Watch ‘Secrets of the Vatican’

 

Seattle Times
PBS FRONTLINE

Here is how a stunning PBS documentary describes itself: “In Secrets of the Vatican, FRONTLINE tells the epic, inside story of the collapse of the Benedict papacy and illuminates the extraordinary challenges facing Pope Francis as he tries to reform the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, root out corruption and chart a new course for the troubled Catholic Church and its 1.2 billion followers.” 

Take everything you have ever heard about the Catholic Church and the global clergy child sexual abuse scandals, the dodgy Vatican bank, add in drug abuse, and multiply it all by ten. A primary insight is that Pope Benedict really did not step down from the papacy so much as flee the job. No one could make up what this documentary reveals. For all of the horror on display, the reality is basic: arrogance, hubris and insularity will bring down any organization, even one ordained to do God’s work on earth. 

A human organization manifests all human frailties. Allow it to make its own rules and hide, and the worst happens. This is a tragedy that defies description. Abuse of people, power and a benefit of the doubt that goes with the job description. Pope Francis is [presented] as the institutional savior who comes from far enough outside the Roman Curia and the inner sanctum to instigate and sustain change. The only optimism in the documentary are references to a new beginning for a wounded church, and a religious crusade to save the church. Watch “Secrets of the Vatican.” You might know the story line. You have no clue about the depth of the shame.

 

The Gospel according to millionaire war criminal Saint Tony Blair

Comment: More from the eternally and almost inexpressibly repellent Tony Bliar.

-------------------

 

Stop the War Coalition

All hail. For lo verily, the Prophet Anthony Blair, millionaire warmonger and late convert to Catholicism, hath descended from his spiritual retreat with Bono on Mount Davos and come amongst us,  bearing not tablets of stone, but a column in The Observer containing his proposals on how the world and the Middle East might pursue peace in the 21st century.

Casting his compassionate eye across our troubled world,  Saint Tony is saddened by a ‘ghastly roll call of terror attacks in the obvious places: Syria, Libya, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia and Pakistan.’   He is also appalled by acts of terror ‘ in places where we have only in recent years seen such violence: Nigeria, and in many parts of central Africa, in Russia and across central Asia, and in Burma, Thailand and the Philippines.’

At this point certain inconsistencies cannot help but catch even the most casual reader’s attention.  Why does Blair’s indictment at contemporary violence only refer to the anti-government attacks in Egypt for example, and not the hideous slaughter of more than 1000 supporters of the ousted Muslim Brotherhood by Egypt’s military government last year, in a coup that he supported?   If Blair is so appalled by the ‘ghastly roll call’ of terror attacks in Syria, why was he calling for Western governments to arm the rebels last year?

Does he know that his great friends the Saudis, whose corrupt business investments he did so much to protect when he was in office,  threatened Russia with ‘terror attacks’ during the Winter Olympics last year if Putin did not change his policy on Syria?  What in fact, do the events that he describes actually have to do with each other at all?

That last question, at least, does have an answer.  For the Prophet hath looked deeply into all these events and concluded:

The fact is that, though of course there are individual grievances or reasons for the violence in each country, there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith. But there is no doubt that those who commit the violence often do so by reference to their faith and the sectarian nature of the conflict is a sectarianism based on religion. There is no doubt either that this phenomenon is growing, not abating.

An abuse of religion, golly who would have thought it?  So that’s why the Rohingyas have become a stateless and victimized minority in Burma.  That’s why anti-Russian rebels in the Caucasus have been fighting for years against Russian domination.   This is why Sunnis and Shiites are currently slaughtering each other in Iraq – something that they weren’t doing before the Prophet got together with his equally devout mate George Bush to plot the war that caused the collapse of Iraqi society.

Forget the corrupt oil politics that drive the insurgency in the Niger Delta.   Or the poverty and corruption that fuels the maniacally violent Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.  Forget authoritarian governance, police and military violence, politics, the unequal distribution of resources, the role of religion in forging political and ethnic identities within states and between -  forget all that because all these manifestations of 21st century violence are all the result of a ‘perversion of faith.’

To put it as politely as I can, and far more politely than Saint Tony deserves, this is total and unmitigated nonsense.  That reactionary religious extremism exists is indisputable.  It is also clear  that such extremism has increased its political influence, particularly in the Middle East.

But that does not mean that the wars and acts of violence in the 21st century are ‘religious’ conflicts, let alone that they are based on a ‘perversion of faith’, whatever that means.  Religious conflict did not cause the Syrian Civil War, anymore than it has caused the wars in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, or the ongoing violence in Palestine, Lebanon or any of the other countries that Blair so gormlessly attempts to envelop in his dim thesis.

In fact there is no need to ‘pervert faith’ in order to use religion as a justification for violence or a political instrument.  All religions contain messages of peace and violence that can be drawn upon depending on the circumstances.   Religion can be a tool of political control by states and governments, and in some cases such control can be exercised by favoring certain sectarian groups at the expense of others, or by using religion to promote geopolitical influence beyond their borders.

But religion can also provide a potent mobilising ideology for revolutionary violence, and the fantasy of a just state founded on religious purity tends to acquire more momentum under oppressive regimes where no other ideological critiques are permitted, as has so often been the case in the Middle East.  Religion can also provide a rallying call for resistance to occupation, as Britain and the United States have discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that the belief that religiously-justified violence is sanctioned by God can lead to some spectacularly cruel and fanatical acts of violence, but in strategic terms, most acts that fall within Blair’s  ‘roll call of terror attacks’ stem from a template of modern revolutionary violence that can be both ‘religious’ or ‘secular.’

And however bloody some of these acts have been, they are no less fanatical  than Blair and Bush’s catastrophic and disastrously misconceived wars, with their utter disregard for the potential consequences.

When Blair calls for greater western engagement in the Middle East on the grounds that ‘ All over the region, and including in Iraq…the same sectarianism threatens the right of the people to a democratic future,’ he entirely neglects to mention the extent to which the previous intervention in Iraq that he so fervently advocated has actually fuelled sectarian conflict, and created a vortex of violence that has sucked in Iraq’s neighbours.

All that is neatly obliterated by Saint Tony’s reflection on ‘my experience post-9/11 of how countries whose people were freed from dictatorship have then had democratic aspirations thwarted by religious extremism.’

And the solution?  According to Blair, western governments must now set out to embark on a campaign to promote education and religious tolerance in the Middle East and across the world, against those who ‘disseminate hatred and division’ so as ‘not to allow faith to divide us but instead to embody the true values of compassion and humanity common to all faiths.’

Now resist the urge to be sick, readers, and sing hallelujah, for as Saint Tony reminds us, the world has the ideal instrument for realising this  agenda, in the shape of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation.

So there you have it, the man who took his country to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which his own foreign policy establishment once concluded were a major driving force behind acts of jihadist violence in Britain and beyond, who supported Israel’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza, who has never yet seen a war that he did not support,  just wants us all to love each each other – and help him make even more money in the process.

And yet all this remains puzzling, not because Blair can make such stunningly shallow observations in the belief that they are profound thoughts – he has always done that.  But the real mystery is why so many powerful people take his fatuous and ill-informed pronouncements seriously – and why a former bastion of British liberalism feels the need to promote the views of this contemptible and dangerous narcissist,  whose own actions have proven again and again, that he actually doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Source: infernalmachine.co.uk

Swiss Guard veteran claims existence of 'gay network' at the Vatican

Claims have been made of a 'gay network' among some Vatican 

priests and Swiss Guards. Photograph: Filippo Monteforte/EPA

 

 

A former commander of the Swiss Guard, the small force of men whose job it is to protect the pope, has said there is "a network of homosexuals" within the Vatican, the latest in a series of claims about gay priests working at the heart of the Roman Catholic church.

Elmar Mäder, who was commandant of the Guard from 2002 until 2008, said his time at the heart of the Vatican had given him an insight into certain aspects of life there. "I cannot refute the claim that there is a network of homosexuals. My experiences would indicate the existence of such a thing," he told the Swiss newspaper Schweiz am Sonntag.

Famed for their striking uniforms of blue, red and orange, recruits to the Guard swear to protect the pope and his successors with their lives.

Mäder, 50, from the canton of St Gallen, refused to comment on speculation that he had warned guardsmen about the behaviour of certain priests.

Earlier this month, the same newspaper reported the claims of a former, unnamed member of the Guard that he had been the target of more than 20 "unambiguous sexual requests" from clergy while serving in the force.

Recounting a dinner in a Rome restaurant, the man was quoted as saying: "As the spinach and steak were served, the priest said to me: 'And you are the dessert'."

At the time, spokesman Urs Breitenmoser said the rumoured gay network did not pose a problem to the Swiss Guard, whose members he said were motivated by entirely different interests.

Asked about the claims, Mäder reportedly said stories of this kind "obviously lacking in factual basis" were sometimes told. But the facts remained clear, he added. "

A working environment in which the great majority of men are unmarried is per se a draw for homosexuals, whether they consciously seek it out or unconsciously follow an urge," he said.

"The Roman Curia [the Vatican's bureaucracy] is exactly this kind of environment."

Though it does not condemn gay people, whom it says should be "accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity," the catechism of the Catholic church teaches that homosexual acts are "objectively disordered" and calls gay people to abstinence.Mäder, while he said he did not have a problem with homosexuality, said he feared that a network or secret society of gay people within the Vatican could pose security problems. He added that he would not have promoted a gay man in the Guard – not because of his sexuality but because "the risk of disloyalty would have been too high".

Mäder said: "I also learned that many homosexuals are inclined to be more loyal to each other than to other people or institutions," he said.

"If this loyalty were to go as far as to become a network or even a kind of secret society, I would not tolerate it in my sphere of decision making. Key people in the Vatican now seem to think similarly."

The comments appeared to be referring to a remark made by Pope Francis on the flight home from Brazil last summer. "They say there are some gay people here. I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good," the pontiff told journalists, while at the same time joking that, while there was a lot of talk about a gay lobby, he had never seen it stamped on a Vatican identity card.

While Francis signalled a clear conciliatory tone on the issue, he added: "If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them?" Mäder's comments about the supposed threat posed by gay guards and priests drew criticism among rights advocates in Italy.

"Along with all gay people in the armed forces, I would advise Mäder to become better informed," said Aurelio Mancuso, chairman of Equality.

Franco Grillini, chairman of Gaynet, added: "Statistically, gays are the least violent group in human society so if the pope were really surrounded by homosexuals, he could sleep easy."

Guy Fawkes, the 'Gunpowder Plot' and how false flag operations have shaped history

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

-Old English folk rhyme (anonymous)

By Barrie Zwicker (Special to Truth and Shadows)

Today, November 5^th, is Guy Fawkes Day, also known as Gunpowder Day. In 2012 it’s the 407^th anniversary of The Gunpowder Plot or Gunpowder Treason, as it was first called.

It also happens to be my 78^th birthday. So I’ve been more aware of Guy Fawkes Day than most. I’m especially happy about how ubiquitous the Guy Fawkes mask has become.

The mask was hugely popularized in the movie V for Vendetta. As stalwart 9/11Truther Kevin Barrett wrote, a year ago, in a piece entitled “Unmasking Media Lies: Why BBC’s V-for-Vendetta Mask Piece is Fawked Up”:

“V for Vendetta may be the most revolutionary film ever made. Its obvious message is: Let’s get out there and visit some rough justice on the treasonous bastards who created the 9/11 and 7/7 media spectaculars, and destroyed the freedoms for which we’ve been fighting for centuries.

Watch (on YouTube) V for 9/11 Vendetta: Past, Present and Future

It is also possible to read the film from an interior, psychological perspective: Rather than just a call to action, it’s about the psychological process of coming to terms with the 9/11 and 7/7 inside jobs, by allowing oneself to feel the overwhelming anger that is the natural response. Once one has faced the facts, overcome fear, and come to terms with one’s own righteous anger, THEN it’s time for revolution.

 

The real message of the V mask is simple: We know you bastards blew up the Trade Center. We know you’re blowing up the economy. We know you’re lying to us 24/7/365. We know you’re trying to keep us poor and weak and fearful and impotent. Well, guess what? We’re not afraid of you. We’re not afraid to die. And we’re coming to get you. 

No wonder the BBC is afraid to admit what the V mask really means.”

Yet for the first 71 years of my life I had entirely the wrong idea about the gunpowder plot: what happened, who was really behind it, and its impact on history. An impact that continues to this day. It was in 2005 that I read I read Webster Tarpley’s superb book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA right after it came off the press. He introduced me to the historical element.

True, the brazen events of 9/11 and the mind-boggling cover-up that followed opened my eyes to state-executed terror frauds and the power they deliver to the dark forces that order them. But I didn’t know from nuthin’ about the Gunpowder Plot.

Nor at that time did I appreciate that it and 9/11 are but two examples from thousands of false flag operations that have changed history.

False flag ops are the least-recognized, highest-impact category of human deceit. In terms of emotional wallop, even the most brilliant lies perpetrated by the most talented demagogues pale, in comparison to a big false flag op, for the power to manipulate the public. On this anniversary let’s look more closely at this particular false flag op for some lessons. As William Faulkner put it in his Requiem for a Nun: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Then we will touch briefly on one of the most recent false flag ops – a leading edge digital one that perversely misappropriates the Fawkes name.

…

On the Throne of England in 1605 sits James the First, a Protestant, the King who ordered the translation of the Christian Bible that bears his name.

As midnight approaches on November the 4th – the eve of the traditional opening of Parliament – armed agents of the King raid a basement room of the Houses of Parliament. They discover and apprehend one Guy Fawkes. His age, 36, coincides with the number of barrels of gunpowder they find with him. They find a tunnel leading to the room. Fawkes is a known agitator for the rights of English Roman Catholics. In his possession are a pocket watch (a rarity in those days).

Had he succeeded in detonating the gunpowder, the next morning King James and his queen would be mangled bodies, as would all the members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Smoking rubble would be all that would remain of the Palace of Westminster complex, including historic Westminster Abbey.

So goes the palace version of the events of the late evening of November the 4^th, 1605. The English public is stunned. It’s the equivalent of 9/11. “A cataclysm,” Adam Nicolson describes it in his book God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. Upon his arrest, according to the official account, Fawkes admits his purpose was to destroy king and Parliament.

That there was some kind of plot is not in doubt. By November the 8^th, on the rack, Fawkes names 12 co-conspirators. Those not killed where they are tracked down are found guilty of treason later in a trial lasting less than a day. They and Fawkes are hanged, drawn and quartered.

The following Sunday, November the 10^th, the King James Version of the plot is broadcast from the leading pulpit of the Church of England, that of William Barlow, Bishop of Rochester. Barlow thunders that the enemy, meaning papists, is satanic in its wickedness. The King, their hoped-for victim, on the other hand is, Mr. Nicolson writes, characterized as an unqualifiedly good man . . . virtually a Christ-figure.

Soon all the pulpits of England echo the official account. Between 1606 and 1859 the Fifth is remembered in an annual service of thanksgiving in every Anglican church, writes James Sharpe in Remember, Remember: A Cultural History of Guy Fawkes Day. Until 1959, it was against the law in Britain not to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day. Celebrate, because from the beginning the public was giving thanks that the realm was saved and the treasonous conspirators dispatched. For centuries effigies of Fawkes were burned.

The palace version becomes historical truth for humankind including me – duped again! – for most of our lives.

Mr. Nicolson and others now cast serious doubt on that version. Many anomalies concerning the events have surfaced.

Fawkes was not apprehended in a basement room but rather a ground floor room, one remarkably easily rented by the plotters. There was, accordingly, no tunnel. The authorship of the letter by which the King learned of the plot is murky. It was turned over to the King by the Royal Chancellor, Sir Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury.

Sir Cecil I would characterize as the Dick Cheney of his day. Because plots were common at that time Cecil had an efficient network of spies seeded among Roman Catholic dissidents. He kept tabs on all plots the spies discovered. This one featured a large cast of characters from several cities.

Cecil kept the King in the dark about the plot except for the obscure letter. The gunpowder, it turned out, was of an inferior nature, unlikely to have achieved much result. This was odd, as Fawkes definitely knew a thing or two about gunpowder. He had developed expertise with it while serving with distinction in Spain’s army against Protestant rebels in the Netherlands. It’s conceivable the gunpowder could have been switched by someone; loads of it existed because of all the hostilities. Some handwriting on Fawkes’s confession differed from the rest.

Ignored until recently is a book by Jesuit historian John Gerard, What Was the Gunpowder Plot: The Traditional Story Tested by Original Evidence. Gerard died in 1606 but his book was not published for almost three centuries, in1897, an interesting temporal fact in itself. While it’s true, as Sharpe writes, that accounts of the plot differ as per the biases of the authors, I find Gerard’s account pretty compelling. He writes:

“When we examine into the details supplied to us as to the progress of the affair, we find that much of what the conspirators are said to have done is well-nigh incredible, while it is utterly impossible that if they really acted in the manner described, the public authorities should not have had full knowledge…”

Exactly. The evidence points to a particular kind of false-flag operation. There are many variations. In some (9/11 being the leading example) an outrageous event is carried out by the perpetrators and blamed on the chosen enemy. In others (example, Gulf of Tonkin) nothing happens but a fiction blames the chosen enemy. The Gunpowder Plot is midway: a plot was underway but the precise intentions of the plotters can never be known. The main feature is that, with or without taking a hand in the plot, the Cecil elements manipulated events brilliantly.

Cecil was heavily involved in an influential London group known as “the war party.” It wanted to push James into a confrontation with the Spanish Empire, from which the group’s members hoped, among other things, to extract great personal profit.

The war party considered it politically vital to keep persecuting Roman Catholics. Sir Cecil set out, writes Tarpley, to sway James to adopt his policy by means of terrorism.

It amounts to this: Either Cecil and the war party made the Gunpowder Plot happen or they let it happen –and made sure of a brilliantly timed “exposé.” And if they let it happen they made it happen.

James himself had negotiated peace with Spain the previous year. His other advisors told him there was no chance of a general Catholic uprising and that no foreign Catholic powers were involved in the plot.

The King knew, Sharpe writes, that “the reality of Catholicism in England around 1600 was very different from the image conjured up in government propaganda and contemporary Protestant myth.” Sharpe again: “…even in the face of … persecution it seems that most of England’s Catholics remained loyal to their monarch and wanted nothing more than to be allowed to practice their faith unmolested.” (The parallel with most Muslims living in the UK and Canada today springs to mind.)
For his part, James downplayed the plot. “James and his ministers,” Sharpe writes, “showed more restraint than many modern regimes faced with similar problems.”

Nevertheless, the power of the imagery of what might have happened burned itself into the public’s psyche, and was repeatedly fanned by the Protestant and war promoting establishments.

The outcomes of this ongoing propaganda campaign are incontestable. Tolerance for English Roman Catholics is replaced by a period of terrible bloodletting for them. Numbers are killed. Catholics’ homes are burned. A string of laws is passed restricting their rights and liberties.

The English become “fixated on homeland security,“ Nicolson writes. An inclusive, irenic idea of mutual benefit between Spain and England – trade between the two countries, because of the peace treaty, had been growing –“is replaced in England by a defensive/aggressive complex.” All Catholics, of all shades, never mind their enthusiasm or not for the planned attack, are identified as the enemy.
Most significantly, war with Spain ensues. England’s course is set for a century of wars against the Spanish and Portuguese empires. England for various reasons comes out victorious and on these war victories the British Empire is founded in blood, deception and conquest.

 …

There’s no way of knowing whether the British Empire – and all the consequences of its rule from Capetown to Canada to Iraq to its American colonies — would have emerged anyway or in what form or at what pace, but we cansee in retrospect that the Gunpowder Plot was pivotal in what did transpire.

It would be a failure of imagination not to see the parallels with 9/11 and society in our day of blanket war propaganda, teeming with covert agents, ever-encroaching surveillance, ever decreasing civil rights and liberties, and either helpless or conniving leaders.

Let’s look at false flag ops generically. It’s difficult in my opinion to over-estimate their terrible place in history, and their place in making history terrible. Think of the wars and millions of deaths that followed the Gunpowder Plot, the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbour in 1898 that kick-started the US Empire’s expansion to the Philippines and beyond, the sinking of the Lusitania that brought the USA into World War I, the torching of the German Reichstag that boosted Hitler to power and enabled his bloody grab for world domination, the assassination of John F. Kennedy that yanked U.S. foreign policy onto a warpath, the alleged attacks during LBJ’s presidency the next year by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin — attacks that simply did not take place but that provided the basis for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, passed 88-2 in the US  Senate. That resolution constituted the “legal” basis for escalating the Vietnam War with an eventual death toll of more than 3-million. And 9/11. To name a few.

Without false flag ops most wars would be harder to launch. Some would barely be possible. Think of the unprecedented millions of peace marchers who took to the streets prior to the invasion of Iraq. If the deceptions are used to justify such wars were exposed earlier by a skeptical, independent, ferociously investigative media, we all would be living in a different world. Millions of horrible deaths and all the accompanying grief could have been avoided. And the military would have to put on bake sales to raise funds.

There always has been a yearning for peace among the normal everyday citizenry: finding meaningful work, marrying and raising a family, tilling the soil, writing poetry, inventing things, or — as Pierre Berton said was his favourite thing – “getting smashed with your friends.”

There are exceptions, but the horrible norm is that for wars to be launched, maintained or expanded the people have to be fooled. And history proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the most surefire way to accomplish that is to lumber them with an iconic outrage allegedly perpetrated by the designated “enemy” of the day. And we go on sinking ever further into the mire of deaths – the deaths of innocents, the death of promise for a better future, the death of honest history, the death of coming to grips with reality – because each new false flag op draws power from the fictions planted about all the previous ones.

And so the elites continue to hide their four aces in a rigged game. Their most closely guarded secret retains the potency of the first one. Remember, remember, the 5^th of November, the 11^th of September, Faulkner, and George Santayana’s comment that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

But today we also have to remember the future. Added to the false flag ops, false flag agents and false flag organizations of old are false flag digital organisms, sent to infect particular publics. One of the most recent of which I’ve become aware is a rogue individual or group identified as ” This tricky entity “FawkesSecurity” on Monday, October 22, released via YouTube and Pastebin a bomb threat against an unidentified U.S. Government building.

I for one smell digital gunpowder.

“FawkesSecurity” claims to be associated with the Anonymous collective. The threat of violence, however, goes against everything Anonymous says it stands for. Sources at Anonymous are denouncing “FawkesSecurity” and its bomb threat.

A report on this, from which I am quoting, can be found at Examiner.com
Following is an excerpt from the message of “FawkesSecurity:”

Dear citizens of the world,
 We are anonymous. As of today 200 kilograms of composite Nitroglycerin and commercial explosives have effectively been concealed in a government building, situated in the united states of America. on the 5th of November 2012 …
we are anonymous
we are legion
we do not forget
we do not forgive
on the 5th of November, you will expect us.

As the Examiner report says, “the video displays many of the standard trappings of associated with Anonymous [and yet] the threat of violence is completely out of step with the ethos that guides Anonymous.” The Examiner report adds:

“Multiple social media accounts have denounced FawkesSecurity and their bomb threat. Many speculate FawkesSecurity is a false flag operation conducted by government agents in an attempt to discredit Anonymous. Others speculate that FawkesSecurity is simply misguided, and unfamiliar with the bullet proof idea that is Anonymous.”

Whatever the case, those who wrote the text above can’t punctuate or capitalize worth a damn.
The digital and physical worlds are not separate. Agents of the state infest both. Although unlikely, if the threat by “FawkesSecurity” were to be carried out today, one outcome could be to seriously besmirch Anonymous. (The question of whether Anonymous itself might be a false flag op, or is, or could be infiltrated or otherwise manipulated, is one to be asked and answered further down the rabbit hole. Such is the ultra-elusive nature of “reality” today.)

We’ve come a long way from 1605 technically, but the general scheme is the same: deception rides high, wide and ugly.

Segments of this post were originally published in an op ed page piece the author had published on November 5^th, 2005 in The Globe and Mail; others come from notes for a talk given by the author in London, Ontario November 5^th, 2011.

Rome 'told priests to keep quiet about abuse'

Independent

Ireland's government summoned the Vatican's ambassador yesterday for a rare face-to-face meeting to respond to a report showing that Rome secretly discouraged Irish bishops from reporting paedophile priests to police.

The Foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, met Pope Benedict XVI's diplomat in Dublin a day after Irish investigators found that the Vatican in 1997 encouraged bishops to reject the Irish church's tough new child-protection rules.

The Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, who didn't attend the meeting, said that the Vatican's role in placing the church's own canon law above Irish criminal law was "absolutely disgraceful".

He vowed to pass legislation that would make it a crime to withhold evidence of child abuse from the police – even information that a priest obtains in the confession booth.

In the Name of the Father Part I

“Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a

democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.”

- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger

The High Priests of Paedophilia?

 According to the first comprehensive national study of the prevalence of sexual abuse by priests within the Catholic Church, some 4 percent of U.S. priests ministering from 1950 to 2002 were accused of sex abuse with a minor. It was further discovered that over 95 percent of the dioceses and 60 percent of the religious communities were affected. 1 Though rigorous and wide ranging, this study cannot ascertain the full extent of sexual abuse within the Church.

Released in Washington on February 27, 2002, the John Jay study was commissioned by the U.S. bishops’ National Review Board, which released its own report at the same news conference on the causes of the clergy sex abuse crisis that has continued to rock the church for the past four years. The review board named by the bishops and composed of prominent lay people, is monitoring compliance with the U.S. bishops’ policies to prevent clergy sex abuse. The study concentrated on providing suitable statistics about the nature and scope of the crisis. The findings were shocking.

Over 4,392 clergymen - most of whom were priests - were accused of abusing 10,667 people. Sex-abuse related costs totalled $573 million, with $219 million covered by insurance companies. With child sex abuse more prevalent among diocesan clergy, of the total clergy accused, 929 were religious priests. The Church authorities’ response to persistent claims of abuse was to hush up claims and send the accused clergy for medical evaluation and treatment. While no action was taken against 10 percent of priests accused, only 6 percent of the allegations saw priests reprimanded. After this “tap on the hand” they were promptly returned to ministry. From other studies and reports it is clear that this secret preferential treatment had been taking place for many decades.

According to the study, 81 percent were males, ranging from 11 to 14, being over half of the total victims in this age group. Most of the victims were post-pubescent adolescents with a small percentage pre-puberty, though the study mentioned that 22 percent of the victims were under 10 years old. Homosexual child molestation seems to be more prevalent within the Church than the higher statistical evidence of young girls being abused in society as a whole. The abuse itself was multiple and extreme. Commensurate with the cunning of the sexual predator, the family social contacts presented the most frequent context for abuse whereby priests used the trust of families to gain access to children. Tragically up to 7 percent of these children had a prior history of abuse and were thus easily targeted again by those in which they had placed their trust – the professed messengers and mediators of God.

Though comprehensive enough, this belies the fact that it can only include those who chose to reveal these crimes. As the authors stated, the data from the 1990s had not been recorded as well as the natural time lag of victims not reporting their abuse, priests still to this day being protected and many of the victims unable to have the courage to come forward. They also admit that the financial costs are likely to be far higher: “14 percent of the dioceses and religious communities did not provide financial data and the total did not include settlements made after 2002, such as the $85 million agreed to by the Boston Archdiocese.” The study was based on detailed questionnaires returned by 195 of the 202 dioceses, Eastern eparchies and other ecclesial territories tied to the United States. This 97 percent compliance was “an extraordinarily high response rate,” said the study. Regarding action by civil authorities, the study said that: “3 percent of all priests against whom allegations were made were convicted and about 2 percent received prison sentences.” This alone should give us pause for thought regarding the Churches professed “tough stance” on there in-house child molesters.

While news of the abuse was beginning to seep out, Pope John Paul II was doggedly holding onto power and the belief held by many that he was a symbol of freedom and compassion around the world. Looking at the facts of his tenure this belief proves to have little connection to reality.

The Vatican acts as lawmaker, prosecutor and judge, which is tied irrevocably to its own survival. It guards this survival jealously. Human rights are an anathema to such a corporation. It requires far too many adjustments and reforms that, if implemented would eventually bring the whole business crashing down. This is probably why the European Council’s Declaration of Human Rights has yet to be signed by the Vatican. Wojtyla decided it would be a good thing to preach about human rights and the due process of the law while ensuring that such a process was frozen within his own dominion. 

Similarly, it is easy to place the Virgin Mary on a Gold encrusted pedestal while ignoring the rights of women around the world. Condemning birth control and refusing the ordination of women is a classic contradiction and symbolic of Catholicism in its entirety. Pope John Paul moulded and shaped the episcopate discarding some of the more congenial and inclusive wording of the Vatican councils in favour of total obedience. He was big on re-Romanization and a return to “traditional values.” The net result of these values is unending fear, misery and suffering born from those divorced from reality and compassion while theologically claiming the reverse.

Wojtyla’s papacy, like his predecessors in the 11th and 16th centuries, served to add to the schizophrenia of the Vatican still further, creating more of an obstacle to the prospect of hope, freedom and diversity among Christian churches. A serious lack of new priests taking up their posts is symptomatic of millions worldwide who have become tired of the corruption and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church. The scandal of abuse on its own is enough to understand why.


 “God’s Rottweiler”


Now, with the embodiment of contradictions that Karol Wojtyla represented, we go to the hand-picked Pope Benedict XVI a.k.a. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, affectionately known as “the enforcer,” “the panzer cardinal” and “God’s Rottweiler.” The quality of compassion that merited these nick-names was seen when he attempted to add his own brand of healing for Christians and Muslims.

Rather than providing inspiration towards reconciliation, which it so desperately needs, the Pope effectively sowed the most objectionable propaganda of hatred, consciously and purposefully. The Guardian reported that “The Vatican last night said Pope Benedict XVI had not intended to offend when he quoted a 14th-century Christian emperor as saying the Prophet Muhammad had introduced only ‘evil and inhuman’ ideas into the world.” 2 It is precisely because Ratzinger knew of the delicacy of the issue that he chose such an inflammatory passage to quote. Knowing that he represents the religious arm of the “War on Terror” sideshow, he could not however, be as brazen as Bush in his loathing of Islam, so he did it under the pretence of faith and reason.

Joseph Ratzinger’s neo-conservatism is sourced from a colourful past which included a brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a German army, anti-aircraft unit. His Nazi youth history and his insistence “that it was impossible to resist” the regime at the time, is not the primary reason for the scepticism that he embodies the milk of human kindness. His vocal declarations of compassion have distinct overtones of that same fascism that so swept him off his youthful feet decades before.3 He is a Pope that George Bush can do business with and no doubt has been given a suitably tailored script to steer the faithful. He will be able to hark back to the past by guiding the masses into choppier waters, with a highly predictable set of fascist reaffirmations.
 Perhaps it was this same spirit of “resistance” that led the UK Observer to report in April 24, 2005 about the upstanding qualities of the new Pope and how he was busy “obstructing” the sex abuse inquiry by ordering bishops to keep the allegations secret. Ratzinger certainly led by example on this issue and sent a letter to his staff to conduct investigations - in secret. By doing that, the clergy knew that they could keep the evidence secret for 10 years and by that time the children would be adults. The priests would then be free to make merry with the Communion wine and reminisce about the good old days.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001. The lacklustre inquiry was finally lumbering into action after the growing revelations of enormous systematic and institutional sexual abuse was beginning to breach the boat. Ratzinger was tasked with keeping the doors firmly closed:

[...] The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims claim the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice.


Daniel Shea, the lawyer for the two alleged victims who discovered the letter, said: ‘It speaks for itself. You have to ask: why do you not start the clock ticking until the kid turns 18? It's an obstruction of justice.’


Father John Beal, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, gave an oral deposition under oath on 8 April, 2004 in which he admitted to Shea that the letter extended the church's jurisdiction and control over sexual assault crimes.


The Ratzinger letter was co-signed by Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone who gave an interview two years ago in which he hinted at the church’s opposition to allowing outside agencies to investigate abuse claims. 4

These zipped mouths outside the public domain makes you wonder what secret documents are still locked away in the Vatican vaults marked “for the Pope’s eyes only.” Nothing like openness and honesty on behalf of God’s representatives.
 In the 1990s the child abuse scandal began to affect cracks in their secrecy. Whether by conscious intent or by a natural excess, an August 2003 report from The Observer obtained an “explosive” document which revealed just how corrupted the Church had become. The 40-year-old confidential document, which lawyers called a “blueprint for deception and concealment” came from the secret Vatican archive and clearly showed the seal of Pope John XXIII. The letter was sent to every bishop in the world. “The instructions outlined a policy of “strictest” secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse. In other words, it was a cover-up of monumental proportions. Members of the church were being asked to lie and if they did not do so, they would be threatened with excommunication:

[...] They also call for the victim to take an oath of secrecy at the time of making a complaint to Church officials. It states that the instructions are to ‘be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [Vatican] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.’


The document, which has been confirmed as genuine by the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, is called ‘Crimine solicitationies,’ which translates as 'instruction on proceeding in cases of solicitation'.


It focuses on sexual abuse initiated as part of the confessional relationship between a priest and a member of his congregation. But the instructions also cover what it calls the ‘worst crime’, described as an obscene act perpetrated by a cleric with ' youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)’.


Bishops are instructed to pursue these cases 'in the most secretive way... restrained by a perpetual silence... and everyone... is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office... under the penalty of excommunication’


Texan lawyer Daniel Shea…said: ‘these instructions went out to every bishop around the globe and would certainly have applied in Britain. It proves there was an international conspiracy by the Church to hush up sexual abuse issues. It is a devious attempt to conceal criminal conduct and is a blueprint for deception and concealment’


British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by Catholic priests in the UK, echoes this view and has described the document as 'explosive'.


He said: 'We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.’


Scorer pointed out that as the documents dates back to 1962 it rides roughshod over the Catholic Church's claim that the issue of sexual abuse was a modern phenomenon. [...] 5

With an effective impunity mandated directly from the Pope, the crimes were allowed to flourish unabated to the present day. The fact that special attention was given to condemning bestiality: “with 'youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality)” suggests that their in-house investigations involved a great variety of chronic abuse previously unimagined. As well as protecting the perceived sanctity and authority of the Church, it may have also served as a double layer of protection that would ensure investigations stayed within the upper echelons of the cardinals’ clique, thus making them null and void.

In the city of Seattle; Washington State, U.S., Rev. James McGreal became the subject of four lawsuits which shed light on the number of victims the archdiocese allowed the priest to abuse. The Church was forced to pay out over $7.87 million to the victims. McGreal, who served in at least 10 parishes and two hospitals in the archdiocese between 1948 and 1988, was considered an extremely dangerous sexual predator. Although around 20 men sued the Church, filed court records say that McGreal admitted to his therapist that he molested “hundreds of victims.” 6
 The former priest who was removed from the ministry in 1988 is now 80 years old, residing in a Missouri home for “troubled Priests,” the fees of which are being paid for by the Church. So, if you're a practicing Catholic or a part-time sinner and you give the odd donation to your local Church, directly or indirectly, you are funding the protection and no doubt, suitably comfortable lodgings of priestly paedophiles. In Boston, Massachusetts four priests brought before the courts indicated the true scale of the problem.

The defrocked priest John Geoghan was “one of the worst serial molesters in the recent history of the Catholic Church in America. For three decades, Geoghan preyed on young boys in a half-dozen parishes in the Boston area while church leaders looked the other way. Despite his disturbing pattern of abusive behaviour, Geoghan was transferred from parish to parish for years before the church finally defrocked him in 1998.”7 A Child rape charge and many civil claims were pending before Geoghan was strangled to death in 2002, although he was meant to be in “protective custody.” Allegations have surfaced that prison guards were complicit in his murder. The fact that the man who killed him was serving a life term for killing a gay man only increases the likelihood of complicity regarding his death.

The late Rev. Joseph E. Birmingham “allegedly befriended and then abused at least 50 boys over a 29-year career as a priest in the Boston Archdiocese, even as archdiocesan officials ignored numerous complaints against him.” 8 The Rev. Paul R. Shanley “ran a ‘street ministry’ in Boston in the 1960s and ‘70s, taking advantage of youths who came to him for guidance. Finally, the Rev. Ronald H. Paquin “is the only Boston-area priest who has admitted guilt in a criminal molestation case, and is serving 12 to 15 years in prison for rape. He also has acknowledged molesting several boys during his ministry at parishes in Haverhill and Meth.” 9

His “eminence” Bernard Cardinal Law resigned as Archbishop of Boston on December 13, 2002, whereupon Pope John Paul II appointed Cardinal Law to several authoritative positions in Rome and the Vatican City, just to show how well he understood the concerns of the abused. It is this Cardinal that proved to be the catalyst of further investigations into the abuse taking place due to his unwillingness to seek justice on behalf of the victims. Over 50 priests signed a letter declaring no confidence in Law and asking him to resign - something that had never before happened in the history of the Church in America. The Archdiocese was forced to close 65 parishes before Cardinal Law stepped down from service.

A recent Grand Jury in Philadelphia came to some damning indictments regarding the “immoral cover-up” in the Philadelphia Diocese, leading to “excoriation” of prominent priests. In September of 2005 the Grand Jury concluded that Church officials allowed hundreds of sexual assaults against children to go unpunished and protected the priests who committed the crimes. Cardinals Anthony J. Bevilacqua and John Krol were accused of widespread corruption which included: “‘burying’ abuse reports, ignoring warnings about abusive priests, and shuttling offenders from parish to parish, where some found new victims”:

Sexually abusive priests were left quietly in place or ‘recycled’ to unsuspecting new parishes - vastly expanding the number of children who were abused,’ the grand jury concluded.”


The hierarchy ‘excused and enabled the abuse’ for decades, the grand jury said in a 418-page report, while demonstrating "utter indifference to the suffering of the victims.’”


The grand jurors, who spent three years investigating, concluded that Krol and Bevilacqua were more concerned with protecting the reputation and legal and financial interests of the archdiocese than the children entrusted to its care:


“In its callous, calculating manner, the archdiocese’s ‘handling’ of the abuse scandal was at least as immoral as the abuse itself," the grand jury stated in its report.


Yet the panel recommended no criminal charges, saying it was thwarted by the statute of limitations and a church hierarchy that keep silent about the abuses until it was too late for prosecutors to make a case.


The archdiocese angrily denounced the grand jury report as “incredibly biased and anti-Catholic.”


In a blistering 70-page response, the church officials and lawyers called it "a vile, mean-spirited diatribe.” 10

The actions of the Philadelphia archdiocese do mirror a similar mandated intent to stymie investigations of abuse claims across the north western states of the US. These “orders” are indeed as “immoral” as the abuse itself, yet forms part of Vatican tradition. As the District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham pointed out in a rebuttal of the Church’s denial, it contained: “all too familiar denials, deceptions and evasions” that she said had characterized the church's handling of the abuse crisis. The Philadelphia Inquirer further reported:

“The truth, as horrifying as it is, is now out in the open. We believe it will help survivors heal.”


The grand jury report was startling in its expression of sheer outrage and striking for the depth of detail of the abuses.


"What we have found were not acts of God, but of men who acted in His name and defiled it," the grand jury said.


The grand jury concluded that at least 63 priests - and probably many more - abused hundreds of victims over the past several decades. […] …the grand jury found that many victims were abused for years and that many priests abused multiple victims, sometimes preying on members of the same family.

According to the report, victims of the abuse included  an 11-year-old girl who was repeatedly raped by a priest who took her for an abortion when she became pregnant; a fifth grader who was molested by a priest inside a confessional; A teenage girl who was groped by a priest while she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital room; a priest who abused boys playing the roles of Jesus and other biblical characters in a parish Passion play by making them disrobe, don loincloths, and whip each other until they had cuts, bruises and welts; another who falsely told a 12-year-old boy his mother knew of the assaults and consented to the rape of her son; a priest who offered money to boys in exchange for sadomasochistic acts of bondage and wrote a letter asking a boy to make him his “slave.” The latter priest is still in the ministry. 

If we were in any doubt as to the culpability of the Church hierarchy, Cardinal Bevilacqua “allowed known abusers to remain in ministry after receiving warnings about them…In three cases, the priests abused again after finding more victims in their new assignments,…” and most astonishingly, “church officials did not call police to report assaults against children, even in cases in which priests admitted the attacks.” When the Cardinal was asked by the grand jury as to why the Church had not informed the police: 

“‘Bevilacqua told the grand jury that the law did not require them to.’”

‘That answer is unacceptable,” the grand jury said. ‘It reflects a willingness to allow such crimes to continue, as well as an utter indifference to the suffering of the victims.’”

The grand jury also observed that as recently as 2002, Bevilacqua and his representatives knowingly understated the extent of sexual abuse within the church.

[…] There was evidence of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault, indecent assault, endangering the welfare of children, and corruption of minors.
But in all cases, the panel said, the abuse happened years, if not decades, ago, and the statute of limitations on any crimes had expired.

The panel said it had considered charging the archdiocese with endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors, victim/witness intimidation, hindering apprehension, and obstruction of justice. But again, it said, the statute of limitations on any crimes had expired. 
So the panel was left with what it described as ‘a travesty of justice, a multitude of crimes for which no one can be held criminally accountable.’” 11

It seems by August of 2006 the Philadelphia archdiocese was still failing to take adequate steps to address the problems of sexual abuse in their parishes. Keep quiet and “suffer the little children unto thee.” That is exactly how the Church intends it to be. It appears that God isn’t listening.

Since the grand jury investigation and the discovery that archdiocesan files contained accusations against 169 priests the archdiocese only posted on its Web site the names of 57 priests whom it acknowledges as abusers. What is still more disturbing is why the archdiocese chose to believe that there was not enough evidence to take action against the abusers. According to Sorensen and McCartney the former prosecuting lawyers:

“It is troubling - and telling - that the church has not revealed the names of many accused priests or explained why it has evidently kept them in ministry,…” 12 Moreover the Philadelphia Inquirer also reported that the archdiocese had “failed to lend full public backing to a set of legislative proposals that would lift the statute of limitations on all future sex abuse and expand the definition of who must report abuse to authorities.”

The Pennsylvania Catholic Conference is “quietly opposing the bills.”  




Notes
 
1  The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States   A Research  study Conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
2 ‘Muslim anger builds over Pope's speech’ Agencies, Guardian Unlimited, September 15, 2006.

3‘Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth’ The Sunday Times, April 17, 2005. “‘Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. [his brother] “Before we were conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.” “Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions. “It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”
4 ‘Pope ‘obstructed’ sex abuse inquiry’ - Confidential letter reveals Ratzinger ordered bishops to keep allegations secret – by Jamie Doward, The Observer, April 24, 2005.
5 ‘Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse’ - Expulsion threat in secret documents – by Antony Barnett, The Observer, August 17, 2003. See original 1962 Vatican document at wwwtheguardian.co.uk.
6 ‘Washington: Church Settles Abuse Suits’ The New York Times, September 12, 2003.
7 The Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation: Abuse in the Catholic Church – ‘The Geoghan Case.’
8 Ibid. ‘The Birmingham Case.’
9 Ibid. ‘The Shanley Case.’
10 ‘Grand jury harshly criticizes Archdiocese for hiding clergy sexual abuse’ The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sep. 21, 2005.
11 ‘An 'Immoral' Cover-up’ By Nancy Phillips and David O'Reilly, The Philidelphia Inquirer, September 22, 2005.
12 ‘Letter: Church failing on sex abuse’ Two former prosecutors told Cardinal Rigali that children remain at risk because steps have been inadequate. By David O'Reilly, The Philidelphia Inquirer, August 6, 2006.