Nuns implicated in deaths of 800 children found in septic tank

Last updated on: June 6, 2014 at 11:28 am By Michael Stone

Neglect and abuse: The Irish government is launching a criminal investigation into the discovery of 800 dead children found in the septic tank at a home for unwed mothers run by nuns in western Ireland.

Reports indicate the children were malnourished and neglected by the nuns, which is suspected of causing many of the premature and tragic deaths. Hundreds of infants and toddlers in a home for “fallen women” and their “illegitimate” children are believed to have been buried in a septic tank next to the former home for single mothers and their children.

The home was run by Bon Secours nuns in Tuam between 1925 and 1961.

Ireland’s Roman Catholic Church has instructed the order of nuns who ran the home that it must co-operate with any inquiry into the investigation, according to the Reuters news agency.

Speaking in the Irish Parliament on Wednesday, the minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Charlie Flanagan, called the discovery of what is described as an unmarked grave as “deeply disturbing” and a shocking reminder of a darker past in Ireland when our children were not cherished as they should have been.

In the past, unmarried mothers and their children were incarcerated in state-funded, church-run institutions called mother and baby homes or Magdalene asylums, where the women worked to “atone for their sins,” while their children were taken from them.

Perhaps even more disturbing, this is probably not an isolated case. The home in Tuam was only one of a dozen mother and baby homes in Ireland in the years after the Second World War, all of which treated their inmates in a similar fashion.

It is hard to grasp the magnitude of the physical and psychological abuse the women and their children suffered at the hands of nuns determined to punish both mother and child for being party to a pregnancy not sanctioned by the church.

This sad episode is yet another reminder of the Catholic Church’s failure to protect children. The moral corruption of the Catholic Church is by now well documented. The Catholic brand is forever tarnished, reduced to a symbol of moral corruption and decay, a symbol of inhumanity, a symbol of broken and dead children.

Photo depicting a home for ‘fallen women’ and their children in Ireland.

John Paul II: Patron Saint of Pedophile Priests

Last updated on: April 25, 2014 at 9:55 am By Michael Stone

How can you be a saint if you fail to protect innocent children?

Pope John Paul II was no saint. His legacy will always be tainted by his lenient attitude towards sexually abusive priests, and his failure to protect innocent children sexually brutalized by Catholic clergy.

As the Telegraph reports, the late Polish pontiff could have prevented “thousands” of children from being raped by pedophile priests but instead chose to ignore the scandal in the interests of protecting the image of the Catholic Church

Pope John Paul II died at age 84 in April 2005 from complications from Parkinson’s disease. Since his death, John Paul has been put on a fast track for sainthood. Usually the road to becoming a saint is measured in decades or even centuries. However, Pope Benedict XVI waived church rules that normally impose a five-year waiting period after a candidate’s death before the procedure that leads to sainthood can start.

This weekend Pope Francis will canonize a man who protected and enabled pedophile priests, and Pope John Paul II will become a saint. In so doing, the Roman Catholic Church will honor a man who failed to protect innocent children from rape and sexula abuse.

It is sad, and it is ugly.

Columnist Maureen Dowd writes:

John Paul was a charmer, and a great man in many ways. But given that he presided over the Catholic Church during nearly three decades of a gruesome pedophilia scandal and grotesque cover-up, he ain’t no saint.

One of John Paul’s great shames was giving Vatican sanctuary to Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, a horrendous enabler of child abuse who resigned in disgrace in 2002 as archbishop of Boston. Another unforgivable breach was the pope’s stubborn defense of the dastardly Mexican priest Marcial Maciel Degollado, a pedophile, womanizer, embezzler and drug addict.

There is something wounding and ugly about the church signaling that those thousands of betrayed, damaged victims are now taken for granted as a slowly fading asterisk.

Barbara Blaine, the president of the Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which represents 18,000 people from 79 countries who were sexually abused by members of the Catholic Church, said:

“It’s time for the Vatican to stop honoring those who enabled wrongdoing. There is irrefutable documentary evidence to show that John Paul II refused to take action that would have protected children during his 27-year papacy. Thousands of victims were abused because John Paul refused to read the reports he was receiving.”

Ultimately, by his inaction, John Paul allowed countless innocent children to suffer the most vile sexual degradation. Rather than sully the reputation of the Catholic Church by exposing and punishing pedophile priests, John Paul turned a blind eye to the rape and abuse of children. How can you be a saint if you fail to protect innocent children?

pope john paul ii — John Paul II: Patron Saint of Pedophile Priests?

Sorry Francis, no forgiveness until pedophile priests are punished

Last updated on: April 12, 2014 at 9:01 am By Michael Stone

Pope Francis has asked for forgiveness for the rape and sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. However, no such forgiveness is possible until pedophile priests face criminal prosecution.

Speaking to members of the International Catholic Child Bureau, a non-profit international Catholic network of organizations engaged in the promotion and protection of children’s rights, Pope Francis said:

I feel that I must take responsibility for all the harm that some priests—quite a number, but not in proportion to the total. I must take responsibility and ask forgiveness for the damage they have caused through sexual abuse of children.

The Church is aware of this damage. It is their own personal and moral damage, but they are men of the Church. And we will not take one step backwards in dealing with this problem and the sanctions that must be imposed. On the contrary, I believe that we must be even stronger. You do not interfere with children.

Yet despite the promise to impose “sanctions,” the Vatican continues to protect and enable pedophile priests engaged in the sexual abuse of children, according to a scathing report recently issued by the United Nations.

If Pope Francis was sincere he would immediately release all records pertaining to the rape and sexual abuse of children by clergy, and immediately turn over for criminal prosecution all those priests suspected of abusing children, and the bishops who protected them.

Talk is cheap Francis: put your money where your mouth is and prosecute the pedophiles.

Nun tells high school students masturbation causes homosexuality

Last updated on: April 2, 2014 at 4:26 pm By Michael Stone

Controversy at a Catholic High School in Charlotte, North Carolina after Sister Jane Dominic Laurel told students that masturbation causes homosexuality at a school wide assembly last week.

Sister Laurel, a professor of theology at Nashville’s Aquinas College, is being widely condemned after forcefully denouncing homosexuality with outdated statistics, prejudiced stereotypes and other extremist claims.

A Charlotte Catholic student describes the lecture:

She started talking about how gays [sic] people are gay because they have an absent father figure, and therefore they have not received the masculinity they should have from their father … Also a guy could be gay if he masterbates [sic] and so he thinks he is being turned on by other guys. And then she gave an example of one of her gay ‘friends’ who said he used to go to a shed with his friends and watch porn and thats why he was gay. … Then she talked about the statistic where gay men have had either over 500 or 1000 sexual partners and after that I got up and went to the bathroom because I should not have had to been subject to that extremely offensive talk.

More than 3,800 people have signed onto a Change.org petition asking the school to apologize for the lecture led last Friday by Laurel; and in a separate action, 64 students and 86 alumni signed onto a letter with similar requests, which was sent directly to school officials.

LGBTQ Nation reports the letter and petition allege that Laurel made a variety of prejudiced comments about gay and lesbian people during her lecture on masculinity and femininity, including that masturbation or an absent father may make a boy more likely to be gay — two claims soundly rejected by mainstream medical professionals and associations.

According to the petition, Laurel told students that “people are gay because they have an absent father figure, and therefore they have not received the masculinity they should have from their father,” and then cited a statistic where “gay men have had either over 500 or 1000 sexual partners.”

It should come as a surprise to no one that Laurel has been linked to the notorious anti-LGBT Christian hate group, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).

UN report says Vatican continues to protect and enable pedophile priests

Last updated on: February 5, 2014 at 1:03 pm By Michael Stone

Despite the friendly facade of Pope Francis, the Vatican continues to protect and enable pedophile priests engaged in the sexual abuse of children, according to a scathing report issued by the United Nations.

The UN report demands that the Vatican “immediately remove” all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers, and turn them over to government authorities for criminal prosecution.

In the unprecedented report the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said Catholic Church officials had imposed a “code of silence” on clerics to prevent them reporting attacks to police, and moved abusers from parish to parish “in an attempt to cover up such crimes.”

The UN watchdog for children’s rights denounced the Vatican for adopting policies which allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children. The report expressed its “deepest concern about child sexual abuse committed by members of the Catholic churches who operate under the authority of the Holy See, with clerics having been involved in the sexual abuse of tens of thousands of children worldwide.”

The report said:

“The committee is gravely concerned that the Holy See has not acknowledged the extent of the crimes committed, has not taken the necessary measures to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children, and has adopted policies and practices which have led to the continuation of the abuse by and the impunity of the perpetrators.”

The UN report demonstrates that Pope Francis has failed to address in any meaningful way the sexual abuse of children by clergy. As Pope, Francis continues the Catholic tradition of protecting pedophile priests from criminal prosecution, allowing the cancer that has destroyed any moral authority the church may have once claimed to continue to metastasize and fester.

The report offers compelling evidence that Pope Francis, and the Vatican, continue to protect and enable pedophile priests engaged in the sexual abuse of children. Francis may be a likable and charismatic leader, but he represents a product that is toxic, and obnoxious to reason and human decency. By continuing to protect and enable pedophile priests, Pope Francis indirectly sanctions and promotes the rape and sexual abuse of children.

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

― Steven Weinberg