Pope Francis asked us to forgive him?

Pope Francis asked us survivors of priest rape and nun abuse of the Roman Catholic Church to forgive him the other day.
After talking to quite a few of my brother and sister survivors well….we find it rather insulting. These are the reasons why.

1. To be forgiven you MUST repent. Even Jesus Christ says this. To repent means you turn away from the evil you are asking forgiveness for. So has the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Francis and those whom committed either the crimes of cover ups and moving around of pedophile priests, or the priests themselves whom raped and abused us, and thus destroying our faiths, our lives, truly repented? In the opinions of the majority of priest and nun abuse survivors the answer is a resounding NO.

To truly show repentance, the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Francis must show real concrete action in cleaning this mess up and not just lip service and more empty promises to us.

Pope Francis MUST immediately fire and prosecute to the fullest extent the law allows and give the harshest penalties to all credibly accused Cardinals, Bishops and Archbishops whom there is overwhelming evidence against they participated in these cover ups. We have positive proof many Cardinals, Bishops and Archbishops did in fact cover up these crimes against us. Through their own words, through Church documents, through whistleblower accounts by the likes of Father Thomas Doyle and other brave priests, nuns and yes, leaders whom find this evil just as disgusting as we do and a cancer destroying this church, we do in fact have overwhelming evidence, that if these people were brought before a court of law, they would be convicted of their crimes of cover ups. 80% of the Cardinals and other leaders currently in the United States participated in this cover up, there is more than enough evidence against them to prove this.

Their excuses are weak, they did not know this was a crime is one of the biggest insults that can be said to us. This has been said by many of those whom covered up these crimes, or that they were ill prepared to deal with this. Well to the victims of these crimes..this is just another example of hey…we know what we did was wrong, but we will make any excuse to cover our butts.

2. Another priest was found whom raped children and is now safely in Paraguay. His name is Father Carlos Urrutigoity. This is just one more of dozens of other priests whom have still escaped justice through the help of the Roman Catholic Church along with such Cardinals as Bernard Law.

Again, despite the clear warning, and complaints of sexual misconduct against him, Urrutigoity was allowed to continue living and working in the Diocese of Scranton. Two years later, he was being accused of sexual misconduct again, this time in court.

In a 2002 lawsuit against Urrutigoity, and another priest Eric Ensey and the Diocese of Scranton, the two priests were accused of a pattern of sexual misconduct. Urrutigoity was accused of giving alcohol and cigars to teenagers, sharing beds and sleeping bags with seminarians and inappropriately touching at least two young men. The alleged acts were cloaked in a bizarre dogma upon which Urrutigoity and Ensey had founded their society.

One former member of the Society of St. John said in a deposition that he slept in the same bed as Urrutigoity after the priest said it would help him overcome his “puritanical attitude.” After a few months of their sharing a bed, the seminarian woke one night to find the priest’s hand first on his abdomen, then on his penis.

In a deposition for the lawsuit, a former seminarian in Minnesota said Urrutigoity asked him to insert anal suppositories in front of him. When he refused, the young man said in a deposition, Urrutigoity was furious, calling the act a betrayal. Urrutigoity at least twice invited him to sleep in the same bed, the man said in the deposition. One night, he woke up to find Urrutigoity was molesting him, the seminarian said.

The Diocese of Scranton settled the lawsuit in 2004 for more than $400,000. It also sent Urrutigoity and Ensey to The Southdown Institute, an organization in Canada, for a detailed psychological evaluation.Instead he should have been defrocked and turned over to the police for prosecution.

Following that evaluation, the Diocese of Scranton’s Independent Review Board made its recommendation, which was noted in the confidential minutes of the board meeting:

“In view of the credible allegation from the seminarian, his admitted practice of sleeping with boys and young men, and the troubling evaluation by the Southdown Institute, Father Carlos Urrutigoity should be removed from active ministry; his faculties should be revoked; he should be asked to live privately.”

A criminal investigation launched by the Lackawanna County district attorney was stymied by a lack of cooperation from St. Gregory’s and Pennsylvania’s short statute of limitations on sex crimes, said Tom Dubas, the lead investigator on the case. Dubas wanted to launch a grand jury investigation, but never had the chance.

“As soon as it got out that I was interested in a grand jury, both priests just disappeared,” Dubas said. “We never did convene one.”
Then, in 2008, Urrutigoity began making headlines again, this time in far eastern Paraguay in the den of iniquity known as the Tri-Border Area.

In 2008, Javier Miranda, a Ciudad del Este resident who was once an active volunteer at local churches, learned of a recent influx of international priests. He decided to research the newcomers.

It didn’t take Miranda long to unearth the scandals that had followed Urrutigoity. Immediately, he protested against the priest’s presence in the diocese, and was soon joined by dozens more local volunteers and even a group of 12 local priests, who in 2009 signed a letter denouncing Urrutigoity as a divisive figure.

The bishop of Ciudad del Este, Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano, responded with a spirited defense of Urrutigoity, The priest had been slandered and persecuted, Livieres said. Miranda and other critics should join with the church in praying for a peaceful end to the controversy, he wrote on the diocese’s website.Miranda said far from being welcomed, he and the other vocal critics were ostracized by the church. Undeterred, Livieres continued to support Urrutigoity, not only was Urrutigoity active in the Catholic church in Paraguay, but he had been promoted to the position of vicar general, essentially the second most powerful post in the diocese of Ciudad del Este.

This rapist priest is still protected by the church. There are dozens and dozens more just like him, still protected and defended by those of the Roman Catholic Church.

This priest and all the others, including Cardinals like Bernard Law, whom is still protected by the Vatican, should be immediately fired, defrocked and prosecuted.

3. The church must stop hiding behind the statue of limitations they use against victims to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and paying for their crimes against us and make things right with the victims. Anything less would be pure hypocrisy.

They MUST keep their words and promises to us they signed onto with their Pledge to Protect and Promise to Heal charters with the Attorney Generals of each state.

The disgusting attacks against the priest rape victims MUST END. No more telling us because we did not punch our priests, we were responsible for our own rapes, or that we wanted to be raped and we enjoyed it and we are homosexuals because of it. No more blame games being put upon the victims of these evil crimes.

This is NOT a homosexual problem, this is a pedophile, hebephile and ephebophile problem. This is not just a sin, this is a crime, a FELONY crime and should be looked upon as such and these people whom have committed these crimes should be prosecuted. Just because they are the religious leaders of your church that does NOT give you the right to avoid prosecution for crimes you have committed, especially ones of rape, abuse and torture of children and teens. No more telling us priest rape survivors that we must forgive but must NEVER seek prosecution because that is Anti-Catholic and bigoted of us. Yes this problem exists in other denominations and other sections of the population. We find all of these crimes evil, disgusting and anyone whom rapes a child or covers it up should be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and this means EVERYONE whom commits these crimes, whether they be a Roman Catholic or anyone else. Just because you wear a religious robe should NOT give you an out from being prosecuted for your crimes. If anything, they should be prosecuted with that much more vigor because these people portray themselves to be the moral leaders, the spiritual leaders, the head of the church. Jesus Christ would condemn them, so why should not we? Jesus Christ would say they should be prosecuted…for did he not say render unto God that which is Gods and render unto Man that which is Man’s? That means not only are we supposed to follow Gods laws, but mans laws to. Raping children and covering up these crimes are not only contrary to Gods laws, but man’s laws too.

In conclusion…if Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic Church wishes for us survivors of these evil, disgusting crimes against us, then they must first truly repent. This means doing all that I have described. If we were to forgive this, right now, without true repentance shown on your part Pope Francis then that would make us hypocrites.

For even Jesus Christ said…to be forgiven of your sins. you must first truly repent of your sins.

A Priest Rape Survivor told to count his blessings…ok.

I was told by a few Christians that instead of being pissed off at God and Jesus for all the wrongs done to me by those claiming to be followers of theirs, to count my blessings. The gist goes…If I count my blessings and then count the wrongs…the blessings will far rise above the wrongs.

So I took a few days to ponder this weighty question. Here is my answer:

First let me quantify something here. Even though I hate God and Jesus….it is NOT the kind of God and Jesus I read about and believe in somewhere deep down inside of me…it is the ones those whom Jesus said of: “For many shall call themselves by my name, but their hearts and minds are far from my teachings.”…that I do NOT accept nor will I EVER bow my knee down to. I do love the teachings of Jesus Christ.as I do all great teachers of peace, love, hope, charity..though I do have a problem with some of them, I believe it is those teachings in the bible that ring wrong with me…that were changed by Constantine and the council of hackers whom produced the first bible for use. So I do not really pay attention to them.

But what gets me about this story of this guy named Jesus…without all the extraneous bullshit…like the virgin birth, etc…was his core principle teaching and commandments (with my own revision because I truly believe that the original Hebrew translation…which was in the first King James but subsequently taken out stated: We made them in our image, male and female we made them like unto us. This would mean that there HAS to be a male and a female God…for a male God cannot make a female…it is not in his likeness, nor can a female God make a male…it is not in her likeness):

Love the Lord your God and Goddess with all of your heart and soul, and the second is like it…love your neighbor as you do yourself. On these two commands should hang all the laws.

Yet I am going to combine in judging my list here of the blessings and wrongs by both standards…mine and what these Christians tell me their God and Jesus are all about. I am going to use the bible too as a guide and what it says to make my list.

So here goes.

BLESSINGS:
1. My two sons top this list. Joshua and Austin are my most important blessings. Even though they were taken away from me by their cruel mothers and an evil system designed to destroy fathers for the sake of a buck….the two biggest blessings in my life are Joshua Michael LaFerriere-Fifer and Austin LaFerriere. There is a LOT of things I would have changed…but the birth of my two beautiful sons….nope.

2. My loving and caring “family” and friends. I have a lot of brothers and sisters from other mothers. They are much more blood to me than my own blood relations. Most of them are also survivors of the evil that I too went through. Most of them were raped, beaten, abused, by either a religious person or a supposedly loving family member. We all have survived some of the worst horrors, some of the most brutal degradations done to a child or a teenager. Yet we have somehow survived without becoming the evil that has tried it’s hardest to destroy us. We are good, kind, loving souls with generous hearts. We love each other because we have experienced the same things in life. We survived through horrendous ordeals to come to the point we are today, and we offer each other things that NO ONE has EVER offered us in our lives before…true love, without exception or condition….not based on a perverted, evil concept of love…if you want to call what these people did to us love…..we offer each other support and acceptance….and we stand tall together…when one of us is falling into another Dark Night of the Soul…where we feel no hope.

My true friends and family are a blessing to me.

3. My love and my skills as a nature photographer are a blessing to me. The fact that I can wander around in a forest, taking pictures of all the beauty I see around me, and then able to share it…well that is a blessing to me. The reality to me, that I can go anywhere in a forest and not feel fear of it? That I have admired the stars far too long to be afraid of the dark? To be able to say that I am NOT an evil person because I have actually had wildlife come right up to me and let me pet them? Or take pics of them? Yeah if I were evil….then they would NOT come near me. One thing I have learned from tramping in the woods and being around peoples pets…animals can tell when someone is evil…VERY RARELY have I EVER had an animal react strangely around me…or in fear of me…and that was more dogs whom were abused and are afraid of EVERYONE.

But my photography also blesses me because it brings me incredible peace and joy. In the forest I have no real fear…except for humans…so through my photography and being outdoors…it is a blessing.

4.  Music. Next to my photography, music to me is a blessing.

5. That I am even alive is a blessing. I think about all the times I should be dead. From almost drowning because of my stupidity at Bow Lake when I was 16, to that murdering rapist whom picked me up and drugged me and I woke up to raping me in the back of his RV, to my dedicated drug overdoses, especially when I dissolved all those pills in that glass of vodka, drank it….if it were not for that girl showing up that night…and knowing what to do….I would be dead. Or the other suicide attempts where I should be dead? The fact that I am still even alive…is sort of a blessing one would say. They would say I am here for a reason…if I tried to kill myself like this or survived these things….but hey…..look into the curse section too lol.

Well that is about all I can really think of for blessings. I mean hey…I am really trying…you know…even though I do go starving at least I do eat….or even though I am homeless…I have a friend whom is letting me crash on her couch til next week…but I cannot stay any longer as it would NOT be fair to her….it is my responsibility and if I cannot afford to live in my own place…then I gotta go live in my tent until I do. The biggest problem is security deposits…and anyone whom knows me…thinks that Catholic Charities is going to help me? After what I say about their Pedophile Pimps? Not in this lifetime.

Now honestly lets look at the negatives:

CURSES:

1. Even though my sons are the greatest blessings in my life….their mothers have been the greatest curses of my life. To have done to me what was done to me at the hands of their mothers…should be illegal. To have done to me what was done to me by Holly Hepp of the CPS in Ohio…she should be in prison for the rest of her life so she can never harm another father or their children ever again. Yet I am made out to be the one whom is wrong, the one to blame, the evil one, the one whom would rape his own sons or abuse them as Holly Hepp said to me.

No one can seem to understand the Catch-22 I am in here with my soul over this..as well as my life. Sure with Josh I got to be with him maybe a total of two months after his birth, but with Austin, hell I haven’t even been able to tell him I love him. Not even kiss him. Nothing. So here it is…I think about them and it destroys me. So I try to put them out of my mind to retain my sanity and it is even more of a curse on me…because what kind of father am I to not want to think about my sons? I love looking at their pictures, they bring me joy, but they also bring me incredible pain, because of all the loss…and then I hide the pic for a while so I do not have to look at them and then again condemn myself for it because…what kind of loving, caring father does this?

2. I guess I am supposed to consider being raped by a priest, to have my soul destroyed and taken from me and all the living hell I went through and been through because of it…and because of now standing up about it and demanding the Pedophile Pimps…hell anyone whom participated in these evils against us…be put where they belong…in prison….is a BLESSING? OK about the ONLY blessing I can consider coming from this is the fact I made some beautiful friends and family from it. Otherwise ANYONE whom got raped by a priest…or by any pastor, minister or supposed Holy Person…..would consider it a curse and evil and a HUGE NEGATIVE.

3. How about that scumbag whom picked me up hitch-hiking and drugged and raped me? Nope…I sure would NOT consider that a blessing…even in disguise!! Why did you NOT just kill me that day and get it done and over with?

4. The last scumbag, whom picked me up hitch-hiking….showed me those gay books, would NOT take no for an answer…drove down the dirt road before the Gloucester bridge and in MY MIND I was about to be raped again when he pulled out his knife. Well I guess being arrested when I flagged down that cop car and told him what happened, and the scumbag jerk being in the back seat of that car, and then pressing charges against me for assault with a deadly weapon, attempted armed robbery etc…well that is supposed to be a blessing too?

5.  My blood family turning their backs on me. Ok let me get this straight. Was I a problem kid? Freaking right I was. Did I steal cigs from my parents to smoke? Yuppers. Did I steal a check from my dad, cash it, bought a carton of cigs? Yuppers. I believe those were really my worse crimes. Yeah I skipped school….but hey….ya know? Did I steal porn mags from the local book store and sell them to my friends? Guilty! I wonder how many of us actually did this as kids? I know at least my older brother used to steal cigs and drink and smoke dope…but hey that was him…..the freaking hypocrite…and oh yeah…he did have a chance to get his girlfriend knocked up at such a young age….but hey I don’t have all the facts to judge him…but even though he does not have all the facts…he can judge me.

Yet in my older brothers eyes….that made me Hitler…hell that made me worse than Hitler.

When my life fell apart after the priest rape, or anything else…it did not matter to any of them….I was the black sheep of the family…well the ONLY one whom it mattered to was my father and mother…..and I damn well know my father…loved me and so did my mother. But to my brothers and sister…I am still the evil black sheep of the family, without one redeeming quality, bound for hell….so I got that going for me.

I ALWAYS thought that family…blood family…though they could get pissed off at the wrongs you did….unless you truly were a rapist, a murderer, etc….but come on…for this shit????? They were supposed to at least never disown you for this kind of crap. So yeah…I would consider the loss of my family…though I did wrong…this was NOT deserving….and I consider it a major negative. Yeah my older self righteous brother thinks I am such a Hitler that I should be banned from any family reunions that he may be at….and have me arrested if I decide to come. Gotta love older brothers like that. Should I BELIEVE what my mother used to say about him to me…how he was such a defender and protector of me when I was sick, had all those operations and was blind for a while because I had to wear eye patches? Nah.

6. Donohue and the whole Catholic Church. THEY ARE A CURSE TO ME. Need I say more? Cardinals like Timothy Dolan, George Pell, Donald Wuerl, Justin Rigali, Bernard Law, Roger Mahony and the whole lot of them…they are a curse not only to me…but to all mankind. They preferred to protect their pedophile priests over us whom were being raped and abused by them….and became Pedophile Pimps. They then became LYING PEDOPHILE PIMPS. when they all signed those Promise to Protect Pledge to Heal charters, the Dallas Charter and all the Charters with the United Nations on children’s rights. They became LYING PEDOPHILE PIMPS when they PROMISED to help us victims…then attacked us at every chance they could, saying they wanted to beat us with baseball bats, or we were to blame for our own rapes, or we were the seducers of these disgusting scumbag rapists. Or we are liars, gold diggers out looking for a payday. Or how we are Anti-Catholic bigot scum for daring to challenge them. Yeah this whole thing is a curse to me, a double edged sword.

For if I walk away…I am no better, hell I am even worse than they are. See I have a soul, I have a conscious…something people like Dolan, Donohue, Law and the rest do not have…I feel real pain when a victim comes to me with their story, or I read their stories. I feel real pain when I see what the scumbag Pedophile Pimps and their buddies are doing to us…when all we want is justice and healing…all they give us is more pain and suffering. Well they are a curse…and they deserve to be cursed.

I could no sooner walk away from this, or helping others whom were harmed by these scumbags as I could live without breathing. But it is a curse, a double curse…because this is also destroying what is left of my soul…..for my soul cannot take this evil much longer.

7. Christianists. Always telling me what to do…be like them!!! What? A bigoted, self righteous, hate filled scumbag? Well thanks but no thanks…you people have instilled enough hate in my heart for you that you make it almost impossible to do what your own Jesus tells you to do….love thy neighbor as thyself….for if I do like these Christianists do…I could rape a child, cover it up and say….oh I did not know it was a crime…and even if it is…..you should just forgive and turn the other cheek.

I also love their hatred towards women, gays, etc….They demonstrate to me the truth when Jesus said…Many shall call themselves by my name but their hearts and minds are far from my teachings.

I seem to attract these psycho, freak Christianists in my life in droves…why am I such a magnet for these psychos? Oh…it is because I tell the truth about them and it pisses them off.

8. MY LIFE OF ABJECT POVERTY. Oh Jesus and God….I am supposed to count as a blessing the abject poverty I have lived through in my life eh? Now wait a minute….I thought you guys were supposed to bless good people and curse bad people. That you all slammed these religious holy people living off the fat of the land? That you were supposed to punish the bad and reward the good. Oh I haven’t been being good just for the reward….like most of those Christianists attempt to portray they do…but fail miserably….I’ve done good because it is the right thing to do. Besides…that Spirit that is inside of me? Each and every time I claim I must be evil because of all the evil things that happen to me……it says NO I AM GOOD AND NOT EVIL. Yet again…in the bible, it says…As you sow…so shall you reap.

So hey…not to brag….but I have sowed a lot of good things…some incredible things….so how come????

I tried and tried to sell my photography…I do not want a hand out…I want a hand up. Yet nada for 7 years. I bust my ass to work and I do not deserve any pay for it? While your religious leaders basically sit on their asses, raping children, covering up the rapes of children, murdering children and burying them in septic systems…..and do all kinds of other evils…then go to their church on Sunday and you forgive them for all their evil…but you still shit on us? Oh and how rich do they have to be? Before some of that trickles down to us? They do not earn their pay…but you sure give it to them in stacks of $100s!!!

I am supposed to bow down and worship this type of God and his Son? REALLY? I am supposed to be grateful? I am supposed to count abject poverty where at the end of the month…like the last two weeks…I am lucky to eat one meal a day? While those fat pigs whom raped us and covered up the rapes of us look like they have not missed a meal in decades? Oh and then if I bitch about it…not only does that mean I am an ungrateful little prick….I get shoved deeper into poverty to see what it is like to have even less? I am supposed to thank you and love you for this? When I see you barely lift a finger to help me? But you sure the HELL lift your big fat hands to make those whom did these evils to us…not want for ANYTHING?

Yeah abject poverty…now I consider that a real BLESSING….not!!!

7.  That I am even alive. I have suffered so damn much. Jesus and God must think I am Superman times two. They really must. Look at all the loss I have suffered…if I look at it…my life is the life of Job in a way. Trouble is….there is a saying in the bible that goes…Suffer the children that they may come unto me. REALLY?

Unrelenting suffering is a way to make someone come to you? Raping them is a way to make them come unto you? Forcing them to live in abject poverty is the way to make someone come to you? Taking away their children and giving them to their evil mothers…that too is how you make someone come to you?

Listen bozos…I’ve tried….oh how I’ve tried…to come to you. I have begged you, I have screamed at you, I have threatened you, I have cried to you, I have pleaded with you…to help me…to show me God and Jesus Christ that YOU are worthy…of my love and faith…but you have NOT SHOWN ME ANY OF THIS!!!! You keep saying to have faith? Faith in what? That one day you are going to find that I have suffered enough? That I have lived in abject poverty, loss and suffering enough? When will that be please? I sure would LOVE to pencil it in on my calender. That I have been denied justice for the crimes done to me? Your sure did punish the living shit out of me when I broke into that hotel room and stole the wallet from the car. You sure punished the living shit out of me with a five year prison term over that utter and complete bullshit over my son Josh. You are even punishing the shit outta me for standing up to Pig Face Donohue.

So which is it Bozos? Do you truly hate evil like you say? God…you say you cannot stand the sight of evil. Jesus…you say it would be better for you to tie a huge millstone around your neck and throw yourself into the deepest of lakes than to harm a single hair on the head of a child.

Seems though….you do the exact opposite. You punish the good and you reward the evil.

Again…I am supposed to love you, follow you, bend my knee to you? Be like those whom proclaim to follow you and then do all manners of evil against humanity…and then claim they are doing it in your names and then you do not punish them….like you promised to do…but you sure the FUCK punish us when we stand up and fight it…like you supposedly tell us to do. Do you not tell us to fight this evil? Oh wait…I guess there is a caviat to this rule eh?

Those whom do fight this evil will be destroyed…is that not what you said? We whom fight this evil will be murdered, thrown into prison, slaughtered and butchered????

Wow… now you are making me wonder….why should I not join the bad guys if this is what you are going to do and allow to be done to the good guys. I thought God and Jesus were supposed to defend the righteous, to fight on our side…but hey…look honestly and realistically at it…if they are real…man are you guys dropping the ball.

So I would say essentially though my life is a blessing…it is more of a curse. I have been made to suffer some of the most evil things that can be done to another…and still to this day…I am still suffering.

Put it bluntly there God and Jesus…do I want to be rich? Yeah…I do not want to ever worry about putting a roof over my head, or food in my stomach…or wait until my clothes totally disintegrate before I can spend 5 bucks on a used pair of pants. I want to give my sons some beautiful things. I want to help many others whom have been harmed by your followers. I want to set up a foundation that truly and honestly helps the religious abuse survivor with their needs….but I guess this is wrong to ask for in your eyes isn’t it?

Because God and Jesus….you would rather make those religious freaks all fat and sassy and rich….than the children you supposedly love…but I guess we are the ones whom are supposed to suffer for truly wanting to follow you. While the hypocrite Pharisee and Sadducee get all the help they need from you. Oh wait a minute…I forgot….

I am not supposed to blame you…I am not supposed to blame YOU God or YOU Jesus for turning your backs on us….I am supposed to blame Satan and his followers….I guess this then all goes to prove…that when it comes time to fighting Satan and his followers….you arm your combatants with nothing and expect them to do everything for you…but give them NOT one drop of help…because I guess that would be messing with our free will again…wouldn’t it? Our free will to be raped, destroyed and live in abject poverty……because you deem that more fit for us…than you do for the scum whom did this to us…in YOUR names.

SO IN CLOSING…I COULD POST MORE NEGATIVES…BUT HEY THIS IS MORE THAN ENOUGH…TO SAY TO THOSE CHRISTIANS WHOM SAY IF I COUNT MY BLESSINGS AND MY CURSES I WOULD FIND THAT MY LIFE IS MUCH MORE BLESSED THAN CURSED….YOU’RE WRONG.

THEN AGAIN…MAYBE YOU CHRISTIANISTS WHOM SAY THIS TO ME…CAN PROVIDE ME WITH WHAT I NEED….CAUSE YOUR GOD YOU WANT ME TO FOLLOW SURE ISN’T. AGAIN…..I DO NOT WANT A HAND OUT…I WANT A HAND UP.

 

III. Evidence & Hearings: Canada

III. Evidence & Hearings: Canada.

II. The Unrepentant

II. The Unrepentant.

I. The Proclamation

I. The Proclamation.

A priest rape survivor speaks not in hate…but in hope

You Parishioners on here find my postings insulting and degrading, you find my words disgusting and nasty. Well I would ask YOU to read this posting. It will NOT be full of my swears but it speaks the truth. I just want you all to hear, from the words of a Priest Rape Survivor why we cannot forgive you just yet.

When I was diagnosed with PTSD over my priest rape and soul torture, I thought it was bull. I believed that the ONLY people whom could be classified as someone with PTSD were soldiers or those in war zones. Then my therapist started explaining to me what a person whom they diagnose with PTSD goes through, what their life is like…it was like they wrote most of that definition for me.

Yet people still think what I went through can simply go away if I just get over it, forgive the priest, forgive the church, forgive those whom harmed me.

That if I just forget…somehow this will make me all better.

What those whom think this way do not realize, for 33 years I hid what that priest did to me. I felt guilty, I hated myself for what he did to me. I called myself the Antichrist because of it.

When I thought I was the ONLY one who got raped by a priest…once I came out and started raising my voice about this evil…I found there were tens of thousands of us. Then I found out what the leadership did to protect the rapists and not us. Then I found they continue to rape us and harm us by their actions against us.

They continue to deny us justice. They just wish we would shut up and go away. They insult us, denigrate us, call us faggots, say we enjoyed and wanted what happened to us. They call us liars and gold diggers. They say we should look at others whom do the same thing.

How can anyone with what I or others went through EVER hope to get any healing from this, hope to ever find it in our hearts to forgive those whom harmed us…when they continue to do this to us?

Whom do you think Jesus Christ is going to one day, heal our pain and wipe away our tears, take away the never ending nightmares we suffer from because what those whom called themselves priests, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops and even Popes did to cover this evil up? I have some hope with Pope Francis…we survivors had none with Pope Benedict.

This is my first communion. I am in the first row with my two brothers. My older brother Joe on the left of me, my twin brother Paul on my right.

I onced loved the RCC with all of my heart and soul. When I was a young boy taking my Catechism and doing my First Communion…I was hooked to the beauty and the mysticism and most of all…the love of God and Jesus Christ. That I just had the incredible honor of having my first Communion, of taking the Holy Body and Blood of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into me and that meant the world to me at that moment.

That was taken away from me in one night due to the perversities of a priest. Whom that night decided his vows he made to God, Jesus Christ and all of us did not matter, that his lusts mattered, and in that night…he took the soul, the faith and the life of a scared, young boy whom had just ran away from a foster home and thought the next day he was going to go to prison til he was 18 for it.

So when YOU PARISHIONERS hear us survivors of these crimes against us, speak out in anger, speak out in pain, speak out in horror about the evils done to us…do not condemn us…help us…help us heal from all of this suffering, all of this pain. Stand up for us. Stand up for your children. I know if you are true to the church…you have some God children. Remember the vows YOU TOOK…to protect and defend the life of this baby…with your very own if you need to.

If this is true to your heart and soul, if you took vows like these and you felt them burn within you…then do this again. Take the vow again to stand up and defend the Children of the Roman Catholic Church.

Help us heal our pain, help us heal our suffering. Help us.

Former Promoter of Justice for Congregation of the Faith Addresses Canon Law Society about Abuse Situation: For Whom Is Canon Law Designed?

From the blog: Bilgrimage
Link: http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2013/10/former-promoter-of-justice-for.html

In my previous posting, I referred to a report Fr. Thomas Reese has published at National Catholic Reporter regarding Bishop Charles Scicluna’s recent address to the Canon Law Society of America. Scicluna was previously the Promoter of Justice for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican. In that capacity, he was, as Reese notes, roughly the equivalent of the Vatican’s “chief prosecutor” for cases of clerical abuse in the Catholic church.

As I read what Scicluna has to say about how canon law addresses abuse cases, I’m struck by the following:

1. The emphasis of Scicluna’s reading of canon law (and this reflects the emphasis of canon law itself) is far and away skewed in the direction of protecting the rights and serving the needs of clerics–while the rights and needs of lay Catholics, and notably of lay Catholics abused by clerics, are only distantly addressed by canon law.

2. Scicluna notes that canon law envisages three ends in any process considering the guilt of a cleric: these are “reparation of scandal, restitution of justice and the conversion of the accused.” Only the second of these ends can in any way be said to address the needs of those abused by priests, and it does so only in a glancing way.

3. What’s very clear in Scicluna’s presentation is that canon law itself sees the primary problems in an abuse case as tamping down all reports that can lead to scandal and as “converting” the priest himself. Canon law has almost no room at all for considering the needs of lay Catholics who have been sexually abused by a priest, or for addressing the hurts and mending the injuries done to those who have been abused.

4. Scicluna makes three affirmations that, to my way of thinking, are mind-boggling, in that they cannot possibly hang together, and one cannot coherently affirm all three statements at the same time:

1. Pastoral leaders must find “the courage to tell victims to move on,” to stop creating “a persona out of being victims.”

2. “A tragic consequence of abuse is the loss of faith — a loss of faith in a God who is compassionate, merciful and loving. I have met victims who have renounced the faith as a consequence of what they suffered, and my attitude is silence and prayer.”

3. “The victims evangelize us.”

As I say, these three affirmations cannot possibly hang together. How is it possible for victims to evangelize us, when we tell victims that they must move on? How can someone who is not there evangelize the rest of us?

How can someone we’ve told to consider herself or himself as less than the rest of us, as an unworthy part of the body of Christ–Just move on–possibly evangelize any of the rest of us in the body of Christ? When we make people invisible, how do they retain the ability to evangelize us, to remind us of good news?

And so in what way does it make any sense at all to speak of victims renouncing “the faith,” when the faith itself clearly renounces them by informing them that they must move on, must stop being professional victims? There is, isn’t there, something egregiously evil about blaming those who are victims for their loss of faith when we ourselves–Just move on!–have created the conditions for victims’ loss of faith by treating victims of clerical sexual abuse as less than human?

What gives any human being the right to tell another human being suffering from childhood sexual abuse that it’s time to “move on,” to stop suffering, to shut up and get over it? Where does such astonishing hubris come from on the part of Catholic pastors and canonists, and how can Catholic pastors and canonists possibly imagine that they’re behaving pastorally when they engage in such hubristic, insensitive, cruel behavior?

As I wrote recently,

As long as we have bishops (with canonists who think as Rev. [Reginald] Whitt [of St. Paul-Minneapolis] does to advise them) who assume that their primary pastoral responsibility as bishops, bolstered by canon law itself, is to “save” pedophile priests while ignoring the needs of the people of God, we’ll continue to have dangerous priests placed by bishops in positions in which they’ll have access to minors. And we’ll have cover-ups.

The roots of the abuse crisis in the Catholic church begin with the very governing system of the church itself, and are inscribed in that governing system’s code of canon law, which creates a two-tiered system that allocates power exclusively to the ordained, and excludes the non-ordained from all governing power and from fundamental rights within the church. Until that deeply unjust system of governance, which is itself a recipe for abuse, is rectified, the abuse will continue. And it will continue to be covered up.

Catholic priest recalls fleeing after sex abuse confession

9/9/13 By Gillian Flaccus of Associated Press

From the link: http://news.msn.com/us/catholic-priest-recalls-fleeing-after-sex-abuse-confession?stay=1

This undated photo shows a man identified as Carlos R. Rodriguez on the “Megan’s Law” online sex offender registry maintained by the state of California. Rodriguez, 57, was a priest with the Vincentian order who confessed to molesting a 16-year-old boy in 1987. His confidential personnel file was released Monday, Sept. 9, in Los Angeles along with those of five other priests from three religious orders.

 

The Rev. Carlos Rodriguez’s account of his flight after confessing to molesting a boy was among files released Monday under the terms of a lawsuit settlement.

LOS ANGELES — The orders the Rev. Carlos Rodriguez got from his religious superiors after he confessed to molesting a 16-year-old boy just hours before were swift and decisive: Leave immediately. Check into a motel. Don’t tell anyone where you are going. Await further instructions.

Rodriguez, then 31, picked up cash and waited by the phone. The next day, the regional leader of his religious order called and told him to book a plane ticket out of state. By the time the victim’s family went to police, he had checked in at a residential treatment center for troubled priests in Maryland.

“I felt like a fugitive. But what else could I do under the circumstances. I had no other choice but to follow orders,” he wrote years later in an essay that was included in his Vatican petition to be defrocked.

The essay was part of a 303-page confidential personnel file on the priest that was released Monday along with files for five other priests who were also accused of molesting children while working for their Roman Catholic religious orders — the Vincentians, the Norbertines and the Augustinians — while on assignment in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Rodriguez’s file stands out because it includes a candid and detailed autobiographical account of his actions in 1987 and the steps his religious superiors took to shield him from the family and civil authorities.

The file also makes clear that officials with Rodriguez’s religious order, the Vincentians, and the LA archdiocese worked together to intercede. Both knew of Rodriguez’s confession, but no one spoke with police until the boy’s family filed a police report a month later, according to the file.

“The thing that Carlos Rodriguez does is, he lays out the truth, the underbelly, and exposes that for all that it is,” said Ray Boucher, a lead plaintiff attorney in the clergy litigation who secured the release of the files.

The religious order files are the second set to be released and more are expected in the coming weeks as religious orders comply with the final terms of a 2007 settlement with hundreds of clergy abuse victims in Los Angeles.

The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages under court order this year for its own priests, but the full picture of the problem has remained elusive without records from the religious orders, which routinely assigned priests to work in Los Angeles parishes.

Without access to Rodriguez, the police case dried up and the priest was back at work within seven months, where he molested two brothers. Rodriguez, who was defrocked in 1998, was convicted of that abuse 17 years later, in 2004, and sentenced to prison. He was released in 2008.

Now 57, he lives as a registered sex offender in Huntington Park, a gritty, industrial city southeast of Los Angeles. He has been accused of abuse in at least five civil lawsuits.

“It still weighs heavy on me,” Rodriguez, who wore a cross around his neck, said on Monday when reached at his apartment. “It’s nothing proud to talk about. I still feel remorse and it still hurts.”

The Rev. Jerome Herff, the Vincentian regional provincial who told Rodriguez to leave LA after his 1987 confession and placed him back in ministry the following year, said he urged him to leave because the boy’s family was irate and he feared for the priest’s safety. The treatment center, he said, was recommended by a law enforcement authority, although he declined to say who.

“I did what I thought was best and had to be done and what happened, happened,” Herff said in a brief phone interview. “I’ve lived with this for years and I just don’t want to go back there anymore.”

Rodriguez’s troubles began when he took two teenage boys on a trip to the Grand Canyon in 1987, roughly a year after he was ordained. The three checked into a Holiday Inn in Flagstaff, Ariz., and in his essay, Rodriguez wrote he began molesting one teen who was asleep on the floor.

The boy awoke and the novice priest, terrified at being discovered, drove nearly 500 miles through the night to deliver both teens to their families and immediately went back to his parish, where he took a shower and confessed.

The Vincentians sent him to the residential treatment center. While there, Rodriguez fretted in letters home about the “seriousness of the law in Arizona” that could get him up to 15 years in prison and asked the Vincentians for character references that would convince the Arizona prosecutor not to press charges.

When the family contacted the Los Angeles police a month later, Rodriguez’s superior told the investigating detective that the “church was aware of the situation and the defendant was currently hospitalized,” according to court papers.

The victim’s former attorney, Drew Antablin, said his client, who could not be reached for comment, was part of a larger settlement with the church in 2007.

After his release, Rodriguez was assigned to work for the archdiocese’s office of family life in Santa Barbara in 1988 and then to St. Mary’s Seminary in Santa Barbara. He took a leave of absence in 1993 after complaints of abuse surfaced again — but his superiors soon discovered he was saying Mass in a neighboring county in violation of his status.

In 1996, Rodriguez asked the Vatican to be defrocked and was exiled from the priesthood two years later.

In 2004, he pleaded guilty to molesting two brothers whom he met in 1988, just after his return to ministry. “He used his position in the church and used the victims’ faith as a weapon against them,” said Deputy District Attorney Anthony Wold, who handled that case. “It was outrageous and unforgiveable.”

Associated Press Writer Greg Risling reported from Los Angeles and Huntington Park, Calif.

Cardinal Roger Mahony defends legacy on church abuse in blog

Cardinal Roger Mahony defends legacy on church abuse in blog

2/2/13 By Gillian Flaccus

From the link: http://news.msn.com/us/cardinal-defends-legacy-on-church-abuse-in-blog

Cardinal Roger Mahony

On his blog on Friday, retired Cardinal Roger Mahony said he was ill-equipped to deal with sexually abusive clergy when he took over the archdiocese in 1985 and quickly sought to develop policies and consult with leaders in other dioceses.

LOS ANGELES — The public rebuke of retired Cardinal Roger Mahony for failing to take swift action against abusive priests adds tarnish to a career already overshadowed by the church sex abuse scandal but does little to change his role in the larger church.

Mahony can still act as a priest, keep his rank as cardinal and remain on a critical Vatican panel that elects the next pope.

While Archbishop Jose Gomez’s decision to strip Mahony of his administrative and public duties was unprecedented in the American Roman Catholic Church, it was another attempt by the church to accept responsibility for the abuse scandal that has engulfed it.

Victims were quick to point out that Mahony’s new, paired-down local standing was in stark contrast to his continued position among the prelates at the Vatican.

The decision “is little more than window dressing. Cardinal Mahony is still a very powerful prelate,” Joelle Casteix, the Western regional director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said at a Friday news conference outside the Los Angeles cathedral. “He’s a very powerful man in Rome and still a very powerful man in Los Angeles.”

The Vatican declined to comment Friday when asked if the Holy See would follow Gomez’s lead and take action against Mahony.

Tod Tamberg, the archdiocese spokesman, said Mahony was in Rome several weeks ago for meetings unrelated to Thursday’s announcement. He said he did not know if Pope Benedict XVI was aware of Gomez’s announcement.

The cardinal and Gomez both declined interview requests from The Associated Press.

In a letter to Gomez posted on Mahony’s blog Friday, the cardinal said he was ill-equipped to deal with sexually abusive clergy when he took over the archdiocese in 1985 and quickly sought to develop policies and consult with church leaders in other dioceses. He reminded Gomez that he was well aware when he took over in 2011 of the steps Mahony had taken to safeguard children.

“Not once over these past years did you ever raise any questions about our policies, practices, or procedures in dealing with the problem of clergy sexual misconduct involving minors. I have stated time and time again that I made mistakes, especially in the mid-1980s,” he wrote.

“Unfortunately, I cannot return now to the 1980s and reverse actions and decisions made then. But when I retired as the active Archbishop, I handed over to you an archdiocese that was second to none in protecting children and youth.”

Gomez’s public criticism is almost unheard-of in the highly structured church institution and would have been cleared by the Vatican in advance, said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer who worked for the Vatican’s Washington, D.C., embassy.

“He’s an archbishop — he cannot order a cardinal around,” said Doyle, who co-authored a 1985 report warning of a coming clergy sex abuse scandal. “The Catholic church is a monarchy. If you’re one of the princes of the realm and you’re a duke, you don’t dump on a prince without the king’s permission or you’re no longer a duke. That’s what the deal is.”

Gomez went as far as he could within this authority, but only the Pope has the power to sanction a cardinal or laicize him, he said.

Gomez made the announcement Thursday as the church was forced by a court order to turn over thousands of pages of confidential priest personnel files after a bruising, five-year legal fight. The archbishop also accepted a resignation request from one of Mahony’s top aides, now-Bishop Thomas Curry.

The move came two weeks after other long-secret priest personnel records showed Mahony and Curry, in particular, worked behind the scenes to protect the church from the engulfing scandal.

Mahony is a member of three Vatican departments, including the Holy See’s all-important economic affairs office, and he remains a member of the College of Cardinals. At 76, he is still eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.

The Vatican’s former sex crimes prosecutor, Bishop Charles Scicluna, has said Canon Law provides for sanctioning bishops who show “malicious or fraudulent negligence” in their work, but has acknowledged that such laws have never been applied in the case of bishops who covered up sex abuse cases.

In the past, lower-ranking members of the church hierarchy who have spoken out about their superior’s handling of the clergy abuse crisis have been rebuked by the Holy See.

In 2010, for example, Viennese Cardinal Cristoph Schoenborn criticized the former Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, in an interview for his handling of a notorious sex abuse case. Schoenborn didn’t use Sodano’s name in his critique, but was nonetheless forced to come to Rome to explain himself to the pope and Sodano.

The Vatican publicly rebuked Schoenborn, saying that only the pope has authority to deal with accusations against a cardinal.

The Vatican’s silence after Thursday’s announcement indicates they were aware of it, said Patrick Wall, a former Benedictine monk and priest and vocal church critic who consults on clergy abuse cases.

“Gomez was as brilliant as a sniper the way he orchestrated this because he did not overstep his authority against the Pope and yet at the same time it appears that some type of penalty is being imposed,” said Wall. “He cannot force Mahony to resign. It’s brilliant and this has never happened in the U.S.”

Mahony will reduce his public appearances, including numerous guest lectures nationwide on immigration reform, and no longer perform confirmations, Tamberg said. However, he remains a priest in good standing and will continue to live in a North Hollywood parish and can celebrate the sacraments with no restrictions, he said.

Several of the documents in the newly released files echo recurring themes that emerged over the past decade in dioceses nationwide, where church leaders moved problem priests between parishes and didn’t call the police.

Studies commissioned by the U.S. bishops found more than 4,000 U.S. priests have faced sexual abuse allegations since the early 1950s, in cases involving more than 10,000 children — mostly boys.

In one instance, a draft of a plan with Mahony’s name on it calls for sending a molester priest to his native Spain for a minimum of seven years, paying him $400 a month and offering health insurance. In return, the cardinal would agree to write the Vatican and ask them to cancel his excommunication, leaving the door open for him to return as a priest someday.

It was unclear whether the proposed agreement was enacted.

“I am concerned that the Archdiocese may later be seen as liable — for having continued to support this man — now that we have been put on notice that one of the young adults under his influence is suicidal,” a top aide wrote in a memo about the priest to Mahony in 1995, urging him to stop paying benefits to the priest.

The cardinal added a handwritten note: “I concur — the faster, the better.”

In another case, Mahony resisted turning over a list of altar boys to police who were investigating claims against a visiting Mexican priest who was later determined to have molested 26 boys during a 10-month stint in Los Angeles. “We cannot give such a list for no cause whatsoever,” he wrote on a January 1988 memo.

Mahony, who retired in 2011 after more than a quarter-century at the helm of the archdiocese, has publicly apologized for mistakes he made in dealing with priests who molested children.

Associated Press writer Shaya Tayefe Mohajer contributed to this report.

Catholic priest sentenced to 50 years for child porn

9/12/13 By Associated Press

From the link: http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/catholic-priest-sentenced-to-50-years-for-child-porn?stay=1

The Rev. Shawn Ratigan pleaded guilty in August 2012 to five counts of producing or attempting to produce child porn.

Prosecutors had asked that he get 10 years in prison for each of five victims after he pleaded guilty to five counts of producing and trying to produce child porn.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City-area priest whose child pornography case led to a criminal conviction against a Roman Catholic bishop was sentenced Thursday to 50 years in federal prison.

Prosecutors had asked that the Rev. Shawn Ratigan be sentenced to 10 years in prison for each of five young victims after he pleaded guilty in August 2012 to five counts of producing and trying to produce child porn.

Ratigan, 47, was charged in May 2011 after police received a flash drive from his computer containing hundreds of images of children, most of them clothed, with the focus on their crotch areas.

Bishop Robert Finn, head of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, was convicted last September of one misdemeanor count of failing to report suspected child abuse to the state.

Prosecutors said the diocese learned about the photos on Ratigan’s computer on Dec. 16, 2010, after a technician found them on the priest’s laptop and alerted church officials. A day after the images were found, Ratigan missed Sunday Mass and was found unconscious in his garage with his motorcycle running and a suicide note nearby.

Instead of reporting Ratigan or the photos to law enforcement, as required by state law, Finn waited until the priest was released from the hospital and sent him out of state for psychiatric counseling.

When Ratigan returned to Missouri, Finn ordered him to stay at the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist, a facility in Independence, where he could say Mass for the sisters.

The diocese turned the photos over to police in May 2011 after receiving reports that Ratigan had violated Finn’s order to avoid contact with children.