Inquiry into child abuse at Catholic institutions in Ireland

THROWERS EGGS COMMUNICATED

not if the eggs are halal xp

good work NickB

4.20pm:
BREAKING NEWS: The pope's astronomer would be willing to baptise an alien, he confirmed today. Brother Guy Consolmagno, who is speaking at the British science festival at Aston university, Birmingham, tomorrow, said any intelligent creature living anywhere in space should be recognised as one of God's children – "no matter how many tentacles it has".

Consolmagno, who was interviewed by John Crace for the Guardian in 2006, said he would not force the catholic faith on an extraterrestrial being, however.

Speaking to PA, the papal astronomer said any intelligent aliens living elsewhere in the universe should be considered God's children, no matter what they look like.

"Going back to the Middle Ages, the definition of a soul is to have intelligence, free will, freedom to love or not to love, freedom to make decisions," he said.

"Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul."

In an interview Consolmagno admitted to being a science fiction fan – which he said got him into astronomy – and said he would be willing to baptise an alien, but "only if they asked".

Consolmagno, whose appearance at the British Science Festival is unrelated to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit, said: "I'd be delighted if we found life elsewhere and delighted if we found intelligent life elsewhere..

"God is bigger than just humanity. God is also the god of angels."

lols

douglas adam lols

"Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul."

Has Paul der Orakel-Krake had an audience with the Holy Father yet? If he meets Bono, he'd meet anyone surely.

the vatican observatory is a totally amazing place btw. they run a summer school every year and it's basically the top 20 young astronomers in the world, and these people go on to do great things. so there's that. still, bunch of kiddy-fiddlers.

how many tentacles does god have, i wonder

http://www.salon.com/ent/comics/this_modern_world/2010/09/14/this_modern_world/story.jpg

Oh yeah, about those terrorists that were arrested: based on an overheard conversation that could be construed as a threat, no proof whatsoever has been found, police bracing themselves for when they let them in without charge. Expect "hey, we didn't chase them in plainclothes with guns and shoot them seven times in the head when they ran away this time, you should be grateful we've improved so much" excuses.

http://guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/17/pope-visit-terror-police-arrests-street-cleaners

For "in" read "go" (thx, phone spell help)

this roscommon incest/abuse/neglect case has me in bits. nasty, sinister links to right-wing catholic group preventing social wervices intervention. jesus it's too early to be reading this shit.

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/mother-from-hell-is-guilty-of-incest-1609693.html

“Article 41
1. 1° The State recognises the Family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of Society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.
2° The State, therefore, guarantees to protect the Family in its constitution and authority, as the necessary basis of social order and as indispensable to the welfare of the Nation and the State.”

cheers lads, thanks for that

… what are those rights supposed to be?

synopsised details/timeline here. detached but unpleasant reading, be warned.

how can anyone stand over this. 16 fucking years of it.

j. that vagueness would probably have been very deliberate.

there's vagueness and then there's absolute opacity.

what else are you supposed to do in roscommon?

gtfo out of roscommon. see 'worst irish county' thread for confirmation of that i guess.

worse case coming

god help me but i have a feeling this one, which apparently will be the nadir of irish state child protection revelations, involved kids that i went to school with.

A 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims' groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the church enforced a worldwide culture of covering up crimes by pedophile priests.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/01/18/world/europe/AP-EU-Ireland-Catholic-Abuse.html?_r=1&src=twt&twt=nytimes&pagewanted=print

documentary on creepy irish pedo-priest and the church that helped him

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7745088455537169028#

Is there a more general "The Catholic Church is a bunch of fucking perverts" thread?

Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries

Most of the abuse has occurred in Africa, where priests vowed to celibacy, who previously sought out prostitutes, have preyed on nuns to avoid contracting the Aids virus.

Confidential Vatican reports obtained by the National Catholic Reporter, a weekly magazine in the US, have revealed that members of the Catholic clergy have been exploiting their financial and spiritual authority to gain sexual favours from nuns, particularly those from the Third World who are more likely to be culturally conditioned to be subservient to men.

The reports, some of which are recent and some of which have been in circulation for at least seven years, said that such priests had demanded sex in exchange for favours, such as certification to work in a given diocese.

In extreme instances, the priests had made nuns pregnant and then encouraged them to have abortions.

The US article was based on five documents, which senior women from religious orders and priests have presented to the Vatican over the past decade. They describe a particularly bad situation in Africa. In a continent devastated by Aids, nuns, along with early adolescent girls, are perceived by some as safe sexual targets. The reports said that the church authorities had done little to tackle the problem.

The Vatican reports cited countless cases of nuns forced to have sex with priests. Some were obliged to take the pill, others became pregnant and were encouraged to have abortions. In one case in which an African sister was forced to have an abortion, she died during the operation and her aggressor led the funeral mass. Another case involved 29 sisters from the same congregation who all became pregnant to priests in the diocese.

I'm guessing if there is a general "The Catholic Church is a bunch of fucking perverts" thread this will already have been posted on it, but if not here is an amazingly wtf report on paedophilia in the church from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

http://mirandaceleste.net/2011/05/24/a-worthless-and-dangerous-report/

including the definition of paedophilia they're working with:

"Media reports about Catholic priests who sexually abused minors often mistakenly have referred to priests as pedophiles. According to the DSM IV-TR, pedophilia is characterized by fantasies, urges, or behaviors about sexual activity with a prepubescent child that occurs for a significant period of time. Yet, the Nature and Scope data indicated that nearly four out of five minors abused were at least eleven years old at the time of the abuse. Though development happens at varying ages for children, the literature generally refers to eleven and older as an age of pubescence or postpubescence (53)."

nah we ain't paedophiles we only have sex with eleven-year-olds.

ya but they're just sayin in fairness

damning reports released yesterday in relation to the systemic cover-up of abuse in the cloyne diocese in cork.

www.irishtimes.com will get the info if that's your thing.

In the US, some of the money the church collected ostensibly for charitable causes was diverted to their own legal defense. Beyond revolting.

nice to see the church taking it seriously at last

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/0718/breaking9.html

'Congregations are, undrrstandably, unclear as to why they should be held responsible for the costs of the Ryan Commission etc'

^ seriously

'despite warnings from the congregation...that the nature of the scheme (claims for compensation of abuse victims) would inevitably attract many more. Yet we, the religious are being held responsible for this miscalculation'

Fair enough lads, sorry that ye abused more kids than ye were letting on in 2002, our bad huh.

american churches also buy sex abuse insurance

are these fuckos really for real?

But Bishop Connors said not even revelations by Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson that 26 young men had killed themselves after being abused by priests and brothers in Ballarat convinced him that more would be learnt from an inquiry.
''I think we've learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate … [and] not appropriate behaviour,'' Bishop Connors said.
''I think people are very well informed nowadays as to what's inappropriate approaches from a male.''
While conceding the abuse of children was wrong, he said that in the past it had not always been clear to everyone what was inappropriate behaviour.
''In the past a lot of ignorance was there on the part of lots of people. Parents didn't understand, sometimes bishops didn't understand. We have no excuse now.''
As to whether there was an excuse when Ridsdale and Best were abusing boys, Bishop Connors said he did not know.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/suicide-inquiry-wont-shed-light-bishop-20110802-1i9yc.html#ixzz1VCEyRsHt

i think we're clear now, lads? Are we all clear now? Grand lads, we'll leave it at that so. Thanks lads.

Yes - he raped a nine-year-old in his office, and the boy thought he was going to die. His monstrosities spanned twenty years and he's hardly an isolated case, but that's all in the past now. We can't really live in the past.

Seriously how can some of these bishops sleep at night with the bullshit paving-over they do, they should read Luke 17:2 and then buy millstones in bulk

tbf they probably knew luke back-to-front when they were taking the exams, but cmon how often do you dip into yr sleevenotes from 'get your wings' nowadays?

This can't possibly be . . . I mean, can I just . . . what the everloving fuck?

The Catholic Church's leading exorcist priest asserts that a Vatican employee's daughter thought to be buried in a mob boss's tomb was kidnapped for Vatican sex parties, reports Nick Pisa of the Daily Mail.

Father Gabriel Amorth, who was ordained in 1954 and has carried out more than 70,000 exorcisms, made the claim to Italian newspaper La Stampa as police examine the contents of mobster Enrico De Pedis's tomb for clues about the 1983 disappearance of 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi.

Father Amorth, 85, noted that an archivist at the Vatican previously admitted to recruiting girls for parties and told La Stampa newspaper the he believes that Orlandi "ended up in this circle" and that the "case of sexual exploitation" led to her murder followed by "the hiding of her body," according to the Daily Mail.

Father Amorth also said that "diplomatic staff from a foreign embassy to the Holy See" were also involved.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/catholic-churchs-chief-exorcist-priest-says-missing-girl-kidnapped-for-vatican-sex-parties-2012-5?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29#ixzz1vbqavGLg

that is a lot of exorcisms even for 58 years

4 a day

he sounds nuts tbph

do the vatican even acknowledge/name exorcists?

Some of those exorcisms were probably pretty casual, just a quick flick of holy water, a "the power of christ compels you" and boom, off to the next one. You can hammer out a couple dozen a day.

i'd reckon he's counting multiple demons in a single host there too, there's a lotta fat in those figures for sure.

'legion, i cast thee OUT'

*enters '30' into ledger, snickers, heads for golf course*

Yes the Vatican appoints exorcists. It is an option for Catholics, generally a last resort. Skepticism regarding exorcism is acceptable, IME.

i know they appoint em, but i dunno do they ever get named or acknowledged (ie i'd be kinda sceptical about this guy being 'that exorcist priest everyone knows about')

Gabriele Amorth (born 1 May 1925) is an Italian Roman Catholic priest and an exorcist of the Diocese of Rome who claims to have cleansed tens of thousands of people of evil spirits. Controversially, he believes that practising yoga is satanic and that both it and JK Rowling's Harry Potter books lead to evil.

good start

In 1990, he founded the International Association of Exorcists and was president until he retired, at 75, in the year 2000. He is now honorary president for life of the association.[3]

Amorth's favorite film is The Exorcist. He thinks that it is substantially exact and based on a true story, although the special effects are exaggerated. In an interview with the London Sunday Telegraph that Father Gabriele Amorth stressed that "People need to know what we do.

yes, yes, go on

ps he only started exorcisms in 1986 nakh

What even more hilarious is how the even the comments section for that story devolves into an anti/pro Obama dust-up.

and JK Rowling's Harry Potter books lead to evil.

feeling this

Wow, I'm lost for words.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/23/cardinal-keith-o-brien-accused-inappropriate