Clergy sex abuse crisis 'is not over'

[Socrates]

[quote name='Melchisedec' date='Feb 24 2005, 03:16 PM'] I think its possible for them to choose kids simply for many reasons. THey are around them all the time. They are naive and more easily manipulated minds. They form a trust type bond that helps keep it secret. I dont understand it anymore than you. But the facts are pointing to either a real bad evaluation of these future priest. Or maybe something develops in the mind due to sexual tension or frustration. Not sure. [/quote]
The problem, as I noted earlier in this thread, is that many seminaries have become refuges for homosexuals, and people with similar sexual deviations. Most of the molested boys were in their teens. Young teenage men are seen as objects of desire by homosexuals.
This is the politically incorrect truth.

The problem is the kind of men in certain seminaries who go on to become priests. It is not the fact that they are priests and take vows of celibacy.

A normal, heterosexual man does not seek teenage males for sexual release (unless no women are available, as in prison). A heterosexual priest who could not control his sexual urges would have sex with women, not molest altar boys.

[Donna]

The churchmen can indeed purge the stinking rotten fruit.

The works of Michael Rose, Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF), Father Hanley and others deserve not the empty kisses of the faithful. There do exist prelates and persons with power who boldly and cunningly give aid and comfort to pedophiles and others who persist in sexual, financial and soul theivery.

The rot is almost always preceeded by a falling away from the faith, as the Scriptures say (tho the Trad and Indult orders are not immune from terrible scandal; I cannot say how upset I was by the Trad press seemingly blacking out the crimes of Fr. Svea of Christ the King Institute, but RCF at least reported it).

If it was the SSPX exposing these things, it'd be expected that they as whistle-blowers would be vilified. But if the churchmen choose to not exorcize this evil, then eventually all whistle-blowers will, by degree, fall from approved diocesan grace. Suspensions, interdicts, excommunications...it's harder to stop laymen, but a way will be found. If it's even needed. Watch.

Perhaps the best lay recourse is to stop funding the corrupt chancery/parish/college/seminary.

But God is God and has situated the faithful thus, for His own reasons.

We are STILL responsible for the salvation of our souls.

[color=red]*[/color]If the faithful opt for spiritual/sacramental starvation because "we must go along with a,b and c"-

[color=red]*[/color]And if the faithful Palm Sunday the brave Father Hanley's - just the kind of saints we clamor for - one week and hand them over to the Sanhedrin and Pilate the next because of a known corrupt superior's indictment, it is the faithful's own fault.

Such faithful can accordingly expect God to withhold light and recourse from them, because such do not receive the love of the truth. God's visitation comes when it will and if we reject it, we set our souls up to be seduced, deceived, raped, and worse.

[color=green][i]"Don't listen to what is said, listen to what is done, for by their fruits you shall know them."[/i][/color]

Edited February 25, 2005 by Donna

[Myles Domini]

[quote]I agree that sex can be sacrificed with the proper discipline. But at the same time, our bodies and minds are hard wired for sex. Some more than others. The very essence of being a man (testosterone) is linked with sexual desire. For boxers, they are told to abstain from sex while training, because come fight time. The will be in a frenzy. If an indivual cannot deal with the repression of their sexual tendecies, than I feel the likelyhood for deviant sexual behavior to occur is increased. Maybe for a virgin saying goodbye to sex is not difficult. But to someone who has had it before, it may prove far more difficult to let go.[/quote]

Perhaps, but look at St Augustine. He was a womaniser and took part in the Manichean dualistic immoral exercise of the pro-creative function for much of his life. All Christians are called to some sort of Chastity and if we have a thorn in our sides God will help us. I talk here from experience. I am a revert of two years and approaching 19 years old I am in a University and a country where sex is all around. Where I came from in inner city South London I knew of girls aged 12 who had fallen pregnant. Sex was all that people went on about. Indeed, statistically as an afro-carribean young man I should be dancing along to the debaucherer's beat. Until two years ago I was well on course...

God though changed me as He changed St Augustine. I firmly agree with St Augustine that all desires for goods are a symptom of a desire for the highest good: God. Men get a taste of pleasure and they want more cos they cant take transiency and rightfully so God didnt design them for transient goods but to seek Him, know Him and love Him. If you're designed to love a being who is infinate of course temporary pleasures wont satisfy your appetite and just leave you hungry for more of the same. Its logical. When I met God, really, my life was completely changed and understanding the Catholic religion has blown me away. This God of ours who needs nothing, came down to earth to take on our nature which to Him is effectively nothing, and even after resurrecting Himself makes his body and blood take the form of bread and wine that are even lesser nothings all so that we can feel His love inside our souls. Even better yet when we sin He gives us grace through confession to be healed. All we have to do is go to Him and He draws us to Himself and I will keep emphasising this point.

We live under grace not under law. If we lived under law with God far from us we could never keep the commandments but because God's love is immanent and so intense its magnetic it draws us to obey. When a man really loves his wife he can even kill for that woman or die for that woman. Likewise if we simply open our hearts and allow our eyes to see and our ears to hear, if we contemplate the mysteries of faith, God will ignite us to love so that no matter what temptations are thrown at us we wont want to turn from His beautiful face. God lives in us and us in He, all we need to do to keep the commandments and abide in Him is take the time to follow the mystics in meditating upon what this means and He will draw us to Himself with relatively no effort on our part. What earthly pleasures could possibly compare to the joy of knowing--not always feeling but knowing--God personally in the sacraments. Knowing that being itself loves non-being enough to take on the inanimate form of non-being. The Blessed Sacrament is...the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. This is the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.

His burden is easy and His yolk is light...

The problem is the people running the seminaries and the many of the candidates dont even understand this, were never taught it, and look like they dont even want to hear it. I sometimes wonder to myself if the Church at large even exists outside of the Vatican? Is there one country that can say with certainty that it is united fully to the magisterial teaching and cuts no corners in preaching the truth of God's love, which overcomes the temptations of the prince of this world effortlessly with the simple words 'This is my body' ?? I mean the very fact we're having a year of the Eucharist is because in so many places people have forgotten what it means. Often encouraged by dissident clerics who are pushing their own agenda upon the Church under the pretense of it being in 'the spirit of Vatican II'.

Ultimately 'this worlds crises are crises of saints' as St Josemaria Escriva said. You know if we want to make the New Evangelisation work we have to look to the past and remember that every Church renewal in history was begun by mystics, men and women of deep prayer. Take for example the crisis in the Church in the early mediaeval period. All of a sudden thanks to two men of deep prayer: Sts Francis of Assisi and Dominic of Guzman the Church was revived. Then there was a St Clare, then a St Thomas Aquinas, a St Bonaventure etc.etc. The family of friars grew and grew and with their radical spirituality they changed the world. Likewise at the Reformation first there was a St Teresa of Avila who met a St John of the Cross and elsewhere a St Ignatius Loyola who met St Francis Xaiver etc. Mystics made the Church strong and if our seminaries are not houses of mysticism we can expect the Church to be weak. Indeed, if our domestic churches are not houses of mysticism we can expect the Church to be weak. Because without grace there is no way a man can overcome temptation. "A saint without prayer...I dont believe in such a thing" St Josemaria says elsewhere in [i]'The Way'[/i].

The problem with the Church at the moment is that the desire for God's love is lacking in too many peoples hearts and its upto to those who possess that love to remind them of the neccessity to be completley engulfed in God's love. We need to be souls on fire for our friends, for our family, for our priests. Remember that St Philip Neri was only a layman when he started the oratory and would never have become a priest if not for the fact his spiritual director told him to. His ambitions were simply to love God and share God's love and for that he earned a reputation as a recruiter for the priesthood long before he founded the Oratory. The seminaries must change but they can only change if we ourselves change because if we change then the people entering the seminaries will change.

Prayer, prayer, prayer. Our only weapon against corruption is prayer. In the reformation it was the souls who cried out against abuses who ended up further ravaging the Church whilst those who devoted their time to personal reform ended up reviving a Church on the edge of disaster. If we talk more to God about others and less to others about God, we can turn this crazy situation around.

I leave you with a short extract from one of the many biographies of St Francis of Assisi:

[quote]Soon Francis started to preach. (He was never a priest, though he was later ordained a deacon under his protest.) Francis was not a reformer; he preached about returning to God and obedience to the Church. Francis must have known about the decay in the Church, but he always showed the Church and its people his utmost respect. When someone told him of a priest living openly with a woman and asked him if that meant the Mass was polluted, Francis went to the priest, knelt before him, and kissed his hands -- because those hands had held God. [/quote]