THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — "Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse in Dutch Catholic institutions over the past 65 years, and church officials knew about the abuse but failed to stop it or help victims because they feared sparking scandals, according to a long-awaited report released Friday. "
Brungard - Scandal avoidance is often cited to explain a coverup. It does not excuse the coverup. Those who cite it simply hope to mitigate their own conscience and or the social outcry that will follow with exposure. I propose a bit more sinister motive. Given such a large and powerful and wide reaching organization as the catholic church, and given the large number of employees given access to children; I must consider that some or many working to cover up acts of child sex abuse were trying to cover their own behavior by covering for others. I suggest this motive is often the case among and between so many employees and so many reported cases of child sex abuse, including rape.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — "The abuse ranged from "unwanted sexual advances" to rape, the report said. Abusers numbered in the hundreds, at least, and included priests, brothers, pastors and lay people who worked in religious orders and congregations. The number of abuse victims who spent some of their youth in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to the probe, which went back as far as 1945. The commission behind the investigation was set up last year under the leadership of former government minister Wim Deetman, who said there could be no doubt church leaders knew of the problem. "The idea that people did not know there was a risk ... is untenable," he said. Deetman said abuse continued in part because the Catholic church in the Netherlands was splintered, so bishops and religious orders sometimes worked autonomously to deal with abuse and "did not hang out their dirty laundry." However, he said the commission concluded that "it is wrong to talk of a culture of silence" by the church as a whole."
Brungard - A culture of silence is wrong? Deetman is trying to give the catholic church a pass with that statement. When considering reports in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Belgium the Netherlands and other countries have documented widespread cases of children suffering at the hands of Catholic clergy and others working at church institutions; can anything but a broad and far ranging institutional culture explain the findings?
How was the catholic church treating children during the inquisitions across Europe and of the Knights Templar across an even larger area? Inquisitors, secretly, used torture to obtain confessions and recantations and, publicly, burned alive those unbroken.
Biblioteca Pleyades - "Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with Church dogma must be burned without pity." - Pope Innocent III
The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical court and process of the Roman Catholic Church setup for the purpose towards the discovery and punishment of heresy which wielded immense power and brutality in medieval and early modern times. The Inquisitions function was principally assembled to repress all heretics of rights, depriving them of their estate and assets which became subject to the ownership of the Catholic treasury, with each relentlessly sought to destroy anyone who spoke, or even thought differently to the Catholic Church. This system for close to over six centuries became the legal framework throughout most of Europe that orchestrated one of the most confound religious orders in the course of mankind."
Brungard - Even tody, the catholic church claims to be the only true church. It still considers any other religious sect or organization or dogma to be heretical. I suggest that the only difference in catholic culture from inquisition to now is that the world no longer allows the church to toture people and burn them. So what of the children?
Read the AP report on Yahoo here
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