melbourne in 1975. Br Brian Mark Thomas The Christian Brothers have settled a complaint about Brother Brian Thomas. This Brother (born 1938) adopted the religious name “Brother Mark Thomas” when he joined the order. He worked in various Catholic institutions including: at St Augustine’s orphanage in Geelong VIC in 1969; at schools in Box Hill VIC, Albury NSW and Balmain NSW in the 1970s; at Chatswood NSW, Strathfield NSW, Toorak VIC and Canberra in the 1980s; and at Waverley NSW in the 1990s. Br Aubrey Tobin In separate incidents, two men committed suicide in the year 2000 after complaining that their lives had been damaged after sexual abuse by Brother Aubrey Tobin while they were pupils at the Marists’ Assumption College in Kilmore, Victoria, in the mid-1980s. The Marist Brothers head office has confirmed that the two complaints were made. See the Broken Rites story here. Monsignor Maurice Tully Broken Rites is investigating this priest who had a long career (until 1975) in the Armidale diocese in northern New South Wales. While working in a parish, he also acted as the diocese’s vicar-general (chief administrator) and this high status protected him from complaints. See more from Broken Rites here. Br Frank Webster The Christian Brothers Australian administration has accepted complaints from victims who were abused, when they were young boys, by Christian Brother Aloysius Francis Webster (also known as Frank Webster or “Lou” Webster) while he was  the superintendent (principal) at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria, from 1954 to 1959. See the Broken Rites story here. Fr Adrian Wenting A number of ex-students have complained that Father Adrian Wenting committed offences of indecency against them at the Salesian College boarding school in Brooklyn Park, South Australia, where he was the principal until 1979. Wenting also worked at the Boys Town residential institution in Engadine NSW and at Salesian College Chadstone in Melbourne. Westmead Boys’ Home, NSW Broken Rites is investigating complaints from former inmates of St Vincent’s Boys’ Home, Westmead, in Sydney’s west. This orphanage was operated by the Marist Brothers until it closed in 1991. Broken Rites possesses a printed list, compiled by the Marists, of all Brothers who worked at this institution. The Westmead site is now a campus of the University of Western Sydney. Fr Dennis Whelan, NSW Broken Rites is researching Father Dennis R. Whelan, who ministered in the Bathurst Catholic diocese in north-western New South Wales, notably St Brigid’s parish in Dubbo and St Mary’s in Dubbo North. Dennis Whelan’s middle name was either Redmond or Raymond. Fr Ray Whitehouse After action by Broken Rites, the Melbourne Catholic archdiocese has apologised to (and signed a settlement with) a man who complained that, as an altar boy, he was sexually assaulted by Father Raymond Whitehouse on several Sundays after Mass. See more here. Fr John Whiting Broken Rites is researching Father John Thomas Larmer Whiting. Originally a member of the Redemptorist order, he founded a small Australian society of priests and brothers called the “Confraternity of Christ the Priest”. He established a small seminary at Scoresby, in Melbourne’s east. A man who inquired about joining the order in 1981 (aged 19) says that, during the interview, Father John Whiting inspected the young man’s genitals. Another young aspirant says that he was required to bathe naked, with Fr Jack  Whiting, in a pool. In later years, Whiting’s society also provided seminary training in Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales. Fr Murray Wilson In 2006, after action by Broken Rites, the Vincentian Fathers’ Australian office apologized to a Victorian man for a serious sexual assault committed by Fr Murray Joseph Wilson in the 1970s, when the victim was aged 13. See our story here. Bert Zeelen, sacristan, Adelaide cathedral Broken Rites is researching Hubertus Zeelen (a Dutch name), who was the full-time sacristan, caretaker and chief altar-server at St Francis Xavier Cathedral, Adelaide, in the 1960s and 1970s. He was in charge of altar-boys. He lived in a dwelling at the cathedral. Section C: Current court cases Here are some examples of cases that are currently scheduled to come up in the courts: Armidale court, NSW, re an ex-priest A former Catholic priest (now aged 59), who used to work in parishes in north-western New South Wales (comprising the Armidale Diocese), appeared in Armidale Local Court on 18 October 2012 on multiple child-sex charges dating back to two or three decades ago. The case will come up in court again in early 2013 for a further mention in the next step in the prosecution process. For legal reasons, the court prohibited any publishing of the man’s name. See more from Broken Rites here. Brian Dennis Cairns After beginning in the early 1970s as a Christian Brother, Brian Cairns worked as a lay teacher (“Mister” Cairns) in Catholic schools in Queensland. In 1985 he was jailed for sex-crimes against boys. In October 2012, after more of his former male pupils contacted police, the Brisbane Magistrates Court ordered that Brian Cairns must face a judge in the Brisbane District Court (in 2013) on multiple charges involving alleged offences against these additional boys. Fr John Denham Father John Sidney Denham (of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese, New South Wales), who is in jail for  child-sex crimes, is scheduled to be charged again in Newcastle  Court in early 2013 with offences against more boys. See a background article by Broken Rites here. Fr Finian Egan This Catholic priest, who belongs to the Broken Bay diocese in Sydney’s north, appeared in court in 2012, charged with multiple sexual offences against young persons, allegedly committed in the 1970s and 1980s. Further court proceedings are sheduled for 2013. See more here. Fr Lewis Fenton A  retired priest, Father Lewis Fenton, aged 81 (from the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, New South Wales), has become the second Catholic clergyman in Australia charged with concealing someone else’s child-sex crimes. On 4 January 2013, Fr Fenton was ordered to appear in a magistrates court on a later date. See more here. Br John Gaven Brother John Gaven, of the Vincentian religious order, is awaiting court proceedings in Sydney in 2013 regarding sexual offences that were allegedly committed when he worked at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, NSW. See more here. Br Bill Houston, Victoria In the 1960s, Christian Brother William Stuart Houston worked at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, Victoria. In 2010, he appeared in the Geelong Magistrates Court and was ordered to stand trial at the Victorian County Court regarding incidents of buggery and indecent assault, allegedly committed while he was at St Augustine’s in the 1960s. The  County Court process (indictment number Y.03305021) has not yet been completed. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Jim Jennings James Patrick Jennings was once a Catholic priest in the Vincentian order. In 2012 a Victorian magistrate ordered Jennings to stand trial in the Victorian County Court (in 2013) on child-sex charges relating to when Jennings was a priest working at St Vincent’s College (a boys’ boarding school) in Bendigo, Victoria, in the 1960s. Police investigations (under Senior Sergeant Grant Morris, of Bendigo Police) are continuing. See more Victorian material from Broken Rites here, plus some New South Wales background  here. Ex-Brother Edward Mamo In 2013 the Victorian  County Court is scheduled to announce the details of its sentence for former religious Brother, Edward Mamo, who has pleaded guilty to sexual  offences, which he committed in the late 1970s and early 1980s against boys at Monivae College, a Catholic secondary school in Hamilton, western Victoria. The investigation is continuing, by detectives at the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Unit in Warrnambool, telephone 03 5560 1333. See more from Broken Rites here. A Marist Brother in Newcastle  court New South Wales detectives have charged a retired Marist Brother with having indecently assaulted two students at a school in the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, during the 1960s and 1970s. He has been ordered to appear in Newcastle Local Court in 2013.  The detectives (from Strike Force Georgiana, at Charlestown police station, Lake Macquarie) are continuing their investigations and expect to lay further charges. Fr David O’Hearn Legal proceedings are scheduled in the New South Wales District Court for Father David Anthony O’Hearn, of the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese in New South Wales, who is charged with child-sex offences. See more from Broken Rites here. Fr David Rapson, Salesian Fathers David Edwin Rapson (born 30 July 1953), who used to be a Catholic priest (in the Salesian religious order), appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court in November 2012, charged with child-sex offences allegedly committed when Fr Rapson was a teacher at Salesian College “Rupertswood”, in Sunbury (in Melbourne’s north-west). A magistrate ordered Rapson to face a trial in the Victorian County Court (in 2013). The Victoria Police investigation is continuing (being conducted by detectives of the Sexual Crimes Squad, Flinders Street, Melbourne). See more from Broken Rites here. Fr Brian Spillane In the 1970s and 1980s Father Brian Joseph Spillane was a priest in the Vincentian Fathers religious order in New South Wales and Queensland. In the Sydney District Court in 2012, Spillane (then aged 69) was sentenced to nine years jail (with a non-parole period of five years) for indecently assaulting three girls aged between six and seventeen. He is also facing future court proceedings regarding alleged offences against boys. See more here. Section D: Cases where church people failed to help the police Here are some examples, researched by Broken Rites: Fr Tom Brennan, Newcastle, NSW In August 2012, in what is believed to be the first such prosecution in Australia, Father Thomas Brennan (former vicar-general of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese) was charged with failing to report the alleged child-sex crimes of another priest who was under Brennan’s supervision. Brennan was ordered to appear in court on 25 September 2012 but he failed to appear and he died five days later. See more from Broken Rites here. Also see an earlier conviction of Brennan here. Monsignor Patrick Cotter Cotter was formerly the vicar-general (chief administrator) of the Maitland-Newcastle diocese in New South Wales. In 1995, detectives discovered that, 20 years earlier, Cotter knew that one of his priests, Father Vincent Gerard Ryan, was sexually assaulting boys in parishes. According to a letter written by Cotter in 1974, Cotter admitted covering up the crimes. Cotter wrote: “I decided to do nothing [about Ryan’s crimes].” This meant that Cotter became complicit in Vince Ryan’s continuing crimes. In 1995-6, police investigated Cotter with a view to charging him with the crime of misprision of a felony — that is, wilfully concealing a serious crime committed by another person. However, as Cotter was aged 82 when police found this letter in 1995, the prosecution did not proceed. See our Cotter story here. The Monsignor John Day case Church people, including a police sergeant, discouraged the Victoria Police from prosecuting Monsignor John Day, who sexually abused many boys and girls in the Mildura parish. See the Broken Rites story here. The “Father F” cover-up Bishop Henry Joseph Kennedy administered the Armidale diocese in northern New South Wales in the 1980s, assisted by his deputy, Monsignor Francis Joseph (Frank) Ryan. This pair protected a certain priest (Father F) after receiving complaints about him committing child-sex offences. Furthermore, Kennedy and Ryan later arranged for Father F to transfer to parishes in the Parramatta diocese in western Sydney, thereby giving him access to additional children. According to a church document, Father F has admitted that he indeed committed sexual acts upon children. The cover-up continued for 30 years until it was exposed by the media in 2012. Read more here. The Father Ridsdale case Catholic church authorities in western Victoria knew that Father Gerald Francis Ridsdale was indecently assaulting children but the church continued giving him access to more victims, until victims (not the church) finally brought him to justice. See the Broken Rites story here. Section E: Court cases ending with no conviction Sometimes, for various legal reasons, a court case might fail to result in a conviction. For example: Fr Bernie Connell In November 1995, news media outlets in southern New South Wales reported  that a Local Court magistrate committed Father Bernard Connell to stand trial on charges of sexual offences allegedly committed against boys. However, the subsequent trial proceedings did not result in a conviction. Born in 1938, Father Connell was ordained in 1963 as a priest of the Wagga Wagga diocese in southern New South Wales. His postings from early 1964 to late 1991 included: parishes at Junee and Albury in the 1960s; South Wagga Wagga parish in the early 1970s; working as a chaplain at army bases in Puckapunyal (Victoria) and Holdsworthy (NSW) in the 1970s; Lockhart parish in 1978; Albury and Tocumwal parishes in the 1980s; and Leeton parish in 1990-91. In early 1992, he left the Wagga Wagga diocese to minister in the Pacific nation of Kiribati for several years, after which he returned to New South Wales to live at a private address, with no further parish postings. Fr Dennis Corrigan On 9 February 2012 Father Dennis John Corrigan, 68, who worked in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese, north of Sydney, was acquitted in the New South Wales District Court on charges of indecent assault on a boy. See more from Broken Rites here. Br John Coswello Christian Brother John Francis Coswello, then 70, was sentenced to jail on 22 June 2009 after a jury found him guilty of committing sexual offences against a 12-year-old boy in a Melbourne orphanage. Later, the Victorian Court of Appeal granted him a re-trial, at which another jury (in October 2010) found him not guilty.  See more here. Br Brendan Crawford, Passionist Order A Catholic religious brother, Vincent Crawford (a.k.a. Brother “Brendan” Crawford), of the Passionist Order, appeared in court in 2009, charged with sexual offences against a girl in the late 1970s. The charges were withdrawn after the court was told that Crawford (aged 77 when charged) was medically unfit to undergo the court proceedings. See more here. Fr Peter Dwyer In the New South Wales District Court on 9 May 2011, a jury found Father Peter William Dwyer not guilty of alleged sexual offences, between 1977 and 1992, against four students who attended St Stanislaus College, Bathurst NSW (where Fr Dwyer had been a music teacher and later a headmaster). Fr Ray Garchow Raymond Garchow became a religious brother in the St John of God order in 1964, aged 17, and was upgraded to a priest in 1987, aged 40. In New South Wales in the early 1980s, he worked at “Kendall Grange” boarding institution for educationally disabled boys in Morisset, north of Sydney. In 2006, after he had been living and ministering around Sydney for several years, the Federal Court of Australia ordered that Garchow be extradited to face charges of child-sex abuse in New Zealand, where he had worked at an institution (Marylands special school for educationally disabled boys) in Christchurch in the 1970s. A trial was scheduled for Garchow in Christchurch. On 23 July 2008, the New Zealand prosecutors decided not to proceed with the trial for several reasons: Garchow, aged 61, was too ill; furthermore, one of the two complainants was also unwell; and the second complainant had trouble with a disability, which made the prospect of a trial difficult. The prosecutors entered a permanent stay of proceedings. Garchow’s counsel said afterwards that Garchow maintains his innocence. See our story about the extradition proceedings here. Br Bill Houston On 17 June 1997, a magistrate ordered that Christian Brother William Stuart Houston, then aged 58, should stand trial in the Victorian County Court on charges relating to a twelve-year-old boy at St Augustine’s orphanage, Geelong, in 1969-70 (reported in the Melbourne Herald Sun, 18 June 1997). This trial has not yet been held.  See more here. Fr Jim Jennings James Patrick Jennings was once a Catholic priest in the Vincentian order. In  the Sydney District Court, in July 2010, he was charged with indecent assault on four boys (aged about 12) at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst NSW, during 1961. On 5 August 2010 the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” on all charges See more here. Br Bill Lebler In 1951, aged 29, William John Lebler became among the first Australian-born recruits to join the St John of God Brothers, taking his vows at the order’s “Kendall Grange” institution for intellectually handicapped boys at Morisset, north of Sydney. He later worked with SJOG in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. In 2003, prosecutors sought to extradite him from Australia to face trial in New Zealand on child-abuse charges there, dating back as far as 1955. However, a Sydney magistrate released William Lebler because of his age (82 years) and health and because of the delay in reporting his alleged offences. See our story about the extradition proceedings here. Br John Maguire By July 2004, Marist Brother John Dennis Maguire had faced eight jury trials in the New South Wales District Court, charged with multiple sexual offences involving six boys at St Joseph’s College in Hunters Hill, Sydney.  In all, he faced 17 counts of assaulting boys aged between 11 and 13 while he was the year 7 dormitory and form master (in charge of fifty boarders) in the early 1980s. Maguire had a bedroom adjoining the dormitory. The alleged offences ranged from indecently touching the boys through to anal and oral penetration. Unlike in many other similar cases, Brother John Maguire (born 13 December 1943) was not required to face his accusers jointly in a single trial. The church lawyers succeeded in obtaining a separate jury for each complainant, so that each jury was unaware of the other charges. Two juries failed to agree on a verdict and were discharged. The other six juries each returned a verdict of “Not Guilty”. Despite this, any complainants are still able to take civil action against the Marist Brothers regarding Brother Maguire. See “We saw it coming, say ex-students” article in the 2 July 2004 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. Br Eddie Mamo, Sacred Heart order A Sydney newspaper reported that the Bankstown Local Court on 23 August 1994 dismissed two charges of aggravated indecent assault that had been laid against Edward Mamo, then aged 49. Mamo had been a religious Brother in the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart order, and was associated with the Nguon Song Group Homes, which provided accommodation for Indo-Chinese teenage males in Sydney’s Canterbury-Bankstown area. (In the 1970s and 1980s, Brothers in the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart worked as support staff — such as dormitory supervisors — at prominent Australian boarding schools operated by the MSC order, including Chevalier College in Bowral, New South Wales, and Monivae College in Hamilton, Victoria.) See more here. Fr Hugh Edward Murray This Catholic priest (from the Vincentian order) appeared in court in Sydney in 2010, charged with indecently assaulting boys in the 1960s and ’70s. In July 2011, a judge granted Murray a permanent stay because of his advanced age (81 years) and health problems. See more here. Br John Parker Various news media outlets reported that Christian Brother John David Parker appeared in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on 22 March 1995, charged with sexual assault of a nine-year-old boy in Grade 4 at Parade Christian Brothers College junior school in Alphington (in Melbourne’s inner north-east) in 1958. Brother Parker contested the charge. Magistrate Phillip Goldberg committed Brother Parker (then aged 60) for trial and listed the matter to go to a judge in the Melbourne County Court for 19 June 1995. However, the County Court case did not proceed. The complainant was satisfied with having succeeded in getting his allegation aired in the Magistrates Court. In the Christian Brothers, Parker adopted the religious name John “Neri” Parker (there was once a Saint Neri) and was listed as Brother J.N. Parker. Brother Parker has also taught at other Catholic schools in Victoria, including Ballarat (St Patrick’s primary school, Drummond Street) in the 1970s and Mill Park (St Francis of Assisi primary school) in Melbourne’s north in the 1990s. He also taught with the Christian Brothers in Tasmania. Fr Phil Robson In early 2010, a Sydney magistrate ordered Father Philip John Robson (a member of the Vincentian order of Catholic priests) to stand trial at the Sydney District Court, charged with five sex offences against a 15-year-old boy who was a pupil at St Stanislaus College, Bathurst, New South Wales, in 1991. Robson was accused of one count of attempting to have sexual intercourse with the boy in circumstances of aggravation, and four counts of aggravated indecent assault. On 14 September 2010, a District Court jury found Robson not guilty of all charges. See more here. Br Lambert Wise, Adelaide A South Australian court ruled in 2008 that an elderly former Christian Brother, Francis Lambert Wise, was medically unfit to stand trial on alleged incidents of child-sexual abuse, dating back to 1964 and 1965. However, in 2009 a judge held special hearings, enabling two of Wise’s former pupils to have their allegations aired in court. Thus, the South Australian public was able to learn of the allegations. See more from Broken Rites here. Section F: Lay teachers in church schools The above lists (Sections A to E) on this website all relate to priests or religious brothers, as distinct from lay teachers. Many victims have contacted Broken Rites about offences committed by lay teachers in Catholic schools or school youth camps. The teachers’ cases are too numerous to be all listed on this website. Here are just a few examples to demonstrate the range of cases: Yvo Gulien Cleyman, at Gosford, NSW, 1970s In the New South Wales District Court at Gosford (New South Wales) on 20 April 2004, Yvo Gulien Cleyman (then aged 59) was sentenced to a maximum of six years’ jail over a series of sex offences against two schoolboys in the late 1970s. The case was reported next day in the Central Coast Herald (and the preliminary proceedings had been reported in the Central Coast Express on 26 February 2003). The boys, aged 13 and 14, were attending  St Edward’s Christian Brothers School in East Gosford (north of Sydney), where Yvo Gulien Cleyman was a lay teacher of languages and social studies in the late 1970s. The court was told that, on school camps, on drives to isolated places and out fishing, he forced anal intercourse on the boys as well as forcing them to give and receive oral sex. Cleyman pleaded guilty to six counts of buggery and two counts of indecent assault on the two victims. When charged in 2003, Yvo Gulien Cleyman’s address was given in court as Buccan, Queensland. He was extradited to New South Wales for the court proceedings. After the conviction, the Christian Brothers headquarters in New South Wales began having mediation meetings with victims of Cleyman. John Coogan, teacher, Geelong, Victoria John Patrick Coogan, then aged 61, was sentenced in 1994 to five years jail (minimum of three years) after pleading guilty to seventeen charges of indent assault of boys while he was a lay teacher at St Joseph’s College (Christian Brothers) in Geelong. Outside the court, one of the victims said the St Joseph’s College administration had known that Coogan  was a child-molester but it did nothing about him. Mark Dean, northern Victoria Mark Christopher Dean, a Catholic lay teacher, pretended to be a priest during role-playing sessions with children while he sexually abused them, the Bendigo Magistrates Court was told in July 1992. Dean, then aged 33, of Rochester and Bendigo, who taught in north Victorian Catholic schools, pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting eight schoolboys in three towns during the 1980s. Dean was sentenced to a six-months suspended jail term. The victims’ families told police that Dean had been protected by the church authorities. John Gahan, lay teacher, NSW On 30 October 2007 in the New South Wales District Court, John Stephen Gahan was sentenced to 13 months jail (with a non-parole period of six months), on  three charges of indecent assault of a boy, aged 11 to 13, while Gahan was a lay teacher at St Mary’s Catholic parish primary school in Scone (in the Maitland-Newcastle Catholic diocese), in the late 1970s. Gahan befriended the boy’s family. Gahan admitted that the abuse (masturbating the boy) occurred on a number of occasions during two years — in Gahan’s car and on overnight trips. The victim said in his impact statement that, as a child, he did not understand what was happening — “only that here was a man that took an interest in my future and this was a small sacrifice to maintain his friendship”. The victim said that the abuse caused problems in his adult life, including in his marriage. Mato Karapandzk, cathedral caretaker On 11 March 2008 in the South Australian District Court, a 37-year-old woman gained justice for sexual abuse that she experienced while she was a pupil at Adelaide’s St Aloysius Catholic girls’ school.  At age 12 in the early 1980s, the girl was told to wheel a disabled elderly nun over to the Adelaide cathedral (opposite the school) for church services. There, the girl was befriended by Mato Karapandzk (then over 50), a Croatian-born caretaker at the cathedral. Over the next five years, he sexually abused the girl in and around the cathedral building, “under the noses of the cathedral staff and the school”, sometimes giving her $20 after the abuse, the court was told. He continued as the cathedral caretaker until the victim came forward with her complaint in 2004. Karapandzk, aged 77 at sentencing, was given a nine-year jail sentence (with four years behind bars before parole). Willi Kovac, sports teacher In Melbourne County Court in December 2005, Kovac (then aged 73) was jailed for a maximum of  nine and half years’ jail, with a non-parole period of 5½ years, after pleading guilty to indecently assaulting three  boys (aged between nine and fourteen) in the 1960s and 1970s. German-born Kovac was an athletics coach at Melbourne’s Xavier College and Marcellin College and other Catholic schools and worked as a co-ordinator at summer camps for Catholic school children. Judge Pamela Jenkins said that, since the offences, Kovac’s three victims had struggled with life, including drug and alcohol abuse and relationship breakdowns, and had under-achieved in their work-life. These three boys were not Kovac’s only victims. He also had victims from other Catholic schools. Some victims have contacted Broken Rites. According to information given in court in 2005, Kovac was also jailed in 1970 for indecent assault. One prominent Catholic school sacked Kovac for his behaviour but it then breached its duty of care by allowing him to work at other Catholic schools, putting more boys in danger. Paul John Lyons, Canberra In 2006 and 2007, Daramalan College, a Catholic co-educational school in Canberra (run by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart), finally began making civil settlements with victims of a former teacher, Paul John Lyons. Lyons taught at Daramalan from 1989 to 2000. He took dozens of students to his home overnight or away on sporting trips. In 2000, police caught up with Lyons who admitted indecently assaulting a 15-year-old schoolboy. Police charged Lyons but, a few days later, he committed suicide. His police interview indicated that Lyons had many other victims, meaning that more charges would have been likely. John Marsden, solicitor, school sports coach John Marsden was originally a trainee for the Catholic priesthood but he left the seminary and later became a prominent lawyer and president of the New South Wales Law Society.  In a crimes compensation case on 6 July 2001, NSW District Court judge Ken Taylor found that, “on the balance of probabilities”, Marsden had sexually abused an eight-year-old schoolboy in the late 1960s when Marsden was a swimming and football coach at a Catholic school, St John’s, Campbelltown, in Sydney’s south-west. The court was told that, on three occasions, the boy was forced to engage in mutual genital fondling with Marsden and on the third occasion he was forced to perform oral sex on Marsden. The boy then complained to school authorities but was not believed over the respected local solicitor and former trainee priest, the victim told the court. The victim took his allegations against Marsden to Mr Justice Wood’s royal commission into corruption in 1996, but Marsden was never charged by police. The victim then began a civil action in the NSW Supreme Court, but said he was “threatened with financial ruin” by the rich and powerful lawyer.  On legal advice, he sought victim’s compensation instead.  Judge Taylor awarded the plaintiff the then maximum amount of $40,000 in victim’s compensation, plus $5078 for psychiatrists’ fees and $8000 in legal costs. This finding could not be revealed in 2001 because it was subject to a court suppression order.  Marsden died in May 2006, aged 64, and the Weekend Australian published the court documents on 3 June 2006. Former Test cricket umpire Steve Randell He was jailed in 1999 for sexual offences against young girls while he taught at Marist College in Burnie, Tasmania, in the early 1980s (after the school became co-educational). Randell also taught at St Virgil’s College in Hobart. He also allegedly had male victims.  See our article about a different offender at Marist College here. St Mark’s College, South Australia Jenny Christall, who was an education support officer at St Mark’s College in Port Pirie (South Australia) in 2001, learned that a male religious education teacher, Sunil Francis Clark, was sexually abusing female students. Mrs Christall alerted the school administration and the Port Pirie Catholic diocese but, she says, these authorities failed to contact police. Ms Christall contacted the police herself but this meant losing her job because of a workplace confidentiality agreement.  After this, she says, she was banned from working at more than 100 Catholic schools in South Australia. The male teacher, Sunil Clark, was charged in the South Australian District Court in 2006 with sexual offences against two schoolgirls, including two charges of unlawful sexual intercourse by a teacher. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, with a non-parole period of three years. Stephen Stockdale-Hall, Adelaide In the South Australian Supreme Court in December 2005, Stephen John Stockdale-Hall (aged 56) was sentenced to 10 years’ jail (with parole after eight years) after admitting that he sexually abused nine boys, aged between eight and 16 years, between 1977 and 1989, while he was a Catholic schools lay teacher. His crimes started while he was a teacher at Adelaide’s Blackfriars Priory School and went on for a decade after he resigned when he continued to take students on camping expeditions. Stockdale-Hall also encouraged some of his Catholic school victims to drink alcohol and take drugs. See our story here. Darren Tector, former lay teacher In 1994, Darren John Tector was jailed for sexual offences against boys while he was a teacher at a Catholic primary school (Our Lady of Lourdes) at Seven Hills, near Parramatta, west of Sydney. He was jailed again in 2007 (aged 41) for using the internet and a telephone to procure a child (a 12-year-old boy) for sexual activity. See our story here. The Broken Rites database contains many similar cases of teachers in church schools. Some of these are teachers of “religion”, which indicates hypocrisy as well as a crime.

Joseph Smith: The Self-Shysted Shyster

Joseph Smith: The Self-Shysted Shyster

Daniel June

What sort of man was Joseph Smith? The type to establish a world religion, clearly, but how much does that tell us? It takes a mere spark to blast a keg, after all, but sometimes the wick can be fickle, and waits for just the right spark. After all, there were hundreds of upstart sects and self-styled prophets in New England at the time, and especially in Smith’s hometown which was within the “burned over district,” where many revivals and sects had roused the people again and again. This is not unlike the stories of Jesus, who was merely one of many miracle workers at his time, merely one of many self-styled messiahs of the time, and many of the stories and sayings of the gospels seem to be absorbed from the urban myths regarding the wide group of itinerate preachers. Statistically, that one of the prophets caught on seems inevitable. But what is the nature of that one?

Smith had an idea, he calls its source “God.” Demythologized, this is the same source as all artists and poets—Walt Whitman claimed the Holy Spirit had inspired his own “New Bible,” the Leaves of Grass, and we need not by any means be a student of literature to see his writings are more inspired than Joseph’s. But Whitman’s new religion affirmed all world religions, whereas Joseph’s denied each and everyone one—every last sect of Christianity as “the Church of Satan.”

What was his basic idea, and where is it now? Perhaps it was lost? After all, an idea may develop into its opposite. Kellogg, when he invented corn flakes, like Graham with his crackers, intended to invent a food so bland and boring that it would dull all excitement, especially the sexual, and especially the masturbatory. The latest children’s cartoon, however, features a cartoon “cuckoo bird” who for lust of Cocoa Puff’s cereal explodes into a “coo-coo” frenzy to get his chocolate fix. In the same way, many defend Jesus against those who act in his name, listing, perhaps, the Catholic Church as the ostensible opposite of everything the man taught.

Is Smith an equally sympathetic character? His religious story began when he was perplexed about which of the competing sects in his neighborhood was the true one, and how to make sense of it all. Unconsciously, Smith wanted a short cut, a simple answer, no need for study or critical thinking. “They’re all wrong” the voice naturally tells him, and what a relief! He could instead use hunches and warm feelings to settle all theological disputes and package his conclusions as indisputable revelations. His Book of Mormon—a purported translation of ancient Jewish-American scriptures—therefore solves not only theological issues that could plausibly be ancient, but issues of his own day.

His revelations were sometimes revelations of convenience, making his personal whim unchallengeable, nor was God above weighing in on his domestic spats—to Joseph’s favor, naturally—and for this his wife would make fun of him.

After all the hoopla that comes later, the propaganda about angels and visitations and such, when his feeling of certainty after his prayer about which sect was correct got rewritten as a dazzling visitation of God the Father and God the Son, what are the ideas, anyway, that would be divine? This, to any intelligent person, is what really matters, not the incredible framework it is placed within. Smith’s basic ideas is the sacredness of family. Such an overpowering emphasis could only inspire the founding of a religion at a time of family disintegration. The patriarchal family is the symbol of heaven, and LDS teaching on the matter will be a valuable voice even for us as our cultural battles roil on.

Smith, the teenage shyster who used seers’ stones to find buried treasure—a bit of hooliganism popular enough at the time to make laws to keep such people from fleecing the public, and for which Smith himself was convicted—would later, by the same method, discover “gold plates,” which like the ark of the covenant, have mysteriously disappeared, but unlike the ark of the covenant probably never existed at all. These would be used to translate the most unliterary document I have ever read: the Book of Mormon. And just like L. Ron Hubbard, would write hundreds of sci-fi novels until one day he believed that he wasn’t making fiction but writing true galactic history, Joseph also began to believe his own stories, and the Shyster shysted himself.

The religion is a great comfort for true believers. They are communal, their symbol is the honey hive. You’re either all the way in or all the way out—hivemind—and it doesn’t matter if you understand, but it does matter if you obey. Your salvation depends on it.

Unlike other religions, there is little in Mormonism that could tempt an intelligent person to convert—though Buddhism and Taoism impress even highly critical and skeptical minds. Unfortunately, the scriptures—The Book of Mormon, The Doctrines and Covenants, The Pearl of Great Price—are so poorly written that its painful to force yourself to read them, though a nonbeliever may enjoy large portions of the Bible, the Upanishads, and the Tao Te Jing. One searches in vain for an original trope in The Doctrines and Covenant, anything aside from the endless mixed up quotes from the King James Bible. Tropes and figures are pulled seemingly at random from the Old and New Testament, and this passes as “The Word of God” for a world already saturated in that literature. New “revelations” are spoken as if God scissored and collaged his old material before he whispered them to Smith. Yet like Muhammad, Smith will scoff at the skeptics, saying, “If you think I’m just making it up, try writing one of these revelations yourself,” but unlike Muhammad, he had no right for such a Poet’s arrogance.

The basic idea of Mormonism, the symbol of heaven, is the family. Therefore, the basic ethic, naturally enough, is husbandry, or in a wider sense, industry. Indeed, outside their temple they have sculptures of bee’s hives with the word “industry” written on them. In The Doctrines and Covenants 107, after detailing the proposed structure of the church, Smith ends saying, “Let every man learn his duty and act in the office in which he is appointed in all diligence. He that is slothful shall not be counted worthy to stand, and he that learns not his duty and shows himself not approved shall not be counted worthy to stand.” In other words, aside from apostasy, and aside from refusing to have a large family, the biggest Mormon sin is laziness.

About the large families, it does come as a great pressure for each young Mormon to prepare, first of all, for his necessary two year missionary trip (the missionary field being mostly American Christian neighborhoods), and then after that getting married in a celestial marriage (redefined from being what it once was, a plural marriage, to the now in-fashion, regular marriage of one man to one wife, and meaning, more or less, that its not death till you part, but never shall you part). The highest heaven is reserved only for those who have been “celestially married” and have large families. A bachelor by nature is dispicccable, and the homosexual Mormon, if he persists, will soon be excommunicated.

Sincere, convicted, stupid—this trademark look of the nineteen-year-old Mormon missionaries can equally be found in true believers everywhere, and they look a lot like evangelical Christians. Watching videos about Mormons and ex-Mormons, it is easy to spot the ex-Mormon even before he has been introduced. There is a look of intelligence to his eyes, you can tell you are looking at somebody with intellectual integrity and perhaps a bit of a mental edge lacking in the Mormon counterpart.

So the sell-job we get from the Mormons—I let a couple of these lads visit me and make many subsequent visits—asks you not to think about the claims The Book of Mormon makes, whether it is historical, but to ask God in your heart if its true. This little bit of hypnotic shamanism didn’t work for me. I quickly read as much as I could in the book and prayed and not only felt from myself, a certain judge, but was also told by the higher power that this stuff was not inspired. At least not more than popular fiction.

As for the plates, the angels, all that stuff, we are back to the same sell-jobs Christians make. We have faith because God revealed his word in miracles, and you know that the miracles really happened if you have faith. But why these miracles? Regarding miracles, the question isn’t “If God can do anything why couldn’t he also do this? (swallow his prophets into large fish, allow talking snakes possessed by the devil into paradise, make a human sacrifice only to reverse it three days later, etc.),” but the more apt question is “If God can do anything, why wouldhe do this?” The stories are, after all, absurd. God can do anything, write on the moon, write the gospel in the stars, give every person the same dream when they turn thirteen, whatever. Why did he hide a scripture in a hill and then evaporate it again after it was translated? Why not just inspire him to write what was on it in the first place? The answer is that the story about golden plates is fun, it is more interesting then the story that God inspired Joseph of an ancient scripture. But that’s a pretty shabby miracle compared to the stuff we hear in the New Testament, although that stuff is a lot more absurd (God’s faked death, his casting out of spirits into pigs, the healing of a few local diseases rather than disease itself, walking on water). If God can do anything, why these quiet miracles, done in a small corner of the world, witnessed by incredulous fisherman, and reported a few generations later by anonymous sources? To escape some of the damage that this question could cause, Paul, ever clever in his cynicism, claims that God performs such foolish miracles precisely to hurt our pride, to insult our intelligence, to mock our wisdom. It seems that God, like Paul, finds human philosophy intimidating enough to sneer at it, to attack it, that he regards human wisdom as wrong, bad, evil. Well having wisdom does save a man from believing nonsense, so Paul knew his enemy.

The incredible story of a criminally convicted shyster convincing his parents and friends that he is a living prophet seems to be explained by Smith’s well-documented charisma. People liked him as they like con men, trusted him as they trust tricksters, but more than that, and this is a key difference, Smith managed to con himself, and most of the others are not able to do that.

Related articles

• Does the Internet Spell Doom For Organized Religion? (chasdarwin.com)
• When It Comes to Factual Knowledge About Mormonism, the ‘Nones’ Score Highest (patheos.com)
• A Mormon Massacre (jfhilborne.wordpress.com)

Facebook: What Fears You Faced Based on Religion

Facebook: What fears you faced  based on religion

by Sean Faircloth

I wanted to cry reading several posts volunteered on our official Foundation Facebook page about childhood experiences and religion. Thank you everyone who told of your experiences. A recent comment in a Catholic publication implied these are isolated incidents. Maybe we all can take a step back, read the comments below, with compassion in our hearts, and face the reality that children are quite often deeply harmed by religious dogma. It is immoral and unacceptable. Under the leadership of our Executive Director, Elisabeth Cornwell, we are working at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science to overcome this great injustice and do so based on reason, and based on basic human decency.  Read the comments below. Some will break your heart. The last one from Amy Milligan breaks mine.

So many of you, by overcoming these horrors, have set an example for those of us who were never religious. If you can overcome, we can support you and work together for a better world in 2013 and beyond.

Thank you so much. It is such an honor to be involved in this deeply compassionate cause. Read on. — Sean Faircloth, Dir. of Strategy & Policy, author of Attack of the Theocrats, How the Religious Right Harms Us All and What We Can Do About It.

You can leave comments here or on the RDFRS Facebook page

The comments below are just a few of the many

Laura Rhodes I was brought up by a conservative southern baptist mother and atheist father. As a child I was indoctrinated into a “hellfire and brimstone” religion that taught me anyone that didn’t accept Christ as lord and savior would burn in eternal damnation. Every night for years I laid awake praying that god would convince my dad to become Christian so when I died we would be together in eternity. I remember having nightmares about his damnation. It wasn’t until high school I was able to leave the church and denounce all the nonsense I’d been fed as a child. To this day I consider myself a recovering Christian and as a result do not allow my child to be involved in Christian churches or organizations. No child should have to suffer the abuse of organized religion and carry lifelong scars from it

Karin Petersson I often looked at the sky, terrified the clouds would part, Jesus return to bring “home” the ones who was pure at heart, leaving me behind…

Amanda Bond Warner I was told to never bring home toys or books that belonged to my school friends and never to purchase things second-hand (like at yard sales, the Good Will, etc) because the owner or previous owner could be involved in spiritistic practices and attached a demon to the object. Once the demon has entrance to the home, it would torment and rape me, my mother, and sister. I was 6 when I was told this.

Trevor Buvyer I was invited to watch a Church production called “Hell’s Fire and Heaven’s Gates”, depicting the deaths of several people. Those who were believers were shown to ascend to heaven where Angels sang, those who were not, were hauled down underneath the stage by a man dressed as the devil with flames shooting up and terrifying music. I accepted Christianity out of pure fear. It was a horrible experience.

John Ashley When I was seven..I was told by a teacher in a Morman sunday school class that my grandparents,who weren’t Morman, could not go to the same heaven that I and other Mormans would be allowed into….so I told the teacher that I wasn’t going if they couldn’t go..She then put me outside the classroom on a chair in the hall and told my father what had happened.When I got home my father gave me a beating..Merry xmas

Susanna Sharp-Schwacke Because of teenage indoctrination, I suffered from absolute terror of the “End Times.”

Anita Wittig I was told similar to what the 7 year old in the story did. Went to church and school at the same damnable place, a church filled with pedophiles, con artists, and perverts..I learned early into my teens that nothing is as it seems, that there is an agenda behind each and every one of these losers, and that heaven and hell are states of being and mind here on earth.

Jacob Wagner It was always, and still is, difficult to discuss being gay (at least between family members, as they are very religious). Back when I was a Christian, I tried to suppress many feelings to stay “normal” and out of Hell. Now that I’m an atheist, I’m much more comfortable with myself and discussing such things as homosexuality.

Melissa Glenn My best friend in 2nd/3rd grade came from a home that didn’t go to church or practice religion. I tried to tell her about jesus and all that but she didn’t believe. I remember being 8 years old, crying, praying on my knees for god to let my best friend take my place in heaven. What kind of 8 year old should have to worry about the eternal torture of her best friend?

Martin Navnihal Lochner Our politics taught us that we are Gods people and that we must suppress the heathen that represent all the other races and orientations..a mix of nationalistic autocratic rule with apocalyptic theology crushed my spirit until I one day discovered a book called ‘ straight and crooked thinking by a Mr Thouless..’ It saved me by my own effort. I have been excommunicated by my family,crucified by our Church and lonely in community because of reason over myth… I am ok…

Samantha Fischer I was raised a Catholic and, though I have long since renounced that faith, I am still haunted with guilt for my supposed life “sins” that are contrary to the Catholic Church’s dogma: divorce, child out of wedlock, promiscuous behaviour, being “mean” and not “polite and respectful” (ie. speaking up for myself), etc. In fact, as a result of this guilt, the mental illness I suffer from often becomes aggravated and I am in some peril when I dwell on what I’ve done “wrong”.

Jennifer Darden horrible nighmares that if I didn’t “speak in other tongues” from being “filled with the Holy Spirit” that I would spend an eternity damned to hell. along with the ridiculous rules that I couldn’t watch tv, couldn’t wear pants, cut hair, etc. so happy to be out of such an oppressive religion. out of religion, period actually. along with most of my family, who no longer believe in a judgmental god.

Hal Molitor – I remember my sister returning from her Catholic grade school sobbing horribly because our parents were going to Hell because they were not married in the Catholic Church.

Gordo Clayton A woman I used to be very close to was raised in a deeply religious, very harsh, fundamentalist Christian family. Growing up, she was utterly terrified of that one Bible quite that says if you doubt God even for a moment you are doomed to Hell. Of course, tell a brain not to think of pink polar bears, that brain is going to envision pink polar bears. She had an instant of “what if” doubt at a young age and was absolutely traumatized up until she became an adult. She told me when she was a kid she’d lie awake in her room for hours, reading frivolous teen magazines, until exhaustion finally took over and she fell unconscious. This went on for years. This child was abused, without a doubt.

There was also a bunch of Rapture fear thrown in there too, but I gotta keep this thing under a million words. However, I want to say that when she told me her story a few years ago, that’s when I went from being a timid, apologetic atheist to being a militant atheist.

Rachel Wilde My niece (age 12) recently returned home from catholic school in tears because her class mates told her she would burn in hell as she is not a baptised catholic.

Allison Underwood Raised a Calvinist and believing in predestination, I always feared Hell when I was growing up, and the powerlessness I had in my own salvation was overwhelming at times. There’s no way of knowing whether or not you were Chosen until you’re at the Pearly Gates, and you’re either let inside or cast down to Hell. How do you find comfort in those thoughts?

Dan Allford Even now as an atheist adult I still get a pang of fear and doubt: what if the christians are right and I burn in hell for eternity? It’s still an uncomfortable thought for me, aged 38. Then I remember what I’ve seen, learned myself and experienced directly – and the notion of hell becomes rudiculous again. Children don’t have the strength of character to resist these superstitious, religious notions. I feel enormous pity for them.

Angela Darst Blais My mother became a Jehovah’s Witness when I was 5. I grew up thinking the world would end before I grew up. Armageddon would come and I and everyone else who didn’t believe would be killed, our flesh falling off as we watched. Talk about traumatized.

James Willis I had exactly the same speech given to me by someone who resmebled and sounded just like a car salesman. Turns out he was the pastor, I still have a recurring nightmare that scares me awake sometimes of loved ones dying by fire. Please stop this madness towards children. Lets keep them truly innocent by having a “religious” age of consent where it is illegal to have your parents force the archaic religion on you when your not old enough to understand right from wrong, let alone Jesus from Allah, or Krishna from Buddha. KEEP CHILDREN INNOCENT UNTIL THEY CAN CHOOSE FOR THEMSELVES.

Robert Miller We had to take my 5 y. o. brother off of life support after a car accident. A Pentecostal preacher told my grieving mother that because he was so young he was not accountable for his faith, but that my mom’s faith must have been lacking. He told her that if her faith had been stronger Satan would not have been able to take my brother as God promises long life. My mom was shattered.

Jen Martin I felt left out as I had not been “saved” and took the lord’s supper (southern baptist) at about age 9. Two “friends” convinced me that I was going to hell and there was no way out of it, not even salvation, since I had taken of the lord without being worthy (i.e. being saved). The mother of one confirmed this interpretation of the bible, directly stating that I had no hope of salvation. This family justified a lot of questionable teachings to children. On a lighter note, I did find it funny that their daughter, the one in the story above, refused to kiss her boyfriend for months because she was convinced she would get pregnant (we were around 16). I had some laughs over that one. I guess had she allowed her daughter to attend sex education, she would have known (but that would take the “fear factor” out of life, right?). I have many stories similar to this… all in the life of a southern baptist.

Pete Simms I was forcibly exorcised for being gay at fourteen and told that I am going to hell. eight suicide attempts later and at 40 I am still dealing with the fallout so yes understand completely the little girls fears. hell is a scary place to damage a young mind with.

Joshua Torres Demons! This put so much fear in me. I have religious family members to this day said they met angels and demons. As a kid I always worried if one would visit me or attack me. Or even possess me! This made sleeping scary.now as a adult and one who doesnt believe that. No fear

Brian C Findley Being gay, I learned that I was an abomination and for nearly a decade i believed it. Only after my suicide attempt did i learn to love myself again.

Shanta Sultana Horrific fear is implemented on Muslim children, from a very early age children start to imagine the detailed stories of hell fire they have been tought about and its an excellent way to abuse and control children. Little girls especially. However the same fear disables the mind and toungue and Muslims stay in a pack and promise never to speak about the abuse. instead become PR mad nation. Whenever someone points out the truth its propaganda by the west, perhaps Penguin publishing company (figure that out!) or the Church etc.

Eddie Mcclanahan My Father was a Baptist minister, I am gay and always have been, so trust me growing up I had many sleepless nights.

Ross Moorhouse I was a fundie Christian till I saw the light. I am ashamed to say I used to preach about people going to hell. I no longer follow the god of bloodshed and murder nor his so called book.

Fred Akman sorry this is a bit longer than requested.. I was confronted at YMCA camp in Greensboro, NC after moving there from Los Angeles. A Young kid got up in my face when he found out I was Jewish, yelling that I couldn’t just turn my back on Jesus, he had died for my sins and I was going to hell. When I told him I was Jewish and didn’t believe in Jesus, he assaulted me. The camp did nothing about the attack after it was reported by my parents, so I stopped going to camp there. The same kid went to my high school, where he did the same thing to a gay student. This time I got in between and verbally wiped the floor with him and made him look really stupid, I didn’t hear any more out of him during high school. I became an atheist around the same time as the second incident, though I had been one inside since around 3rd or 4th grade (at a religious school). After leaving high school I began fighting to keep religion out of school and maintain separation of church and state, as well many other causes while I work towards my eventual PHD.

Mike Ahern Good Friday Catholic prayers for the Jews. Every Catholic congregation in the world prays for the conversion of the Jews so that they may be redeemed.

Linda Selzer My mother grew up in Austria with a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. In those days religious training was part of schooling, so my uncle went to a Jewish school so he could be Bar Mitzvahed and my mother went to Catholic training, When she was 10 her father died, and the nuns told her she had to pray every day for her father because he was Jewsih and therefore burning in hell. Becoming an atheist at the age of 12 is what eventually saved her.

Kaveh Haddadi I had the same experience, as a kid in my homeland Iran I’ve been told to follow the rules made by religion and it could even cover the rules made by our teachers. Failing to obey those rules, having a doubt about god or even about the supreme leader would lead to hell, I remember how it affected our childhood. fear of thinking and illusion were the smallest consequences of this method for us children. Thank you Mr. Dawkins, you’ve gifted the valuable act of thinking without fear to many Iranians, we owe you a big one.

Ashley Alderman After suffering complications (retroplacental hemorrhage and an incompetent cervix), I had my pregnancy terminated at age 20. I’ve been told repeatedly that I’ll burn in hell for it, even though the complications weren’t my fault. I’ve always questioned religion, but the fear of “hell” was so deeply embedded in my mind that I prayed for “forgiveness” night after night. I am SO glad that I broke free from those chains.

Bonny McCurdy My older brothers friend committed suicide in high school, I was so so sad for such a long time because I was taught that he was most definitely in hell. It was several years later that I realized it was all nonsense. Why do people teach their children such damaging lies? I will never understand.

Lainey Head Kloes I was kicked out of a catholic private school because I believed in science more than mandatory bible class. They called me a heathen at 11 and I’ve been atheist ever since..

Phillip Jones When i was in Primary school, my 5th grade teacher screamed at me about how I am born stupid and i should repent and devote my life to learning the ways of Jesus, or my family and friends would be sent to Hell.

At 23 and an Atheist, I still have re-occuring nightmares about my family and friends burning in a Lake of Holy Fire or dying in all sorts of gruesome manners. I’m on medication for my night terrors and I hope they leave my mind before i shuffle off this mortal coil and my natural materials go back into the universe.

Devin Kennedy Not exactly the same, but I was told as a child that “little boys who ask questions don’t get into heaven.”

Rachel Shockey I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family. My whole life was based on Christianity. At the age of 6 I became “saved”, only because the thought of hell terrified me. I wanted to avoid it at all costs. Throughout my childhood and teenage life I often wondered if I was really saved. And I would pray again to be “saved”. Looking back I now realize those were the start of my doubts about my faith. But it took till I was 16 to really question everything. When I finally told my family, at age 17, that I no longer considered myself a Christian, it was a family crisis. Although it hasn’t been easy being the only nonbeliever on both sides of the family, I’m glad I had the courage to not be influenced by irrational fears.

Bill Melton I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian (Nazarene) environment, and began having anxiety attacks at about 6 years old. I knew I was going to Hell because I had crushes on other boys, among other naughtinesses. One day at about that age, I came home from school to an empty house. I knew that my family had been taken in the rapture and left me behind. I carried the anxiety long after I realized that the myths were just that. Encouraging a child to envision him/herself being eternally tortured for being human is child abuse.

Chris W James In the church I went to as a child, they had a baptism tank to dunk ppl in. Being 5 years old, I asked my parents what the tank was about. After explaining to me briefly it was to “save souls from hell and eternal torment ” I let my mind wander and conjure up horrific images of a horrible place with torture, blood, demons etc. After service we talked in the parking lot, like most do, and a man with a Polaroid camera showed us these pictures of Jesus floating in the sky. My dad bought one for $5 and kept it in the glove box, assured that the end was nigh and we better get our house in order. I had terrible dreams of the devil coming for me, and that her lived in the water tower at my school, which was walking distance from the house. For awhile there I even wet the bed. My uncle finally told me it all wasn’t true, and things were better.

Wayne Stremski Catholic School, 1966, sixth grade, Confirmation time. I procrastinated on the coloring book of Jesus and the apostles I was assigned, not completing it. The lay teacher told me that I would not be confirmed because of that. I sweated through three days, too fearful to tell my parents – or even my friends. I thought the teacher was going to tell the bishop to walk right past me and not confirm me in church on Sunday. But when I was indeed confirmed, and the bishop slapped my face, well that started me thinking. 40 years later I figured it out for good. I am an atheist.

Aimee Eisiminger Sleepless nights….praying feverishly for forgiveness for the smallest of transgressions. At one point I started to believe that I must be a demon because I kept transgressing. I was simply following my nature but religion kept telling me that my nature was evil.

Boris Warszawski When I wasn’t 18 yet I was still forced to go to church. I got out of it by volunteering during the mass by teaching children the gospel in an age appropriate manner. The kids would draw or make crafts after the lesson. I was surprised when a little boy stole a girls crayon and she didn’t mind. I told her it was very nice of her. She replied, “Oh, I’m not being nice, he’s just gonna burn in hell”. The boy cried for the rest of the lesson and I was flabbergasted at how religion is taught to our youth.

Derek Rowe As a child raised in Mormonism, I was taught the following:

There are three different heavens. If I ever left Mormonism, if I did not marry in a Mormon temple, if I drank coffee or tea, if I drank alcohol, if I participated in any sexual act before marriage, if I did not continuously give 10% of my income to the Mormon church, I would be separated from my family members in the afterlife in a lower heaven while they enjoyed the highest level of heaven without me.

Stacey Silverman We live in the bible belt (Texas) and my 8-yr old daughter was told by her classmates on the playground that she would be going to hell since she doesn’t believe in Jesus. Dawkins is absolutely right. This is traumatic for a child to hear and she was upset for several days.

Petra Roesner I was “born into” the evangelical church in Germany, and for many years was told exactly that, that I would burn in hell for eternity and suffer terrible pain if I were to reject the church’s teachings. As if those words were not enough, we (in Sunday school) were shown horrific pictures that depicted human suffering in hell, resulting in many nightmares as I grew up. When I was 14 I was forced to participate in the traditional ritual of being “confirmed,” because it was what was expected from me by my family. Two weeks after that, I rode my bike to the courthouse and filed papers that I was officially leaving the church. As a mother, I have encountered one child in particular, who has told my boys that they would go to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus, had their character attacked for knowing about religion but not being religious (which would ultimately be their choice). As a result of this taunting or religious bullying, my younger son was afraid to go to sleep and had nightmares. Needless to say, they are not playing with this child anymore.

Mary Charles Severinghaus As a small girl, I lay in bed trembling and crying in terror if the sunrise were red. We had been taught by the nuns at our Roman Catholic school that the “unrevealed secret” of Our Lady of Fatima was that the end of the world would be preceded by a red sunrise. My parents wouldn’t listen to me, so I bore that burden by my scared little sad self for years.

Jennifer Bisson My sister died in a car accident at a young age. Afterwards I couldn’t even count how many people told me (@14 years old) she died because my family didn’t pray enough or because my family was not more active in church.

Vicki Burns-Hufstetler Very similar story- at 9 my father told me my beloved grandfather was going to hell for not believing as we did. They had also terrified me into thinking that Jesus would return at night- and i wouldn’t be ready. Worrying for mine and my Padaddy’s eternal souls caused me to be plagued with middle of the night panic attacks into my late teens. I educated myself and am now free

Buddy Brown Yeah I grew up in Oklahoma, as Christian as possible. When I was younger I wanted to be a missionary and spread the word of God. I used to be terrified of every little thought I had. I used to cry at night fearing that while I dreamed id have a dirty thought and miss the rapture. I used to physically hurt myself to do my best to prevent myself from thinking sexual thoughts. The fear of hell was horrible. It dictated every aspect of my life. The way I acted, dressed, thought, everything. I was as Christian as possible. In my teens I managed to get some time to think for myself. I got into a pretty bad car wreck. I certainly would’ve died were it not for the doctors and medical advancements… Not god. Yet over and over god kept getting the praise for my survival. I was bed ridden for quite a while and did plenty of reading. I had a biology textbook with me and read it as unbiased as I possibly could, and that was that. No more christianity for me. I’m now slowly working to try and become a biologist. And so much happier with my quality of life. Everything is better. Life is sweeter. And knowledge, not dogma, is what I strive for.

Angela Amira Petite A Priest told my infant school assembly that parents who had disabled children were evil and were being punished by god. My sister of course experienced significant brain damage through meningitis and became disabled. I was escorted shouting and crying from that assembly.

Eleanor Tagart I remember being in tears as a child because I was taught in school that unbelievers won’t go to heaven and that meant my mum wouldn’t be there.

Sondra Cevelin I was raised Agnostic, but my parents always let me go to church groups with school friends when I was a child. I remember a youth group leader asking me once why he never saw my parents on Sundays. I told him they didn’t believe in God, and he gave me a big hug and told me “I’m so sorry they won’t be in heaven with you”. I was absolutely devastated. I cried and prayed For them every night. At 8 or 9 years old, my parents were my whole world, and the thought of them burning in hell forever was terrifying. I brought it up with my dad, and he explained to me why I shouldn’t have believed it, but that only made me feel worse. I eventually got old enough to know better, but I vividly remember the terror I felt, and I would never wish that feeling on anyone, especially a child. That is why now that I have kids of my own, they are not allowed to go to church groups with friends. The last thing I want is my children crying themselves to sleep in fear over my soul.

Kirsty Moss I had a christian and atheist upbringing, my mother was a devout christian, my father an atheist. I remember long fitful nights terrified by the thought of my father being sent to hell simply for not believing. Funny thing was, he is a warm gentle beautiful soul with a strong moral compass and generous nature. An awesome nurturing and respectful father and husband. My mother was deeply depressed, volatile, angry and unhappy. The irony only dawned on me when I was substantially older and wiser. Not that I blame my mother. I believe (though I’m not 100 percent sure) that the church made her depression that much worse by its belief that to seek treatment was to admit to not being a good enough christian to fight off the ‘demon of depression’.

Melissa Glenn Idk if there is much to elaborate on.

I was raised baptist. If you didn’t believe in god you were going to hell. My best friend, when I was 8, didn’t believe in god. I tried to tell her about god but she wouldn’t believe. I was terrified for her. I prayed and cried on my knees for god to let her into heaven and I would go to hell in her place. I didn’t want my best friend to burn forever.

* * * * * *

What is really messed up about it is that I think at the time I was hoping that giving up my “spot” would be considered selfless enough to get us both in. Then I felt immediate shame and guilt once I realized that god could read my mind and would think I was actually being selfish and trying to trick him and that we would both go to hell because of it.

Isaiah Copp Raised as a evangelical/pentocostal I dealt with severe guilt and shame, mostly due to sexual maturity. Every time I had an erection, sexual thought, or masturbated I was taught that I was essentially crucifying and breaking the heart of Jesus over and over…Feeling insane with guilt for torturing such a beautiful saviour, I sought counsel and was told that I had demons in my soul fighting for my etenal existense….this is total psycological abuse…

Lm Brown That happened to me when President Kennedy was killed: A neighbor told five-year old me that he was going to Hell because he was Catholic. Christianity never had a real chance with me after that.

Desiree Nicole Maslen Being told a friend was going to hell was the least of our worries as children of my parent. That fear was just normal every day pain that we would never know the people around us when we went to heaven because none of them were as good christians as my mother. Our torture was being molested and beaten, if you can call it beating when you black your childs eyes and touch them and verbally bludgeon them into submission and fear every day…then you clench the deal by telling them baby jesus will cry if you ‘lie’ to the police or the school teachers so they think your mother is doing bad things.

Jessica Lynn-Lato As a child my Sicilian grandfather told me that anytime bad things happened to me – a cut or bruise, disappointment, death of loved ones, etc – God was punishing me for something bad I had previously done.

Kenneth Jones I feel ashamed to be subscribed to the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science. I hate this religion bashing.

Shouldn’t we be promoting reason, science and tolerance.

Also I am sick of comments like “god is bullshit” shows just as much intelligence and reasoning as those with unproven faith.

Elyse Schuler-Cruz I was raised Catholic, and went to Catholic schools. I was afraid of physical intimacy until I was in my mid 20s. Even after I stopped believing that kissing with tongue was akin to premarital sex, I still had trouble becoming comfortable with sexuality. Sometimes, I find myself feeling guilty about things I do with my husband even though I know better. Hell, my husband and I are pretty vanilla by any standards except religious ones.

Sam Jacob Simply put I lived in fear as a child, I was never clear on what might send me to hell and what not. I had a friend who went to vacation bible school with me and he woke up screaming for months because he was having dreams that he was burning in hell. I felt so bad for him. Religion is CHILD ABUSE.

Mackenzie Maxwell I grew up Mormon. When I was 6, the Sunday school teacher told me that people who smoke would not make it to Heaven. My grandfather smoked back then. I had nightmares for weeks. Then I decided that if the people I love aren’t going to Heaven, I don’t want to go to Heaven either.

Daniel Villalobos I was told by the pastor of my baptist church that God can see me everytime & everywhere. That’s really fuck me up when I come to that age when kids start to masturbate. Sounds funny: IT WASN’T.

Gary Harmon I have a mental disorder which makes me paranoid, anxious, prone to mood swings and delusions. As a child, my religion both fed and subdued my mental disorders: God is always watching you. Thirty years later, I had to be hospitalized due to a mental breakdown. I told the doctors that my greatest fear was going to Hell, despite being an Atheist. But there’s no such thing as Hell. Some childhood monsters follow you forever.

Thema Modisi When I was a kid I we carpooled with this family that were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They gave me these Watchtower booklets to read. I remember reading a story about a girl who forgot to bless her food before she ate. Unfortunately for her there was a demon curled up in a piece of lettuce on her plate and after eating it she became possessed. I remember praying everynight after that for God to bless everything i would eat the next day. I was terrified the same would happen to me. One day when I was 13 I got tired of being afraid and I embraced atheism.

Chelsea Leah Johnson I had a lot of insomnia when I was ten because I was afraid of hell. I couldn’t bring myself to accept that any of the bible stories or god or jesus were real. I thought I HAD to accept it and I really tried, but I just couldn’t.

Phil Peron I have many childhood memories of being awakened by horrifying nightmares of hell and damnation. Felt more like terrorism. Even if God exists, It wouldn’t be worth worshipping. What an abhorrent being. Needless to say I won’t be subjecting my own children to this rubbish.

Hiroki Burke A belief in God made my adolescence a lot more confusing and frightening than it needed to be.

I had an interest in Biology and Evolution, and struggled to reconcile what I learnt about those with what I was being taught in religious education class. I was also struggling with my sexuality, which my religion teacher taught was a way for God to test our faith, and that God would still love us, so long as we never acted on any sexual feelings towards other men that we may have had. I interpreted this as God’s way of punishing me for having doubts and I would need to get rid of my doubts in order to get rid of my attraction towards other men and become ‘normal’.

Eventually, I got the courage to ask…why was God punishing me, and did he have good reason? Sure, I was having doubts. But how could I not? Everything I was learning about God simply didn’t match what I was learning about the real world. I was trying to reconcile it, I was TRYING to believe in God, I WANTED to believe in God. Was it really just for God to punish me when I actually wanted to serve him?

It finally occurred to me that, even if God did exist, he was a being that was not kind, was not just, was not something I wanted to spend eternity with after my death, and certainly wasn’t worthy of worship. It gave me the freedom to look at the world and myself with clear eyes and question my morality. Rather than just accepting that being Gay is wrong because my religion teacher said so, I was finally able to ask… “is it? If so, why? How is my being gay harming anyone else?”

Without religion, I would not have had to go through years of believing that I was a bad person. Believing that I was being punished for questioning the existence of my apparent creator.

I would have been able to develop a strong understanding of morality long ago. Religion doesn’t encourage understanding of morality, rather, it suppresses it by teaching the faithful obedience and submission.

Jaden Martinez I use to live in Wisconsin, America from birth to seven years. I was born into a heavily religious family, my grandma was a deep believer and grandpa was a paster. I would attend church services and was scared to death by the thought of burning in hell if I did not follow gods word. I did everything right, praying every night before bed and not saying a single swear word. My life was devoted to god until I entered pubescents. I started having feeling for girls, impure thoughts would come into my head almost all the time. I would try and fight these thoughts, I even looked into seeing a doctor about it. After a few years my worries increased causing me to be extremely anxious. I became mentally ill and had an episode that lasted nearly six months. When I was a child my mum told me that the devil would put a gun to my head and if I believed in god enough he would save me. In hospital I feared this was going to happen to me. The unpear thoughts lead me to believe I had evil me so I would hurt myself to try and get it out this resulted in me trying to take my life as a sacrifice so god would forgive me.

After a lot of counselling and help I got better. I have excepted myself and left religion behind me.

All this time I thought being gay was an illness but really it was the fear of gods word.

Lindsey Thompson I went through 10 years of undiagnosed Bipolar Hell. My parents took me to Christian counselors instead of psychiatrists, who told me that my depression came from sin and that if I truly repented in my heart, I would be healed. I began cutting and branding myself with hot metal in an attempt to prove to God that I was willing to suffer like Jesus suffered. When I attempted suicide at age 22 I was finally properly diagnosed in the psych ward. My church excommunicated me. I now lead a happy, stable life with medication and without God.

Kedar Anil Gadgil as a kid being raised to be hindu, i was convinced by adults that if i didn’t do something, or did something, or did something wrongly, etc…any infraction of the arbitrary code of ethics and ritual requirements…i would be reborn (in my next birth) as an ant (to be crushed) or a frog (living in mud and dirt) or a donkey (overloaded and abused)…etc…i was told that because in my past births (as ‘lower’ animals), i did good deeds, i have been ‘rewarded’ with a human birth…and that the ultimate goal is to be so good in this life that the lord shall have mercy on my poor soul and break the cycle or birth and death, and offer me a privileged place at his feet for eternity…!!! i have had many a sleepless nights trying to hope (and pray) that some random act of ommission or commission i did during the day didn’t break some arbit rule, and that if it did, hoping the lord would forgive my transgressions…

Tom McEvoy entered catholic school in’55..kindergarten….. 2 nuns for teachers…. I remember them holding big yard sticks….. they told me anyone who didn’t go to our church will burn in hell. 5 yrs old. Child Abuse…..

Anna Gardner I am still plagued with guilt even though the rational side of me tells me to stop being so silly. It is an intense fear. A fear of simply acting like a human. Afraid to think outside the box. Belittlement, shame..ugh I can’t express it correctly. These are deep-rooted feelings that come frombing told my whole life that I had better get my act together or face the deepest darkest pit. It still hurts.

Victoria N Finney There aren’t enough words for what I went through as a young bisexual girl in a Christian boarding school. I wanted to die. Anything would have been better than the hatred and condemnation I was surrounded by, even death.

Kristie Keller Starting from the time that I was about 7 or 8, I was told that my dad would go to Hell unless he accepted Jesus as his savior before he died. Because of this, I would sit in fear with my hand on the phone in case he fell off a ladder while changing light bulbs in our vaulted ceilings. Eventually I decided I’d rather not believe in Heaven if it came with the possibility of Hell. But that was only a decade later.

Diana Szymiczek At around 12 years old my Born-Again Christian neighbour stopped by to see me (she was the same age), and she heard my brother listening to AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell”. She turned to me and said “your brother WILL go to hell if he listens to that music”, and left. I cried for days. This is a girl who burned her bible after she lost a competition to win a new house, because the bible “told me if I wanted it I would win it”.

Jennifer Blaesing I remember being so terrified about feeding into temptation that it would lead me to become possessed by demons or the devil. We were told that temptations to sin were whispers from demons so I felt like they were constantly trying to control my mind. I’d lay awake petrified at nights agonizing over the idea that I cannot defeat them. I felt like I was the perfect candidate for possession because my mind was so weak.

Anneka Padrón Having been told that people who didn’t believe Christ was the Savior, and knowing that Jews denied he was so, I told a little girl in my 2nd grade class that she was going to Hell. She was so upset by this statement that she cried the rest of the day. To this day, I still feel guilty over this. This poor girl probably went home terrified. I know kids say mean things, but the things I told her were just me repeating what my mom told me. Ugh, I’m so glad I came to my senses.

Amy L Milligan I was raised as a Jehovah Witness. To keep young children in line we were told that god only loves children who obey their parents, study the bible, and attend the meetings without disruption. We were told stories of people harasses by demons who have to call on gods name to get freedom. Not having faith in god or worshipping him correctly results in demonic possession and harassment that is anything from physical harassment to your life being filled with terrible tests if faith. However they also teach that if you do worship in the most faithful way you will also be harasses by demons as proof that you have gods approval much like Job. Many if their teaching are in contradiction. So as a result, I had nightmares into adulthood of dark beings chasing me and pinning me down and no matter how loud I screamed gods name I couldn’t get away. I would wake up screaming and crying. 15 years ago my brother (22 at the time) was kicked out of the religion for being possessed by demons because he heard voices and thought people were following him. A year later he committed suicide. He was never directed to mental healthcare, it is never discussed and the “elders” who remove people from the congregation for these offenses are not trained in mental healthcare. They are janitors, construction workers, etc…regular men making dangerous judgements. About a year after that I left this cult, tired of the guilt, shame, and fear. For this I was excommunicated (they call it disfellowshipped like my brother) and deserted by all my family and friends. It took about 5 years to deprogram and I still struggle to understand how in this century a religion can proliferate such ignorance and fear. Currently I am a well educated Atheist, having nightmares on occasion but I no longer hold any fear of spiritual beings of any kind.

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• Church teaching on homosexuality ‘is like justifying slavery’, says evangelical leader (telegraph.co.uk)

Jews Branded ‘Enemies of Church’ by Catholic Cult

Jews Branded ‘Enemies of Church’ by Catholic Sect

Society of Pius X Leader Says Jews Engineered Vatican II

GETTY IMAGES

Fighting Change: Some Catholic traditionalists blame Jews for the reforms of the Vatican II conference.

Jews are “enemies of the Church,” the head of a radical Catholic sect said in Canada.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, made the remark during a Dec. 28 address at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy in New Hamburg, Ontario, about 90 minutes’ drive west of Toronto. He was reviewing the situation of the society, which opposes Catholic Church reforms decided by the Second Vatican Council and is not recognized by the Church.

According to an audio recording posted on YouTube two days later, Fellay spoke about the society’s three years of discussions with the Vatican over the society’s future and explained how he interpreted behind-the-scenes communications.

Apparently speaking without a text, Fellay asked, “Who during that time was the most opposed that the Church would recognize the society? The enemies of the Church: the Jews, the Masons, the modernists.”

According to the Catholic News Service, Fellay added that Jewish leaders’ support of reforming Second Vatican Council “shows that Vatican II is their thing, not the Church’s.”

As of Friday, there was no response from the society’s Swiss headquarters to a Catholic News Service email request for comment, the agency reported.

The Society of St. Pius X, , was founded in 1970 as a reaction against the Vatican’s efforts to modernize. In 2009, Pope Benedict launched talks with the society and lifted excommunications imposed on its four bishops.

One of the bishops was Richard Williamson, who has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers and asserted that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died during World War II.

The society’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, spoke approvingly of both the World War II-era Vichy regime in France and the far-right National Front, and in a 1985 letter to Pope John Paul II identified the contemporary enemies of the faith as “Jews, Communists and Freemasons.”

Related articles

• Monday’s Religion News Roundup: *SSPX’s anti-Semitism *Obama’s Taoism *ND’s Catholicism (religionnews.com)
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• Traditionalist Catholic leader calls Jewish people ‘enemies of the Church’ – VIDEO (irishcentral.com)
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Philippines Begins To Dismantle The Shackles of Catholic Medievalism

Passage of contraceptives law in Philippines shows times have changed for Catholic church

Article by HRVOJE HRANJSKI , Associated Press

MANILA, Philippines – Twenty-six years after Roman Catholic leaders helped his mother marshal millions of Filipinos in an uprising that ousted a dictator, President Benigno Aquino III picked a fight with the church over contraceptives and won a victory that bared the bishops’ worst nightmare: They no longer sway the masses.

Aquino last month signed the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012 quietly and without customary handshakes and photographs to avoid controversy. The law that provides state funding for contraceptives for the poor pitted the dominant Catholic Church in an epic battle against the popular Aquino and his followers.

A couple with links to the church filed a motion Wednesday to stop implementation of the law, and more petitions are expected. Still, there is no denying that Aquino’s approval of the legislation has chipped away at the clout the church has held over Filipinos, and marked the passing of an era in which it was taboo to defy the church and priests.

Catholic leaders consider the law an attack on the church’s core values — the sanctity of life — saying that contraceptives promote promiscuity and destroy life. Aquino and his allies see the legislation as a way to address how the poor — roughly a third of the country’s 94 million people — manage the number of children they have and provide for them. Nearly half of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unwanted, according to the U.N. Population Fund, and a third of those end up aborted in a country where abortion remains illegal.

Rampant poverty, overcrowded slums, and rising homelessness and crime are main concerns that neither the church nor Aquino’s predecessors have successfully tackled.

“If the church can provide milk, diapers and rice, then go ahead, let’s make more babies,” said Giselle Labadan, a 30-year-old roadside vendor. “But there are just too many people now, too many homeless people, and the church doesn’t help to feed them.”

Labadan said she grew up in a God-fearing family but has defied the church’s position against contraceptives for more than a decade because her five children, age 2 to 12, were already far too many for her meager income. Her husband, a former army soldier, is jobless.

She said that even though she has used most types of contraceptives, she still considers herself among the faithful. “I still go to church and pray. It’s a part of my life,” Labadan said.

“I have prayed before not to have another child, but the condom worked better,” she said.

The law now faces a legal challenge in the Supreme Court after the couple filed the motion, which seems to cover more ideological than legal grounds. One of the authors of the law, Rep. Edcel Lagman, said Thursday that he was not worried by the petition and expected more to follow.

“We are prepared for this,” he said. “We are certain that the law is completely constitutional and will surmount any attack on or test of its constitutionality.”

Over the decades, moral and political authority of the church in the Philippines is perceived to have waned with the passing of one its icons, Cardinal Jaime Sin. He shaped the role of the church during the country’s darkest hours after dictator Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law starting in 1972 by championing the cause of civil advocacy, human rights and freedoms. Sin’s action mirrored that of his strong backer, Pope John Paul II, who himself challenged communist rulers in Eastern Europe.

Three years after Aquino’s father, Benigno Aquino Sr., a senator opposing Marcos, was gunned down on the Manila airport tarmac in 1983, Sin persuaded Aquino’s widow, Corazon, to run for president. When massive election cheating by Marcos was exposed, Sin went on Catholic-run Radio Veritas in February 1986 to summon millions of people to support military defectors and the Aquino-led opposition. Marcos fled and Aquino, a deeply religious woman, was sworn in as president.

Democracy was restored, but the country remained chaotic and mired in nearly a dozen coup attempts. The economy stalled, poverty persisted and the jobless were leaving in droves for better-paying jobs abroad as maids, teachers, nurses and engineers. After Aquino stepped down, the country elected its first and only Protestant president, Fidel Ramos. He, too, opposed the church on contraceptives and released state funds for family planning methods.

Catholic bishops pulled out all the stops in campaigning against Ramos’ successor, popular movie actor Joseph Estrada, a hero of the impoverished masses who made little attempt to keep down his reputation for womanizing, drinking and gambling.

But few heeded the church’s advice. Estrada was elected with the largest victory margin in Philippine history. Halfway through his six-year presidency, in January 2001, he was confronted with another “people power” revolt, backed by political opponents and the military, and was forced to resign.

His successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, styled herself as a devout Catholic and sought to placate the church by abolishing the death penalty and putting brakes on the contraceptives law, which languished in Congress during her nine years in power.

It mattered little. Arroyo’s mismanagement and corruption scandals set the stage for Aquino’s election on a promise to rid the Philippines of graft, fix the economy and lift millions out of poverty. The scion of the country’s democracy icon took power several years after Sin’s death, but it was a different era in which the church was battered by scandals of sexual misconduct of priests and declining family values.

The latest defeat of the church “can further weaken its moral authority at a time when this is most badly needed in many areas, including defense of a whole range of family values,” said the Rev. John J. Carroll, founding chairman of the Jesuit-run John J. Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues. He said he wondered how many Catholics have been “turned off” by incessant sermons and prayers led by the church against the contraceptives law, and how much it contributed to rising anticlericalism and the erosion of church authority.

“People today are more practical,” said Labadan, the street vendor. “In the old days, people feared that if you defy the church, it will be the end of the world.”

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez and Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.

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A New Inquisition | The Vatican Targets US Nuns

A New Inquisition: The Vatican targets US nuns

• 
  Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell (CNS/Sid Hastings)
• 
  Sr. Nzenzili Lucie Mboma: “It is painful to see the Vatican carrying on these kinds of things.” (Jason Berry)
• 
  Pope Benedict XVI greets U.S. Cardinal William Levada during the pontiff’s general audience in Paul VI hall at the Vatican in 2011. (CNS/Paul Haring)

Vatican City    

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of articles, a joint reporting project by NCR and GlobalPost.com, examining the background and the principal players in the Vatican’s investigations of U.S. women religious.

Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell and three other sisters crossed St. Peter’s Square through the fabled white columns, paused for a security check and entered the rust-colored Palace of the Holy Office.

It was April 18, 2012, and on entering the palazzo, they were aware of its history, that in this same building nearly 400 years earlier Galileo had been condemned as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition for arguing that the Earth orbits around the sun.

Today, the palazzo houses the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that enforces adherence to church teaching. As president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Farrell and her executive colleagues had an appointment with the prefect, Cardinal William Levada, about the congregation’s investigation of their group.

They were walking into what Fr. Hans Küng, the internationally renowned theologian who has had his own battles in the palazzo, calls “a new Inquisition.” (See related story.)

The sisters were accused of undermining church moral teaching by promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” To many sisters, the congregation’s action is a turn toward the past, causing a climate of fear and a chill wind reaching into their lives.

The Vatican wants control of LCWR, an association of 1,500 superiors, representing 80 percent of American sisters, most long active in the front lines of social justice.

The main leadership council of American sisters embraced the Second Vatican Council’s social justice Gospel, which has taken sisters to some of the poorest corners of the world to work with politically oppressed people, particularly in Latin America. But a stark drama of attrition has unfolded as the Vatican II generation reaches an eclipse. Since 1965, the number of American sisters has dropped by more than two-thirds, from 181,241 to 54,000 today.

In contrast, the rate of women joining religious orders has surged in Korea, South Vietnam, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Caribbean. Nowhere has the increase been more pronounced than in India. Five of the 10 largest religious institutes of women have headquarters in India, where only 1.6 percent of the population is Catholic.

“While India has nearly 50 million fewer Catholics than the United States does, it has over 30,000 more women religious,” wrote Jeff Ziegler in Catholic World Report.

The Vatican crackdown of LCWR has exposed a schizophrenic church. Interviews with missionary sisters in Rome, from India and other countries, register a deep fault line between cardinals immune from punishment, and sisters who work in poor regions with some of the world’s most beleaguered people. Religious sisters from other parts of the world view LCWR’s conflict with foreboding. How far Pope Benedict XVI goes in imposing a disciplinary culture, policing obedience over sisters, is an urgent issue to many of these women — and one sure to color this pope’s place in history.

The doctrinal assessment delivered by Levada was an intervention plan; he appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to approve speakers for LCWR gatherings and overhaul its statutes. “You can impose silence, but that doesn’t change anyone’s thinking,” Farrell reflected several months later at the convent in Dubuque, Iowa, where she lives.

“This is about the Vatican II church, how we have come to live collegially with participatory decision-making,” Farrell said. “When I entered in 1965 we studied and prayed with [the Vatican II] documents, implementing new charters. … We’re in a line of continuity with the early history of our communities, assessing unmet needs, going to the margins to help the homeless, people with AIDS, victims of torture and sexual trafficking.”

“When Vatican II requested nuns to search their history, Rome believed in a mythology of plaster statue women,” said Syracuse University Professor Margaret Susan Thompson, a historian of women religious. “They found instead nuns who took the job literally, and became controversial for doing so.”

The leadership conference endorsed women’s ordination in 1977 — 17 years before Pope John Paul II reinforced the church’s ban on it with the apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. Farrell says LCWR has not campaigned for women’s ordination. Nor has it endorsed abortion. The doctrinal congregation’s demand that the leaders speak out against abortion and gay rights is a battle over conscience, forcing words into superiors’ mouths.

“These women are really rooted in Christ and committed to the poor,” said Sr. Nzenzili Lucie Mboma, executive director of Service of Documentation and Study on Global Mission in Rome. A Congolese member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, Mboma had two friends murdered in political violence in the 1960s, during her novice years. “It is painful to see the Vatican carrying on these kinds of things,” she said.

“In certain parts of the church we have an us-versus-them mentality,” said Fr. Míceál O’Neill, an Irish Carmelite prior in Rome with background as a missionary in Peru. ” ‘Us’ is religious, and ‘them’ is officers of the Holy See.”

“We have a church that is doctrinally conservative and pastorally liberal,” O’Neill said. “The Vatican is trying to assert control, ‘we are in charge.’ … Many people are saying the two churches are not coming together.”

“There is a fundamental problem of honesty.”

Farrell, 65, came of age in Iowa in the years of Vatican II. She joined the Franciscans at 18, and in her 30s worked with Mexicans in San Antonio. She moved to Chile in 1980 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Disappearances were common. “It was routine for police to torture people in the first 72 hours,” she said. Demonstrations were banned, yet protests were the only way to put a spotlight on abductions when lives were at stake.

She joined “lightning demonstrations,” unfurling banners of the anti-torture protest movement in congested traffic, spreading leaflets that gave people information on the missing, who were airbrushed out of news reports. At one point she was arrested, with 100 other people, but coverage in a growing clandestine media saw them released the same day.

In 1986, she moved to El Salvador with a handful of sisters to help people reeling from a civil war with U.S. military support of the Salvadoran government. Farrell spent her first weeks sleeping at night in a church sacristy, getting to know people, and eventually moving into a sprawling refugee camp, living with villagers displaced by military bombings. American sisters were a nonviolent presence, giving thin cover to locals.

“We learned never to leave the road because any area off defined footpaths could have land mines,” she explained. “I remember walking down one long hill with trembling knees to meet a group of soldiers who entered the camp. Part of our role as internationals in the camp was to keep the military out and I was on my way down to ask them to leave. That time they did, thank God.”

Religious processions common to Latin America took on heightened meaning. For a newly repopulated community to show up en masse, with banners of saints and the Virgin Mary, conveyed “a political statement,” Farrell said: “We are not afraid. We have a right to be here. Our faith continues to be a source of strength to us.”

In 2005, Farrell returned to her Dubuque convent. Elected to the LCWR board several years later, she was midway through her one-year term as president when LCWR leaders made their annual trip to Rome in 2012 to update church officials on their work. With Farrell were Dominican Sr. Mary Hughes, past president; president-elect Franciscan Sr. Florence Deacon, and Janet Mock, the executive director and a Sister of St. Joseph of Baden, Pa.

Before their appointment in the Palace of the Holy Office, they held an hour of silent prayer in a Carmelite center.

The sisters had met once with the doctrinal congregation’s investigator, Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio, but had not seen his report. The sisters were expecting some conclusion to Blair’s inquiry but had no indication about what it would entail. Blair was not in the meeting that day. They were to meet with Levada, who was about to turn 76 and retire to his native California.

After a cordial greeting, Levada read aloud an eight-page, single-spaced assessment that his office was just posting to the Internet. The assessment accused the sisters of “corporate dissent” on homosexuality and failure to speak out on abortion. The assessment also castigated LCWR for ties to NETWORK, a Washington-based Catholic lobbying group that supported the Affordable Care Act, and the Resource Center for Religious Institutes, a group in Silver Spring, Md., that gives religious orders canon law guidance on property issues.

Leaving the Holy Office, Farrell felt numb. “It was in the press before we had time to brief our members,” she recalled.

“The reaction of rank-and-file sisters was anger. Now there is a stage of deep sadness and concern for the climate in the church and the misrepresentation of religious life,” she said.

A darkly ironic twist involves the doctrinal congregation’s handling of the clerical sexual abuse crisis. The congregation has processed 3,000 cases of priests who have been laicized for abusing youngsters. Several hundred are reportedly pending.

Yet those procedures, which Benedict, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, put in place as prefect in 2001, have a large loophole. The office has not judged bishops and cardinals whose negligence in recycling abusers caused the crisis.

The most glaring example is Cardinal Bernard Law, whose soft-glove treatment of pedophiles ignited the Boston scandal. He resigned as archbishop in 2002 and in 2004 he was named pastor of a great Roman basilica, Santa Maria Maggiore, with a $10,000 per month salary and a highly influential role in choosing new American bishops.

Law was a driving force behind a preliminary investigation of all American religious orders of women, according to several sources interviewed here, and a May 15 report by Robert Mickens, the respected Vatican correspondent for the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet. Law, who has not spoken to the media in a decade, refused an interview request. But Cardinal Franc Rodé, 78, retired prefect of the congregation that oversees religious orders, confirmed Law’s role. In a wide-ranging interview at his residence in the Palace of the Holy Office, Rodé said, “It was the American milieu in the Roman Curia that suggested it.”

The “apostolic visitation” of all but the cloistered communities of U.S. women religious was the initial phase. The doctrinal congregation’s aggressive investigation of the main leadership group soon followed.

“Some people say this is an attempt to divert attention from the abuse crisis, like politicians do,” a missionary sister from a developing country with her order in Rome, said of the doctrinal congregation’s investigation. She asked that her name not be used because the order depends on donations from U.S. Catholics channeled through dioceses.

“The Vatican is trying to assert control, to say, ‘We are in charge,’ ” she continued. “This envisions a different church from Vatican II. Many people are saying that the two churches are not coming together.”

LCWR has indeed pushed the envelope by giving forums to theologians who have questioned celibacy and the evolution of religious life. As liberal theologians clamor for change, LCWR has collided with the doctrinal office over freedom of conscience, a core principle of Vatican II.

Rodé, as prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, ordered the 2009 visitation of American sister communities. He told Vatican Radio of his concern for “a certain secular mentality … in these religious families and perhaps also a certain ‘feminist’ spirit.”

Rodé was also prompted by a 2008 conference he attended on religious life at Stonehill College near Boston. Dominican Sr. Elizabeth McDonough, a canon lawyer, accused LCWR of creating “global-feminist-operated business corporations” and “controlling all structures and resources.”

“I’m unaware of any such facts that would back up that claim. It sounds like a sweeping indictment of the direction many orders have taken which the hierarchy found offensive or disloyal, summed up in the ‘radical feminism’ catch phrase,” said Kenneth A. Briggs, author of Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.

“Most orders were scrounging to come up with funds to support retired sisters, often selling off property that belonged to them to do so. It seems clear to me that the aim of the Stonehill meeting was to paint a picture of disobedience as a pretext for a crackdown,” Briggs said.

Rodé in an interview brushed off suggestions that the apostolic visitation was unfair.

Rodé had requested $1.3 million from religious communities and bishops to cover travel and other expenses for the visitation, which he appointed Mother Mary Clare Millea, superior general of Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to carry out.

The funding request raised eyebrows among many missionary orders.

“Why would you want to pay them to investigate you?” asked one of the missionary sisters in Rome.

The study by Millea has not been made public.

“Vatican II was the most important event that changed the Catholic church,” said Sr. Nzenzili Lucie Mboma. “Jesus was a carpenter. He didn’t build cells, but windows to see every culture.”

She paused. “Why is this investigation happening?”

Also in this series: German theologian Hans Küng still resists the ‘Roman Inquisition’

Coming in this series: Next: The bishops and cardinals who are investigating the sisters have poor records on sex abuse cases.

[Jason Berry, author of Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church, writes from New Orleans. Research for this series has been funded by a Knight Grant for Reporting on Religion and American Public Life at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; and the Fund for Investigative Journalism

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Infected by Priestcraft, Catholic Poland Regresses Further Into a Culture of Credulity | “country is in the midst of an exorcism epidemic”

Rash of demonic possessions in Poland gives rise to ‘Exorcist Magazine’

Posted by George Dvorsky

Business is good in Poland for priests who are skilled in the arts of demonic extrication. The country is in the midst of an exorcism epidemic (or boom, depending on how you feel about it.) And this has inspired Catholic priests to join forces with a publisher, and launch the world’s first monthly magazine devoted to the subject. And with a three-month waiting list for exorcisms in Warsaw, people had better start reading.

Called Egzorcysta Magazine, the monthly journal contains such page-turning titles as, “New Age – the spiritual vacuum cleaner,” and “Satan is real.” The first issue is 62 pages and costs about $3.00.

The Raw Story tells us more:

“The rise in the number or exorcists from four to more than 120 over the course of 15 years in Poland is telling,” Father Aleksander Posacki, a professor of philosophy, theology and leading demonologist and exorcist told reporters in Warsaw at the Monday launch of theEgzorcysta monthly.

Ironically, he attributed the rise in demonic possessions in what remains one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations partly to the switch from atheist communism to free market capitalism in 1989.

“It’s indirectly due to changes in the system: capitalism creates more opportunities to do business in the area of occultism. Fortune telling has even been categorised as employment for taxation,” Posacki told AFP.

“If people can make money out of it, naturally it grows and its spiritual harm grows too,” he said, hastening to add authentic exorcism is absolutely free of charge.

Ah, so it’s authentic exorcism that’s free of charge. Good to know; now we can avoid all those inauthentic kinds.

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Pope Ratzinger a Nazi Pedophile? Stop The Catholic Church From Raping Our Children

Via truelogic

The exhibit below depicts the Pope as a Nazi pedophile, and some folk ain’t happy with it.

The sculpture is a three-and-a-half metre tall stylised image of the Ratzinger in a state of sexual arousal with his hand firmly on the shoulder of two little boys. It has also been embellished with a Swastika-style crucifix.

The Catholic Church has a history of molesting children and supporting the Nazi’s.  The Pope thinks he and his church is untouchable while they hide their immoral acts from the world.  Time for them to be held accountable.

Below, A Christmas Gift for your favorite Christian:

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50 Reasons to Boycott the Catholic Church

50 Reasons to Boycott the Catholic Church

The Church uses its resources to oppose social progress and positive change all over the world.

 

Photo Credit: AFP

Last month in Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died, and she shouldn’t have. Savita was a 31-year-old married woman, four months pregnant, who went to the hospital with a miscarriage in progress that developed into a blood infection. She could easily have been saved if the already doomed fetus was aborted. Instead, her doctors did nothing, explaining that “this is a Catholic country,” and left her to suffer in agony for days, only intervening once it was too late.

Savita’s death is just the latest in a long line of tragedies directly attributable to the doctrines and beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. I acknowledge that there are many good, progressive Catholics, but the problem is that the church isn’t a democracy, and those progressives have no voice or vote in its governance. The church is a petrified oligarchy, a dictatorship like the medieval monarchies it once existed alongside, and it’s run by a small circle of conservative, rigidly ideological old men who make all the decisions and choose their own successors.

This means that, whatever individual Catholics may do, the resources of the church as an institution are bent toward opposing social progress and positive change all over the world. Every dollar you put into the church collection plate, every Sunday service you attend, every hour of time and effort you put into volunteering or working for church organizations, is inevitably a show of support for the institutional church and its abhorrent mission. When you have no voice, there’s only one thing left to do: boycott. Stop supporting the church with your money and your time. For lifelong Catholics, it’s a drastic step, but it’s more than justified by the wealth of reasons showing that the church as an institution is beyond reform, and the only meaningful response is to part ways with it. Here are just a few of those reasons:

1. Throughout the world, Catholic bishops have engaged in a systematic, organized effort going back decades to cover up for priests who molest children, pressuring the victims to sign confidentiality agreements and quietly assigning the predators to new parishes where they could go on molesting. Tens of thousands of children have been raped and tortured as a result of this conspiracy of silence.

2. Strike one: “What did the pope know and when did he know it?” The current pope, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was personally implicated in a case from the 1970s in which at least three sets of parents reported that a priest in his diocese had sexually abused their children. In response, Ratzinger assigned the priest to therapy, without notifying law enforcement, and washed his hands of the matter. That priest was back on duty in just a few short days and went on to molest more children.

3. Strike two: In 1981, again when the current pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he got a letter from the diocese of Oakland asking him to defrock a priest who had acknowledged molesting two children. Ratzinger ignored this letter, and several followup letters, for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back saying that more time was needed, and that they had to proceed very slowly to safeguard “the good of the Universal Church” in light of “the young age of the petitioner” — by which he meant not the victimized children, but the pedophile priest. (By contrast, when a rogue archbishop ordained married men as priests, he was laicized six days later.)

4. Strike three: In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter, De Delictis Gravioribus, to all Catholic bishops advising them how to handle accusations of sex crimes by priests. There was no recommendation to contact the police, but rather an instruction for them to report such cases only to the Vatican and tell no one else: “Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret.”

5. Some church officials, like the American friar Benedict Groeschel, have blamed the epidemic of child molestation on sexually wanton boys who tempt priests into assaulting them.

6. They threaten to cut off funding for immigrants’ rights advocates because they sometimes work with gay-rights advocates. Preventing immigrants from getting legal and medical aid is less important than ensuring the church isn’t contaminated by even indirect contact with anyone who helps gay people.

7. In a sign of how ridiculously disproportionate and unhinged the church’s martyrdom complex is, the current pope has compared expanding the rights of women and gay people to the murderous anticlerical violence of the 1930s Spanish civil war.

8. They’ve used their official UN observer status to team up with Islamic theocracies like Iran and Libya to oppose calls for family-planning services to be made available in the world’s poorest nations.

9. They’ve gone to desperately poor, AIDS-ravaged regions of Africa to spread the life-destroying lie that condoms don’t prevent transmission of HIV.

10. In the mid-20th century, they appointed a special papal commission to study whether Catholicism should permit the use of birth control. When the commission almost unanimously recommended that they should, they ignored that recommendation and doubled down on their absolute ban on contraception.

11. They excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a pregnant 9-year-old who’d been raped by her stepfather.

12. They did not excommunicate the stepfather.

13. Savita Halappanavar wasn’t the first: Catholic-run hospitals are willing to let women die rather than get lifesaving abortions, even when a miscarriage is already in progress and no possible procedure could save the fetus.

14. They refused to provide contraception or abortion to women who were abducted and forced to work as prostitutes, and then filed a lawsuit complaining it was violating their religious freedom when the government took away their contract.

15. In Poland, they ordered politicians to vote for a law banning IVF and threatened to excommunicate any who didn’t comply.

16. They were a major source of the pressure on the Komen Foundation that led to its disastrous decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood.

17. They’ve announced an inquisition into the Girl Scouts to get to the bottom of its association with morally suspect groups like Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam.

18. They’ve been one of the major forces attacking Obamacare, filing lawsuits arguing that non-church Catholic employers should be able to decide whether or not employee health insurance plans will cover contraception. This is effectively an argument that a woman’s employer should be allowed to force her to pay more for medical coverage, or even place it out of her reach altogether, based on his religious beliefs.

19. In Australia, they allegedly derailed a police investigation of an accused pedophile, putting pressure on higher-ups to get an investigating officer removed from the case.

20. They demanded that Sunday school teachers sign a loyalty oath agreeing to submit “will and intellect” to the proclamations of church leaders.

21. Some top church officials, including the current pope, have advocated denying communion to politicians who support progressive and pro-choice political ideas. Notably, although the church also opposes preemptive war and the death penalty, no conservative politician has ever been denied communion on this basis.

22. They’ve cracked down on American nuns for doing too much to help the poor and not enough to oppose gay marriage, condemning them for displaying a seditious “feminist spirit.”

23. In Germany, where parishioners pay an officially assessed tax rate to the church, they’ve tried to blackmail people who don’t want to pay the church tax, threatening to fire them from jobs in church institutions. In some cases, if the person opts out but later loses the paperwork, they demand on-the-spot repayment of decades of back taxes.

24. In America, bishops have compared Democratic officeholders, including President Obama, to Hitler and Stalin and have said that it jeopardizes a person’s eternal salvation if they don’t vote as the bishops instruct them to.

25. They fight against equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. It’s not enough for the Catholic church hierarchy that they refuse to perform church weddings for gay and lesbian couples; they want to write that prohibition into the civil law and deny marriage equality to everyone who doesn’t fit their religious criteria, and have invested vast amounts of money and effort into doing so. In the 2012 election cycle alone, the church spent almost $2 million in an unsuccessful fight to defeat marriage-equality initiatives in four states.

26. They’ve compared gay sex to pedophilia and incest and called for it to be forbidden by law, saying that “states can and must regulate behaviors, including various sexual behaviors.”

27. They’ve shut down adoption clinics rather than consider gay people as prospective parents. The church’s official position, apparently, is that it’s better for children to remain orphans or in foster care than to be placed in a loving, committed same-sex household.

28. They barred an anti-LGBT bullying group, anti-teen-suicide foundation from a Catholic school ceremony, explaining that the group’s mission is “contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church.”

29. They told a teenager he wouldn’t be allowed to go through confirmation because he posted a pro-gay-rights status message on Facebook, and they expelled a preschooler from a private Catholic school because his parents were lesbians.

30. They have a history of dumping known pedophile priests in isolated, poor, rural communities, where they apparently assumed that local people wouldn’t dare to complain or that no one would listen if they did.

31. They’ve given huge payouts — as much as $20,000 in some cases — to pedophile priests, to buy their silence and quietly ease them out of the priesthood, after specifically denying in public that they were doing this.

32. When the Connecticut legislature proposed extending statute-of-limitations laws to allow older child-abuse cases to be tried, the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass instructing parishioners to contact their representatives and lobby against it.

33. To fight back against and intimidate abuse-survivor groups like SNAP, the church’s lawyers have filed absurdly broad subpoenas demanding the disclosure of decades’ worth of documents.

34. In the Netherlands, some boys were apparently castrated in church-run hospitals after complaining to the police about sexual abuse by priests.

35. When a Catholic official from Philadelphia, William Lynn, was charged with knowingly returning predator priests to duty, his defense was to blame those decisions on his superior, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, thus acknowledging that the corruption reaches to the highest levels of the church.

36. When confronted with hundreds of complaints about child-raping priests spanning decades, a Dutch cardinal used the same “we knew nothing” excuse once given by Nazi soldiers. Several months later, it was reported that this same cardinal had personally arranged to move a pedophile priest to a different parish to shield him from accusations.

37. In one case, Mother Teresa successfully persuaded the church to return a suspected pedophile priest to duty because he was a friend of hers. Eight additional complaints of child abuse were later lodged against him.

38. In yet another case, they appointed a priest with a history of child molestation to a board that advises the church on what to do when they get reports of priests molesting children.

39. And after all this, they’ve had the audacity to plead for money and ask parishioners to pick up the tab for legal costs and settlements.

40. They abducted tens of thousands of babies from unwed mothers who gave birth in Catholic-run hospitals all over the world throughout the 20th century, forcing drugged or helpless women to give their newborn children up for adoption against their will.

41. They tried to have the Indian skeptic Sanal Edamuruku charged with blasphemy and imprisoned for debunking a claim of a miraculous weeping statue.

42. They publicly supported the Russian Orthodox church’s decision to have the punk band Pussy Riot charged and imprisoned for blasphemy.

43. Their finances are a disorganized mess, lacking strong accounting controls and clear internal separations, which means parishioners who give to the church can have no assurance of what the money will be used for. According to an investigation by the Economist, funds meant for hospitals, cemeteries and priests’ pensions have been raided to pay legal fees and settlements in several diocesan bankruptcies.

44. They’ve said in public that the sexist prohibition on women priests is an infallible part of Catholic dogma, and hence can never be changed.

45. They’ve silenced priests who call for the ordination of women and other desperately needed reforms, exhorting them to instead show “the radicalism of obedience.”

46. They’ve excommunicated at least one priest for advocating the ordination of women.

47. They lifted the excommunication of an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying bishop who also thinks women shouldn’t attend college or wear pants.

48. When it comes to the question of who’s financially responsible for compensating the victims of sex abuse, they argue that priests aren’t employees and therefore the church bears no responsibility for anything they do.

49. They canonized Mother Teresa for doing little more than offering a squalid place for people to die. Outside observers who visited her “Home for the Dying” reported that medical care was substandard and dangerous, limited to aspirin and unsterilized needles rinsed in tap water, administered by untrained volunteers. The millions of dollars collected by Mother Teresa and her order, enough to build many advanced clinics and hospitals, remain unaccounted for.

50. They announced that voluntary end-of-life measures, such as terminal patients’ directives for when they wish to have a feeding tube removed, won’t be respected at Catholic hospitals.

Related articles

• Catholic theologian preaches revolution to end church’s ‘authoritarian’ rule (guardian.co.uk)
• Catholic Church Defends Convicted Child Molesters (atheistrev.com)
• Why Popes Never Have to Say Sorry (time.com)
• Alex Gibney On What The Pope Knew (And Why He Did Nothing) In ‘Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence In The House of God’ (movieline.com)
• 50 Reasons to Boycott the Catholic Church (alternet.org)
• Pope Ratzinger a Nazi Pedophile? Stop The Catholic Church From Raping Our Children (truelogic.wordpress.com)