... to Protest the Pope?

[stubbornhubby]

A friend of mine told me at the weekend that this will make me an extremist...anyway we had a long thread about this in July and a few people said they'd be keen, like me, to wave a banner as he parades around the country.

There's a big march in London on Sat 18th, Hyde park Corner @ 1.30pm
details here
www.protest-the-pope.org.uk/

Also, if you live in SW London, a Small demo in Strawberry Hill on Fri 17th @9am. (NB official visti website says you will not be able to see the pope arrriving/departing SMUC - I think he must be using helicopter. Or apparating )

I'm not balancing out anything, and am sorry for Marjorie and her terrible experience. I'm just saying I don't know anyone at all in my Catholic upbringing who was abused and that's all we seem to hear. There are abused children in all walks of life eg, by policemen, teachers, scoutleaders, childminders,relatives, nursery nurses, everywhere.
It's so sad but let's hope we can stop it now. And I agree that the priests that have done it, should be brought to book.

Domestics: I'll be there. Would love to see a MN contingent.

Marjoriew: I'll be thinking of you at the protest. Anybody with an ounce of humanity and the means should be out there.

curryfreak - A state visit doesn't include a stadium tour.

'This was one Catholic child who wasn't abused'.

Go back a couple of decades and the chances are, under the circumstances myself and others found ourselves, she probably would have been, especially if she had no mum or dad to speak up for her.

Of course, she had a mummy and daddy, didn't she? Most of us didn't, but the ones that did, didn't get picked on.

"And I agree that the priests that have done it, should be brought to book."

So why was Eric Taylor allowed to continue as a priest with access to children after he had been convicted of indecent assault? Why was Michael Hill posted to another role by Cormac Murphy O'Connor, after it was obvious he was a child abuser, when in the new role he continued to abuse children? Let's get the Catholic Church straight: given concrete evidence that their priests were child abusers, they continued to employ them in roles that gave them access to children. This wasn't "we didn't know, they're so devious": Taylor had pleaded guilty to indecent assault against young boys, and yet the Catholic Church gave him twenty more years to carry on doing it. Yes, they should be brought to book. So why in God's name aren't they?

I am not a Catholic; I believe in the use of condoms to prevent the spread of STD's; this would help in the prevention of the spread of HIV. But HIV spreads and is caused by people - mostly men - having sex with multiple women. Men's sexual aggression over women causes the spread - the condoms are a preventative but not the primary cause. I believe in condom use and think the Catholic church should rethink its stance but I do believe that the issues are more complex than "the C church causes the death of millions".

I'll throw this one in from the comment-is-free page of the Guardian: a quote from Nietzche -

"Friedrich Nietzsche: (Twilight of the Idols)

When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt."

Marjorie, I am sorry for all you have been through, believe me.

Why aren't the police investigating the abuse? These people aren't above the law.

The Pope, as religious leader, should be respected during his visit. He's a head of state as well, so people can protest at this but not the religious aspect imho

My mother died a few years ago, aged 77.

I never met her because I never looked for her.
I never looked for because part of the psychological abuse meted out to us was to tell us our parents were dead.
This was used as a means of controlling children and ensuring they were more vulnerable.
My parents were from Ireland and some of the nuns came from the same part of Ireland and would stand around making jokes about my mother.
These women had mouths like sewers and in the same breath they would take Communion.

Melikalikimaka, i couldn't agree with you more. What i actually find quite sick is the way it seems that non- catholics want to think of all catholics, as victime. It gives them something to hang their predudices on (sorry for spelling)
I was brought up as a catholic and had a really lovely spiritual experience of religion.
My dh an dd's are not, and i am not a practicing catholic. I havent been inside a church,- any church for years.
I recognise that the catholic church have done very bad things, and that the victims will live with this for the rest of their lives, but bad things are done by bad people, be they catholic jew or muslim. I'm sure there are some not very nice atheists as well. There are certainly plenty of evangelical ones.
And melika, like you i know many people who were brought up as catholics and not abused in any way, but that doesn't quite fit with the anti- catholic rethoric does it?

"Why aren't the police investigating the abuse? These people aren't above the law."

The police did, and the people in question were eventually imprisoned. However, the Catholic Church had responded to complaints from parishioners by attempting to silence them (it's easy to silence children who complain of abuse by systematically beating them, as nuns did in the Taylor case; in the Hill case, the complainants were told the Church would deal with the matter, but it concealed the reports and moved the priest).

In the case of Taylor, having been imprisoned did not seem to be a bar on him remaining a priest, and although he was eventually defrocked by the Vatican four years later, it appears they were hoping he would die quietly in prison so that they would not need to court the publicity.

The nuns who abused children to protect Taylor have never been named, and the Church claims not to have records of who they were. It is to be hoped that they feel guilty about it, but presumably they don't.

bluecardi, they were above the law then and they are above the law now.

The state placed us in the care of these people and were responsible for us. They failed in their duty of care towards us by placing us with a bunch of freaks in frocks who were allowed to do what they liked with no supervision.
The police [ the state] colluded with the church and knew what was going on.
Society at the time knew it was going on but didn't give a toss.
We were the kids no-one wanted and out of sight, out of mind was the order of the day.

bluecardu - Why should religous leaders be respected? Would you want the same treatment for Fred Phelps or Sun Myung Moon?

When was this Majoriew? I just don't see how people could ignore abuse claims nowadays?

Thecoalition - out of respect for the right to believe in what religion you want or not. I respect peoples religions and customs

Curryfreak, exactly, nice to have you alongside!

It is a matter of public knowledge that abuse has continued up until the 1980s and is only now being brought to the public eye.

I went into care as a foundling in 1948 when I was born and I know it went on before that -even back to the 1930s.

How did they get away with it for 70 years or more - ask them?

Abuse claims can be ignored quite easily.
I went into my local police station TEN YEARS AGO and made a statement to my local police. I gave names, dates places and details of abuse.

Weeks went by and when I enquired why there had been no feedback regarding my statement,I was told there was no record of my statement.
Coincidentally, I had a visit from the local parish priest whom I had never discussed it with and he told me ' It was all a long time ago, Mrs.W. Put it behind you, you have a family to bring up. It's best this way. God bless you.'

bluecardi - so you WOULD be happy for Fred Phelps or Sun Myung Moon to have the same treatment?

bluecardi - does respecting religion and culture include female circumcision, forced marriages, exorcising with children and treating domestic servants as slaves? What about sexual relationships between men and boys?

All these things are or have been part of peoples religons and customs.

with =witch

Not read the whole of this thread, but flicked through the first few pages.

marjoriew - I'm glad you're here and I hope you take advantage of as many platforms as you can to bear witness to what happened to you. There can never be a time when the Catholic Church should say 'enough - we've dealt with the issue of child abuse, let's move on'. It needs to face up to the fact that it happened and that nobody did anything about it.

I'm a Catholic, but also a modern, liberal woman. Dittany might not approve, but I think of myself as a feminist. I've thought long and hard about the churches' teaching over the years, and find that I actually accept and understand most of them.

There's lots that I dislike about the church - its refusal to be more compassionate on the issue of abortion; its reluctance to allow women to take positions of authority within the church; the attitudes of some of its adherents towards homosexuality - but I find that these result from principles that are basically sound - that human life is a gift to be celebrated.

The church is rooted in tradition and sees this tradition as wholly a strength, and doesn't consider that this can also be a weakness. Child abuse was covered up because of the damage it would do to the institution; women are discriminated against because this was the cultural norm when the church was founded.

My criticism of the current Pope is that he defends and perpetuates the inward-looking nature of the Vatican as an ivory tower of theological purity when the church needs to be outward looking and engaging with the world.

I welcome the protests (won't be joining them) but hope that they're based on more principled opposition than just that he was once a member of the Hitler Youth! There are many more substantial criticisms that can and ought to be made.

marjoriew - just read your most recent post. Very sad to hear that your parish priest said almost exactly what I said the church SHOULDN'T say.

DandyDan - and I wholeheartedly agree that the issue of male sexual violence against women is a considerably greater threat to the containment of HIV than people following Catholic teachings about sexual relations.

Needless to say, I told him to fuck right off.