The real target of California Senate Bill 131: The Catholic Church
Making the news recently is California Senate Bill 131, which seeks to open up a one year "window" in 2014 allowing anyone over the age of 26 to sue the Catholic Church for damages stemming from clergy sex abuse. Suits would be allowed even if the alleged activity took place many decades ago and even if the accused abuser is long ago deceased, thus making it nearly impossible for the Church to effectively defend itself in court.
Sound familiar? It should. California enacted the exact same measure a decade ago, which led to the Catholic Church in California paying out $1.2 billion in settlements because of the "window" year of 2003 determined by the state legislature.
Indeed, it was implicit a decade ago that California's temporary lifting of the statute of limitations was a one-time event that would give people who were abused decades ago a unique opportunity to come forward and collect damages. Yet cash-hungry contingency lawyers are at it again for a second round.
The real beneficiaries of SB 131
Contingency lawyer and
SNAP sugar daddy Jeff Anderson
After the record $660 million settlement in Los Angeles in 2007 (which was a direct result of the 2003 window), the jubilation among contingency lawyers was to the point that their celebration "looked like a frat party" with some lawyers "even chest bumping," according to one victim who witnessed the surreal scene.
Indeed, the notorious Church-suing lawyer Jeff Anderson, who funnels tens of thousands of dollars annually to the anti-Catholic group SNAP, has already set up a web site (along with Facebook and Twitter accounts) as a way to attract more clients in the event that SB 131 is passed.
Yet mainstream journalists like Powers go to great lengths to portray the Church's efforts opposing the outrageous bill as somehow nefarious and sinister. Meanwhile, they ignore the efforts of contingency lawyers like Anderson, who stand to bank millions if SB 131 is enacted.
Ignoring the elephant in the room
Ashley Powers : Los Angeles Times
And only months ago, LAUSD paid out $30 million dollars in settlements stemming from just some of the 189 abuse claims at only one elementary school.
Yet public schools are completely exempt from the wrath of SB 131, and the proposed law does nothing for those who were sexually abused years ago in California's public schools. Nothing.
In other words, SB 131 is a bill that sets one standard for the Catholic Church and another standard (nothing) for everyone else.
Yet while Powers makes a passing mention to the fact that public schools are exempt from SB 131, she makes absolutely no mention of the rampant abuse in Los Angeles schools going on today.
The bigotry and double standard are glaring, but apparently not to Powers and just about everyone else in the mainstream media.
Zealotry against the Church
A decade ago, contingency lawyers and anti-Catholic zealots surely thought that the 2003 window would lead to the bankruptcy and eradication of many dioceses in California.
Yet the fact that not all dioceses have been bankrupted is what seems to bother those who want to see the passage of the unfair SB 131 the most.
[We urge California readers to contact their local state representatives and ask them to vote "NO" on SB 131.]
[See also this excellent analysis of SB 131 by UCLA law professor Dr. Stephen M. Bainbridge.]
The two Cali-clown Dems that introduced the Bill are "interesting" characters; for intros:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Lara – this one is an "openly gay" proud product of the LAUSD system ('nuff said?).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Beall_(California_politician)- this one, a vegetarian (who looks like he ate the WHOLE Amazon forest) got a "special award" from Planned Parenthood.
Wouldn't be any personal axes a-grinding away here, now, would there?
Politician Beall is a left wing veggie and Lara is a homosexual radical.
Nice.
Delphin: You are right on. One further thing about Lara he is sponsoring a bill to take away the tax exempt status of the Boy Scouts because not allowing gay scout masters is not in tune with current "values". A good example of the gaystapo at work … agree with us or face punishment. It doesn't look good for churches who are not on board for gay marriage. One step at a time and there will be no religious freedom.
BTW – the CaliforniaTeachers Associate supports SB 131, too.
Good article. I know Jesus would have spent his time, money and reputation fighting people whose lives have been shattered by child molestation from getting access to the California courts. Kudos to The Media Report for finally giving us accurate reporting on this bill.
Steve, do you beleive in justice and fairness?
That is what thsi site is all about.
Good job to TMR for uncovering this outrage.
Shame on you Beall you bigot.
Why do you "think" gay people are child molestors?
You can't have a tax excempt status for people who discriminate. Churches shouldn't have tax excemption either. In other words the rest of society including gays are picking up part of the Boy Scouts and Religion's tax tab; The tab, that they aren't paying; and then they use the money they save to discriminate against us. Politically. Talk about a set up.
But the money the government spends on the military industrial complex could house and educate and provide health care to us all. Why are Americans so afraid of the rest of mankind that they cheat themselves to pay for a useless and valueless military. Is the boogy man gong to get us? Whose designated bogeyman this week? The Muslims, the commies, yourselves? If we can loathe and slaughter a population one year and then declare them are our best friends,allies, the next. Then we can go to "friends" and skip enemy entirely if we want to. I vote for wanting to. IMHO
I think this article touches on a vital aspect of the Stampede (the effort to reduce or weaken Statutes of Limitations is simply one part of the general effort to Keep The Ball Rolling).
By useful coincidence, The New Republic print edition for August 5, 2013 has a substantial article by Noam Scheiber entitled “The Last Days of Big Law” (pp.24-33). In this article the hardly conservative TNR reports on the extensive and intensifying complications and fears among lawyers that are arising from the end of the salad days that began in the 1980s.
So the tort attorneys (or ‘torties’ – why not?) are a major ‘interest’ among the congeries of interests that have come together to enable and sustain the Catholic Abuse Matter and the Stampede. And they themselves are now very much in need of Keeping The Cash Flowing.
Especially in California, a State so shockingly in debt that it is not inconceivable that the State government that may pass this Bill will no longer be in business at the end of the ‘one-year’ window.
The torties need to keep in business. And so do the State pols.
And for much the same reason, the Citizens need to be distracted. Because as the money runs out, and services and entitlements are reduced, Californians generally are going to be getting rather upset. What better solution for the sitting political class and its assorted abettors than to distract everybody with the specter of a slavering Catholic clergy (in the State that was the original site of the McMartin Pre-School Satanic Ritual Day-Care Abuse Trials thirty-plus years ago) and the piñata prospects of yet another ‘one-time-only’ window for anybody who feels they’d like to take a whack with a story from the (doubtless, nowadays) very very long-ago?
So because there are lawyers involved on a contingency fee; unaided victims shouldn't be able to claim damages for injuries that have occured?
Because they didn't make a race as it were ten years ago. A race to an artificially set deadline. Even when they have life long damage?
The kind of damages that the state has to pick up the bill for.? Alcholism, Drug abuse, suicides; murders; prison expenditures. ?
I know I'm just flapping my lips here but you really don't seem to be creating with TMR a groundswell of followers on this. Is it all back room deals? When are you going to have a demo?
D don't bother to address me you suggest criminal asault as a way for you to get your way. [edited by moderator]
Jim, you fail to address the exemption of public schools from this bill. That's what this post was addressing, along with the windfall for contingency lawyers. Why isn't SNAP holding press conferences in front of the LAUSD and other districts insisting that all abused children get their day in court?
Because cardinals; bishops and monsignors don't work in or control public schools; and they did not commit their felonies in public schools.
SNAP, church front though it is, calls itself a "survivors network of those abused by priests".
It tells you who it pretends to represent right up front. The truth is SNAP was created for all victims of the church to turn to so that we may be controlled by the church; and that SNAP might control what victims supposedly "want",by never asking them, and by becoming "survivors' "voice to the press and public. In other words the church became the "voice" of "survivors" to the world. How's that for a scam?
If public school victims want justice let them organize. Pointing out there are other abuses in other places does not let the church loose from it's responsability for it's own crimes.
You want to focus on the public schools to take the heat off what you've done.
Because cardinals; bishops and monsignors don't work in or control public schools; and they did not commit their felonies in public schools.
SNAP, church front though it is, calls itself a "survivors network of those abused by priests".
It tells you who it pretends to represent right up front. The truth is SNAP was created for all victims of the church to turn to so that we may be controlled by the church; and that SNAP might control what victims supposedly "want",by never asking them, and by becoming "survivors' "voice to the press and public. In other words the church became the "voice" of "survivors" to the world. How's that for a scam?
If public school victims want justice let them organize. Pointing out there are other abuses in other places does not let the church loose from it's responsability for it's own crimes.
You want to focus on the public schools to take the heat off what you've done.
Let those abused inpublic schools: fight their fight.
If your side had put victims first you,
A) would have less victims to compensate.
and B) would have no scandal in the first place because your hierarchs would have done the right thing in the first place; but that just didn't happen. Did it?
David, as always you are on the frontlines of service to the Church and to the truth with this post, and it is much appreciated. This shakedown needs to be exposed for what it is. Something Fr. MacRae wrote on These Stone Walls recently makes a fine companion piece to your post. The title was "The Shakedown of the U.S. Catholic Church."
As you know, he is in a place where frauds and shakedowns are the daily stuff of life. He has come to know them when he sees them, and so have you. Thank you.
Regarding the ‘Steve Cantrell’ comment:
First, we don’t know whose lives have been “shattered by child molestation” and whose lives have not. That is precisely the utterly indispensable and primary problem exacerbated by these Statute of Limitations windows.
Second, the fact that TMR is pointing this out (supported, I add, by the links to law professor Bainbridge’s law-journal article discussing the SOL-‘window’ issue) is indeed “accurate reporting”. The fact that TMR does not simply indulge in the usual presumptions and tropes that have fueled this whole Stampede since the McMartin days may irritate ‘Steve Cantrell’ but that is an entirely different matter.
Third, at this point in time (as opposed to thirty years or a quarter-century ago) there has already been enough time for persons to ‘come forward’ into a hospitable (to say the least) public and legal atmosphere. It has already been half-a-decade since the 600-plus million dollar, 500-plus Plaintiff case in LA – which gave about as much ‘hospitable’ atmosphere (and promise of sugar-plums) as anybody could reasonably expect.
Fourth, this WWJD (‘what would Jesus do’) bit – so popular among evangelical and fundamental types – doesn’t quite work. Jesus set forth principles, in a short, unorganized ministry that was for its entirety a small-group and ‘outsider’ operation. To try to specifically apply his maxims and principles to the Church as it has evolved over the ensuing millennia, and especially in as highly dubious and conflicted an issue as the Catholic Abuse Matter, is simplistic and conceptually off-base from the get-go.
Further, Jesus dealt with life-principles for individuals, not organizations. WWJD would be more clearly applicable to individuals who got themselves involved in as stunningly conflicted an issue. Would ‘Jesus’ have approved the Jeff Anderson and torties’ strategic shenanigans as outlined in Michael D’Antonio’s book? Would ‘Jesus’ have disapproved of an effort to defend oneself from false-witness and from incomplete or mis-applied thinking? He certainly never shrank from engaging in vigorous and pointed debate with those who sought to trip Him up with slyly-calculated stratagems.
As I have often said, this Catholic Abuse Matter – like post-WW2 Pentagon domestic political strategy – has always appealed to a broad carnival of ‘interests’ – political, media, professional (the torties), religious and anti-religious, victimists, and the generally oppositional types reminiscent of Brando’s character in The Wild One (if memory serves: What are you rebelling against? - Whaddya got?). This Matter and the Stampede it has created have rewarded each of those ‘interests’ and interest-groups with something they very much want and like to have or to get. The more you spread the bennies around, the more support for the overall program and plan and operation.
And as I said: the more difficult the financial times become, the more attractive the possibilities for persons who are in need of cash and the easier it will be for the governing political and societal interests to distract a potentially disaffected Citizenry from the very failures of their elites (which failures, in California nowadays, are becoming harder and harder to hide or spin-away).
Why don't you ask the church's insurance companies and the hierarchy itself; which and how many of us victims are telling the truth? Wouldn't they be better equiped to answer that question.? Particullarly since you don't believe what we victims say.
If telling you the truth is seen by you as a "slyly-calculated strategem" What then is lying? The moral highground?
I wonder if "Jesus would have singled out the least of the offenders, and also not forgiven them even after their very public penance, thereby supporting a full-blown persecution; and I wonder if Jesus would have promoted the state's interests by covering up ongoing evils against minors in/by the government education system"? Nah, I doubt it.
Every thing we need to know about the morality of Cali political leadership (and sadly too much of the population) and their media lackeys is all neatly rolled up in this legislation.
Here's hoping their looming bankruptcy comes sooner rather than later, perhaps it'll finally snap them out of their 60's hangover.
The Church also needs to do what they didn't do the first time around (their second biggest failing in this matter has been their inability to effectively respond to their politicized critics and persecutors) on this nonsense- it is past time to invoke their Constitutional protections against just this sort of illegal governenment action.
Outrageous. The entire state of California is called in effect "persecution ready" because they might legislate what you refuse to do: compensate your own injured.
"Run for the catacombs girls, here comes the Californians."
For perspective, here is a case of real pedophilia and minor sexual abuse as opposed to the majority of the Chuch clerical abuse claims (which were largely homosexuals [age of consent, aside] "acting out")-
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/11-year-old-girl-marry-me-off-ill-kill-myself/
Who will she sue? Where are the "torties' (good label, Publion) lining up on her behalf?
When will the mosques, here and abroad, be held accountable for their religions' support of and promotion of these truly heinous (not politically manufactured) crimes?
Regarding the irresponsible and idiotic claim that anyone promoted or supports "criminal assault", as usual, the leftists "imagination" took over any logic. The Amendments that seem to apply within the context of a Supreme Court review, which are the basis for my comment pertaining to Constitutional protections, are the 1st, 6th and 14th.
But, isn't this a perfect example of the "so-far-left they're hanging off the left edge of the planet" illogic, duplicity and hype that defines them and their astoundingly failed philosophy.
So far as the typical marathon "run to Jesus" the lefty atheists (mostly) regularly undertake to support the lies, distortions and thievery required to persecute the Church, a little more praying to Jesus for conversion and mercy, and a lot less reliance on Him to support your chicanery would be better for you in the here and now, and most certainly later in the hereafter.
That's a small c, your highness.
You know I've heard how evil and stupid and failed, left thinking is . But we've been listening to the right since the Ronnie. And though that may have improved the 1%'s lot; the rest haven't been doing so well. And you say more free markets , the same "free market" that has cost the American tax payer 3 Trillion dollars.( Lot's of free there) Well I'm glad it's working for somebody but at what price?
Would Jesus support tort attornies?( Seems a rather odd question on many levels. Every year there's a "Red Mass" celebrated for the legal community in L.A.. I guess the church supports tort attornies when they donate money but doesn't when they have to be paid money.)
Would Jesus support hierarchical hostility towards the people, that clerical class within the the church, had injured? That might be the more moral question.
Or "Why has child abuse reached such an epidemic number?"that:
A) The vast number of claiments could "bankrupt" the church.
B)That "Financial bankruptcy" (Talk about being "unproven") is judged to be more "important" an issue than immediately compensating the harmed individuals.
and finally C) That such a contention should somehow demand your attention at all when there are real victims, who are really harmed.
Maybe the question should be: Are there only emotional and moral cripples left in the church these days?
How a "person" can constantly bring up "persecution" after everything they've said regarding violence being a solution to their problems? Is beyond me.
" the least of the offenders"????? What does that mean? Let's forgive the one time offenders? When will you forgive the victims for telling you we were victimized? You attack us more than you've ever attacked the perps and their enablers. [edited by moderator]
"And for much the same reason, the Citizens need to be distracted. Because as the money runs out, and services and entitlements are reduced, Californians generally are going to be getting rather upset. What better solution for the sitting political class and its assorted abettors than to distract everybody with the specter of a slavering Catholic clergy…."
Rather chilling similarities to the current Catholic (and Christian) persections in the US (and abroad, generally) that mirror the early phase of those same "politically-lofty" justifications in Hitler's Germany (as it was coming out of the Weimar daze) scapegoating of the Jews, gypsies and Catholics.
The US, since the sickness of the sixties, is also eerily mirroring the Roman Empire just prior to it's self-inflicted demise (death by bloated, lazy and corrupt [Socialist] government).
No wonder we're seeing Constitutional protections and rights being suspended or abused all around us, and a stockpiling of ammo (and coffins, and "camp" lands), as well as federal martial law provisions being revamped.
"Oh no, 'it' could never happen here", decry the leftists. You may continue to cling to your "statism", I'll continue to cling to my Bible… and ALL of my Constitutional rights, protections and obligations.
Now comes JR with an attaboy for the torties. And why shouldn’t he? Torties been “bery bery good to him” – despite his prior plaints about the size of the share they took out of his cut – from that case that surfed the last ‘window’, by amazing coincidence.
The spin here is that the still-undeclared ‘victims’ didn’t “race” to the attorneys’ offices a decade ago during the last once-only ‘window’. With the passage of a decade, during which persons under present legal usage and CA could still have gone to a tortie if they wished, the possibility has only intensified that persons choosing to involve themselves are looking for a whack at the piñata, since there is even less chance that any possible priest they choose to name is alive or still sentient. And the very passage of yet another one-time-only ‘window’ will have signaled to them that the California political and media elites will back them in their quest.
And once again, the “life-long damage” trope. But i) we will not really be able to know if they ever were ‘abused’ in the first place in the long-ago (there don’t seem to be many new or ‘current’ allegations, curiously).
And ii) there is no way – if you buy the usual Stampede tropes – of knowing if a person who now comes forward loaded with various dysfunctions and issues (characterological as well as physical or emotional) isn’t simply playing-out issues s/he had even before any ‘abuse’ took place. Readers are invited to take a look at the Billy Doe material (on the BigTrial site) and see if one can actually determine whether he is a lovely little boy utterly derailed by ‘abuse’ or whether he is simply a life-long scammer who saw a) an easy way to get paid well for his story (or stories – there are so many variants) and b) also receive an all-solving and all-absolving excuse for being the way he is (and quite possibly shall for the rest of his earthly life remain).
So too then the State may well have had to pick up the tab for any such person’s problems – but with the Stampede ‘window’ the (frighteningly cash-strapped) pols can now pawn off the cost on the Church while simultaneously claiming that they have struck another blow at the sex-abusive religious racket of Catholicism (while, of course, leaving the public schools untouched) and giving the politically influential torties a new lease on their fading salad-days.
Which – when you come to think of it – is a sly gambit: rather than admit that their secular wonderland has now failed because they have run its finances into the ground and thereby allow the Church to step in with her historical charities to try to pick up the slack, the pols can tap the Church while simultaneously keeping up the appearance that their secular wonderland is and always has been right and successful; the Church won’t be asked to take up the slack – she will be tapped like a piggy-bank and whacked like a criminal piñata at the same time.
And no doubt there is a quiet hope that when election time rolls around, the hopefully enriched ‘victims’ will remember who rigged the lottery for them.
To what sort of mentality does something like this seem like a really really great and good idea?
And just what "truth" is it that JR is always "telling" us here? So far everything asserted seems to melt like ice cream under a klieg light as soon as one looks closely at it. But notice the gambit: if you focus on the implied victimization (i.e. JR is a disrespected 'truth-teller' – focus on the disrespect and be very very outraged) then you miss the key point: identifying just what "truth" JR claims to be "telling". Neat.
This is just a little backwater. Where are the throngs? Did the hypnotized kids all go to Brazil? Bring out your throngs and kick a few gongs around while your at it.
Let's see more of you, publicly. I think the rest of the World needs to hear what you have to say.
How can I help to make you louder?
No longer a backwater. but a Mississippi.
You guys need to grab a board and get out there and catch that wave. You can do it.
So you finally admit to being disrespectful to victims who've posted here. We noticed it as it occurred believe me. And I admit I returned the favor ten fold when I could. Whether it was posted or not's another matter. A big strong sailor like you cringing at expletives that were never written in the first place. I haven't described you or D with an expletive for a long while now. I don't write to be edited, You do have an imagination.
You won't quit being disrespectful will you?
Again I'll ask: if a cardinals car hit another vehical injuring that vehical's passengers; would there be such tsuris (trouble) about compensation and restoration? Oh hell no!
Your church is outraged that the children they harmed have talked about it publicly. We were "supposed" to keep the secret. So that the church could look good to the world.
How about doing good? Instead of posturing as "good".
Why haven't you done the right thing from the begining? Why aren't you doing the right thing by victims now?
You have fought us tooth and nail with lies and subtrafuge (SNAP); not because we are dishonest but because you are dishonest.
And you think you'll get "by" with this because your church is so used to having it's way.
Those days are over.
Oh Good Grief, not, yet, another great TMR article that's going to "get lost" as it's selfishly used to play the "….what about ME,ME,ME,ME…." perpetual whining and gaming of an antiCatholic bigot, Communist, atheist malcontent.
It's probably occurred to some observers here to just cave in and give this child more candy ("holy-loot"?) – just enough to rid the blogs of this perennial pestulance. Perhaps, that is the strategy?
Back to the TMR article, I wonder if it has dawned on the left-coast geniuses that the precedent they set with this legislation could be set upon them by their political opposition (aka the "sane")? I guess the lefty-liars are not too worried that their opposition would use the same dishonest and illegal tactics since their opposition actually have morals?
I would like to see a brave msm journalist (anybody out there?) present an analysis for the dull-masses (their readership) that applies this insane legislation to their precious protected classes, aka, enslaved Democrat constituents.
This signing of this bill by Governor Pot-head will be a profoundly divisive and destructive precedent for America, and it is straight out of Rules for Radicals – Alinsky would be so proud of his minions.
I think the world should hear your point of view. That's what I want for you.
. You need more feedback.
Sorry about my misspelling "vehicle".
JR’s comment of the 25th at 702PM is so vague that I am not sure whether it is in response-to or prompted-by my question in my comments of 253PM or is simply just another rant prompted by an undigested bit of beef or something else.
But I will go on the presumption that it is somehow prompted by my question of 253PM and proceed from there.
First, in response to a short and clear question that would require JR to actually make a coherent answer, we get a vague disquisition that fails to rise to a rant only because there are no delete-able expletives.
Second, it seems clear that direct questions somehow derail his preferred processing of material, resulting in these oddly unfocused (if not – thankfully – overly agitated) ramblings.
Third, these ramblings yet take the form of curt admonitions from the Heights of Advice to us benighted groundlings below.
Fourth, what substance do we get? What is “this” that is “just a little backwater” lacking “throngs”? Does this refer to California? Or to the US itself? Or to the TMR site? Or something else?
And what does it mean to “bring out your throngs and kick a few gongs around”? Is the reference here to the old slang for smoking opium? (The rhyme possibilities of “throngs” and “gongs” seem to be trying to get off the ground here but the effort doesn’t quite succeed.)
In “let’s see more of you, publicly” is he somehow recalling his own single media-ploy at the LA cathedral? If so, of what relevance is the reference to the material here? Is he somehow – inchoately, for whatever reason – trying to say that his media-ploy gives his material some sort of authority that requires it to be listened-to and agreed-with?
And the remainder of the comment simply trails off into increasing incoherent one-liners that make use, magpie-like, of this or that word or image (“backwater”, surfing) that yet aren’t clearly explained in terms of their use here in this comment.
And – the bottom-line here – no actual response to the question: What “truth” is JR telling? But this could be sly in its way – because, after all, his only “truth” consists in the various victim-stories that have never been clearly demonstrated (indeed it is precisely their failure to be demonstrated that contributed so much to the Stampede in the first place).
It is possible – but who can really say? – that “Mississippi” refers to that State as it was in the pre-civil-rights era, thus that the Church is somehow characterized as the Jim Crow South. But if that is the case, then notice how vaguely this supposedly courageous and forthright firebrand hides and masks his actual intention – perhaps so that he can’t be held responsible for what he says or implies. This would be sleazy if it is intentional; although possibly it is simply further indication of conceptual incapacity.
In a bong-drenched 1960s surfing image – rather trite in light of the seriousness of the topics on this site – we are then encouraged, apparently, to become more vividly and actively involved in Great Events in the World … as, but of course, JR is. Which simply serves to strengthen the impression that we are receiving messages from the sun-porch of a secure facility.
Thus, overall, no answer but rather a rambling and vague tissue of wackness to the general effect that since we are not involved in Great Things then we don’t get to ask the Great Ones (JR, if you haven’t made the desired connection) any questions. While this position might flow from a personal disposition to the Napoleon-hat (or Wig), there can be no doubt that the Stampede officially put the direct-questioning of allegators off-limits and JR – being thus blessed and enabled by that free-pass – intends to dine-out on that scam in the service of Keeping That Ball Rolling.
That being said, a quick review of JR’s comment of 1019AM on the 25th.
The attorneys’ traditional Red Mass is an effort to remind Catholic attorneys of the ideals and responsibilities of their calling. JR’s “guess” is there to be taken for what it is.
We are precisely still not sure where the line can be drawn in this matter of “hierarchical hostility” towards those whose genuine victimhood remains to this day an unresolved question. If JR has the solution for accurately resolving this problem, then let him share it. But he doesn’t; he simply has the Stampede’s solution: believe the stories and allegations completely because … well, just because.
Jesus – again with this WWJD bit – rather clearly establishes in the Gospels that He won’t put up with untruth and slyly-calculated stratagems and pretextual confrontations.
While “child abuse” (however defined) may have reached the status of “epidemic”, it is the Stampede – carefully crafted to sidestep precisely the legal system’s safeguards for establishing truth and actuality – that has opened up an almost examination-free path for what amounts to a free-for-all rush to get to the piñata and grab some goodies.
Thus financial concerns for the solvency of the Church are justifiable, especially in light of the fact that nobody actually knows who and how-many were “harmed”. For that matter, if we were to conduct a study of the extant allegations and the compensatory outcome of each allegation, then would it not become clear that most of those allegations have indeed been compensated? (An outcome specifically calculated by the multiple-plaintiff strategy as practiced so well by Jeff Anderson – which “been bery bery good” to JR, among so many others). The entirety of JR’s position depends on everybody going along-with the Stampede insistence that there is no difference between a genuine victim and a person otherwise-classifiable; once that Oz-like smokescreen is brushed away, he is left with little if anything to stand on.
As far as the question about whether there are “only emotional and moral cripples left in the church these days”: a) people in glass houses … ; b) if being thus a “cripple” is to be judged merely on the presumption that all victims are genuine, then the fact that nobody actually knows how many genuine victims there are thus rather substantially alters the chemistry of the question.
Although in noting that I am not implying that I am totally satisfied with the present and past composition of the hierarchy.
Lastly, but in regard to the role of the Church and the hierarchy in this-world, I invite readers to consider this article (link at the end of this comment), an assessment of Pius XII’s role concerning the Third Reich.
There is a quote from one Georgy Chicherin, Soviet foreign minister in 1925, who opined that “communism would defeat capitalism, but the church might indeed endure and prevail against all secular ideologies”. Chicherin went on to observe that “Rome will prove a harder nut to crack. If Rome did not exist, we would be able to deal with all the various branches of Christianity. They would capitulate before us. Without Rome, religion would die.”
The current approach of the American government is as “secular” an “ideology” as the Soviet approach. (And California’s, on top of that, is one of the marquis sites of that current American government approach.)
But on a more theological level, I think that the Crucifixion serves to indicate precisely the challenge posed to humanity: we are literally “nailed to” our human-ness, its shortcomings and weaknesses. When Lincoln said that “we cannot escape history” there lay under that awareness the fact that we cannot escape our own humanness that participates so fundamentally in the history that we make.
The Crucifixion provides a vivid expression of what we as humans face: the reality and the challenge of our weaknesses and failures.
In her human dimension, the Church – the human vessel commissioned to embody and signify the presence of God and the work of God in the world – is as crucified to humanness as any other human enterprise. I suppose – if one wanted to be a bit snarky as, say, a European of an earlier age might be – one could go so far as to say that God willed Himself to be crucified to the Church … and sustains that decision throughout human history.
Which places a tremendous responsibility on the Church.
But also an assurance of God’s sustaining assistance to the Church and to humanity.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/not-hitlers-pope/
Oh if religion would only die. It's a Frankenstien monster.made up of bits and bobs of other lies.
Example: the fact that archelogical digs have shown the Jews were never in Egypt. No Exodus. No residue for 2 million people trucking around the desert for 40 years. No just imaginings by later classes in order to build legends of faith and national strength. No slaughter of the first borns no magical miracles nothing.
And the bible? All fairy tales. No powerful Israel. No David and No Solomon. Why do bible archeologists know this? No ruins of Solomon's temple or palace for one. No remains in an area of the world where ruins, thousands of years older than Solomon's time, are there to be seen.
That was when the media was religion. (You might want to think of the bible both old and new testaments as the Fox "News" channel of it's era. Billy O'Reilly as Moses another non existant character.)
The oldest documentation for the gospels goes back only to the 3'd century and there were many other gospels: Thomas; Mary Magdelene; even the gospel of Judas were at the time used by early christians but never made St. Jerome's editing. And still it's a mass of contradictions. And they were all written in Greek; hardly a language known to Gallilean fishermen.
Look it up yourselves.
I want the public and press to hear what you have to say and how you say what you do.
I would love for the bright light of public attention to hit your backwater musings. What a revelation that could be.
The reference to Mississippi was to the river. I could have added" become a Niagara. A cataract of protests against your victims claiming damages. If one follows your logic you should be suing all of us. I think the press and public might have something to say to you about such "thinking".
So of course I want the world to see what you have to say. I can hardly wait.
But you don't seem to be pulling much of an audience for such an effort. Let alone comrades. comrade.
What I am is a human being.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/26/detroits-city-council-spends-time-weighing-in-on-zimmerman-case-puts-motor-city/
This is what motivates Motown in the heat of their city's bankruptcy collapse?
And, this is why blue states (and municipalities) are being abandoned by the tax base for red state governance (see US 2010 Census: US Dept. of Commerce, US Dept of Transportation demographic projections through 2025), which is based upon free market principles.
Racists come in all colors, genders, sexual "preference" [gee, and here I thought they were BORN THAT WAY], religions, and economic classes – just as do all bigots. Such is the case of those persecuting the Catholic Church, which are usually defined by whichever "protected class" they belong, and who rely for their taxpayer-funded entitlements as their sole income.
Church booty is now considered as fair game in the lefts entitlement category. Its how they supplement funding for their bling, bang, drugs and prostitutes.
As the taxpayers and other productive and lawful citizens of Chicago, Philly, Detroit and most of Cali and the northeast abandon their homes to the entitlement class, the debt will only increase, along with crime and so the collapse of America society and culture proceeds on course, per Alinsky.
But, our Church will never abandon her faithful, she wll remain to help them rebuild their lives with Jesus at the helm, as she has done for thousands of years.
It couldn't be the giganteous military budget could it? 6 times the rest of the world's military budgets combined. Over 170 military bases around the world to do what? Protect us from events like 9/11? Well that worked well. So worth the money spent.
Or the invasion of Iraq perhaps? Completely necessary. "Shock and Awe" indeed! Those little right wing choices were so helpful to America's economy; weren't they?
Wow! Your wall street and your banks create a fraud the destroys trillions of dollars of innocent peoples' wealth world wide and you blame the left for this? Completely amazing!
So now us commies control the wealth of the world? I must have missed that memo.
And don't pretend the government forced the banks to make crappy loans. The banks did that themselves, They found they could make money either way. Whether the people won or lost in the great capitalist lottery. And the investment raters passing bundled morgages off as A in vestments when they were in fact C or D investments. Fraud. That was all done by the leftys huh? I did not know that. LOL!
Let us not enter into that world of things that “amaze” JR – I expect that to be a universe far too large for the average mind to comprehend.
If I might mention a few points, though, in regard to his comments of 1201PM:
The banks and the entire F.I.R.E sector (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) were increasingly given free rein by the Beltway over the course of the past 40 years. This period corresponds rather closely to the period that began about 1970, when the US was no longer the only large and functioning industrial economy in the world (given the destruction of potential competitors’ economies and productivity in WW2, from which they began to recover a quarter-century later, in 1970).
After the Democratic Party realized to its collective horror that LBJ’s various civil-rights initiatives and his ‘Wars’ on poverty and so forth would destroy the Dems’ New Deal electoral coalition (Northern industry and immigrant cities, Southern Jim Crow) forged by FDR 30 years before, and since they had been watching since 1948 that as more and more Americans entered the middle-class they were tending to vote Republican, the Party decided to forge or even create entirely new demographic groups to create a new and workable demographic coalition. (See Democratic thinker – and California lawyer – Frederick G. Dutton’s 1971 book Changing Sources of Power: American Politics in the 1970s, that proposes precisely the plan to create the ‘revolutionary’ Identities of Identity Politics; he specifically named Blacks, Women, Youth, and Immigrants but the list has grown). Seeking to avoid missing this new demographic-electoral bus, the Republicans abandoned their East-Coast moderate wing and tried to embrace the same strategy – thus beginning the intensifying erasure of any meaningful distinction between the Parties and even leading to Gerald Ford’s witless burbly channeling of Mao in the ’76 election: America is a country that can have many revolutions, all at the same time.
But as the industrial and productive hegemony of the US continued to ebb away – and in the 1980s and 1990s was actually spun as a good thing in light of globalization and the new role of the US as the world’s presumptive reserve-currency and chief paper-shuffler of world economic activity – then the F.I.R.E sector increasingly became the primary reliable source of economic generativity. The government – desperate for cash to fund its numerous entitlements granted liberally back in the LB days when it still seemed that the US would forever remain the world’s richest and most productive economy – began to kowtow to that sector, increasingly de-regulating it, leading thus during Clinton’s administration to the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932, which then opened up the path for the housing and mortgage Bubbles that collapsed in 2008, less than a decade later.
Had that Act not been repealed, it would have been much more difficult for banks and the entire F.I.R.E sector to pull off the shenanigans they did (and still do). And thus the government wound up indenturing itself to both the very-wealthy and the disadvantaged (those ‘junk mortgages’ were sold primarily to this group).
But for decades the government has had to enmesh itself with increasingly dodgy fiscal and financial strategies in order to keep the cash – or, more recently, the appearance of cash and wealth – flowing and continue the illusion that the US is a productive and healthy and wealthy economy and its currency rock-solid. Should the world’s other economies decide not to conduct business using the Dollar as the basic denomination – and some regions’ governments are already doing that on a local scale – then this final Bubble of the Dollar’s supremacy will burst as well. Nor have the mainstream media been very effective at exploring this precarious situation.
So JR’s sashay into economic history – about which he has indeed demonstrated that he doesn’t know much – remains (surprise, surprise) yet another Cartoon.
Bringing all this to TMR-related focus, I would say that the government has become very adept at creating and sustaining illusions over the past few decades – far more than anybody would have imagined possible in the pre-1970 period.
The Catholic Abuse Matter and Stampede – built so largely on undemonstrated stories – thus takes its place as yet another national-level illusion (or Illusion) spun and sustained for the convenience of various interests. We have become a society increasingly unable to really distinguish Illusion from Reality.
And in a complex, modern, government-heavy society, there is nothing good about the government itself working to create and sustain nation-wide Illusions. And with the media mostly compliant and collusive in the whole thing.
The Church has not only stood against various Identities’ demands to the extent that particular demands have required the derangement of the culture’s and the polity’s foundations, but also has stood for a certain Vertebracy in an era when Invertebracy (spun as flexibility and a healthy un-structuredness) has become the government’s ‘philosophy’ of choice.
In this overall context, the Stampede of the Abuse Matter figures greatly as a way for the elites to overcome the last great institutional obstruction to their carrying-on a Game that has already brought the country and the culture into dark places indeed and will quite possibly continue to do so with increasing intensity.
But I add, as always, that the Church – hierarchy, clergy, laity – must understand and must face-up-to the reality of all this, and strengthen their commitment and the quality of their witness to the Faith accordingly.
Well you almost have me agreeing with you about some things but it isn't Gerald Ford playing Mao. I must have missed that.
I didn't "sashay" into anything, darling.
At the age of 66 I've lived through the economy you write about. I agree completely that Clinton was an evil jerk because of the removal of Glass Stegall. He betrayed the working class of this country with NAFTA too.
But what did the right wing obsess on during that time? None of that. They were outraged about oral unmarried sex in the White House. Now that was what was important? Who cares? None of anybody's business but the people involved.
Don't you think Blacks and Women and the young and Immigrants, and Gay people ( naturally you'd leave us out) don't you think all those groups needed and still need a liberation from the oppression used against them, systemically, in this country?
25% unemployment for young blacks. Student loans to be paid back even when there are no jobs. Women earning 63 cents on the dollar compared to men doing the same work. Gay's fighting to be married so we can show you we are as dumb and boring as the next guy. Gay's fighting to join America's Imperial Armed Forces so they can go and kill strangers in their own countries and come back basket cases,just like the straight Americans do.
That's liberation?
Not in my book.
Not many victories yet for the 99% on this planet.
But people on the whole have made changes. quantum leaps in figuring out the system and who it's built for and who it works against.IMHO
Why should the catholic Church worry so much about this Bill or others like it across the country if the catholic church is doing everything possible to assist those individuals abused by their clergy ?
I will admit you will have some of those who will come out of the woodwork to collect even though they have not been abused, but why should that be any concern of mine or anyone else ? The Catholic Church once again has deserved everything that is and has happened to them.
If the Catholic Church in California has $70,000 to block this bill from being passed and the Archdiocese in Philadelphia has 6 million dollars to defend one of their convicted clergy members it seems to me there is enough funds floating around to pay restitution to the children now adults who have been harmed.
In closing, I think it is very sad that everyone who posts here and on other sites are more worried about the catholic church. You forget the church is only a brick and mortar building, i have never seen one word spoken about worrying about the catholic faith. A faith that continues to dwindle each and every day.Why ? Because of the actions of your clergy members, and the actions of your leaders who thought it best to try and sweep everything under the rug until there was no more room to sweep.
How could i or anyone else who have left ever return ?
I will use the words of a father of a child who took his own life after being abused by a clergy member and requested by Archbishop Chaput to return," NO THANK YOU, I will find my salvation elsewhere" !!!!
May God have mercy on the souls of your Catholic Church leaders.
I agree Dennis.
The church is more than it's building though.
It's a control mechinism a "judgement bureau" Where this is "good" and that is" bad"
Most decided not from whim but from personal gain. Not gains in a heaven but right here and now on earth.where the "lion's share" goes,whether it be gold or power,per usual, to the people that rule.
I think theft; lies and murder and rape are bad. Who doesn't? So do most people religious or not. All religions believe murder is bad but they don't always. History has proven that.
" Religious" people say Gays or what we gays do is bad; or that , depending on the era, Jews or Muslims are bad. And then they quote from a scripture, Leviticus or Paul or somebody else to back that bigotry.
Scripture just an old fake document as always used as an excuse to kill or mutlate or rob or intimidate but above all to control how people think about themselves and their fellow man.( Example: P's" tropes" about "types"). So that humans become their own self torture machine or their neighbors torturer, an interior Gestapo that can be launched against one's self or one's neighbor at will,
All that they may gain an "after life" (or just more of something they want)..
An 'after life" yet to be proven to exist at all, by the way. Think of all that horror commited to insure access to something that isn't even there.
The Tao is amazing.
If you aren't amazed at life; you just aren't looking.
My, one one must have an awful lot of "Faith" and "Hope" in the abilities of incredibly Flawed Humans (and everything designed by them) to so firmly and finally decree that "archaeologists and scientists "… have already determined that the Bible is "fake" or a "fairytale…".
I guess the "diggers" and researchers should pack up their tents and shovels and head home, the data is all in and we can now conclude with scientific certitude (would that be conclusive empirical data??) that we know everything we need to know about everything – it is all in, good night, Irene.
Close up shop, go home, people, nothing left to see here.
And, this is the sheer idiocy with which we must contend. This is what happens when, as faithful, humble Christians, you must bow to the illogical-irrational musings of the intellectually-challenged to give them voice, however incredibly ridiculous their diatribes may be. (Psst! - do "they" know that it was/is Catholics [Christendom] and their educational [and economic] system that were the greatest purveyors and catalysts of reason, logic and their beloved science?)
This is a fine example of the lefts "social promotion", where the redistribution of reasoning abilities waters down the population, so that they try to get you to think that they are truly competetive with those with demonstrated talents and abilities (um, "experts") in the fields of scientific and historical research/analysis, and how it works…and often doesn't.
Just because you dribbled/dunked a basketball in your driveway as a kid and watched professional athletes train for competition doesn't make you anywhere near capable of playing or competing in the big leagues (with Jordan, Johnson or Bryant).
This is a Fact that is also consistently lost on the media-types (so-called journalists), politicians and attorneys – those who consistently dumb down, and then distort science for their own political or financial gains.
And, then, there's this: the most profound idiotic (and revealing) statement that defines the leftist-bigots position regarding their venomous antiCatholic bias:
"I will admit you will have some of those who will come out of the woodwork to collect even though they have not been abused, but why should that be any concern of mine or anyone else ? The Catholic Church once again has deserved everything that is and has happened to them."
What else is there to say?
If the lefty-bigots are so eager to shine that light of truth on the Church abuse matter, this statement is as good as any with which to begin.
Please, let's do get the msm to reprint these doozies- I dare you.
But the diggers have gone home, the bible historians as well. Looking ,for places that aren't there, is very hard to get funding for.. Unless you're some kind of fundamentalist who "knows" it's there and can scare up funds from some faith. You don't see the Catholic church trying to dig things up. They know better; they know where the bodies are buried cuz they put them there so to speak. In other words they invented the show in the first place. IMHO
Because I want see victims of YOUR catholic church receive what they should receive without having to fight for it and you would like to define me as a bigot so be it.
Then I'm a proud bigot through and through, but this BIGOT does not live with blinders on.
You don't know what Dennis' politics are. I don't know what Dennis' politics are.
You are the one, who claims in your own words the use of "dishonest tactics". You've admitted it. How are we to know when you are or are not being dishonest?
You've x'd yourself right out of the debate.
The "big leagues" (Why is everything a sports analogy with you guys? That's supposed to mean something?)
Why would anyone take your opinion on history or faith or truth as accurate when you have admitted being dishonest when it benefits you?
You did that.
If anybodies not in the "big leagues" here; it seems to be you. And how would you be able to define who is in or out of the "big leagues" accurately if we never know when you are lying or not?
Yea I have real access to the msm. All us "lefty's do.
I can't get the truth out about the SNAP/church connection (and to me that's a pretty compelling story) and I've been trying for years.
But I sure can help you catch their interest. (irony)
Do you ever touch down?
Handcuff yourself to something, yourself perhaps that 'll get 'em.
In regard to the JR comment of 613Pm today, I can only point out that having “lived through” a chunk of chronological time means little of itself; there are sea turtles that have lived even longer and probably don’t have much insight into their ‘times’; mere chronological age is no grounds for authority. Males in their 60s who call people “darling” … don’t suggest authority either. But it demonstrates the validity of the Wig imagery rather nicely.
At no point did I go into the pros or cons of Dutton’s strategy; I merely pointed out that it indeed was a strategy. I will go so far as to point out that all strategies have consequences – intended and unintended – but beyond that JR’s comments in that regard are not relevant to the point I was making. (Curiously, though, in Dutton’s obituaries in 2005, little if any mention was made of his authorship of that book in 1971, which has to be considered one of the more significant political-strategy books of the century, right up there with works like Mein Kampf in the influence it exerted on a major nation’s future course. My thought is that by 2005 the political class and its elites didn’t really want people remembering – those who were capable of remembering – just how calculated a strategy it had all been from the get-go.)
And as we might have imagined, JR apparently didn’t notice Dutton’s book when it came out. And – yes – he clearly “missed” Ford’s comment which I saw on TV.
“Liberation”, though, is a tricky word, as is “freedom”: you have to know what the nature and purpose of X is before you can legitimately and accurately declare any X to be “liberated”. You don’t liberate a train by running it off a dock so it can sail freely across the sea or liberate a boat by dumping it on a highway so it can ‘drive’.
And “changes” are not necessarily improvements or progress; ‘change’ and ‘progress’ are two distinct concepts. Conflating the two reminds us of all the other quick and easy conflations, such as we have seen and discussed in the Catholic Abuse Matter.
And now to commenter Ecker, who returns from the busy schedule of leading un-numbered myrmidons of Stampeding ‘activists’ across the country against the papal Hirohito.
Why should the Church or anybody care about the enactment of a demonstrably bad law if they aren’t going to be specifically harmed by it? This is a ridiculously sophomoric approach to civics and the dynamics of democracy. Bad laws breed more bad laws as legislators get into the bad habit of passing bad laws – and once a dynamic like that gets going, then there is no telling where it will end up. The integrity of the common-weal is harmed more by bad laws because it makes the government itself the chief perpetrator against that integrity. And as Bolt’s Thomas More put it: once the laws are flattened, then nobody is safe and nobody can rely on them; whether you flatten them by ignoring them or by deranging them in contravention of the basic principles of Law, you wind up weakening the rule of law. Which by amazing coincidence is a Problem that is becoming more widely noticed in this country nowadays.
Or, to go with what Ecker really wants to go for: the Church is objecting to this law merely because the Church knows it’s guilty and wants to prevent further ‘discoveries’ along those lines. As if we have seen a great deal of demonstration of that when any of the few allegations that are examined always seem to fall short of establishing a Church-wide, centuries-long ecclesiastical racket.
And then Ecker does “admit” that some of the allegations “of those who will come out of the woodwork to collect” have not been abused (he uses the future tense; but we can even more fruitfully apply the thought to the past tense). He will “admit” to something that has not yet happened (although, yes, there is a substantial probability of it) while avoiding the completion of the conceptual dynamic that his admission has set in motion.
But then – applying yet again that stunningly sophomoric level of analysis – he asks why the bad SOL law “should be of any concern of mine or anyone else?”. For Citizens who are not believers, see my thoughts immediately above in this comment. For persons (and Citizens) concerned for the health and viability of religion – Catholic or otherwise – in this country, then the specifically anti-religious framing of this law (only religious and charitable organizations, and not government or public organizations are targeted), the SOL initiatives must also be of the gravest and most immediate concern.
For those who think that this country can survive without any substantive religious presence, I would say that they are fatuously urging a course of action whose consequences will be irremediable when it finally becomes sufficiently obvious what a bad plan and phantasmagoric vision such persons are urging upon us. Humans need Meaning, and governments cannot provide that; when a government arrogates to itself the role of providing Meaning (the capital ‘M’ here indicates the Metaplane and not simply the ‘meaning’ limited to the Monoplane) then that government is going to fail in its project and in the process will seek to arrogate more and more power to itself.
We saw this in the French Revolution, wherein the government – having taken upon itself to replace God with a deified ‘Reason’ and to remove any religion from the national life and culture – then realized that in order to “force people to be free” – as Rousseau put it – it had to take all power unto itself. In the words of the French revolutionary Committee of Public Safety: “You must entirely refashion a people whom you wish to make free, destroy its prejudices, alter its habits, limit its necessities, root up its vices, purify its desires”.
Thus instead of an organic culture arising out of the people and the nation, what you wind up with is a government that imposes its own visions upon the people and the nation. (Nor did the French people themselves have any input into any of this, and paid the price both spiritually for the loss of Meaning and in blood at the hands of the government (the revolt in the Vendee) and in the foreign wars that ensued.
And when that didn’t work it resorted to The Terror. (Terror, deployed by the government in so good and great a cause, was a Good thing, doncha see? A point lost on neither Lenin nor Mao in their own day.) And that led to the government becoming mistaken – even in its own eyes – for the God it had sought to replace.
And then, finally, to restore any sense of order and Order at all, the revolutionary Directory tried to repair things by resorting to Napoleon.
And all of this is justified in Ecker’s mind because he just knows that “the Catholic Church once again has deserved everything that is and has happened to them” (notice here that suddenly Ecker does use the past tense).
The objections to the SOL initiatives have come from far more than the Church.
And – who can be surprised? – Ecker’s calculations do not include any of the principles included in the foregoing, but simply a sophomoric figuring that if the Church has money to oppose the SOL initiatives (how far will “$70,000” go in California politics these days?) then it has the money to pay settlements.
And then Ecker says that these funds would go “to pay restitution to the children now adults who have been harmed” – although he has already admitted that there may be false claims (slyly avoiding the question of how many future false claims and what proportion of the sum total of claims they would constitute, let alone going into the matter of past false claims). And – as we saw from the get-go with Bentham’s utilitarian calculus of ‘harm’, there is no definition of ‘harm’, so ‘harm’ could be anything at all on a broad and vaguely-demonstrable spectrum.
And “in closing” this brain-popping disquisition Ecker dons the Wig of Mature Sadness and bleats that he thinks “it is very sad” that “everyone” (oh my – JR and LC and the rest of the Wigs as well?) posting here is “more worried about the catholic church”. Alas.
Because – we are now lectured by the Wig of Knowingness – “the church is only a brick and mortar building”. To which I respond that if he properly used the capital-C when referring to the Church as an organization and spiritual community, then he wouldn’t have made the conceptual howler of thinking only of a “church” as “a brick and mortar building”. His snark has led him into the Swamps of Mistake, Wigs and all.
But then he follows it up with this one: “I have never seen one word spoken about worrying about the Catholic faith”, which is “a faith that continues to dwindle each and every day”. Anybody wishing to place bets on whether Ecker will be on his hilltop with his jug of Kool-Aid when the end of Catholicism comes may wish to consult those shadowy entrepreneurs who make a financial business of such predictions.
The Teeth of Nastiness chatter yet again like cheap castanets in the solemn Wig of Sober Concern.
And he has clearly missed more than a few comments on this site that have dealt with the health of the Faith, and clearly is not familiar with numerous Catholic sites that more broadly and deeply deal with the ongoing life of the Faith. This site deals with the Catholic Abuse Matter and the Stampede. Which requires us to wade into the swamps created by the Stampede, and the various denizens resident there.
We are still trying to find out just how much (or otherwise) was swept “under the rug until there was no more room to sweep” (a sly image and this is Ecker’s basic script-hook, if you buy the script to begin with).
Whether anybody chooses to “return” is their business. Whether the Church will survive Ecker’s departure (although he still can’t get anybody to formally excommunicate him, alas) is another question altogether.
We are then given a quote that – who can be surprised? – may come from anywhere or nowhere. And at any rate, raises more questions than it answers.
And the disquisition concludes with the Prayer of Prayerful Piety, delivered ex Wiggedra. To which I respond that God needs to have mercy on all human beings, everywhere and all the time. Nor does God greatly need Ecker’s crocodile-teary plaints to keep that up. God chose to be crucified to the Church and to humanity – to use my image from a prior comment on this thread – and He will continue with his Providential Plan as He has for the past two millennia.
It appears, finally, that Ecker’s idea of prayerfulness and spirituality is to mimic ecclesiastical grammar and usage. Pretending to a certain hierarchical authority by mimicry … the cargo-cult native still sure that his coconuts and vines and empty crates will bring his idea of the silver birds and the great canoes. And to that panoplium of sly and nasty mimicry, of course, we have to add the Wigs. His bathroom mirror must be a very busy piece of equipment indeed.
Meanwhile, the genuine work of the Church and the genuine life of Faith must be carried on.
The real Thomas Moore, not Robert Bolt's "creation", burned Protestants by the cart load before Henry's divorce from Katherine. What a "holy" guy. Thank god for such "holy" men.
Who said the road to hell is paved with good intentions?
Nobodies forcing anybody to leave religion. If they really use their own reasoning and logic and see the the flaws in and the proven, not imagined, historyof their faith.. They'll walk.
In your church they are "walking" away everyday; including some priests.
And where are the new vocations?
You do exagerate so.
O.K. professor what did Jerry Ford say that was so Mao-esque? I'm sure, whatever it is, it changed humanity irrepairably.
Just in passing as I looked through some of your many comments (sometimes it is hard to find a place to respond)..–tune into the overwhelming number (now saying 1.3 million and counting) young people in Rio for World Youth Day (on EWTN) .You may get an idea of the enthusiasm that is not usually witnessed by the average person. What is the point? The Church has problems/crises if you wish and has always come out better than ever. If there will be a purer,smaller Church, so be it. But don't think that the faith is dying. I cannot argue your various points, allegations (some a bit bizarre) because frankly I don't have the time or energy at the moment. But a gentle prodding,— tune into EWTN-probably the 5 days or so will be repeated from time to time–you may hear the kid in a wheelchair who thought his life was ruined-others that had been on drugs, or those whose parents were no good or ill-they kept or found their faith. They are the healthy generation to come-they look forward-they are building Church-It is really a remarkable scene.
The "Swamps of Mistake"; the "Teeth of Nastiness"; the "Wig of Sober Concern"; the "Prayer of Prayerful Piety"!
How about throwing in the "Shroud of Turin" (carbon dated to the middle ages) and the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch"? (Monty Python at their funniest.) And?
Your labels mean what?
I never pretended to know more because I lived 66 years. I just said I've lived them; that I've lived through those economies.
So?
And "God chose to be crucified"!
Who asked him to? He sets the whole show up and then pretends to kill his kid, (Can God kill God?)
Why, because somebody ate meat on Friday? Or a 9 year old disobeyed her/his parents?
If he did it to wash away the sins of Hitler or Torquemada or Stalin or any other murderer or adulterer or thief or rapist. Why "redeem" me and the rest of us who haven't done those things? I put no nails in his cross. If the God of the universe want's to play wacka mole with his kid, why blame the innocent? Why give innocent babies cancer and AIDS and Auschwitz? What did they do?
And who was J.C.'s mom before Mary? Nobody knows. A male birth fantasy perhaps? Eliminate women completely from "The Father Son" relationship?
What do God and Jesus do on Sunday watch sports? Kick back with a couple of brewskis? Wash the Pope mobile?
Regarding JR's of 1003AM today:
If anybody has an idea of "reasoning and logic" such as JR has consistently deployed here, then the Church is the least of their problems in life.
Are people not also "signing up" every day? Surely more than are following JR's own website … oops.
An example of my exaggeration is required (relax – there won't be points off for spelling).
Gerry Ford said just what I said he said in the several prior comments here where I said it. And I have already explained why it was so Mao-esque. Apparently JR not only missed it the first time around in '76, but also recently in comments here. Such a memory – one wonders how much of the past 60 years got by him; and just what capacity for 'memory' he brought to the gaming tables during that last 'window' for allegations and a whack at the pinata. But his imagination seems unimparied (if also un-boundaried) and in the Abusenik Game, the imagination – I would say – is really all that matters.
I don't have a website. i participated in one but. I got tired of having 200 hits a day at times and no feedback. Absolutely none. Who were those hits coming from? The Church ? It's P.R. Firms? SNAP?
I met no victims.I felt I was speaking to an empty warehouse . Yet there were all those hits? This has happened to other victim posters who don't swallow the SNAP Kool Aid on their sites as well.
I must have been in the wrong part of the "stampede".
Perhaps they talk about "chicks"?
You walk in humble supplcation to the Lord through your time here, I assume.
But , according to the Divinely linked you, I only "live through" a " chunk" of "cronological time"
Well to quote Mr Martin: "Excuuuuse me!" There I go chunking around through "your" time again. Darn me!
Do you own all of history? Does your church?
Degrading one's opposition, from the absolute begining of a debate, proves what?
I talk ideas and back them with as many facts as I have. You degrade those ideas never critiqueing the facts and the thoughts. You just keep repeating, how wacky you think I am (.Or un-truthful or inaccurate) Just dismissing the facts and the ideas and never ever providing any proof that you are correct in those judgements or answering any of my questions… How does that make you look anything less than Imperious? Above the fray as it were. While at the very same time really caring about some good things.important things I do see that. You care about people just not victims. But the endless ad hominums make you look frightened? Are you frightened?
Are you afraid that your most obviously cruel diety, (look how animals in the wild suffer, sunami's; wars and holocausts, suffering) that that face of god might be cruel to you?
No matter how much you defend his "bride". He just might.
What a useless burden to carry.
"Imagine there's no heaven". No "Pie in the sky when you die. Bye and bye"
Just treat your fellow man and the planet well and enjoy the time, chunky or smooth, while you're here.
Living life well seems just that simple. IMHO
I don't seek "meaning" in life. The fact that "I am" is all the meaning I require.
It's my job to make my life meaningfull or not.
I see we have more JR material. I am going to move through it and make comments on what seems useful.
On the 17th at 1003AM JR asks where the new priests are. Actually, a substantial uptick of older men – meaning in their 30s and 40s and 50s – are coming forward. And I think this is an excellent development: they have had experience of life and the world, will not so easily sink into some sort of hothouse clerical culture, will be able to work with both hierarchy and laity in a more adult and forthright fashion, and have already gone through the growing-pains and complications of younger men. And – having already held jobs in the ‘real world’ – will be ready to accept the many demands of their calling without feeling put-upon and needing as much TLC as younger men require; they can, in the fine Brit phase, ‘get on with it’.
On the 27th at 146PM he says that “the real Thomas Moore” [sic – and I went to the trouble of spelling it properly too] “burned Protestants by the cart load”. First, there are six formal burnings of heretics under More’s administration as Lord Chancellor – during an era when heresy was considered an assault on society as well as religion because the two were seen as vitally intertwined; nor did the King object nor did Protestants cease the practice (and they greatly increased the search-for and execution-of witches). So in regard to the “fact” of JR’s assertion, one could at best perhaps say ‘a cartload’. (Which goes to JR’s command of history and facts, which we will have to talk about below.)
Second, the Reformation – and the eras preceding it – saw the Metaplane and the this-worldly Plane of Existence as being vitally and actively intertwined, with the latter dependent upon the former. This was true in all of the Western world. And the various monarchies saw religion as vital to public order and to their own legitimacy. Heresy was seen as a Multiplanar form of what we today would call treason; treason to Crown, Church, and humanity itself. And it was a world not as far from the barbarism of the Dark Ages.
But then, it had that serious and vital vision of life – in this-world and as related to the Beyond – that many today would see as unnecessary. Whether this approach – secularism and Monoplanar-ism – will actually work with humans who need Meaning is going to be interesting to see. The most notable efforts at thorough-going secularism – the French Revolution, Soviet Communism, and Mao’s variant – seem to have disposed of ‘heretics’ by the dozens if not hundreds of millions.
Third, my point in my comment was that More as a lawyer saw the role and value and necessity of Law, and the consequences of what would happen when Law was dispensed-with. Thus JR’s 3×5 card on “Moore” isn’t actually relevant. This would not bother somebody whose idea of an education is merely a collection of shoeboxes with 3×5 cards; the un-educated mind cannot process various bits of information – it can only grasp this or that bit if it finds that bit attractive and congenial, and then figure that it has the whole thing figured-out. (Which, again, goes to JR’s plaint about education and so on – see below).
On the 17th at 136PM JR goes on about my inventive characterizations. Without going near the question as to whether they are accurate and effective, he simply makes fun of them. Nothing new here.
Now I will allow myself to speak a bit more candidly than I usually do since JR has raised some clear points about himself (and my purpose in doing so is not to get into the mud with JR but rather to demonstrate a few thoughts about dealing with this general level of thinking, which anybody who encounters Abuseniks is going to encounter more often than not).
It is good to hear JR assert (now) that he “never pretended to know more because [he] lived 66 years”. Good and I’m glad to see that he seems to grasp the difference between living-through one’s times and actually comprehending them (as best as can be done). Thus, though, there then remains the question: what’s the point of the fact that he has “lived through those economies”? He certainly did a marvelous impression of somebody who thought he knew what he was talking about and that others thus should pay heed to what he had to say.
Then on to theological matters. He is somehow agitated by my comment that “God chose to be crucified” (that exclamation point in his comment is – but of course – ambiguous).
Where did we get the idea here that God “pretends” to kill Jesus? And then the sophomoric bit about can-God-kill-God.
I could go into the theology of it all here, but I think that most readers are already familiar with it. And while I can see my way to at least give a shot at discussing some matters at length with LC (at least when he is relying heavily on his selected authors’ bits) I can’t see going into all that with JR. But this is the level of ‘theology’ one is going to encounter so often on Abusenik sites where the various ‘interests’ blend and congeal.
There are times when it seems like trying to hold a serious conference on a street-corner where any homeless ranter can sashay up and declaim his/her declamation. But that’s the internet. You can see now why they put up fences around Los Alamos and didn’t try to work out the various theoretical and technical problems on a street-corner or a bar in LA.
JR also appears to be under the impression that since he hasn’t committed “the sins of Hitler or Torquemada or Stalin or any other murderer or adulterer or thief or rapist” then … what? He hasn’t sinned in his life? (Specific answer not required here.) While commenter Ecker works on trying to fit a hierarch’s headgear over one or several of his Wigs, JR doesn’t see himself as a sinner – which is his business, but we needn’t allow ourselves to be detained by his business.
Then on the 17th at 533PM he infers that since I don’t treat his material with the respect that he assumes that I do not “walk in humble supplication to the Lord through [my] time here”. That’s a mighty big assumption – not only about me but about the quality of his own material. He’s welcome to both assumptions.
But now, suddenly, he is not the same person who wrote some hours earlier that he “never pretended to know more because [he] lived through 66 years”. Now he is apparently miffed at being characterized as merely ‘living through’ “a chunk of cronological time”. And that reduces him to Steve Martin imitations.
In response to his question “Do [I] own all of history?” I answer: No, but I have always tried to understand as much of it as comprehensively as I can. One recalls the plaint of the Slovaks when their wish was granted and Czechoslovakia was split so that they could have Slovakia. It’s not fair – they suddenly whined – because the Czechs get all the good stuff! (The problem went back to the original fusing of the Czech and Slovak lands after WW1 to create Czechoslovakia – the former had been closer to the urban and industrialized West of Europe and the latter had remained closer to the agrarian and rural Balkan edge of Western Europe. A fact which, it has always seemed to me, should have been taken into account before demanding a break-up – but it is what it is.)
The Church doesn’t own history – but it has been around for even more of it than JR’s paltry 66 years and has spent a whole lot of time and energy in that history. Does that give him any inkling or glimmering that somehow the Church might have some worthwhile thoughts about history? It does not. Just what sort of ‘education’ does he imagine himself to have acquired?
If he has any material that can stand up to analysis, I’d be happy to see it. To observe that his material has substantial problems is not quite the same as “degrading” it, but such an exaggeration does create the justification for the Wig of Outraged Victimhood and also then distracts from the stubborn matter of the quality of his material.
I cannot agree that what he does in his comments is to “talk ideas”; he has a store of 3×5 one-liners (on his best days) and simply tosses them out without support or explanation – when he isn’t also engaging in far lesser gambits. And I simply point out here that he doesn’t provide as many “facts” as he apparently thinks he does.
(But, of course, this is the core problem in the Stampede: the one thing that shouldn’t really be done is to try to get at the factuality of allegations. What Abuseniks have been prepped to expect is that they will put out their stories and their factoids from their 3×5 cards and everybody will agree with them; when that doesn’t happen they become confounded, irritated, threatened, agitated, and then start tossing stuff.)
Yes, I do “keep repeating” my assessments of JR’s material; because the material and the quality of the material remains the same. An educated person, confronted with complexities that his material hadn’t taken into account or facts for which his theories cannot account, would want to do some serious re-considering. That’s precisely what would happen in one of those Brit universities at a tutorial (after you’ve done your “reading”): if your paper and your ideas encounter objections that you hadn’t even thought-about, and you can’t come up with facts to support your position, then you will want to go back and re-think your material; and over time the you will learn how to do that self-checking before you even write the paper that you are going to bring to the tutorial. Professors look for the development of that skill and capacity far more than they look for perfect and complete knowledge. And as I have said before, that is precisely the dynamic that I haven’t seen in any of JR’s material over all the time on this site.
Thus the drawbacks of thinking one can get ‘educated’ simply by reading things one thinks might be interesting and even amassing a mental shoebox full of 3×5 cards with factoids scribbled on them.
The simplest and most effective way to keep any interlocutor from seeming “imperious” is to counter his material with facts and material of your own. Instead, what we get here is simply the Wig of Plaintive Whining: why does everybody pick on me? (What cartoon character said that in the old song? Was it Snoopy?) But I say again: this is precisely how Abuseniks have been prepped: tell your story and say whatever you want to say, and then complain that you are being disrespected if your stuff isn’t instantly and sympathetically accepted and agreed-with.
So my advice is to forget about ‘appearances’ and go for substance. And in your own material before others’ material. But again, if the whole discourse is moved to the level of substance … then where would the Stampede be?
Am I frightened? First, I am angry – that so much could have been pulled off in a country that considers itself to be the pinnacle of modern knowledge and competence. But second, yes I am frightened: frightened about what it says about the country and what it bodes about the future for the country. Stampedes are not things that are supposed to happen in advanced and educated countries. But I knew – from the first burst of the McMartin Satanic Ritual Child Abuse Day Care trials almost 35 years ago – that something primal and primitive had been unleashed. Bringing us back to the days closer to the Dark Ages.
But am I afraid of God being “cruel” to me? No. I am afraid God may let things go on and take their course and that perhaps in His wisdom this country is going to be allowed to continue its descent deeper into the Monoplane, with all that implies.
So I am not “above the fray”. I am – however – trying to fly above the smoke and dust and clouds and achieve some clarity of comprehension. The “fray” now includes a Stampede which has raised an awful lot of dust and I want to see clearly. Which is not what Stampedes are designed to allow.
Thus life is not “just that simple” at all. It is a strenuous and demanding challenge (seriously betrayed by the 1970s happy-face ‘theology’ and the general American trend – since the Boomers hit the boards certainly – that life is “groovy” and just – to go even further back – “a bowl of cherries”. And as the economic situation deteriorates further – and I firmly believe it will – then Americans are going to face challenges that no living generation in this country has ever seen. Whether there will be as many “simple” atheists in those foxholes will be what it will be; individuals will have to come to their own conclusions.
I think the Church did neither herself nor anybody else any favors by trying to go with the happy-face and ‘groovy’ trends of the past half-century. If life isn’t a serious challenge then why take God or oneself seriously? If liberty isn’t strenuous – rather than libertine – then why take it seriously (except to whine and demand to be given more of it)?
This country is ending a long run of Abundance that has fueled a too-easy sense of Optimism and a too-easy sense that there aren’t many important things in life that humans can’t whip into shape on their own. The Church herself – in a classic example of how the Church as human institution cannot but avoid deranging herself to conform more easily to the times – lost the sense of urgency about her Message, and about the Gospel, and about the awe-full-ness of life and the screaming human need for Meaning; the Church became too much of the City-Cohorts (to use my ancient Roman metaphor) and with happy-face logos emblazoned on the shields. Parades and the ho-hum of it all, day after day.
But what used to be called by humans of sterner times “the refining fire” will come now, and that will call forth from the Church the exercise of all her ancient Gifts. She must be prepared.
Meanwhile, I want to examine this Abuse Matter and the Stampede to try to prevent – to the extent accurate analysis will permit – any further erosion of her role in American society. Not to protect the Church, but to prevent the distance between her and American society and culture from becoming any wider. Because the more distance that is allowed to develop will simply be the more distance that has to be retraced as we all face the coming times and trials … when nothing will be simple or easy or groovy at all.
If you ask me.
Well that was well written( kind of). I'm not kidding. You finally sounded like a real person.
What you said about your "stampede" is dreck, per usual. What you said about me, again the same old "judgemental" dreck. You mis-quoted and mis-read me again per usual.
But stay on that vulnerable path. It appears more human and less Imperial.
This country is still full of abundance. It's just that 1% have stolen it all. The fruits of all our labor stolen. The profits of all our labor stolen. Example Mc Donalds teaches it's ill paid employees how to get another full time job besides their job at Mickey D's that they might survive. Oh Brave New World Order!
Walmart informs it's employees how to apply for state aid and health benefits to "make up" for the salary Wal Mart pays.
Oh Capitalism! You are the blessing of God come to fruition.
Don't you ever get tired of being taken?
To Publion's latest comment:
I might have feared more that the Church would not have been prepared to counter the rapid and expanding growth of the evils of secularism in western culture since the 60's, but, in God's wisdom, had it not been for the revelation of the arrogance of our Church during that timeframe. This arrogance (i.e. leanings to the left) led to the abuse matter (which is considerably lesser than the Church's enemies would have you believe) and a few other problems (same social-politicization roots) that led the Church astray.
This revelation, and subsequent repair (still underway) of that "lost generation" problem has actually helped to put the Church back on the right path and to reforge her constitution in her traditonal-conservative roots – which will be required to meet, and defeat, the great battle ahead (which is much closer than many believe, as you state).
It is evident that the leftist-socialist-atheists are ramping up the stakes and going all out for the final grab, here in the US and abroad, likely to climax before this decade concludes. The global social unrest is possibly unparalelled in human history, which is also interestingly coupled with an environmental unrest that presents a clear and present (dangerous) perfect storm scenario. Of course, the economy will be the first to feel the severe squeeze between the two strong opposing forces, which will result in the world's financial (structural) collapse, with the rest of our social structures falling like dominos.
And, the Catholic Church, as the only global structural human institution (heirarchical, by Jesus' own hand) will remain standing (not Islamism, not Protestanism, not Mormonism, not Atheism, not Buddhism), and willing and able to undertake the rebuilding of the worlds social structures, in Jesus' name.
The New World Order is coming, but, it isn't going to make the lefties happy.
And, what does all of this, backed by evidence and facts, have to do with the anti-Catholic bigotry wrapped up in the abuse matter and dozens of other manufactured attacks launched against the Church?
Everything.
Why do you think you know what God wants? Does he tell you personally or the Pope personally? If so don't you think the world or at least your doctor should know about these apparitions.
If he doesn't appear to you in person with the info, does he pop thoughts into your head some kind of revelation? How do we know it's "him"? How do we know it's not just you and your imagination using a "dishonest tactic" to get your way?
To Josie's comment: today at WYD, Brazil, they are anticipating up to 3M in attendance. WYD has been a huge success for the Church, the Pope, and of most importance, the people.
All this goodness in the midst of a national social revolution against its leftist regime (same reordering at work worldwide, people trying to move toward freedom and away from the oppression of radicals on all sides).
Christ the Redeemer, overlooking Rio, must be very pleased, indeed.
Meanwhile, ObamaCare, ObamaScandals, ObamaEconomy, ObamaForeignpolicy, Spitzer, Weiner, Felner, Detroit, Chicago, along with much of the whole leftist philosophy (when not illegally hijacked by an activist executive, judiciary or legislature) is thankfully crashing here at home.
He must be the same concrete redeemer who failed the hungry of Rio forever. But now the concrete's "very pleased". Glad to hear it.
Now feed the frigging starving.
To JR-How can you be soooo..hateful , soooo..narrowminded, and miserable that you cannot know to what extent (and efficiently, I might add) the Catholic Church takes care of the poor of the World????? Regardless of your issues, I am sorry, but you sound like a fool when you make statements such as "now feed the…starving".
Since the socialist-communist regimes are so good at feeding the starving (well, whatever is left-over after the mass extinctions of huge portions of their population), perhaps the leftist government of Brazil can take a page from the "food-book" of North Korea, Cuba, China, and socialist Africa and Europe – you know, were the all-you-can-eat buffet is always stocked?
Actually, it seems that the only nations that have successfully conquered mass and chronic starvation are those capitalist socioeconomic systems which were/ are built upon the Judeo-Christian philosophy.
Wonder why?
Factually (a word that appears to be foreign to many here), Catholics (and other Christian denominations) feed more of the worlds hungry than any other group. And, while we're being factual, conservatives contribute more to charity than do their liberal cohorts.
I wonder who the atheists are feeding?
Stick with Capitalism and you just may find out. You could be in a soup line too you know.
Your New World Order is goose stepping America's masses into third world conditions.
Contrary to what you see in comercials on T.V. where everything is "Happy Happy Joy Joy we just consumed something"
Americans , the vast majority are working themselves to death.
Answer one question,please, just one question: What do you do; or did you do for a living?
Princess, China owns Americas debt. They bought it with the dollars they've earned the hard way.
If the Roman Catholic church has the money to give through charity. Why doesn't it compensate it's victims; if it's anywhere near the center of morality world wide?Wouldn't that be the moral thing to do?
Why, when it's been caught with our pants down, does your church forget to help us.
Why were we forced to go to tort attornies if we could?
Because the church has been caught with its pants down too. And hates the fact it's secrets are out.
The Paracletes; the homes for abusive priests; the therapy for abusive priests; the transfer of abusive priests to new vulnerable parishes. All of it and not a jot overall for victims.
Mention us few compensated ones again , if you dare. Out of four victims posting here only 2 have been compensated. And if LC was abused in Massachusetts, he got very little. Unless he sued within the statutes of limitation and most males try and hide what happened to them for many many years. Those statutes are do convienient for the church
Where's the out reach to it own victims? Name one church organization; order ;safe house created to deal with us? Why, (save for SNAP, who the church created as counter intelligence), is there zippo?
If the church and you had done the right thing from the get go; would I be posting here for the victims you haven't helped? Believe me I've other things I could be doing.
But this is a real opportunity to step up to the plate (oh god a sports similie from me) and do the right thing Stop your whining about us. Denying everything and blaming the people injured and do something good for a change..
Don't yamer about helping the poor when you've helped impoverish them in the first place.
The insanity that perpetuates the myth that someone rich stole stuff from someone poor requires actual exmaples, or, here's a novel idea for the lefties, evidence.
No one rich ever stole from me or anyone I know (let's go out there that six degrees of seperation in every economic direction and for a few decades….nope, still no one), and everything middle America worked for resulted in the acquisition and retention of real property and upward mobility. The free market sets the fair wage, not government tyranny.
In reality, the only entity that is capable of stealing from anyone is the government. No one in the private sector [legally] enslaves their labor. The uber-rich do escape government thefts by going off shore (good for them) and the poor avoid their theft because they have nothing from which to take (except their freedom, and their souls).
Tell us, what exactly did the fat, cigar-chomping, evil rich guy take from you? And, while you're fabricating that myth, let's look at reality in the US for a NY minute:
Free [wonderful, no?] public schools, free day care, grants/scholarships/low interest loans for higher [private]education (God forbid the entitled little angels should "work" their way thru higher education) and state universities, affirmative action/social promotion, food stamps, Medicaid, SSI, unemployment bennies, welfare, free phones, public housing, "special" loans for low income mortgages, total loan "forgiveness", rent stabilization, housing subsidies (federal and municipal), tax relief, unions, "special-class" designations……and a whole host of other free goodies designed to give the less able, accessible, motivated or talented a leg-up in society.
And, do you know how wonderful these goodies really are? Ask any immigrant risking death to get here. Because "getting here" means breaking the generational cycle of real poverty (not US-style "poverty") they suffered in their home countries, and being able to finally be free.
Want to know how truly wonderful America is, in every way - ask any immigrant, legal or not – they will gladly provide plenty more "fun facts to know and tell" to you.
So, what does bashing the US have to do with the clergy abuse matter, you ask? Absolutely nothing "they" will say, but, in every word posted here they reinforce other commenters suspicions and claims that the bigots hatred of the Church has nothing to do with whether or not minor homosexuals were sexually abused by priests (the majority of the Church's critics could care less) and everything to do with the much bigger battle being waged between socialist-communist-atheist philosophy ("see Eleanor Run, Run Eleanor, Run.." to the SNAP conference) and the rest of us.
You are going to lose – brace yourself, Bridget.
Hey, how about that record-breaking attendance (and so peaceful) turnout for Pope Francis at todays Copacabana Beach mass? Remarkable display of fidelity for a "failing" Church.
The Brazilians certainly seem to be choosing God over that nasty socialista government.
The only place you mentioned where there has been famine is North Korea
Remember the Bejing Olympics sport's fans. Quite the snazzy show and nary a famine in sight.
And socialist Europe is doing just fine thank you. No hunger there. Just a civilized life..
Can we talk about the U.S.? Any hunger here?
D if people turned up great. Let them see the vicar of Christ I DONT' CARE.
Let em' fall down and worship furniture.if they want to.
It makes you feel good then do it.
But pretending somethings real isn't the same thing as something being real. And I prefer to not have fantasist driving the bus of state, You're not winning your whining..
The entire culture has changed for the better for all the people and your church didn't really aid in that positive change. Remember your church fought and still fights that change with fewer and fewer of your own membership buying what you say..
Let's remember Brazil was where police hit squads murdered abandoned abused street children. Children! Children who were born and abandoned not only by their parents but by your church as well. All because of your church's birth" policies". You go crazy for zygots but when their born you say: screw em.
And I'm not saying abortion should be used to control population but how about the pill or a condom?
Where's your moral responsability?
Believe me if your church had done the right thing for people, particularly it's victims. i would praise yor real christian morality from the roof tops. I swear I would. But it hasn't and you haven't. that's why I post here. Please! Please do the right thing.
Who are you?
Would you have Americans sleeping on the sidewalk? They already do.
Would you have them line up by the thousands for free health or dental care parking lot clinics because they have no care at all.? They already do.
You must be a big Charles Dickens fan because you'd have America return to the days of Fagin and the poverty of Oliver Twist.
HOW MUCH TAXES DO YOU PAY? Answer me, you great big capitalist.
And by the way your beloved Koch brothers, funders for the Cato Institute and The Heritage foundation amongst other right wing S factories and who were the creators of the "moronic "Tea Party Movement", are athiests. And their papa created the John Birch Society. And how they admire Ayn Rand. (that idiot )
And one of them actually admited he wants to "own everything" EVERYTHING.
I guess that being worth 15 Billion dollars, (and that's each of the 2 brothers, who are worth 15 billion) isn't enough to get by on.
D, Have you ever left the U.S.? Ever lived in a socialist country? Do you own a passport?
Even though you are an Islamaphobe, you make your "predictions" from behind a burka. We want to see you. Step out. Don't be shy.
As usual, the premise of your outrage is flawed, as in, untrue. The Church abandoned no one, especially, in Brazil, and especially children. That is just another leftist-atheist lie.
We're rather tired of doing your homework- do it yourself. Suffice it to say that the Church (Catholic) charities for children and everyone else in Brazil (who seem quite thrilled with the Church all week), and everywhere the Church is, works better than any others efforts, especially the brutal leftist governments. That is a fact.
Grow up. Every time a child or another innocent dies, it isnt the Church's fault, or God's fault. It is our fault. What did you do to help the slumkids of Brazil, or anywhere else? All you're interested in doing is punishing, prosecuting and persecuting the Church- at all/any cost, and under the very transparent ruse of getting justice for 50, 60, 70 year old men. Yeah, right.
The blood of those slumkids, and millions more every day that die horrendous deaths, before and after birth, is on all those secular and radicalized hands (not Catholic, not conservative-libertarian) that did not reach out to help, and stop the carnage, or worse, caused the carnage.
Own it. It is as a result of your narcissistic philosophy.
In regard to JR’s of the 28th at 1238PM: if JR can offer any dispositive proof that all of this Catholic Abuse Matter has been based on genuine abuse (rather than things otherwise classifiable) then the characterization of my Stampede material as “dreck” would be valid; but as we know, JR has no such proof; all he has to put forward – as I have said before – is to insist that the almost all of the allegations were almost totally true and we can believe him about that because he would never lie and he knows other ‘victims’ whom he also knows would never lie. But he can offer no other material in support; he personally knows few of the thousands of allegants and even if he did, he would not himself be a witness to the allegations. So what then has he got? And what then have we got?
I would need quotations from my material as to how I “mis-quoted” or “mis-read” him. Readers may make mental bets on whether such a response will be forthcoming and accurate.
In what way did anything I say in my most recent comment make me less “imperial” if “imperial” as JR used it meant that I was somehow passing judgment on the quality of his material? The coherence of that escapes me.
As to his comment of the 28th at 122PM: In what does the abundance that “this country is still full of” consist? And as I said, surely the government’s finances and the currency itself and the Dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, are in dangerous shape.
It is cartoonish to assert that “the 1% have stolen it”. If we took all of the wealth of that group we would not be able to resolve the government finances or personal debt or restore the fiscal viability of the middle class. Lenin, following Marx, expropriated a sizable chunk of the imperial and aristocratic properties and assets and still ran Russia into the ground within a few years (leading in a few years to the New Economic Plan and so on). To think that if we just took the assets of that small (but very wealthy) group then we could recover our “abundance” and restore our fiscal integrity and health … seems grossly insufficient in every respect. That group may have scooped up a sizable chunk of what was left, but what was left wasn’t very much, compared to what existed before our actual and genuine and fundamental abundance began to decline. And as David M. Potter suggested as early as 1955: if American abundance enabled American democracy, rather than the other way around – as is commonly imagined, then what happens if America loses its abundance?
I try very hard not to be “taken”. Especially by Cartoon thinking.
O.K. D, per usual, your dishonest tactics are showing. You offer no examples no demographics nothing. Thanks for nothing. You just say the church is doing these things. No proof as always. That's why the Brazilians voted socialist. VOTED. Just Like the Venezuelans voted for Chavez and the Chileans voted for Allende.
And P, America's "abundance" came from the stolen property of native Americans, the land; and from, the slave labor and wage slave labor of the majority of the population of this country. If Democracy really mattered, if our votes really did something to change things. There would be no voting. Democracy in America is a facade. We voted for a Democrat in the last 2 elections and we got a Republican, who is owned lock stock and barrel by the banks and Wall street.
You ,P, need to define ,with examples, please " Cartoon thinking"
I just noticed Delphin’s comments (the 28th, 1020AM) about my comments. I want to put up some thoughts that are prompted by Delphin’s thoughts. I didn’t mean to ignore them until now.
I think that the “arrogance” of the Church is part of a larger phenomenon: the Church in the US simply did not pay enough attention and take sufficient efficacious action as the general trends of the times, working within American culture, moved matters beyond the shape of a prior era in American Catholic history.
The age of the Great Immigration (1880-1920, roughly) brought sizable numbers of Catholic immigrants from Europe, but not from the more industrialized Northwest of Europe. The American bishops – working in a formally-classified ‘mission’ country up until almost 1910 – labored mightily to a) provide spiritual and religious support for these somewhat ‘strange’ (but still basically European) new-comers, while b) trying to ‘Americanize’ them, getting them to fit into the dominant American culture (which was what the majority of those immigrants wanted, somehow, to do anyway).
Those Catholic immigrants saw the Church as their helper in becoming settled in their new country; they also brought their own various approaches to how they saw organized religion (e.g., the Irish largely tended to see the Church as a vital and omni-competent core and anchor of their identity and of their lives; the Italians from the South of that country did not quite see the Church in a ‘worshipful’ way). But they all realized that the Church provided a thread of continuity from their ‘old’ lives to their ‘new’ lives. And wherever they settled, their concentration enabled a certain political and cultural influence – which funneled itself up to the role and stature of their Bishop (Arch-bishop, Cardinal) and thus of their priests.
And, like all human beings, they sensed in the Church that their need for Meaning was being fulfilled.
It all fit into the overall American cultural situation of the era. World War 2 simply wrapped up this dynamic with a big red-white-and-blue bow.
But the mid-1960s brought substantial complications. Vatican 2 ended in 1965 and there were all manner of approaches afloat as to how to implement its ideas – and indeed, how to interpret those ideas in the first place. And the Boomer generation posed huge challenges to that overall cultural consensus. And things were simply intensified when – following the lines of Frederick Dutton’s 1971 book that I mentioned in prior comments – the regnant political Party – the Democrats – began to adopt wholesale a heady brew of not only Boomery this-worldism but also the various agendas and demands being pressed upon the government by new ‘revolutionary’-based Identity groups (following Dutton’s schematic).
While all of this was more than enough to require major fresh thinking and assessment by the American Church (and by this I do not mean that the hierarchy should have simply caved to everything with a happy-face and invertebrate desire to please as many demands as possible), yet that did not happen in anywhere near the depth and scope that was required by the changing cultural situation.
The hierarchy and clergy had become so well-grooved in the older ecclesiastical roles and presumptions that – like the City Cohorts of my ancient Roman imagery – they basically tried to keep up a basic business-as-usual approach, adapting where they thought they could, resisting where they thought they had to.
This – I would say – was not so much “arrogance” as it was simply a characteristic human tendency – seen in organizations as well as individuals everywhere and in all times – to hope that things would basically remain the same, despite the surface changes.
When matters had gotten as far as the increased spread of Victimist concerns and priorities – and when, as Doyle and his team accurately perceived in the early/mid-1980s (following closely upon the Church’s powerful and successful opposition to the early Regan Administration’s re-emphasis on nuclear reassertion vis-à-vis the USSR) – it became clear that the Church’s customary cultural inviolability was starting to come under concentrated pressure, then that caught the hierarchy off-guard. (Nor am I saying here that all of the numerous allegations were genuine).
Nor did the hierarchy quickly grasp that the government itself, now heavily indentured to Victimism as a further efflorescence of the 1960s anti-authority Stance, was politically shifting away from its long-time ‘alliance’ with the Church (just as the government had – as Dutton had advised – turned away from the formerly-immigrant white middle class and working classes), abetted by a mainstream media that had become enamored of dramatic and emotional confrontation and ‘stories’ of pain and ‘outrage’ in order to keep up circulation.
The American Church – to put it briefly – had become a targeted element in all of these dynamics, rather than an ‘above the fray’ and somewhat immune observer. And the hierarchy was slow to realize this (as Doyle and his team saw). What we then saw was the playing-out of – to use a military/historical image – a ‘battleship’ Church un-ready to accept the startling changes demanded by the development of aircraft carriers and naval/air warfare. What we saw – unlike in the actual historical event of the Pacific War – was a series of ‘battleship’ bishops undergoing a series of ‘Pearl Harbors’ that lasted for quite a while longer than otherwise necessary. (Doyle and his team in their 1985 Report were again, in this matter, accurate in their assessment of the dynamics involved.)
So I would say that the American hierarchy was not so much overtly and deliberately “arrogant” as they were simply ‘battleship’ leaders who hadn’t grasped i) the full extent of the changes required of them, and ii) the sudden vulnerability of an American Catholic Church institution that they had been raised and trained to think of as inviolable.
Their “leaning to the left” did not so much constitute arrogance, I think, as much as it constituted an effort to adapt to the hugely complex and purely ‘wonderful’ changes demanded in American culture – changes that were indeed increasingly ‘secularist’ (as demanded of the government by its ever-increasing list of Identity-groups and their demands). These changes toward secularism and the Monoplane (as opposed to the Metaplane) required action and thought based on profound spiritual challenges that the hierarchy in those bishops’ own formative era had never imagined itself to have to face.
(Of course, the ‘Americanist’ bishops of the late 1800s had always had a problem with Rome: the Vatican was not so gaga over Western ‘modernism’ precisely because it had even by that early date realized that ‘modernism’ required the exaltation of the Monoplane and the weakening of the Sense of the Metaplane and the Beyond. And thus Rome was constantly anxious that the American Bishops were going to give away vital principles of life and belief while trying to make their flocks more ‘American’ and in trying to adapt Catholicism to the essential American culture of the this-worldly and the material, of appearances rather than substances, of a Progressive confidence and optimism in the power of government to fundamentally change and re-orient an entire society and culture (see my comments on the French Revolutionary aims).)
And this ‘Americanist’ controversy was merely a re-play of arguments that had often arisen in the universal Church when Catholic missionaries encountered ‘native’ populations (and – recall – that to the Vatican, Americans of that era were very much the ‘natives’ of a missionary-land).
But – to continue my Pacific War imagery – while the ‘battleship’ hierarchy still didn’t grasp the new operational requirements of the changing situation, they were still charged with a Great Mission in a Good Cause. And the value of that Cause – bearing Gospel witness to a society that was becoming increasingly bent in the direction of a secularist and modernist Monoplanarism – was vital and valuable. (As I think we continually discover nowadays as the consequences of so many of the ‘changes’ – ignored by the pols in their eagerness to please the demands of their new Identity-demographics – are becoming increasingly and un-spinnably clear.)
But it was certainly true that, having become so much a part of the ‘furniture’ of American culture, the American Catholic Church relaxed its requirements for episcopal and clerical candidates in some cases (the City-Cohort dynamic again in play here).
But I fully agree that the Catholic Abuse Matter has helped concentrate the American Church’s mind wonderfully – and that is, I also agree, a powerful work of the Holy Spirit toward this ecclesia semper reformanda (Church that must always be reformed and – I would add – always be re-forming). I won’t go into it here as to a) what constitutes genuine reform and b) what constitutes merely a self-destroying adaptation to situation against which the Church must take a strong stand and bear clear Witness.
Human cultures seem inherently ‘conservative’ in the sense that they reflect a deep human tendency to seek stability and order. Upon which the Church – in a more comprehensively developed position than most other world religions have adopted – has built the Metaplanar value of Order, i.e. a support for stability in human life – individual and collective – that is i) grounded not simply in tactical human societal and cultural needs for predictable and reliable social and political ‘order’ but rather is ii) fundamentally linked to the human need for a Beyond-based Meaning and Order supported by God.
Against this Vision, much of ‘modernism’ and ‘secularism’ posit the – to me, blithe and callow and fatuous – presumption that a) many deep and profound changes can be quickly and successfully imposed by government and that these changes can b) dispense with the Multiplane and the Beyond totally, because humanity no longer needs the Multiplane (since it is so capable of controlling its own destiny by working its own will – or at least its governments’ will – upon the Monoplane).
These are some of the deeper reasons why the Church since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution has always been leery of ‘modernism’ and ‘scientism’: there are deep and profound and dangerous consequences if things are taken too far and the Metaplane is dismissed (or, if you wish, ‘deconstructed’).
This is a point often missed in a basically Marxist-Gramscian analysis that sees the Church’s opposition to ‘modernism’ as simply a fuddy-duddy and nasty effort to preserve its own ‘hegemonic’ position. And we have all seen a lot of that type of analysis passing for the fantastic new ‘knowledge’ that utterly replaces the ‘old’ knowledge.
So the Church does – I completely agree – have a vital role to play as the consequences of the past few centuries start to manifest themselves and create extreme and fundamentally dangerous situations around the globe.
In that sense – let me conclude – it is now the modernist/secularist elements that have become the ‘battleship admirals’ who cannot see how things have changed and are changing. My own hopes lie in this new Pope’s efforts, and ultimately in the Holy Spirit working to re-form the Church to prepare her to meet the intensifying need for her ministry.
Well that was really well written and instructive and in an almost conversational and respectful tone. Thank you. I disagree with your conclusions. But so what?. Again well written P.
O.K. I see what you mean about "cartoon thinking" I think I'm not posing as a degree'd person in these subjects. I ask questions, (that you never bother to answer).
Russia coming out of serfdom what 60 years before the revolution? Had tons of natural resources but no capital. The roads all dirt in the spring thaw and autumn rains were mud mires something like only 10% of crops produced survived the journey to major population groups.
While in America at our inception, we had slave labor " free land" and indentured labor producing wealth that was unprecedented(and capital from the Slave; suger; rum triangle) and after the American revolution no war on American soil for almost a hundred years. The Russians had none of that in WW1. They didn't even have food for their Army or clothes or ammunition.And that's before the Revolution.
Comes the revolution. America; Britain and several other countries sent "expeditionary forces" to fight on the side of "White Russia" ,the royalists, but those troops had their butts kicked by Trotsky and the Red army
. Even when the foreign troops were gone; no major countries recognized the Soviet government for years, many years; and refused to do business with them Just like we've done for 50+ years with Cuba.
So you are correct no socialist paradise was created in Russia, they only had 25 years untill Hitler.( I believe Stalin was stalling with his pact with Hitler. Stalling for time.) Then the Russians were invaded by Hitler for " living room for the German Reich" Hitlers invasion cost the Russian people 20 million live to say nothing of the wounded. 20 MILLION can you imagine. Think of the numbers we lost in the Civil War what was it 150,000 and America still isn't over that 150 years later.
Then after Hitler was defeated the Soviets had to deal with the "Cold War". America, comparitively untouched by the war, started an arms race, that by the time communism fell had sucked the Russian economy dry. Why did the Russians feed all their wealth to the military budget? Why to keep up with the "God fearing" Americans. It was the arms race that bankrupted the Soviet Union. They never wanted another invasion again. Think 20 million dead 25+ years before. Those dead lived in the psyche of the Russion people. They still do.
So Russia at the time of the revolution, with a vast agrarian economy that couldn't transport it's own crops to market with out 90% loss, had no capital. It had oil in the south west. some gold reserves, but not much capital.And from it's inception, a government that was treated with armed hostility by the international community.
Plus Marx predicted the workers in the indusrial countries, England; Germany would rebel first. Not the uneducated, un-connected( because of distance 12 + time zones in Russia) illiterate peasants of undeveloped Russia.
I'm not interested in taking the 1%'s wealth. If they just paid their taxes ,as they did in the '50's we'd all be doing better here and if we didn't have a military industrial complex to support.Example: Costa Rica has had no armed forces since 1947 and surprise! surprise! No wars either. You can't say that for other countries in Central America.
If we reapraised our purpose as a nation; we might focus more on the needs of America's people rather than insuring a world wide give away to it's corporations We've become the hit man and the bag man for the world elite. We used to get something for that, health care pensions; homes. jobs. Now we're just the world's enforcer and get blamed for not "working hard enough" if we are poor. No pensions. No homes. No jobs. Just corporations on welfare who have all the rights of a citizen and care, about nation or citizen building, not one bit. IMHO
America also had seperation of church and state. I believe that added to the growth of capital in the U.S In Russia it was found the Orthodox church owned 60+% of all the arable land; and had huge political influence. As does religion here; and we have no idea how much religions own.
Thank you, everyone.
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The menaplane is the great spiritual link for you?
How do the words come, to your leaders from heaven,? Is it in English or Latin or Swahilii? Or do they just "know"? It sounds, quite a bit, like a type of channeling. Doesn't it?
Can they channel other people than god? Elvis maybe?
i believe it is time for the catholic clergy to start countersuing all of the false acusations and fight back against the money hungry lawyers that all they care about is a monetary proffit, also i hope to see church lawyers going against all the difamators specially the left-athiest liberal media and all their antiamerican values agenda and sue their asses.