Plugging their ears: The mainstream media goes silent to the claim that sex abuse
is actually "worse" in a place that's not the Catholic Church
Just last week, Boz Tchividjian, a prominent Liberty University law professor and the grandson of Billy Graham, stood before a roomful of journalists and declared that Evangelical missions are a "magnet" for sexual abusers and that Evangelicals "are worse" than the Catholic Church at handling the problem.
Speaking to the annual gathering of the Religion Newswriters Association (RNA) in Austin, Texas, Tchividjian said that Evangelicals have "sacrificed the souls" of innocent children, and of known data from abuse cases, a shocking 25 percent are repeat cases, he claimed.
Tchividjian is also the executive director of an organization called Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), which works on combating abuse in the Evangelical community.
Last summer, GRACE spearheaded an online petition condemning the "silence" and "inattention" to sex abuse in Evangelical organizations, especially its missions.
Where are you, mainstream media?
Missing in action again:
The NY Times' Laurie Goodstein
The story has been picked up by a handful of Catholic sites and a few other religion blogs, and all of them appear to point to the story written by Sarah Pulliam Bailey at Religion News Service, who attended the RNA conference. Bravo to Ms. Pulliam Bailey for her reporting.
And, once again, the New York Times's National Religion Correspondent, Laurie Goodstein is nowhere to be found on this compelling story. Goodstein appears to be an award-winning member of the RNA, but apparently she either did not attend the conference, or she did not find Tchividjian's remarks worth reporting.
As we recently reported, nearly one out of every four articles that Goodstein has published in the last three years has trumpeted specifically the issue of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
Could it be that Goodstein is deliberately ignoring Tchividjian's eye-opener because it would undermine the implicit premise pounded into her reporting that sex abuse is primarily a Catholic problem?
The double standard rolls along.
[ADDENDUM, 10/4/13, 9:45am: Sarah Pulliam Bailey notes in the comments that Goodstein actually hosted the panel at the RNA at which Tchividjian made his remarks. Commonweal's Grant Gallicho, who identifies himself as "Catholic" yet has falsely smeared this site and this post on Twitter, claims that Goodstein actually "convened" the RNA panel.
Both observations actually bolster our original assessment! We specifically wrote, "[A]pparently [Goodstein] either did not attend the conference, or she did not find Tchividjian's remarks worth reporting."
In other words, our original estimation was entirely correct! Goodstein was actually present at the panel and personally heard Tchividjian's eye-opening remarks, yet she did not print a single syllable about it in the Times!
A few years ago, we praised Grant Gallicho for his critique of the slanted film, Deliver Us From Evil. Since then, however, it seems he has taken a new position as Laurie Goodstein's waterboy. And it also appears that the installation and influence of Pope Francis has had no effect on him taking to the Internet and lying about this site and this post. That's pretty sad.]
Thanks for looking at my piece. It is worth mentioning, though, that Laurie Goodstein hosted the above panel at RNA.
So why didn't she write about it?
Did you read the story below about Goodstein?
Enough said.
1. “We would be naive and dishonest were we to say this is a Roman Catholic problem and has nothing to do with us because we have married and female priests in our church. Sin and abusive behavior know no ecclesial or other boundaries.” Rt. Rev. William Persell, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, Good Friday Sermon, 2002.
2. “The three companies that insure the majority of Protestant churches in America say they typically receive upward of 260 reports each year of young people under 18 being sexually abused.” Last year there were 6 plausible cases involving Catholic priests. Six.
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2007/06/18/80877.htm
3. % of Catholic priests who are pedophiles: between 0.2 and 1.7 %. Protestant clergy: 2 to 3%. Prof Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests.
4. http://www.rickross.com/reference/sgm/sgm3.html
Lawsuit claims evangelical church hid abuse claims
5. “Retired bishop Peter Ball arrested on suspicion of child sex offences” (13 Nov 2012). Rt Rev Peter Ball thought to be most senior Church of England figure to be arrested in connection with a sex abuse inquiry
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/15/pricne-charles-provided-free-house-to-bishop-arrested-in-uk-child-abuse-probe.html
Of course you won’t find any of this in the NYT. In 2012 then–New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane fretted that thanks to the “political and cultural progressivism” of Times employees, “developments like….. gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.” And so it is for sexual abuse, the NYT treats – or rather, “mismanages” – as more of a (anti-Catholic) cause than a news subject.
To follow up on a point raised towards the end of Mark’s informative comment (the 3rd, 807AM): that New York Times public editor let the cat out of the bag (perhaps intentionally) with his characterization of certain issues as becoming a “cause” (which must therefore be supported by all its faithful adherents, by whatever means necessary) rather than as a “news subject” (which must be factually and objectively investigated and reported-upon).
For more on that, I offer the thoughts in my comment on the immediately prior thread (about Laurie Goodstein’s record of publications) time-stamped the 3rd at 1214PM.
Only 6 cases of "possible" abuse is 6 too many. This isn't a race too see who has the most abusers. Clean your own house and compensate the injured. Take care of your own crimes.
It’s About The “Cover-Up” Stupid.
…and
So by saying that another religion is raping innocent children Does that Absolve yours from its Crimes?
Thanks for letting us know “some of the twisted thinking of Catholics”.
Sincerely,
Finian
No one will deny that the catholic church is not the only organization that is harming children.
But as Finian said above its lower then low when an organization such as the catholic church looks upon the crimes of other institutions to minimize there own.
The harm that was done to children by their clergy is unforgivable. The church itself could have put a stop to it many years ago by taking the stand of turning all clergy members over to the police, but instead they decided to sweep the abuse and the victims under the rug, and allow the abuse to continue until enough was enough.
Its not only the abuse of children that will see the catholic church persecuted for years to come but also how they handled the abuse by their clergy.
The RCC made their bed many years ago and now its time to lay in it. We can only hope that priests do not drag more children into a bed with them.
Actually, in response to the "Dumb and Dumber" comments submitted at 12:25 and 3:31, it is only about persecuting Catholics for far lesser crimes than are being committed everywhere else but there (don't 'harmed children' matter outside of the Church, hypocrites?); and it is totally about the bigotry being practiced against the Catholic Church (aka persecution).
Twisted thinking is certainly happening; in that, it has reached an epitome by those intent on practicing their antiCatholic beliefs at all costs to integrity.
So, in the spirit of the season, "Boo", go away evil spirits.
Ever notice how they can't or won't address the details of the article or thoughtful posters comments? Why, there must be a "conspiracy' by them to hide the truths are are so vividly evident to others.
Incidentally, if 'one' had any 'proof' of the "…coverup, Stupid" one should share such evidence, 'stupid'-
(…must be another one of the 'rainbow brigade'…)
Sincerely-
Our precious son, at 12 and 22yrs., was raped by two clergy of a denomination other than Catholic. In all our lives we have never seen such tactics to cover up the crimes ranging from law enforcement, to courts, to media to other clergy–the whole gamut. Even stooping to taking our son's records, medical and educational, from his lawyer's ofc. during the hearing processees and abducting him from his apt., blindfolding and binding his hands to get him alone for interrogation by attorneys from the Diocese. Unbelievable!!!!!
Ms. Taylor, I am very sorry this happened to your son and your family. I only hope you pressed charges for kidnapping.
As TMR now starts to deal directly with the reality of sex-abuse in other ecclesiastical venues and polities (to say nothing of sex-abuse in the larger non-religious setting), we see once again the familiar bits compiled by the Abuseniks in order to Keep Their Ball Rolling.
We see the governing assertion from the 2002 Boston Globe Phase (as discussed in D’Antonio’s book): it’s not about the abuse but instead it’s about the cover-up. But the trick here is the presumption embedded in that ‘cover-up’: that there was actually a panoply of crimes that had to be covered-up in the first place.
And yet what we have actually had – with the help of the mainstream media for so long – is only a panoply of allegations of crimes, very few of which have ever been examined, and the few of which we have managed to examine here have not given any rational grounds for the (gratuitous and self-serving) presumption that those allegations were accurate and true in the first place.
And with no actual demonstration of some monster epidemic of “raping innocent children” (as it has been characterized here), then attempts to subsequently claim “cover-up” that epidemic fail utterly. And indeed, as the Jay Reports have described in detail the gravamen of the allegations that have been made, there have been very few allegations of rape.
So the “cover-up” gambit – developed, as D’Antonio describes, by the Globe and the local torties (in best Anderson Axis style) in order to breathe fresh life into a failing Stampede (and to breathe new life into the career of its then-new Editor – cannot stand on its own. Immediately, an alternative explanation for the Church’s failure (or refusal) to totally and immediately cave-in to all the lawsuit demands becomes rather plausible: there wasn’t such an epidemic in the first place. (Although – as has often been discussed here and as D’Antonio has revealed in great and substantiated detail – the Anderson strategy of multiple-plaintiff lawsuits went a long way toward undermining the possibility of any organized defense against the allegations.)
So then another excuse was developed to plaster-over the gap caused by the lack of proven outrages and claims: the Even If Only One gambit (thus: even if there has been only one case ever, then the Stampede has been justified and continues to be justified). This of course also provided (and provides) an excuse for the continued activities of all the loose electrons that had been attracted to the Stampede like discarded iron-filings to a magnet.
And the Even If Only One excuse was supported by the Other Religions’ Problems Are Irrelevant excuse. But a) this excuse presumes that the Church indeed had presided over an epidemic and that all or almost-all of the allegations were accurate and true – and we are thus back to square one with the problem.
And b) this excuse feeds off the core Stampede trick: lack of proportion. Does the existence of a comparatively few instances of abuse (and very very few of even those instances rising to claims of rape) justify the Stampede sustained against the Church, to the exclusion of functionally exploring and dealing-with even larger possible sites of sexual-abuse?
It’s a skein of excuses, all of which fail individually: i) presume that all or almost-all of the allegations were true; ii) presume that most of them somehow deal with “rape”; iii) presume that therefore any attempt to defend-against these presumed actions is a “cover-up”; iv) presume that the Ball Must Rightly Keep Rolling Even If There Is Only One actual instance of “rape” or of “abuse” (however defined); v) presume that there is no room for actual examination or for any sense of proportion in judging what to do about the issue.
And – of course – (v) feeds off the Victimist mantra that any pain (however defined and however proven) whatsoever justifies whatever derangements in law and justice that may be “necessary” .
So when you look at it, the whole thing is a skein of presumptions with very little established proof of any of it.
And if JR (the 3rd, 1225PM) can demonstrate where the Church has not ‘cleaned house’ in the past 13 years, then let him do so. And as for the usual bleat to “compensate the injured”: I again say that we have not yet established just who the genuinely “injured” may be (nor does even his own case offer much support for the plausibility of allegations being true and accurate). And, but of course, we have yet to actually see much demonstrable proof of “crimes”, and the very few cases that have come to trial (and the current crop are still under appeal) have demonstrated nothing so much as the highly suspicious failure of the Catholic Sex Abuse Trials to hew to any normal jurisprudential and legal integrity.
Then we get variations on the cacophonous themes from ‘dennis ecker’ (the 3rd at 510PM). But “the catholic church” is not the one that “looks upon the crimes of other institutions”; it is this site, which – contrary to his own Cartoonish proclivities – is not “the catholic church” but rather is simply a site to assess and deliberate and discuss in order to get a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the Catholic Abuse Matter. Thus it is ‘dumber than dumb’ – if I may – to a) equate this site with the actual Catholic Church and then to b) characterize the Catholic Church as somehow (another Playbook gambit here) being “lower than low”. Nor do I accept in any way that it is “lower than low” for this site to try and get a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the Catholic Abuse Matter.
Nor do I accept in any way that attempting to get a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the extent of sexual-abuse (however defined) in this country is somehow an effort to “minimize” anything. But the assertion reveals the Game and the Playbook: any attempt to do anything that may have the result of widening the focus and deepening the analysis and thus opening up the whole Game to being exposed for what it really is and always has been must somehow be stopped.
As for the “harm”, we still haven’t been able to establish a) the genuine cases and b) the extent of any “harm” (I recall here my discussion in a comment last month of the three formidably interlocked Problems of Reporting, Causality, and Definition). Thus ‘dennis ecker’s repetition of the old PR Talking Points is just a repetition of the old PR Talking Points. Which works to lock the whole issue into an endlessly-repeating time-loop and thus the Ball Can Keep Rolling ad infinitum.
And clearly even his own comment opens up another can of worms: that in all the decades of the past “the police” took no action, despite the fact that – if the number of ‘victims’ is to be credited – vast numbers of parents and law enforcement agents must also have done nothing. This raises far more questions than it answers, but that’s the direction assessment and analysis has to take here.
But the effort to cast those decades as being nothing more than an era of monstrous and near-total Catholic control over the police and the parents and the media and the government – such that nobody is responsible except the Church (and responsible for an epidemic that has not actually been demonstrated to have actually ever taken place) – is beyond any rational plausibility whatsoever and becomes a Cartoon. But what’s new there?
And as far as the Church “putting a stop to it many years ago”, we still haven’t established what that “it” was, to the extent that it was an epidemic. And to apply the ‘abuse’ definitions and sensibilities of the present to an era decades ago is grossly unacceptable historical practice (I recall here my comments about MADD and the national attitude toward drunk-driving decades prior to MADD and then in the decades after MADD).
But then ‘dennis ecker’ gives his own game away: his agenda is to “see the catholic church persecuted for years to come”. Charming. So much for various Abusenik denials in comments on this site that they are seeking or conducting ‘persecution’ of the Church or Christians or religious persons or fill-in-the-blank.
And again the effort to freeze time (ungrammatically stated though it is): the Church “made their bed long ago and now its time to lay in it”. Even if all of the presumptions noted above were true (and that has in no way been established) then we are looking at a comment that is a revenant from thirty years ago and more and corresponds to very little – if anything – in the actual present.
And the bit about “we can only hope that priests do not drag more children into bed with them” is – he will be unhappy to know – met by the acute drop-off in allegations, which in any case were never primarily about ‘current’ allegations in the first place but rather those ‘historical’ allegations that were made decades later once the Stampede got going and which – thanks to the cumulative effect of the Anderson legal and media strategies – were almost guaranteed never to be carefully examined.
We will no doubt see more efforts to try to Keep The Ball Rolling as the national discussion moves – however hesitantly – toward a wider focus on sexual-abuse (however defined) and thus threatens to deprive various loose electrons and numerous special-interests of the Catholic piñata which has for so long “been bery bery good to” them.
Remember what I said before. We are not keeping the ball rolling but in fact we have picked it up.
The history books are written and the catholic church is portrayed like a horror movie for what they have done to children and their famlies.
I finally came to understand why you and others like you hide behind a false title, and that is first you are ashamed of what you write and the second is safety.
Is there not a commandment that says you shall not bear false witness ? HYPOCRITE
Yada Yada Yada! Same old song and dance from P, i.e. " We'd compensate victims if we had proof they were victims" LIAR! You have proof, your princes had so much proof in fact that an order was created to handle the perpetrator priests. That order was the Paracletes and centers, rest homes were created that the rapists might be treated. Where were the rest homes for the victrims. Where were the comfort stations for the raped children and our families to find healing?. No where. That's where. The creation of centers for abusive priests is proof enough that abuse was not only endemic to the church but very well known to the hierarchy who funded those centers.
You want proof that we were abused? Look to the Paracletes.
Re: the bigots who post on here. I don't know why I'm not supposed to care about Evangelical children as well as Catholic children and young adults. I think Laurie Goodstein doesn't want to come under the scrutiny that she would if she reported the abuse happening in the Evangelical world.
Julie, who said you shouldn't care about any harmed child?
Secondly, Why would Ms. Goodstien be under "more" scrutiny by reporting evangelical abuse than she would by reporting catholic hierarch's abuses? The catholic church is the largest christian religion in the U.S. by far.
IT"S THE COVER-UP , that's causing the attention from the media.
[edited by moderator]
I've noticed one thing re: comments. People are much more willing to think and talk about what is going on when it is protestant clergy under scrutiny, rather than simply throw vicious comments out there. See, Laurie, maybe they wouldn't be so hard on you if you take the focus to other places besides the Catholic Church. That or you have a blatant agenda.
For once we suddenly see (the 4th, 1040AM) ‘dennis ecker’ remembering what he said before. So often with the Abuseniks here, they fire-and-forget (to use the military phrase): they put up their bits and then (usually when the problems with those bits are pointed out) they change the subject. (Although, if it’s one of their standard go-to Talking Points, they will wait awhile and then simply toss the same plop up again after they figure others have forgotten.)
Anyhoo, he is welcome to play with the words: I’d be happy to say this: they picked up the Ball and now they must Keep The Ball Rolling. How’s that?
Then the Wiggy declaration that “the history books are written”. Which history books would those be? D’Antonio’s? Peter McDonough’s recent The Catholic Labyrinth? Some of Philip Jenkins’s work?
Also, contrary to his static Cartoon conception of history and historical process and “the history books”: they are always being written and the task of an intelligent reader is to sift the newer books in comparison with the older books, and judge the claims on their coherence, rationality, plausibility and the evidence put forward to support them.
The Catholic Church as “horror movie” reveals – as so often – more about him than about the Church and that’s not my problem. Perhaps more time with actual history books and less time with TV and movies might be in order for him.
He then returns to his earlier spew about “false title” (meaning a screen name, I imagine) although he has never made a convincing response to i) the verifiability issues with online screen names or ii) the problem of verifying even so-called real names (any Mike Harris could sign in as Jack Jones, and who would know the difference?) or iii) the ever-queasy reality that we have so often seen here: persons claiming to be a certain somebody with a certain record of achievements yet who in their material here demonstrate absolutely none of the cognitive or expressive skills and mindsets one would presume went with the claimed achievement.
And then he simply repeats his “ashamed” bit and then the unexplained “safety”- is this mentatlity once again revealing some violent tendencies or urges, insufficiently masked in vague phrasing?. (And I say again: this material reveals a mind that cannot seem to analyze or sustain and pursue a train of thought. Can it really have been successfully medically trained in even the most basic levels of diagnostic and reporting skills? That seems highly implausible from the material on the record here. If the mind that has produced the material we have seen on this site was indeed ever employed as a first-responder at some level of EMS training, then surely humanity – at least in that jurisdiction – dodged a bullet when he became no longer employed in that capacity.)
And then the Wig of Papal Pretension delivers a summary declamation about “false witness” and tosses the epithet “hypocrite” (exaggerated formatting omitted). As I have said, when ‘dennis ecker’ starts capitalizing (thus ‘shouting’) then it’s a pretty clear indicator that he is i) projecting and/or ii) trying to force onto readers an interpretation that he knows cannot stand on its own. It is what it is.
But to justify the characterization of “hypocrite” he would first have to establish that I have borne false witness. And he hasn’t. And nothing new there either.
Conspiracy theorists (and apparently people who have a lot of time on their hands) spend much time theorizing why the media cover what they do. We expect this, even though most of the time we're credited with much more power than we actually have. But in support of factual accuracy, which seems scarce in this thread: When I contacted Laurie Goodstein about a panel about abuse in religious institutions for RNA's Annual Conference, Laurie was the one to suggest something on abuse beyond the Catholic Church. She helped invite the panelists and she even spent considerable personal time vetting one potential panelist about whom we received complaints. She moderated the event and thus was unable to take notes the way the audience could. When an abuse victim spoke to us and was shaken, Laurie stood up to give the victim support and kept the tissues handy. This panel was not something to be reported on immediately, so much as it was for background and source-building for our journalists. Reporting on any abuse takes considerable time, is emotionally traumatic even for reporters, and depends on closely held private documents becoming public. Furthermore, religion reporters such as Laurie have all religions, all topics on their docket. To assume she has never written about non-Catholic abuse (news flash: Not everything journalists write gets published due to space, timing, legal concerns, etc…) and never will in the future, is a bizzare and unfounded accusation.
Dr. Debra L. Mason
Professor, University of Missouri School of Journalism
Executive Director, Religion Newswriters Association
Debra -
Thank you for your comment. However, if there is any scarcity of factual accuracy, it is from you.
1. We have *never* claimed that Goodstein “has never written about non-Catholic abuse.” We were explicitly clear that our survey convered the last three years. And the facts speak for themselves: Goodstein has not trumpeted a single article about non-Catholic sex abuse in the past three years. Period.
2. The fact that Goodstein actually convened the RNA panel actually bolsters our presentation. Some panelists made some very eye-opening claims, and, according to you, there were some very compelling stories. Yet Goodstein did not publish even a single syllable about any of it in the Times and share her knowledge with the public. To us, that is nothing short of astonishing.
3. You also wrote, “This panel was not something to be reported on immediately.” Well, apparently Sarah Pulliam Bailey did not get that memo. She indeed did report on it immediately, and Huffington Post, one of the most visited web sites in the world, later re-published her piece.
Best regards,
TheMediaReport.com
Dr. Mason, Would you say who was complained about and why, if not by name as speaker x? I am curious what the complaints were and why.
Jim, You are trying to give yourself credibility by pretending we don't know about the cover-ups. We do know. I am surprised however that your vitriol extends only to Catholic abusers. Actually, you're a troll and we keep feeding you, which is our fault.
Thank you for your comment. However, if there is any scarcity of factual accuracy, it is from you.
O.K., maybe I missed it somewhere but Dave where is your story about your very close friend who was recently sentenced ? I'm open minded and willing to read what you have to say. We sure don't want to blame anyone for the scarcity of factual accuracy.
Well; Julie someone better tell D about the coverups. she doesn't seem to get that.
I was abused because I was a catholic. That's why I attended catholic schools to be a catholic. If I hadn't been there under their endemic abuse system, I wouldn't have been harmed, (I say endemic because the cover ups weren't the exception but the rule, therefore systemic.) (I could have been abused in a public school and then I'd be bothering them instead of you). I'm a catholic chicken come home to roost. I speak to catholics because I'm a catholic victim. You're the ones who still avod responsability. Why would I let you get away with that?
"The catholic church is the largest christian religion in the U.S. by far."
No, it isn't: the Protestant denomination alone, and when combined with the other Reformeds (as predictably fractured into some hundreds of sub-denominations) is the largest Christian religion in the US, by far. http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html#Pew_branches
"IT"S THE COVER-UP , that's causing the attention from the media"
No, it isn't; it is pure, unadulterated antiCatholic bias and bigotry that is causing the attention from the media. That fact has been documented here at TMR and in numerous other reputable places by reputable investigators; the sort of investigator/historian/reporter with integrity, and evidence. The fact is that is there no widespread or conspiratorial or institutional coverup.
Get over it; and man-up on this played-out farce, already.
I am accused by JR (the 4th, at 119PM) of having the “same old song and dance”; this is a wordier variant of the I’m Not – You Are bit in the Playbook: the Wiggy vaudevillians seek to claim that it is not themselves but others who perform the same old stuff.
First of all, I do not speak for the Catholic Church in any capacity whatsoever, so to characterize my comment as coming from the Church (that “we’d” in the bit about compensating victims) is inaccurate and insupportable. My point – repeated because (as I have said in comments before on this site) we keep encountering the same incoherences in the same PR Talking Points from the Abuseniks – is that the entire Stampede is based on the manipulative presumptions that i) seek to equate an allegation with a full and accurate and true report and that ii) seek overtly or by inference to equate a settlement with a conviction or even an admission of guilt in regard to any particular allegant’s claims.
Now in actual competent deliberation, discussion, or even debate, the next rational and logical move for the Abusenik parties would have been to demonstrate proof of this or that specific allegation or all allegations. No such proffering of evidence has ever been forthcoming. And instead, we simply get the repetition of the Talking Points, with exaggerated formatting and/or distractions and/or epithets and so on and so forth.
And as I have said before in comments, this gambit reveals either a) a deliberate avoidance of any effort to discuss the evidence in support of the veracity of the allegations or b) a genuine unfamiliarity among the Abuseniks with the entire concept of rational assessment or c) both.
Thus JR is going to have to demonstrate in what way I am a “liar” [exaggerated formatting omitted]. I have asked questions (to which I have received no substantive response); in what was is asking questions characterizable as ‘lying’?
So I would then answer that No, I don’t “have proof” and I have explained that statement many times here.
The Paracletes were formed to minister to priests with alcohol, substance abuse, as well as celibacy problems. And if they – as I presume they have – worked with some priests that have issues with sexual acting-out, then that fact in no way constitutes “proof” that all of the various Cartoon characterizations of the Stampede are all true or that all (or even most) of the Stampede-era allegations were true. In saying that – I think it has to be spelled out here for the Abusenik mentality – I am not saying a) that no abuse ever occurred but rather b) that in none of the cases that we have seen on this site or in the trials such as those in the Philadelphia case have we ever seen a case in which the allegations were either proven or even plausible, given the disturbing whackiness of the conduct of the trials.
In other words, I am saying that we therefore i) have no proof of the veracity of any particular allegations brought onto this site and that ii) we therefore have substantial reason to question the probable plausibility of allegations, especially under the circumstances of a) the Anderson strategies (legal and media), b) the general Victimist derangements of jurisprudence and media reporting, c) the enticements of easy-money put in place by the synergy of various elements of the Stampede (discussed at length here in prior comments) and d) the quality of the material we have seen here asserting such veracity on the part of individual or all cases.
This clearly proves irritating to Abuseniks – either because of their own difficulties with conducting rational assessment or because of the rationalizations they were fed by organized groups or torties: e.g. that actual accuracy isn’t important; that there is a larger truth about the Church and against that any individual untruths in allegations are not so bad and may even be justified; that Abuseniks are working in a Great “Cause” (as the New York Times editor recently put it) and thus that since Abuseniks are working toward a good End or Purpose then the Means Abuseniks use are OK even if those Means are not something Abuseniks would care to discuss publicly (although CEO Clohessy let that cat out of the bag with his claim under oath that he sees “two standards of truth”, one strict one that should be applied to the Church and another loose one that should be applied to allegations); and that since the Church lies then allegators and Abuseniks can lie too.
And again with the “rapists” bit, although – again and again – very very few of the actual allegations concerned “rape”. This is clearly a manipulative and inaccurate characterization that works only toward trying to make the issue seem far worse than most of the formal allegations themselves would support.
And once again – from a JR who clearly once asserted that the Church can do nothing for victims (no distinction between genuine victims and those otherwise-classifiable) except to pay them cash – the bleat about “rest homes for victims”. Yet there are clear alternative explanations for that lack of such “rest homes for victims”: first, there would first have to be a way to distinguish between genuine victims and those otherwise-classifiable (nor has any Abusenik here ever come forward with his/her solution to that problem); second, victims would quite possibly not want to put themselves under the care of the Church; third, the Paraclete facilities are actual residential therapeutic facilities and not accurately characterized as “rest homes” in the first place, leading to the fourth point: allegants may well not want to submit to therapy, especially if their allegations were not entirely veracious to begin with (nor would their legal counsel necessarily advise treatment in such a facility). And fifth, there would be a serious prudential concern about further allegations arising from such residential patients’ perhaps making further allegations stemming from their residence at such a facility … and how that potentiality could possibly be dealt with.
So JR may have been more accurate than he had initially imagined when he said that the only thing the Church was good for in this situation was to pay cash and let those thus remunerated make their own arrangements as they saw fit.
And again: there were very very few “raped children” according to the allegations lodged against the Church.
The military has therapeutic treatment programs for alcoholics and substance –abusers; that fact in way justifies the assertion that alcoholism and substance-abuse is “endemic” to the military. Ditto many police and other public agencies that also have programs for impaired personnel. And indeed Alcoholics Anonymous and similar groups maintain an extensive network of services for the impaired, and yet that fact in no ways justifies the broad assertion that such networks ‘prove’ that the country is full of alcoholics and substance-abusers. Such assertions are Cartoon-thinking trying to masquerade as rational, coherent, logical thought.
Nor does the fact that the hierarchy set up such treatment centers (and indeed set up an Order whose members would be specifically trained-in and missioned-to provide competent therapy) ‘prove’ that the hierarchy knew that the priesthood was essentially rife with impaired priests. If anything, the setting-up of such an Order and its facilities would indicate a pro-active effort to deal with impaired priests.
So again: we see here the Inverted Pyramid phenomenon as part of the Playbook: upon very few demonstrated facts (as opposed to factoids) a vast structure of allegations and unsupported conclusions has been constructed as if it were actual fact.
How could such a structurally-unsound Inverted Pyramid stay standing-up for all this time? It was held up from the outside by a media seeking controversy in order to snag readers and listeners, and various other special interests whose agendas would be served by the continued standing of the Inverted Pyramid.
So I would say No, there is not in any way “proof enough” for anybody but the Cartoon-dependent.
Now, lastly and if I may, I would like to address a point made by JR in his last comment (before the thread was closed on the article) to the effect that the Nazi death camps were all situated ‘in Catholic countries’. First, what European countries under Nazi control did not have a Catholic presence? Which leads to the second point: what exactly is meant by ‘a Catholic country’ in the first place? Third: the camps were sited and set-up by the Nazis, not by the local governments (indeed, Poland technically no longer existed since its government was in exile in London and the Nazis had erected the Government-General as the political entity that controlled what was formerly known as Poland). Fourth, the citizenries of both mainly Protestant countries (e.g. Holland, Germany itself) and mainly Catholic countries (e.g. the then-former Poland, some of the Balkan countries, Austria) were for their own purposes rather actively acquiescent in what was done to their Jewish citizens. Curiously, and hardly irrelevantly, Italy was not among them and it registered one of the smallest amounts of its Jewish citizens lost in the Holocaust; nor were any death-camps erected there.
Which brings me to Deschner’s ‘historical’ chops: what we see in Deschner, I would say, is JR with a much much bigger 3×5 file and a bit more competence with language and expression, but otherwise the same basically flawed cognitive approach to historical research and to the making of accurate historical assertions. This, I would say, explains the fact that Deschner has never enjoyed the respect of the professional historical community. And indeed he may have actively sought to avoid participation in that community’s professional networks and activities, since it would have exposed his ‘thinking’ to peer-review and criticism and analysis, which is a prospect I don’t think he relishes any more than does JR. Thus Deschner is only found in the type of anti-religious or anti-Catholic venues where those participants already have their axes to grind and where their primary concern is not for accurate and nuanced assessment, but rather for simple plop-tossing.
If you had been raped P, I don't think you'd be so flipant with the word "bit". But who knows? You do have this identify with the oppressor "thingy" going.
[edited by moderator]
RAPE: Unlawful sexual activity. Sexual activity with a person who is beneath a certain age or incapable of valid consent, Forced sexual activity. An outrageous violation.
Sexual Assault: Illegal sexual contact.
Statutory Rape: sexual activity with a person who is below the statutory age of consent.
And again with the “rapists” bit, although – again and again – very very few of the actual allegations concerned “rape”. This is clearly a manipulative and inaccurate characterization that works only toward trying to make the issue seem far worse than most of the formal allegations themselves would support.
Next time get it right. ITS rape.
Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Want version too ?
Your reaching for the lies now. Explain how catholic societies discouraged facism? Why were catholic countries,( and parts of countries like Bavaria), the matrix for facism?
From JR (the 4th, 843PM) I am once again accused of “lies” (“reaching for lies”). What “lies” might those be?
As to his questions: First, what does he mean by “catholic societies”? Does he mean societies that had a Catholic presence? Or is he under some Cartoon impression that a society with a Catholic presence was somehow officially or formally “Catholic” and somehow governed by the Church?
Next, “fascism” is historically distinguishable from Nazism and Soviet Communism. That leaves Italy and some of the Balkan countries. It would also exclude anti-clerical France of the Third Republic.
Next, Fascism was a political movement, arising from the tremendous derangement and damage done to societies and cultures by the experiences and consequences of World War I. It was anchored in a Party that did not eschew violence against any opponents or doubters in the achievement of its control; there was no way to oppose it democratically and no political alternative to it except for civil war; nor were any of the afflicted pre-Fascist governments in a strong enough postwar political position to oppose the Fascists nor in a strong enough military and police position to suppress them.
And to peoples and societies demoralized by the Great War (and in an Italy still greatly divided by the effects of the Reunification of 1860 and the Turin government’s efforts to impose its great plans and hopes upon the South and the Mezzogiorno) the Fascists promised order, work, bread, and (their specious form of) national dignity and honor. It was a heady and toxic brew that the Fascists concocted, spiced with just enough production of tangible this-worldly benefits (at least until WW2 really got rolling in Europe after the German victories over France and Poland) to make its violence and anti-religious elements appear to be a price worth paying.
While both the Italian-Fascist and the Nazi regimes were rabidly anti-clerical, Mussolini was far less insane insofar as he did not set himself up (as Hitler did) as some sort of secular and political Christ-figure. And while Mussolini enjoyed the fear which his regime struck into the heart of the Vatican (it was totally surrounded by his troops and police and goons, and totally dependent on the Fascist government even for basic needs such as water, food, and electricity, as well as access into and out-of the Vatican state) yet he was wary of undermining his own regime’s popularity and legitimacy by actually invading the Vatican State and indeed he never did so. (In all of this, again, I can strongly recommend the second chapter – and the entire book if readers have the time – of Michael Burleigh’s 2007 Sacred Causes.)
Thus Italians could reap the emotional benefits of political belonging to a resurgent Italian state, while – if they didn’t look too closely – consoling themselves that the Catholicism and the Church were not being harmed.
Precisely how a politically non-violent democratic society can “discourage fascism” once that violent and virulent plague-bacillus has taken hold and has begun imposing itself upon the body-politic … perhaps JR can explain how such “discouragement” could be effectively sustained. None of the European post-WW1 governments or peoples could answer that question. But of course, JR is something so very speshull, and perhaps has the answer that would have worked in that so-very-different-and-dangerous time and place. Or perhaps like Deschner, he can simply dine-out for quite a while on the plop-tossing from a safe distance in space and historical time.
“Bavaria” (which, I think I should mention to him, is in Germany) was not the or a “matrix for Fascism” (see above). Hitler got his start in Munich because it was closer to his native Austria and the Prussian-Protestant (German equivalents of ‘WASPs’) elites were not going to tolerate an upstart revolutionary in Berlin; Hitler had to work hard before he had enough political clout to make moves toward Berlin, and even then he lost his last election and it was only because of the problems the Weimar government faced that Hitler was made Chancellor, on the elites’ grossly inaccurate and witless presumption that he could be controlled (as Von Papen put it: “we are hiring him”).
But even more than the Fascists of Italy, the Nazis were ruthlessly violent when it came to dealing with any opposition or doubt or questioning. And while Mussolini fancied himself a new Roman emperor, Hitler made sustained efforts to present himself as both God’s Chosen Destiny for Germany and as a political incarnation of Christ, specifically destined by God (Hitler claimed) to lead Germany.
As for his bits in the 9PM comment on the 4th: I was not “flippant”. I was basing my remarks on the fact that nobody ever has established, or found a satisfactory yet accurate way to establish, who was “raped” and who wasn’t (but rather merely claimed to be). And who is JR to say what the experience of being raped is? Was he himself raped in addition to the arm-across-the-groin or did he at least claim that? Or are we merely seeing here that tin-foil mental magic whereby – through some osmosis or radar – Abuseniks can discern both a) who was genuinely raped and b) what it is like to have been genuinely raped even if you yourself haven’t been? And in any case, and as I have said and said again, very few abuse allegations have to do with rape.
Neat if uncharacteristic (let alone ungrammatical) bit about my somehow ‘identifying with the oppressor’. First, he would have to show where I “identify” myself with an “oppressor” in comments here. I don’t “identify” (and, more cogently, I don’t need-to identify) with any position; I have a self and a life that is capable of standing on its own, thank you. Instead I simply try to follow the evidence (rather than the Spin and the ‘Story’) and see where the evidence and the logic rationally lead.
And that brings me, lastly, to remarks made in the ‘Debra’ comment (the 4th, 458pm): First of all, historically, all of the strategies of powerful regimes (e.g., the various totalitarian strategies) going back at least as far as the early 20th century have taken especial care to secure or suborn the press (today we would call it the media). As Gustav LeBon noted at the end of the 19th century, modern complex societies are very susceptible to the dynamics of public opinion (and how it might be manipulated, through commercial advertising or government propaganda) and subsequent regimes that sought to control the outcomes for their subject-citizenries have always made sure they controlled the press. Also, we do recall that the American Framers themselves realized the vital importance of a “free press” to the sustained freedom of the citizenry and the people. And I recall a very recent report that in the current government shut-down government PR would continue to function, since it was essential to “national security”.
Thus it is not only false modesty but inaccurate (and perhaps self-servingly so) to say that the press/media has far less power than it is imagined to have. In a complex modern society, the press/media has great power to shape public opinion. Indeed, as I have often said here, the Stampede could not have been sparked and sustained without the (unquestioning) support of the press/media, and the admittedly masterful strategist, Jeff Anderson, was very well aware of that when he formulated a strategy particularly aimed at forming (sub rosa) alliances with the press/media. And D’Antonio in his book describes the dynamics and working-out of this strategy in great detail, especially in the matter of the Boston Globe’s 2002 gambit.
So there is no “conspiracy” theorizing going on here where the power of the press/media to shape public opinion is concerned. And it is – as I said – either uninformed or sly to infer that such “conspiracy theorists” and “those with a lot of time on their hands” are the core of the problem. I myself don’t have a lot of time to burn and the fact that I take the time I do on this site reflects my assessment of the urgency and significance of the Matter that this site deals-with.
Was there no recording of “the event” to which Ms. Goodstein could refer afterwards, even if – as moderator – she could not take adequate notes? Is she not skilled at keeping her notation processes working even as she was also moderating? That doesn’t seem an impossible task for a career reporter.
But I am most concerned about the entire purpose of “the event”. As I understand it from the comment, its purpose was “for background and source-building for our journalists”. But what reality lies behind these very nicely chosen words? Would the value of such “background” only exist if the interviewees were presumed to be telling the truth? Clearly, they were not questioned and the purpose of “the event” was not to ask questions (let alone – the horror – express doubts); “tissues” were kept “handy”, in a touching touch.
In what, then, did this “background” consist? I submit that this “event” was more of an indoctrination session where the media attendees a) could be drenched in the emotion and bathos so very necessary to manipulatively override any rational and objective analysis (let alone – the horror – skeptical questioning) and b) could be groomed by the advocates and the ‘stories’ such that the “journalists” would then conform themselves to the requirements of the Stampede. Precisely what Jeff Anderson (or any tort attorney) would dream of and what Anderson specifically called-for in his attorney-media Axis strategy. By amazing coincidence.
And “source-building”? The exchanging of phone and fax or email or tweet info so that ‘stories’ could be updated by those “sources” and quickly forwarded to the willing media contact? This would be the functional counterpart to the emotional contact or ‘bonding’ carried out in the “background” phase.
There are in the film archives black-and-white footage of German nationals – mothers with children in their arms – tearfully relating to the greedy Reich cameras how they were beaten and outraged by the (depending on the moment) evil brutish Czechs or evil brutish Poles. But Goebbels had had them artfully made-up by professional film cosmeticians and they were speaking from carefully-prepared Reich scripts. I’ve always been leery of reporters with a “cause” to advocate since seeing those films (and the public editor of the New York Times recently discussed that “cause”-reporting as it still exists here today). But it is a type of reporting that Jeff Anderson shrewdly realized could be an incalculable boon to his own work, even as media outlets realize how incalculably bountiful such an alliance would be for their own purposes (and bottom-lines).
Was such an “event” also held for priests, who might be brought in, not for the purposes of immediate and specifically case-related reporting, but simply for “background and source-building”? I’m going to imagine not.
There has developed in the Beltway the practice of newly-elected Congress-persons being invited for a free “background and source-building” junket (ever so carefully arranged and directed) to go to a foreign country, at the expense of that foreign government. There is much to be said against this practice.
I would say that this “event” that ‘Debra’ describes is, mutatis mutandis, equally dubious. And equally helpful and influential. To certain interests.
Do you think the Jews had enough food or water in the cattle cars on the way to or in the camps?
Couldn't the pope and his subjects have at least tried ( assuming they even wanted to) to highlight the Jews' kidnapping and slaughter?
It's a complete, a penultimate in fact, moral failure by a religion that claims moral certitude not only for itself but for everyone.
Jim Robertson, you claim you are a victim of sexual abuse in the church. Since I am new here, I wonder if you can direct me to the evidence for your claim? Ie, can you, or are you willing to, substantiate the claim? I certainly do not mean to be disrespectful to your suffering. However, anyone can arrive on a comment board and make all kinds of accusations without providing any proof for the claim. Are you willing to name names, and if not, why, gives
your great hatred for the church?
Again, my apologies if you have already provided evidence for your serious charges on another thread. If that is the case, I would appreciate your directing me to it.
Mr. Halper,
Mr. Robertson on more then one occasion has informed readers of his past or should I say the hell the catholic church and its clergy member has put him through.
I think it would only be fair if Jim decides to elaborate again on his past that you tell us a little about yourself. City and state which you live, family size, profession, age, income, criminal record and mothers maiden name. We can leave out your mothers maiden name.
If your requests from Jim are only to verify the truth, then the questions about you are for the exact same reason.
What happened to me was rape as defined by Merriam& Webster's dictionary. I had 2 abusors at my high-school, Juniperro Serra High school in Gardena, California. one at 13 yrs of age, described by P and the major abuse happened when I just turned 16. It was an on going series of abuses begining with rubbing and violence twisting my arm behind my back eventually shoving my arm first at the front of his trousers which he dry humped then down his trousers between his pants and underwear then into his underwear. (I kept my hand balled into a fist I would not give him what he wanted. All the while never addressing what he was doing but asking me the symbols for chemicals, like Silver is Ag Hydrogen is H.( I forget what you call that thing, the periodic table?) that escalated by the perp. Bro. James McGloin over a 2 week period. Till he physically forced me into his chemical store room exposed himself and expected me to blow him. the reason he had access to me. i was doing the lead in my high school play (The Playboy of the Western World) And I had to report to him for an hour (to be tutored and as a punishment for failing his chem class) while the rehersal waited for girls from catholic high schools to arrived to rehearse.
I was afraid he would kill me. I could only remember a nun in grade school talking about St. Maria Goretti and her sexual murder. I never willfully co-operated with him except to report to him. You had to obey teachers and I obeyed him out of shear terror. I thought who will believe this is happening to me. It's my word over a Brother's ,a grown up. I finally broke under a friend's questioning me about my personality change. I told him and he told the dean of Students. Who said when told by my friend: "What are you trying to do cause trouble?"
Would you say if anyone had a reason to hate the corporate church; it would be myself and other victims? I don't like your religious imaginings but you have every right to believe what ever you like. What you don't have is a right to pretend rapes that did occur, did not.
I was compensated in 2007 by the L.A. archdiocese. Other victims who have posted here have not been compensated.
Bishop Accountability is showing only one allegation against a BROTHER JAMES McGLOIN, S.M. It's JR's word against his. Most proven perps have multiple allegations.
"Well; Julie someone better tell D about the coverups. she doesn't seem to get that."
Well, this is getting old, but, here is yet another fabrication (lie) by a claimed victim of abuse by a priest.
Here is what I said only yesterday (in addition to my too-numerous to count previous comments regarding coverups): "The fact is that is there no widespread or conspiratorial or institutional coverup."
Widespread, conspiratorial, institutional coverups; nowhere claiming that there are no coverups. I have always maintained that there were some coverups, as revealed, with evidence, on individual basis. To date; no evidence of a widespread, conspiratorial or institutional cover up exists, except in the warped minds of antiCatholic bigots and those who claim to have been abused by priests (often one in the same).
Why/how would anyone believe any claim, of anything, being made by such liars (including their media cohorts)?
Also, cease the repeated juvenile attempts to project here that you know anything personal about me – you don't (for your purposes, assume that I am one of your 'frozen vegetable gender-benders' that just had my birth certificate SEX declaration changed to: Unknown); which is just another piece of evidence to be added to the ever-growing mountain of evidence that clearly documents your dishonesty.
In response to the 4Oct 11:21 comment:
http://definitions.uslegal.com/r/rape/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-rape-crimes-idUSTRE80520I20120106
Penetration seems to be central the definiton of the vicious crime of Rape (as opposed to sexual assault, activity or age of consent).
If it weren't for the severity of the subject, that comment could be received as simply yet another laughable attempt at distortion of the truth ('truthstortion').
But, there isnt anything funny about rape, or false claims of rape.
"If your requests from Jim are only to verify the truth, then the questions about you are for the exact same reason"
That's funny, I must have missed Mr. Halper's claims of anything that would/should require verification?
Here's the rule, kids; if you base your universally and conspiratorially applied claims against our Church, such as charges of vast coverups of extensive and pervasive child abuse by our priests, on your own personal unverified claims of abuse, you had better be ready to step up to the plate when asked for your 'story'. In this case, all that was sought was the 'story', imagine the response if, God forbid, evidence was actually required- as it most certainly should be.
It was an absolutely fair question in light of both of your claims, upon which you both base all of your other disgusting allegations against our Church.
Here's hoping that a false claim, sans any evidence, is not similarly made against those, as long as fifty years later, that expect us to accept their dubious claims.
It would be your dog that bit you, after all.
D, just calm yourself.
If cover up happened world wide and an order was created to deal with the perpetrators but not the victims. And this happened. Why did it all happen exactly the same way universally? Cover ups in every country you can name.Why did all the church cover up? Why weren't at least a major portion of attacks reported? Universally the church kept stum and continued to transfer abusers to fresh fields of innocents.
I'll tell you one reason: in 1962 john XXIII declared anyone who gave scandal to the church would be automatically excommunicated. Including the victims and our families for talking about the abuse. Nice.
Now comes ‘dennis ecker’ (the 4th at 1121PM). He’s on a new kick (requiring a new Wig, but of course). Readers might first have noticed it on BigTrial’s most recent article-thread: he had apparently gotten his hands on a dictionary and was arguing that if a person was already arrested, then he couldn’t be arrested again for a second crime while being held in custody for the first arrestable crime. (How did he get into this argument? Don’t even ask for the rationality – you can go to the BigTrial site to try and follow the logic.)
Anyhoo, in the BigTrial episode, he argues from the single general dictionary that he has (marvelously) consulted. And the manner of his advanced-level legal thinking, fellow and sister groundlings, is on this wise: since arrest is defined as a ‘deprivation of liberty’ then you can’t be arrested again on a second Charge while you are already in custody for an arrest on a first Charge, because – waitttt for ittttt! – you clearly can’t be ‘deprived of liberty’ if you have already been deprived of your liberty (by the first arrest).
The possibility that one might simply now have a second font of said deprivation layered over the first font of deprivation has not occurred to him. He has, after all, read a book (!) and so, but of course, he knows (!) and, but of course, he immediately concludes that his interlocutor must be a dope.
A point on his mentation process here. He is – allegedly – trained in medical diagnosis and treatment (at least some basic EMS level). Now the first thing a medical professional would do if he wanted to get the exact meaning of – say – ‘myocardial infarction’, would not be to check a general dictionary but rather to check a relevant medical dictionary. That way he would be sure of his information – and not on a general level but on a serious professional level.
In the matter of ‘arrest’, then, even a professional from another field (medical/EMS) would first think to check a relevant professional dictionary, in this case a legal dictionary. He did not. (If he were familiar with legal actualities he might even then have to consider statute law if not also necessarily case-law.
But the Wig has apparently read a simple general dictionary, which actually doesn’t cover the legal topic of multiple-arrests in its basic general definition of ‘arrest’. And so he goes off the rails and then compounds his self-abasement by hoohah-ing that his interlocutor (Ralph Cipriano) is clearly wrong and etc.
Then he comes after me on this site for the definition of ‘rape’, which he has gotten from a Merriam-Webster dictionary. (Note also: although he clearly references the fact that he has the number of the edition and year of publication of this book, he doesn’t simply put it up but rather does the catty and fry-fly thing: he asks if we would like that information. Yes, I would.
So anyhoo, on to the definition of “rape”. (Although, again, his BigTrial comment included the definitions of other crimes such as Sexual Assault and Statutory Rape – so those other related definitions should have tipped him off to the possibilities that a) there are other related crimes on the spectrum and b) there are “statutory” elements (statutes meaning ‘laws) that also might have to be taken into consideration. But no.)
The Oxford English Dictionary’s most recent definition of “rape” (first link at the end of this comment) is:
As a noun: “the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will”. And as a verb: “to force (another person) to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will”. (Instantly, any rational mind would realize that one now has to figure out the definition of “sexual intercourse”. But this did not occur to ‘dennis ecker’.)
Thus even a modestly-trained and rational mind would want to consider consulting an actual legal dictionary as well. The marquis legal dictionary is Black’s Law Dictionary, which is now in its 9th edition. And Black’s 9th defines rape thus: “Unlawful sexual activity (esp. intercourse) with a person (usu. a female) without consent and usu. by force or threat of injury. Most modern state statutes have broadened the definition along these lines. Rape includes unlawful sexual intercourse without consent.”
So then “sexual intercourse” once again becomes an essential element. (Although it is a primary hallmark of recent Victimist advocacies to try to collapse all sexual-activity along the spectrum into rape, state statutes do not by and large follow that course and retain a distinction between sexual assault and rape. For an example of how complexly contorted all of this can be, readers might wish to examine Article 120 of the current Uniform Code of Military Justice (see second link at the bottom of this comment; note that on the site the listing goes on for several pages).
So “sexual intercourse” is key to rape – which requires (in the common law) at least a minimal penetration by the penis and is thus distinguishable from a “sexual act”.
Thus then ‘dennis ecker’ compounds his complications by brassily blaring: “next time get it right … its rape” [sic; exaggerated formatting omitted]
So at this point I still cannot accept that a competently-trained (even at a basic level) medical professional would not think to consult professional references for definitions. And I certainly don’t consider it a hallmark of a capable mind that one would try to bring so minimal a reference to a serious discussion, especially when more directly relevant references were available. And this is all intensified by the fact that ‘dennis ecker’ considers himself a serious and credible commenter on matters that clearly involve issues of law, legal definitions, statute and case law (often variable across various legal domains and sovereignties), and so on and so forth. But for a fry-fly the simple brandishing of a book (Ooooh, a book!) is apparently all that is needed to impress the rest of the cafeteria crowd.
But we aren’t the cafeteria crowd.
But wait. There’s a second act to today’s show: JR has tossed his ever-waxed board into the seductive surf kicked up by Tropical Plop Ecker and it’s Kowabunga-time for JR too (the 5th, 1118AM).
Burdened greatly with the non-credibility and non-plausibility of his own assertions here, JR quickly signs-himself on to opening in the wall opened by the ‘dennis ecker’ gambit: what happened to JR “was rape as defined by Merriam & Webster’s dictionary”. And yet, in the text that follows, we have nothing but the assertions that cover some of the elements of rape (i.e. force and violence, although we only have JR’s word for it) but we still wind up with the only act being the arm-on-the-groin and then, a new (to this site) bit about having the accused expose himself down in the chem lab (we recall that JR’s school record indicated he wasn’t so good at math and chemistry, with the teachers of which subjects he might have had thus had an academic grievance). Also that – JR allegates – the “perp” (nice touch) “expected me to blow him” – although even if you grant that it’s a veracious report of what the accused might have said (and with JR that’s no small ‘if’), yet by his own report here no sexual act resulted from it, let alone sexual-intercourse.
(In all of this assessment, I am presuming at all times that JR was unwilling and I do not here consider the possibility that at the time of these alleged events JR was in some way … otherwise-inclined.)
Also we have nothing but JR’s own claim that JR was in fear of being killed. But it’s an element any tort-attorney would like to have in the quiver, especially since there wasn’t so much of the sexual activity itself. And more bits dragging in Maria Goretti. And then JR himself reports that “I never cooperated with him” – thus no sexual acts, and certainly nothing that would rise to sexual-intercourse.
And then the bit about his “personality change”. Although speaking abstractly here, any patient with a biological immediate family history that includes institutionalization-level mental or emotional issues clearly would have a range of possible causes for personality characteristics (let alone personality change) that extends well beyond being asked-for-sex and refusing to cooperate with the (alleged) request.
As to the Dean of Students asking “What are you trying to do cause trouble?” [sic] I would submit this thought: if that Dean heard the story we have just read and assessed, might he not well have realized that there was almost nothing to it, and nothing verifiable, but rather all of it simply the assertions of a (possibly already by-then demonstrably unwell ) student who also happened to be unhappy with his chem and math experiences?
Is it then possible that the Dean knew in a younger form the very JR whose mentation, character, and credibility we have been experiencing here for so long? And wasn’t impressed with the story?
http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/rape
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/a/art120new.htm
The dean of students, Brother da Silva, was hearing from my friend that I was being abused for the first time from a second party. My friend did not know the details of what was happening to me. He just knew i was being hurt. I never spoke to Bro. da Silva about these crimes against me. The first adult authority I spoke with and the only one i ever spoke with was fr. Clemmens.
Legal definitions of rape are simply that, legal. Since we never got to a cour room but settled out of court, whet need do we have to use a legaleeze definition of rape? If someone does something sexual to a child that's defined as statutory rape. Would you prefer we had been penetrated? Would that make it easier……..for you?
Let me make this clear. by sharing the truth of what happened to me with you; I expect derision from the usual suspects. I don't intend to be further hurt by catholic bigots. So you can keep your opinions of me to yourself. They are none of my business. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing your story, Jim, and I am certainly sorry you had to endure that. I'm glad you were financially compensated for these crimes against your person.
Thank you Mark for behaving like a gentleman. i appreciate that most sincerely.
"Why did it all happen exactly the same way universally? Cover ups in every country you can name.Why did all the church cover up? Why weren't at least a major portion of attacks reported?"
Because individual sin is universal.
When sinful men commit sin/crimes/immorality/trangressions, they cover it up, they don't walk into the nearest precinct to turn report themselves. This human failing does not make a worldwide institutional conspiracy.
If we're/they're fortunate, the sinners repent, and sin no more.
Stop visiting the sins of individual men on the Catholic Church. I, and 1.2 billion other faithful Catholics just like me, and Jesus Christ are the Church, and, your claims against us are based in hatred for us, not the sin, as it should be.
There was no conspiracy by the Church to coverup anything; not abuse of minors by sinful men, not the crimes of NAZI's or other fascists, not antisemitism, not the horrors of the debunked Magdalena Laundries, not the abortions of babies of priest-nun relations, not the the notorius Black Legend bunk, nor any of the other hate-based claims hurled at her for two centuries.
Yours is not the first conspiracy bunk to be thrown at Jesus' Church, and it won't be the last.
Well, JR weighs in with a pitch-perfect performance here. He now asserts (the 5th; 346PM) that “legal definitions” don’t make any difference because – waittttttt for itttttttt! – his (legal) case “never got to the courtroom but settled out of court”. But it was still a legal case, run by attorneys, one of whom took a sizable cut of JR’s cash for his legal services, and it all stemmed from a Complaint (involving 500 or so Plaintiffs) that was filed with a Court, on the authority of which Court all the further processes were effected.
Or does he expect us to believe the Cartoon alternative that all the lawyers and the judge simply consulted a general desk-top dictionary (still waiting for the edition and publication date from ‘dennis ecker’) and let things go at that?
What then (moving into the 352PM comment) was actually done to JR – by his own report? As I noted in my prior comment, it is not at all clear that any sexual activity was effected that rose even to the level of whatever was in the Merriam-Webster desktop dictionary. (He got a million bucks for this, we recall, minus the legal-services cut for what he now doesn’t think was a legal action … and he infers (characteristically) that to suggest that his thinking is at a Cartoon level is to somehow make up bigoted insults.)
And then he dons the Wig of Definitive Clarity: “Let me make this clear”. To which I can only respond: Wouldn’t that be nice? But – the slyness of the maneuvering here is noteworthy – he somehow manages to convince himself (and will try then to convince us) that any response less than an empathizing cluck constitutes “derision from the usual suspects”. Thus he is the victim here. Even though in his own now-published report of his Compensated Incident no sexual act can be discerned beneath a welter of allegations that rest only on his own word. (Ah, but of course, we are Evil if we do not accept his word – remind yourself never to buy a used car from this person.)
Thus too (the Wig of Outraged Integrity) he doesn’t “intend to be further hurt by catholic bigots”. Is it accurately characterizable as “bigotry” when it is pointed out that his own telling of his story reveals substantive deficiencies?
And all this quickly leads to the question: if JR got away with a million with a story like this, what of the other 500 or so story-tellers? There is no extant information to answer that – at this point – but it has now become even more plausible that the 500-Plaintiff case of over half a decade ago was itself … an Inverted Pyramid, to put it nicely.
Is there yet more to be ‘discovered’ in all of this. You can bet your sweet bippy there is; and you won’t have to look it up in your Funk’n Wagnalls. (With thanks, of course, to the inimitable Rowan and Martin, whose “Laugh-In” could have made great use of some of the material we have been proffered here.)
And – lastly – we are informed huffily (the Wig of Aggrieved Innocence) that we can keep our opinions of JR to ourselves, since they are none of his business. (Repeat here my parenthesized comment from the preceding paragraph.) And once again JR must be reminded a) that it is his material that is the topic here although b) one’s material does reveal one’s inner character, regardless of the Wig and – it would appear here – having put one’s lipstick on in the car (as the phrase goes in certain circles).
And (the 5th, 1006AM) ‘dennis ecker’ then joins the pitch-perfect revelatory parade. (I still await the information on the Merriam-Webster dictionary, by the by.)
In response to a commenter seeking evidence of some sort about JR’s own claims and assertions, ‘dennis ecker’ in effect asks (having donned the Wig of Gestapo Inference and Intimidation) Do yoo haff relatiffs in Chermany, Herr Halper? Then, apropos of nothing in the commenter’s material, ‘dennis ecker’ goes and spells it out, seeking identifying information that has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but that does infer that anybody who doesn’t go along with the Game will be exposed for whatever the Abuseniks can get their hands on in the commenter’s own life.
Has anybody asked for such information from the Wigs and Abuseniks here? No. Questions have been asked about the stories that those individuals have chosen to put up here, but that’s not at all the same thing. Does anyone really care where JR lives or what his mother’s maiden name was? Has anyone ever asked?
No. Instead, this question reflects a) an effort to insinuate that in asking questions about the stories that the Abuseniks themselves put forward, any questioner is invading their privacy and re-victimizing them; and b) an effort to distract from the substance of the questions about the stories that are actually being asked; and c) a clear inference that if they can manage to do it, the Abuseniks will Go Geek and do an internet search to find out any dirt they might possibly dig up. A verrrrrry valuable addition here to our Notebook on the Playbook.
(And – I add – this is precisely why screen-names do so irritate the Abuseniks: unable to go on a distracting fishing expedition (or perhaps one morning one will find a couple of them with placards, patrolling outside one’s front door) they are forced to deal only with the substantive material and the actual issues involved – which, as we have so often seen so vividly demonstrated here – is not what they are willing or able to do, and is not the way they got their goodies from the piñata, either.)
This reveals not only the queasy violence never far from the surface of ‘dennis ecker’s own material (although heavily plastered over with the various histrionic Wigs) but also the violence in the Abusenik Game-plan, which is itself merely a variant of the violence inherent in any manipulative movement (which in the internet era doesn’t actually have to have many members at all, as opposed to the days of mass meetings in the public square with the Party goons on the lookout for anybody in the crowd that doesn’t look enthused by the stentorian and histrionic babbling from the podium.)
So: No, Herr Wachtmeister Wig, the information you request of Herr Halper is not in any way the same as the information commenter Halper has requested from JR to verify JR’s own allegations and claims.
And, lastly, and again: is it in any way plausible that a mentality such as is evidenced in this material was ever a successfully functioning member of a major Fire Department/EMS organization in this day and age? The “counter-intelligence” (to use JR’s own phrase) mind cannot but wonder, and skeptically.
"Legal definitions of rape are simply that, legal. Since we never got to a cour room but settled out of court, whet need do we have to use a legaleeze definition of rape? "
Legal definitions do matter since it is how a charge/complaint, upon which your settlement was based (and how those ever- fruitful damages were determined), will be formulated (usually with some semblance of evidence, or even claimant integrity but, I digress…) per state code law.
"Legaleeze" is required for legal actions, Bugs.
"If someone does something sexual to a child that's defined as statutory rape."
Not true. This is where those 'wascally' legaleeze definitions come in handy, Porky.
Publion's 'abusenik' cartoon analogy is playing out before our very eyes, we're well into a full-blown Warner Bros venture, here. Beep-beep.
That's all folks…
Here we see it again the doubting Thomas of Publion. "Was ever a successfully functioning member of a major Fire Department/EMS organization. It seems that he will not accept any of the proof that has been put out there, and I will no longer put anything else out there.
The question arises does he wish to share his past ? I don't think so. Could it be because what he did was not fulfilling to him or was it because he was unable to fulfill a childhood dream and had to settle for second or third best ?
I have been lucky, I live off the fruits of my labor. A comfortable home, trucks, boats, golf carts, a healthy bank account and what I like to call a poor man's summer home (40FT Travel Trailer) but none of those things matter without the respect and love I receive from my friends and family.
I actually feel sorry for you.
A life that consists of waking up, turning on the computer, and checking on the latest comments posted on TMR, so you may post your latest rantings and ravings. A lonely individual whose life has no value and will not be missed. A individual who shows the "warning signs" of self-destruction.
Some may say including Jim that what I said may have been harsh but it had to be said so you maybe able to get the help you need to live in a world of reality.
When I go to church tonight my prayers along with the prayers of my wife and daughter will be for you.
You are niether judge nor jury of my rape. I asked not to be picked to pieces by you vultures. Obviously a stupid thing to do on my part. My fault. Vultures will always be vultures and sociopaths, sociopaths.
I don't read your insults they say more about you than me. I know you for the sociopaths you are.
I was the only claimant against my perp. Did It happen exactly the way I said? It most certainly did.
Accusations demand scrutiny. Plain and simple. That's not picking you to pieces, that is searching for the truth. Was your perp ever given opportunity to either confess to the crime or give defense? If the answer is no, then all we have is your uncorroborated word. At least have the decency to admit that. It's very basic.
Yes Ken my perp was , of course given the "opportunity" to defend himself. That's why the priest Fr. Bertrand Clemmens, who i told said. first (Which I thought was strange as a 16 yr old). and I quote. "You are the only one this has ever happened to." and "If you want therapy you can have it." He never said "I'm calling your parents". (I was too ashamed to tell them. No one talked about sex in my family let alone rape by males on males.) He never said : "The police must be told." He did say however:"If you tell anyone about this I'll be in big trouble". and I promised him I wouldn't ever tell. I wanted no one to know that I had been sexually used by another male. The shame was crippling.
What do you mean by "at least have the decency to admit that"? What kind of cheap ass crack is that? I have a lot of decency, period.
The entity ‘dennis ecker’ comments at 1149AM on the 6th. Even casual readers will quickly note that among all of the Wig of Fake Sorry-ness’s faux blubbering, there is no publication information as to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. But like so many old-timey streetside scammers, that essential bit is wrapped in various distractions.
There is no possible and logical proof (that ‘dennis ecker’ is the same entity as PFD firefighter Dennis Ecker) that works in the internet universe. Thus I am not ‘doubting’ anything; I am simply following the logic imposed by the webverse.
Additionally, there is a substantial amount of material (remarkably uninformed, a mentality that does not reflect habits of professional thinking and thought-patterns, a primitive level of cognition) that indicates something pretty much the opposite. Let’s split the difference in terms of hypotheses: the screen entity ‘dennis ecker’ is possibly the same entity as the firefighter Dennis Ecker that appears in the news photograph, but that Dennis Ecker was neither intellectually nor tempermentally able to sustain a career in the PFD, and slyly took advantage of the 9-11 first-responder disability wave to get himself out with a nice wad before he was either kicked out or left to be a lifetime non-promotee. (And perhaps then displayed the same type of characterological issues when he also cashed in on the Catholic Abuse wave.)
Thus I do not accept ‘dennis ecker’s “proof” because in the webverse ‘dennis ecker’ has no possible such “proof” to proffer. Nor does anybody else. As I said months ago, quoting that New Yorker cartoon: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”.
But note that sly use he makes of this fact: he will no longer “put anything else out there”. Readers might simply give silent thanks – but like so many of his other assertions, I suspect this one too will turn out to be not at all what it seems.
Of what conceivable relevance is my – or any commenter’s – past? We are discussing the issues of the Catholic Abuse Matter here. Has he not been reading my comments on this topic? But – of course – the answer to all this is: Abuseniks cannot and dare-not address such issues because they have no ground to stand on; they have only “stories” (and as we have seen with ‘dennis ecker’s fire department story or JR’s rape story, those stories don’t hold up so well if you look twice at them). Therefore they want to keep the discussion of ‘issues’ off the table and want the focus to remain on ‘stories: either their own stories or – if they aren’t greeted with empathetic clucks no matter how non-sensical – then they want to try for dirt-stories about anybody who won’t give them the clucks they demand. Thus the old totalitarian bullying of doubters and questioners has been given new life in our own time, by what are essentially Party goons gussied-up in ‘victim’ Wigs. (Is that “harsh”? Alas, “it had to be said”.)
Then some catty speculations about my past. This comes not only the cafeteria, but a section of the cafeteria where … the football team (or perhaps the future firefighters) don’t usually sit. It is what it is.
And then more of a story about his many successes in life: “a comfortable home, trucks, boats, golf-carts, a healthy bank account” and of course “friends and family”. Naturally, we have no way of verifying any of this, and for all we know – as with JR – we are getting Cartoons-in-a-bottle tapped out from the sun-porch of a secure facility. And there are some unsavory possibilities or probabilities about what those “labors” were, the “fruits” of which have – if it is all true – provided him with this swag.
This is where webverse ‘stories’ inevitably take a reader: to a land which may as well be some looney and/or manipulative fantasy as it may be actual. In fact, this type of comment operates on the same dynamic as those spam emails one gets from persons far away claiming a certain name and offering a certain story and clearly seeking to move one toward going along with that story for some purpose advantageous to the writer/sender.
Readers may then consider the psychological ‘diagnosis’ from this alleged medical professional, and ask themselves if actual medical professionals – even at the basic EMS level – allow themselves to essentially speculate (or fantasize) to such an extent. Although he is welcome to speculate as much as he wishes.
If the Doctor might specify just what the “warning signs of self-destruction” (again with the undertow of violence that is never far from the surface of this entity ‘dennis ecker’) are, it won’t be of much use to me personally but would certainly demonstrate – whether in its provision or in its absence – just what sort of an entity we are confronting here. He can provide those specifics in the same post where he passes on the edition of that Merriam-Webster general desktop dictionary.
But the entity ‘dennis ecker’ is right: “it had to be said”. Because he has nothing else and he is somehow a rather violent person beneath the histrionic Wigs, as I have already noted.
But – the combined Wigs of Piety and Successful Mature Family Man – he will pray for me when he goes to church with his wife and daughter. Perhaps so. How nice. Or perhaps he might pray for me when the staff bring him in from the sun-porch and make sure he takes his medication before lights-out. Who in the webverse can really know?
Thus an interesting specimen of the Abusenik mind when it begins to become agitated. And doesn’t want to deal with the actual issues.
Then JR (the 6th, 129PM): Alas, since he put the material up in a public forum then he himself has appointed the judges of his material (which, as I noted, by his own report indicates that no rape ever took place, and by his own report the only physical sexual contact that ever took place was the arm-across-the-groin which took place in a class full of students). Except for the bit about having his arm twisted while being asked for answers to a chemistry question: which may well have happened, but quite possibly as the frustrated (but still unacceptable physically assaultive) behavior of a teacher with an obstreperously oppositional student (who, in this day and age, might well have been – instead – referred to the appropriate professionals for some substantive evaluation). But in the age of the Stampede, with the right amount of enterprise and a tortie of the Anderson school to help shape the narrative, the event could be taken in an entirely different direction, and with much cash to be gotten out of it.
“I asked not to be picked to pieces by you vultures.” This reveals precisely the core enabling Abusenik and Stampede scam in the first place: I am going to tell you a ‘story’ (or “my truth”) and you must believe it or at least if you don’t buy it you must shut up. If you don’t then I am not going to be happy at all.
So juvenile a scam – and any parent who has had to preside over a breakfast table of tykes is familiar with it – is endemic to the primitive human personality before it matures. But it will forever remain a hallmark of this era of American history that such a scam somehow was embraced by various responsible elements of our society and allowed to become for so long a determining modality of public discourse and even of public justice.
And while “vultures” is merely an epithet (a nicely vivid one, though), “sociopath” is a clinical diagnostic term (although no longer professionally much-used). If you question or doubt my material (no matter how implausible it is) or if you draw from it conclusions or possibilities that I don’t like, then you are a “vulture” and a “sociopath”. Ovvvvvvvvvv courssssssssse. And for all we know this is another sun-porch keyboard puncher banging out one-liners before lights-out on the ward.
Interestingly, the same trope can be applied to them that they so often love to apply to the Church and the hierarchy: if only they had chosen to deal honestly and rationally with the issues in their material from the get-go, then none of this unpleasant “vulture” and “sociopath” business need ever have happened. But they chose otherwise and here we are. In the words of the other online Doctor: “it had to be said”.
I could say that it is ‘insulting’ to be presented with such stories in the demanding expectation that they be accepted whole-hog with a straight face and an empathizing cluck, but I don’t dwell on being a victim – it isn’t constructive and it sheds more heat than light, and that isn’t conducive to comprehension and clear understanding.
But perhaps JR could share his clinical definition of “sociopaths” and the professional dictionary or reference which he consulted in his extensive “reading” before composing his comment. And if it’s a general desktop dictionary, perhaps he might give the identifying publication information. If he bothered to put it on that particular 3×5 card in his Mental Shoebox.
Thus too, though, we are then informed that there was no other “claimant” against his “perp”. Curious that so allegedly deformed and ravenous a monster had no other claimants to allegate against him. And perhaps that Dean realized that very point when he surmised – half a century ago – that maybe JR was simply (a somewhat unwell student) looking to make trouble for teachers who did not acknowledge his genius and give him what he wanted. We note that decades later when SNAP did not acknowledge JR’s genius he simply tried to get back at it by declaring it a total tool of the Church, in florid defiance of all logic and plausibility. Is there not a pattern visible here? And one sustained over the space of half a century?
Readers may make what they will of JR’s assurances and assertion as to his own veracity. That’s what I have done. Is that ‘judging’? Yes. What else can any rational reader do? It’s what should have been done with these Abusenik stories from the get-go.
"Old Timey" You are sure hip to the jive by golly.
Here is the deal, which JR is always going to ignore. The fact that we don't really know if JR was abused or not is part and parcel of the internet. You can say whatever you want on the internet. But the fact that the legal system can never really know if JR was abused or not because of the structuring of the lawsuits, and he got a big payout (I guess), is a horrifying indictment of our legal system. Really, he just wants to yell at us for being Catholic, being a troll, insulting us and trying to upset us. We don't know if he's lying or or not. I was surprised to read a journalism professor say that an event was something not to be covered immediately. That's journalism 101. We will give Laurie Goodstein the benefit of the doubt and wait for her story.
Julie. A victim is not a troll. A victim speaking here in cloud cukoo land is a rare privilege, a blessing if you will, for you. We are the overturned rocks that show the slimey wormy things that lived in fact beneath your myths and because of your myths. You just like the myths better than you like the truth. Admit it.
[edited by moderator]
"Acknowledge my genius"? Who asked them too. I was a straight A student in grade school. I got a full paid scholarship to my high school (dropped when i started failing). it was only in high school I got F's ands that's after my initial abuse. I"d fallen into a den of men. No women's kindness to lighten my load.
My veracity speaks for it self; when I'm wrong I admit it as fast as i can. If only you could be like that. But sociopaths just can not do that, can they?
Why there were no other claims against my perp, I don't know? Maybe i was his first and only victim. To me that's only important in that maybe others did not have to go through what I went through. But he was promoted after my accusations to head a high school in Maui by Fr. Clemmens, the same priest I reported my abuse to. I just found that out and I'm still in shock.
Insinuating I was a 16 year old trouble maker who would invent a story of sex abuse because i was failing a teachers class is as far away from me as I can imagine. That was not me now; then or ever. I was the good kid.
My military record and rank advancement from buck private to Spec 5 in a two year hitch plus the good conduct medal, belies your construct of me as criminal. Unless there was some kind of miraculous transformation in the 3 yrs between my abuse and my being drafted. I've been the same me all my life.
I've always been a very honest person. Believe it or not.
I don't care.
Jim says he's always been a very honest person. Really? Because in Aug. 8, 2012, he said: "So now the Jews are Nazis?????
Who were the first to sign a treaty with Hitler?
The Vatican. Who sieg hieled themselves to the death of European Jewry?
The German Catholic Church and the Polish Catholic Church etc. etc.
Who secured passports out of Europe at the end of WW11 The future Pope Paul VI" Demonstrating that he is NOT honest.
And Jim, I know a Polish Catholic who survived a concentration camp. Her father died there.
Julie, Is it my "lie" that causes you not knowing that the things i wrote about your church are true?
Deny away but don't dare say i'm lying when I am not.
There were many Polish communists in the camps too. The majority of the camps were in catholic countries, majority catholic countries. And Poland was so anti semitic that when the war ended and Polish jews, the few left living, tried to return to thier homes. They were attacked and murdered by your catholic Poles.
I went to Aushwitz It's about 30 or 40 miles from Krakow, over lovely rolling hills.
Genocide in a beautiful world.
Incomprehensable if you don't know your own, too real, history.
Once again we see another early morning comment from Publion.
I do not wish for this to be a lengthy comment so I will get to the point.
Publion in his writings has stated numerous times his doubt to who I or Mr. Robertson are. I would like to invite Publion then to simply prove without a doubt that I or Mr. Robertson are less then what we claim to be. Without putting words into his mouth prove to everyone here that we are the liars he thinks we are.
It is simply put your money were your mouth is.
No lengthy personal comments, no beating around the bush, but FACTS. Hard core facts.
Show the other readers here how credible you truly are.
"I"d fallen into a den of men. No women's kindness to lighten my load."
It appears as though you can trace your placement on the wrong path early on in your life, quite well.
I really don't understand, given your experiences in high school, why you chose to stay on that wrong path? And, seem to have actually 'doubled-down'?
You're a mass of contradictions. It isn't our fault if we don't understand, or accept your claims at face value. We are called to discernment (…sheep, wolves, you know the drill).
She's attempting to wax goof ball psychic, like some backwater Cassandra. Being a human being is just that: a mass of contradictions. You think gay people can change. Got any proof for that lie? Are you going to pretend you're nice or has Aunty Em taken over for Miss Gultch again? (By the way Do yourselves a favor and see the new 3D version of Wizard of Oz with Garland; Bolger etc. It's great. It's as if you've never seen it before. Check it out.)
Oz is really a paen to godlessness.i.e. Don't be fooled by a fake diety who can give you nothing you don't already have. ( I'm usually not this gay but beauty is beauty. ) The Lyrics were by Yip Harburg who was black listed for his leftist politics. He also wrote "Brother Can You Spare a Dime". Yep the left has brought this culture nothing but shame.
" We will give Laurie Goodstein the benefit of the doubt and wait for her story."
That's far more generosity than Laurie ever offered Catholic priests as her favorite targets.
I am not inclined to believe she deserves it.
More of the same. But that simply provides more opportunity for analysis and assessment.
JR (the 7th, 1123) claims his “perp” was “given the ‘opportunity’ to defend himself”. How? In a time of Stampede, how defend oneself against what was set-up (even at the time in 1963) as nothing more than a he-said/he-said situation? Especially in that time of Stampede: because it was precisely the effect of the Stampede that public-opinion (with the help of the media, as often discussed, especially in light of the Anderson Axis strategy) simply presumed that priests were by and large sex-abusers or pedophiles because all allegations were – back at that time – generally and widely presumed to be true.
And what that Fr. Clemmons is quoted by JR as having said makes equally good sense in an alternative explanatory scenario where the priest was trying to gently make the point that a) it didn’t seem quite in character for the accused and b) there were no other such allegations made by any other students about this priest (who – if JR told him what JR told us here on this thread – should have certainly have had more than a single instance of such sexual acting-out).
Equally so the Clemmons offer of therapy: not because he thought JR had been “raped” or what-have-you, but simply because it was clear to him that the student JR was somehow rather unwell and needed some serious therapeutic work.
And why would JR have been “too ashamed to tell [his] parents”? That a priest had – allegedly – exposed himself to him but that JR had resisted it and nothing had happened (as JR has written here)? What would be embarrassing about that? Or – in the alternative – is it that JR was known to the school and the parents even at that point as a continually troublesome and probably troubled youth and the fact that he had had an (or another?) incident where he had behaved so as to frustrate his teachers would have angered them again? Was he “too embarrassed” because of the sexual nature of the claim or was he too frightened to have to report that he was involved in another disciplinary incident with his teachers?
What precisely could the police have been told? The story here certainly didn’t rise to the level of a sex-crime (as JR has said: nothing happened) and it was, even in 1963, merely a (troubled and troublesome) kid’s unsupported claims that a priest had roughed him up. Was Clemmons actually trying to prevent serious embarrassment to the student and the family by initiating police officers coming to the house? Was Clemmons trying to prevent this student’s becoming known to the police as somebody willing to make false accusation when he was mad at somebody (one thinks here of SNAP’s experience with JR in later decades)? Was Clemmons thus trying to prevent more trouble from entering into a troubled student’s life?
(In all of this, I am presuming – as I said in an earlier comment – that JR was at all times an unwilling party to this alleged event and had never wracked-up any prior sexual misadventures. But if I am not correct in this presumption, then perhaps there was indeed something he would be “too embarrassed” to tell his parents and – having gone and shot his mouth off to Fr. Clemmons – now had to somehow explain-away by creating yet another layer of story-telling. This is surely the type of situation we have seen JR create for himself on this site – thinking most recently of the ‘dennis ecker’/JR posting and of the contortions they both cooked-up to explain it all away. So much for veracity and credibility.)
And do we see here how the Anderson strategies created a (Stampede) situation where such grossly iffy instances could decades later sail along so easily into the troubled waters where – given the presumption that priests were by and large or at least very often sex-abusers and pedophiles – even a story such as this could be expected to receive a quick and wide acceptance?
And back in 1963 there is no way the story of the ‘incident’ JR has told here could have even been imagined as “rape”; even as he himself says, nothing happened.
So there are too many elements here that simply don’t add up and don’t mesh. The story as he would like it to be accepted is simply but fundamentally implausible. (Yet – again – it was precisely the genius of the Stampede and certainly the cumulative Anderson strategies that ‘plausibility’ was brushed aside in the general rush to presume that priests could be reliably presumed to be sex-abusers and pedophiles.)
In historical research (as in legal assessment) the issue of Plausibility is – especially in the absence of any actual corroborating evidence – vital. This was the Problem that Anderson had to solve in order to clear the runway for his cases.
As to the “if you tell anyone about this I’ll be in big trouble” we face another implausibility: why would Clemmons have been in trouble if the police were told? Clemmons had more than enough justification – certainly in 1963 – for not calling the police, since there was a clearly alternative explanation (which might well have been supported by JR’s own disciplinary record at the school and his ability to ‘work well with others’ – or not).
And “the shame was crippling” … ? – to have successfully and stoutly refused and fought-off the (alleged) advances of an (allegedly) ravenous sex-monster priest, like Horatius at the Bridge? That strikes me as the type of success that any teen boy in those days would have worn (and related to his peers) as a badge of honor.
But all of this ‘fear for my life’ and ‘shame was crippling’ stuff constitute precisely the type of waxy touches that any good tort attorney – especially in the Stampede era – would have recommended as part of the story. Especially in the absence of much sexual activity at all (since ‘nothing happened, as JR himself reports).
JR’s “decency” is for the readership to consider.
Then at 1155 we are told that he was a “straight A” student, although the document cache released this past summer by his (former) attorney reveals a memo between school faculty or administrators that by-the-by observes JR’s difficulties in math and science. So that doesn’t add-up either. (Nicely, his school records are off-the-table here and inaccessible to us; we have only his word for it. Let the readership make of that what they will.)
Then he tries to plaster over that problem by claiming he was straight-A and scholarship-level until he was abused (although, as he himself has said, nothing happened). So that bit doesn’t add-up either. Unless one wants to imagine that he was sufficiently fragile that even being exposed-to by a priest was sufficient to greatly derange his academic performance and – as perhaps we can still see – other core elements of his psyche and character. Which raises more questions about him than it answers.
And this already-dubious bit is then klieg-lighted by the additional trope that he had “fallen into a den of men” with “no women’s kindness to lighten my load”. Is this a cheap paper-back bodice-ripper we are being proffered here?
So then I would completely agree with him when he asserts that “my veracity speaks for itself”. Oh yeah it does.
And then he swings into the all-purpose Abusenik last-defense: no matter how unbelievable the story is, and no matter what did (or didn’t) happen, JR is simply trying to do his moral duty to protect and prevent other kids from having to go through what happened to him – or perhaps more accurately: didn’t happen to him.
Again I say: I am not engaging here in an extended exercise in pulling the wings off a fly for the purposes of lurid and prurient jollies. I am trying to demonstrate how these Abusenik stories would have performed if they were seriously and even modestly examined for plausibility. Which was precisely the process that had to be derailed in order to get the Stampede going and to keep it going.
And what would be the basis of the “shock” when he found out that his “perp” was later sent to another high-school by the same Fr. Clemmons whom we have examined above in this comment? Or is that “shock” bit yet another of those waxy, greasy, buttery bits that a helpful tort-attorney larded onto the basic story to make it shinier and to lubricate its path onto the Pinata Highway?
The readership may consider whether the JR they have read here would be capable of putting together a tissue of lies in order to get himself out of a corner into which he had painted-himself.
But we are then once again given yet more implausibility, in terms of his military record (also neatly inaccessible to anyone on this site). We are to imagine that one solider out of a barracks-full (by JR’s own report on this site in prior comments) of soldiers in the Canal Zone who were merely “counting the days” until they got of their draft-hitch was yet promoted rapidly five or more grades in rank in that same short period. If this story is indeed true, then I would rack it up to the Army’s Vietnam-era personnel and promotion problems. But that’s if the story is true. And thus we are back to square-one here. He certainly has not carried any of the skills he mastered into his future life, if his material here on this site and on others is any example. (And he was, if I rightly recall, in some sort of ‘intelligence’ or ‘counter-intelligence’ billet and occupational specialty – or perhaps he was merely a support-services troop for a unit that was engaged in those activities. Or perhaps – in the absence of any probability of his ever being found-out – just picked a nifty-sounding and impressive billet and occupational-specialty to snazzy-up the performance and presentation here. Square one again.)
And the GCM was hardly a major achievement. It enjoyed much the same status in military decoration lore as any of the I-was-there-and-breathing low-level medals passed out if you don’t get into major trouble. Although in JR’s case, qualifying for it might actually indeed have been something of an achievement.
Yes, I completely agree with him that he’s “been the same me all my life”. Yes indeed.
And – by the by – he doesn’t “care” whether we “believe it or not”. That perhaps is indeed the most prudent attitude for him to adopt, all things considered.
And no matinee would be complete without a trot before the footlights by ‘dennis ecker’ (the 7th, 144PM).
Is there something relevant about my composing some comments “early in the morning”? Or is just the only plop he can find handy? Especially if he’s not going to be telling us the publication information for that Merriam-Webster dictionary?
But since he himself apparently eschews any “lengthy comment” he will “get to the point”. All things considered, I – for one – appreciate that.
Let me respond “to the point”. I find the stories he and JR have put forward to be highly implausible, and I have explained my assessment in numerous and lengthy comments here. However, I – once again – state that as best I can tell the entire corpus of comments that they have produced for us here indicates – as I have gone to great length to explain – substantive discrepancies between a) what they claim and b) the performance of skills and competencies and habits of mind and virtues and character that they insist are theirs. Let alone the inconsistencies or incoherences or implausibilities in JR’s “rape” story.
Thus my assessment – as I have said – is that their claims are very highly implausible. And that’s – also as I have said – the best one can do in the internet modality, where specific documentation and so forth is not available, and where readers are simply left with the various claims and assertions that other commenters make in their material. But the material is indeed before us, and I have assessed it as I have with much explanation.
Thus this little show-down on Main Street that ‘dennis ecker’ would like to stage is nothing more than a distraction and a diversion from all of that unhappy (implausible, incoherent, inconsistent) material that they have produced.
Certainly, they themselves have produced no “facts” and “hard core facts”. They have produced their material, and yet that material itself constitutes the only “facts” we can be sure of – and that material has not at all stood up well to examination (nor have either of them addressed those short-comings in the material). Which does nothing to burnish their plausibility or credibility nor to allay concerns and issues that I have outlined in my “let me respond to the point” paragraph above.
But again this Wig of Facts-HardCore Facts is just another Wig, donned for today’s show. He seems unable or unwilling to produce even the publication facts about his Merriam-Webster dictionary. And there are clearly quite rational and hardly implausible alternative explanations for his own stories about himself, as I have outlined in other comments on this thread.
Let the readership make of it all what they will.
And lastly, and once again, I point out that getting-into-the-mud with these two is a mug’s game and is not my purpose here. My purpose is to take whatever material Abuseniks put forward and subject them to even a modest type of the analysis and assessment that all allegations and claims should have received by media and official parties but never did. And the results of that assessment are now up here in the record for all to see. And if those results are “lengthy” then that is simply because there is so much in their material – and perhaps in most Abusenik material – that begs for such assessment.
Had that assessment been conducted at the get-go, as it should have been, then I think this Stampede would have had a very very different public career.
My purpose is to take whatever material Abuseniks put forward and subject them to even a modest type of the analysis and assessment that all allegations and claims should have received by media and official parties but never did.
I would like to ask Publion if the "official parties" he speaks of is law enforcement ?
…and if his "purpose" for the analysis and assessment of allegations and claims is for some type of self gratification or fueled by some other influence ?
I must say without receiving any type of an answer to my questions your statement is clearly concerning to me regarding your mental state. An anger inside you towards victims of clergy abuse that far exceeds the anger any survivor has towards their abuser.
Your comment can be clearly be interpreted as a dislike for the media on their reporting of your abusive priests and a dislike in the investigations by the "official parties."
By your wording I think you believe you are the savior of the church, and even more scary the one man vigilante who will make all things right because in your eyes the process of the law against your abusive clergy was inadequate.
Clearly the warning signs are there.
I only hope that your "purpose" is limited to your lengthy comments.
[edited by moderator] I was a very devout catholic. I was 16 years old. I obeyed my teachers
. A religious, someone because he was a religious who I thought was more connected to god than I was. Attacked me using punishment that was sexual all against my will. I froze like a deer in the headlights. I weighed ,when I went into the U.S. Army at 19, ,125 lbs and I'm 6 ft tall.
You don't know what you'll do when an authority figure, someone you've been taught to obey and trust turns on you. Did a priest ever come on to you as a child P? D? If not pipe down with your know it all palaver.
I was never a jock
What do you mean, "nothing happened"? [edited by moderator]
Please, let's clear up one thing if nothing else.
How does posting a link to what Dennis wrote constitute dishonesty on my part?
I never pretended, I was writing Dennis's material. I always said I was linking the readership to Dennis's material It was a link. A LINK.
Are you really this dumb and or this desperate?
Can you never admit being wrong? Is that your neurosis?
P, " You've mistaken D's "Military career" for mine. D lied she was a" lifer". Not me. She also seems to have lied about her connection to 9/11.
I was a draftee. I've lied about nothing here. I was stationed at U.S. Army Headquarters, Ft. Amador, the Canal Zone. I was in charge of passports for the U.S. Army in the Canal Zone. I worked from my office in Ft. Amador and also at the U.S. Embassy in Panama. I left the Army as a Spec 5. My daughter was born in the Canal Zone in July of 1968.
Don't you ever get tired of being wrong? Oooopps, sorry, sociopaths are never wrong. My mistake.
I have just noticed JR’s of the 6th at 248PM.
What precisely was the Church or any Catholics (or anybody else) going to do against the Nazi’s Final Solution after 1942? FDR and Churchill were most likely aware of it and it is still a matter of historical contention that they didn’t do enough about it. But what was anybody to do? Bomb the trains? Bomb the camps? Tell the Germans to stop it? Even at the height of the Allied bombing of Germany the Nazis stubbornly managed to keep their death-trains running until the Spring of ’45.
And it is hardly implausible that the Pope had advised the Allies and they told him that there was nothing militarily they could do (which would have been accurate). The Pope was in the middle of Vatican City, surrounded by Mussolini’s forces – and after the Italian surrender by the Nazis themselves – and totally dependent on them for even food and water and electricity. What was the Pope to have done? Order the Swiss Guard to Poland?
This bit of JR’s – gleaned no doubt from Deschner (that “penultimate” is a dead giveaway) – is just the post-facto dining-out of persons who have no idea of what could have been done but are currently enjoying the fun of simply claiming that more should have been done. What practically could have been done by anybody except the Nazis themselves … they offer no suggestions or plans. This is a Game – perhaps even a Scam – that can go on ad infinitum.
The fact that this whole train of accusation started up only after Pius XII – in the immediate postwar months – issued denunciations of the Soviet system and its depredations against religion and the Russian people … that’s hardly unworthy of consideration.
p.s. Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2012 Android App.
Gandhi was doing non violent action against oppression through the 1920's and '30's. and '40's.
the whole world knew his name because of such action. There were examples of people, nobody people, no names, no credit garaunteed them, putting their asses on the line in passive resistance to violence.
If they wanted too the church could have done something and of course the U.S. and British should have bombed the tracks.
Stalin and the Cominturn didn't kill the Jews of Europe in athiestic Ruskyland. Hitler did in good old catholic Europe. Keep dreamin'.
The pope could have done any of those things you mentioned. Something. Anything, to show he loved his neighbor as himself. The facts show he did not.
SNAP's a fraud. You know nothing about it. I know it's a fraud by it's lack of action and support for victims. SNAP is exactly what I say it is a FRAUD. A CHURCH CONNECTED AND DIRECTED FRAUD.
If you really wanted to create a group that linked up and organized victims to organize themselves for their own best interests; don't you think, after 23+ years with million dollar budgets in those years, that you could do better than Barbra Blaine, Barbra Dorris and David Clohessy?
"…you not knowing that the things i wrote about your church are true?"
How is it that an F high school student that barely made it through some community college, that struggles mightly with the simplest of grammar and spelling, that has demonstrated an uncanny ability to be more wrong than right regarding just about any topic, and has generally declared his own lifelong failure has the temerity to school others on their Church's (or their country's) history? Have you managed to 'read' yourself into some parallel universe?
Not to be cruel, but, you do seriously need to get a clue about the obvious limits of your critical thinking abilities. Why in the world would anyone accept your warped version of history? What expertise do you bring to bear on any of these topics? Your claimed 'victimhood' leave you with some sort of savant abilities, perhaps?
When you can cite your dissertation or any peer reviewed paper or publication on the topic, maybe then you can make promote your own brand of historic gnosticism that elevates you above the rest of the unwashed masses here. Until then, stick to what you [think] you know, which is restricted to your own claimed victimhood (the underlying story for which changes daily), and nothing more, for our purpose here at TMR.
You're starting to risk making trolls look good -careful there, big guy.
P.S. You are wrong.
In answer to your first paragraph at 6:30 p.m.
Well somebody's got to do it. I wasn't too busy so I hired me. When someone can tell you the truth better than I can, I will happily step aside. Till that great getting up mornin'. How ya doin'?
I never degraded human beings by calling them unwashed. You did. Don't even try to set up an argument for me than I've never made.
Since I know nothing of your "educational background", D. I am limited in my criticism of it. Since we , the readers here, know nothing about you other than your political rants and complete lack of historical knowledge regarding your one true faiths connection to fascism.
You be cruel? Never! You are all flowers and sunshine.
(There, my first lie posted here.)
Jean Paul Sartre had in right in "No Exit", when he wrote: "Hell, is other people."
"Reporting on any abuse takes considerable time, is emotionally traumatic even for reporters, and depends on closely held private documents becoming public.'
Unless you're reporting on a Catholic priest, right, Debra? Laurie must be absolutely traumatized, suffering from extreme PTSD, with all her "emotional" reporting on the Catholic Church.
Pack of frauds.
Poor thing.
Did I say my perp was a ravenous monster? I think he was screwed up, very screwed up. What was his past? I don't know. I know the choices he made around my life and how his choices screwed me up plenty. Relationship wise. Job wise. just a couple of the unimportant things in life like that. That's what happened to me. How other people coped with their own experience of horror I don't know.
The abuse as you describe it pales in comparison to my own. Now that you have made yours known,I do not understand why I am not the one that professes "night terrors" and how my perp "screwed me up plenty". Actually, I DO understand. The Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world, that's the difference between you and I. Jim, I honestly believe you'd have the same issues, perp or not, true or not. Jesus said there would be tares in His Church. He will seperate them. Until then, put your trust in Him, and He will heal you of what ails you.
No offense Ken, but in my world I'm just another person. You maybe right. I just maybe too damaged to go on. But in my mind I'm not. I've compensated and accepted whoever I am. The one gift of young old age, self acceptance. I wish you nothing but the best. I even wish P and D that. But let's figure out what the best is for all concerned here.
Ken, Weeds,tares, seems a light description of a systemic abuse pattern that by now can be seen to be universal in the church leadership.
I am very glad you don't suffer from the effects of your abuse; thanks to your faith.
I just thought: The catholic church could have bought the Jews of Europe from the Nazi's.
Ken, First of all I'm very sorry about your abuse. if your faith has brought you peace, more power to it. What ever works for you is fine with me.
It just doesn't work for me. . Respite from pain is very important .how you get there not as important.
During the holocaust, agencies, churches and Jewish circles knew well the consequences of speaking out.
In one instance, the Archbishop of Utrecht tragically ignored a warning from the Nazis, spoke out anyway and in retaliation the Catholic Jews in Holland, among them the Carmelite philosopher Edith Stein, were sent to their deaths.
The International Red Cross and Ecumenical Council of Christian Churches, along with Pope Pius XII, equally saw what was happening and refrained from loud protests so as not to jeopardize secret and silent actions helping Jews.
As the U.S., Great Britain and other countries refused entry from Jewish refugees during the war, the Vatican issued tens of thousands of false documents allowing Jews to escape.
According to Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapid, 155 convents and monasteries in Rome sheltered 5,000 Jews during the German occupation, 3,000 refuged in the Pope's summer residence; several lived at the Jesuit Gregorian university and in the cellar of the Pontifical Bible Institute.
Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) contributed millions of dollars in financial aid to the effort.
Reliable sources estimate that Pius XII was behind the saving of 800,000 Jews.
The Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, issued a post-war statement of thanks: "What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts … Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism."
During the war, Nazis arrested priests, nuns and laypersons. Many, many, Catholic priests who protested died in concentration camps. Our Protestant brothers met the same fate, for example, the Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Boenhoeffer, who spoke out and was summarily executed.
In Poland, 2,579 Catholic priests were sent to Dachau, 3,000 went to other camps.
Pius XII declared in his 1942 Christmas message, Catholics should not forget "those hundreds of thousands who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked for death or progressive extinction."
Indeed, we should never forget the heartbreaking atrocities against our Jewish brothers under the Nazi circus.
As is apparent, the manipulation of public opinion can move swiftly.
Later-century anti-Pacelli propaganda gained traction, including "Hitler's Pope" by John Cornwell, which scholars have thoroughly debunked.
I also recommend reading accurate sources regarding the Inquisition and the Crusades. Meticulous Inquisition records were kept, and so you can easily separate fact and fiction as real sources are available. And yes, some overzealous, misguided, stupid, malicious, or just plain human Catholics did, and do, bad things; some by the grace of God do heroic and compassionate things.
It is a mistake to look at ancient history through a purely contemporary lens. It is a mistake to ignore humanity and kindness on the part of your self-declared enemies in the name of "progress."
"Not forget"(ing) seems mild when millions stood waiting, alive and in need of more than being remembered. They needed to be saved. They weren't. They were murdered.
Reviewing the most recent crop.
JR (the 7th, 348PM) advised ‘Julie’ that “a victim is not a troll” – although it is precisely his own status as a victim that is at issue. This is another bit for the Notebook on the Playbook: if your own case doesn’t appear very solid or serious, then a) just hide behind some abstract general ‘victimhood’ and surf yourself over the rocks that way and b) remind everybody that you are doing it all in a great cause (thus distracting them from the problems in your own allegations … while banking the swag).
And while it is certainly a good use of metaphor (almost uncharacteristically so for JR) to liken ‘victims’ to the “overturned rocks that show the slimey wormy things that lived in fact beneath your myths and because of your myths” (yes … really uncharacteristic for JR) yet the image avoids the core realities that i) we haven’t actually seen many plausible (let alone solidly grounded) allegations to support such an image and ii) the image would have worked – it ever legitimately worked at all – a decade ago, but not today.
Then at 403PM JR asserts again that “the things I wrote about your church are true” – and yet we precisely have not established such “truth” (unless perhaps this “truth” is merely JR’s own personal ‘truth’ that appears on the screen behind his eyeballs) and indeed have seen now so much historical information that rather substantially establishes just the opposite. (About which, see more below in this comment.)
Yet ‘Julie’ had better not “dare to say” JR is “lying when [he’s] not”. Although if JR has not been demonstrated to have been deliberately “lying” then the only other alternative is that he is hugely – almost delusionally – misinformed, nor has the provision of substantial material that counters his claims and assertions done anything to give him serious pause; rather, the same stuff just keeps plopping up.
We are told he “went to Aushwitz” [sic] but his description of its geographical location could come from a travel-brochure (in fact “over lovely rolling hills” is hardly JR’s style). And it was the Nazis who set up the camps in the Government-General.
There is much genocide and much evil in what he describes (almost Cartoonishly, if we consider it) as “a beautiful world” and there has been a problem with the Other and the Unfamiliar among human groups since the beginning (as the (non-Catholic) Egyptians of the Pharaonic era demonstrated clearly). Nor in modern times has genocide or mass-murder been limited to religious belief systems (Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot come to mind here, as the larger demons among a much more numerous if lesser pandemonium ).
Which brings us to the problem of how the Church was to deal with such violent tendencies in the human self and such violent tendencies as they were amplified in human collectivities. In such profoundly troubled waters, and so deeply complex, the Cartoonish chanting of factoids is ludicrously sufficient for genuine comprehension.
Whether JR is any reliable guide to discovering the “comprehensable” in what is indeed a “too real history” of the species is up to the reader to decide.
JR also takes issue (the 8th, 106AM) with the “nothing happened” bit. The phrase is his from a comment on the 28th of June at 222PM describing yet another claimed encounter with another priest. But his recent recollection on this thread about the chem-lab encounter effectively proclaimed the same thing (the 5th of October at 1118PM): that a) the “blow-job” did not happen – presuming JR’s mere inference that that’s what the priest expected and that the events took place as he described them – while b) characteristically trying to claim that i) he was the victim of a sex-crime – a “rape” even – but that also ii) he didn’t actually let it happen. (Discussed at length in some of my prior comments on this thread.)
Then (the 7th, 1104PM) JR raises not his own solutions to the problem as to what the Church could have done about the Holocaust (and perhaps the larger problem of the Third Reich and the Nazis generally) but rather simply gives the example of Gandhi.
Which instantly creates for his position far more problems than it solves. Gandhi conducted his personal and individual witness against the Brits, who more or less constrained themselves to the tenets and principles of Western law (i.e. they did not simply send some goons to shoot Gandhi or ‘disappear’ him forthwith before he ever got started). In the (rabidly anti-clerical and anti-religious) setting of Hitler’s Germany or any of the Fascist governments or against Stalin Gandhi would not have been allowed to remain active or even alive for very long at all.
And Gandhi was an individual. The agonizing problem that the violent and essentially lawless or renegade regimes just-mentioned posed to the Vatican was this: those governments effectively held all the Catholics (and indeed all of their citizenries, of whatever religious persuasion) hostage: were the Pope to have taken too firm and strong a stand then not only might the Vatican have been invaded and eradicated, but – far more easily – those governments would have taken their anger out on the hostage-citizenries they controlled. And then perhaps we would now be seeing assertions that it was so easy for the Pope to speak out against those regimes, while safe in the Vatican, while he effectively got so many of the helpless hostage-citizenries killed by those regimes because of his too-robust objections to the regimes.
The Problem that the regimes of that era posed was for the Vatican and the Western governments a lose-lose, certainly in the short-run: speak out and get even more people killed or temper your public proclamations to prevent regime-goons punishing the helpless for what you proclaimed. Nor can it in any way reasonably be expected that if the Pope had just spoken out more robustly, the Nazis would have called-off the Holocaust or cancelled the Wannsee Conference and its agenda. Hitler’s insanity was clear from the beginning, the hope among all European leaders was that he would lose the election in 1932, he did lose that election, but then the Weimar elites went and appointed him Chancellor anyway – against all reasonable hopes and expectations of the Western governments and the Vatican. And with that, then, the die was cast and Hitler had the full power of the government to put at the disposal of his visions.
So I suggest JR give less thought to “asses” and more to the actual historical realities that confronted the West and the Vatican as a result of Hitler’s accession.
Thus, as for the vague bit about “if they wanted too the church could have done something”, it’s just more unsupported plop. And as for “bombing the tracks”: a) the Germans were indefatigable track repairers and kept their rail system operating almost to the end of the war in Europe (although the Allies managed to snarl the rail and roads preparatory to D-Day, but in that instance Western France was well within range of the Allied bomber force and the bulk of the Allied bomber force was assigned to assuring the success of that mission). Which leads to b): the bulk of the camps were in East-Central Europe, beyond the range of the Allied bombers (nor would Stalin allow use of his airfields for Allied bombing missions nor would he take any action in the matter with his own air-forces; indeed when the Poles rose in Warsaw in ’44, he deliberately held his forces back as the SS moved in to bloodily crush the rising and then systematically demolish most of old Warsaw at their leisure).
Thus too JR’s touching concern for the Six Million of the Holocaust (upon whom be peace) seems not to take notice of the tens or dozens of millions of his own subjects Stalin killed-off, either by purges, the Gulag, or the famines and the dislocations of entire subject peoples to inhospitable parts of the further northern USSR. But Deschner (I will for a moment dispense with the polite fiction that most of JR’s historical thoughts are … JR’s) no doubt pays far less attention – if any at all – to Stalin’s awesomely bloody and blood-thirsty depredations because a) they can’t even Cartoonishly be connected to the Church and b) the whole Church-Holocaust bit was prompted by Stalin in ’45 after Pius XII came out very forthrightly against the threat to humanity that Soviet Communism posed and c) Stalin’s murderous depredations took place under a declared atheist and secularist government that had promised at the outset to bring nothing but great goodness to those who came under its governance.
But JR is welcome, by all means, to “keep dreamin’”.
And then on the 8th at 1222AM (ooh – an “early morning comment”) JR shares the fruits of further “thought”: the Church “could have bought the Jews of Europe from the Nazis”. Except that Hitler was not interested in ‘selling’ the Jews; he had from the outset conceived of the project of eradicating them utterly (thus it was called ‘The Final Solution’). In later ’44, Himmler conceived of the idea of ransoming the more valuable (he thought) Jews of Europe in exchange for cash and military trucks – but at that point it could only come to nothing. And in the prior war years, Hitler didn’t see himself in need of cash anyway. So once the Holocaust got started (which, to keep JR up to speed here, was 1942), it was already too late to stop what, in any case, few people anywhere imagined even Hitler was insane enough to attempt. Nor could the Vatican have tried a massive effort of ‘buying’ if the Allied Supreme Command was opposed to it (they didn’t want Hitler picking up any more cash and valuables to continue his war effort).
Nonetheless, the record is replete with small-scale Vatican and Church efforts to provide help and sustenance for Jewish persons; there is – if memory serves – a memorial of that erected by the Israeli government in its special space reserved for honoring those non-Jews who helped.
All of which goes to demonstrate that while it is all well and good to put some “thought” into historical matters, one should a) be clear on just what is involved in “thought” and – even more so – b) be careful in drawing definitive conclusions from insufficient or inadequate “thought”, based on factoids rather than factual realities.
And now to the second act of today’s matinee: ‘dennis ecker’ (the 7th at 1107PM).
Yes, I meant “law enforcement” (broadly defined to include police and prosecutors and courts) when I said “official parties”. Was that not clear?
Then he tries to avoid the issues I raise and go after my motivations. But it’s vaguely put, is it not? So I will simply say: No, there is no “self-gratification” (however he defines that term here) and there is not “some other influence”. And I will further say that if the content of my ideas is capable of standing on its own (and I haven’t seen any counter-material from the Abuseniks here that has effectively neutralized that capability), then of what relevance is it whether I have any other motivations or not? Perhaps if he would stick to his cherished “facts – cold, hard facts” [grammatical correction supplied] – or at least with rational and coherent efforts to address the content of my material rather than try to somehow fiddle around with anything else, then that might do better for him.
Does he have some stated objection to subjecting Abusenik material to analysis and assessment? Is there something wrong with that purpose? Or does he simply realize that he has nothing to counter my ideas and is therefore simply trying to toss some distracting plop? That would be the Playbook’s recommendation in this type of situation, by amazing coincidence. The gist of most of his comment here is merely an extended (and thus “lengthy”) bit of that I’m Not/You Are gambit we usually see in JR’s material.
Then the Wig of Frustration because – waitttttt for itttttt! – he hasn’t been able to receive “any type of answer to my questions” … what questions would those be? The ones designed to simply distract from the issues and ideas here? I have already dealt with that type of “question” at length, even on this thread. But again, it’s all he’s got and it’s all the Playbook can recommend at this point: try to distract and divert-attention from the issues and ideas by going after the questioner somehow.
We are discussing apples and oranges here, and he is trying to keep the focus on his queasy kumquats, and thereby he then poses as the frustrated honest Inquirer unable to receive answers. Neat, but at this point obvious; we’ve read it in the Notebook on the Playbook.
And if the Doctor might explain his diagnosis of “anger … towards victims”, that would be helpful. As I told JR once in comments, I am concerned about the entire phenomenon of the Stampede and I consider it a powerfully lethal development that has deranged many substantive aspects of the American reality and I consider it vitally important to deal with that development in its many aspects. Why else does he think my comments are so “lengthy”? (Answer: I’m simply using “words” to make him and other Abuseniks appear implausible and non-credible, just for personal reasons. Whether the material they put up actually is demonstrably implausible and non-credible … that’s not something he cares to consider.)
Was he specially trained in advanced Psychological Diagnosis as part of the professional preparation for his alleged EMS career? Surely, his predilection for delivering faux-papal pronouncements and denunciations is matched by his predilection for definitive psychologizing. What were they teaching at that school he went to?
And my “comment can clearly be interpreted as dislike for the media on their reporting” (and so on). I have established rather clearly – and on this very thread – the grounds for my concern about the media’s role in the Stampede. But of course, in the Abusenik universe, you must either agree with whatever they toss up or else you ‘don’t like’ them and are ‘hostile to them’ (and are merely re-victimizing them and so on and so forth). But we’ve seen all this before and discussed it at length.
The Abusenik Stampede was not designed to foster comprehension or analysis or assessment. It was precisely designed to short-circuit all of that, in best propagandistic and agitprop style. And we have seen that played-out here consistently in the many comments by Abuseniks and in the material that the TMR articles collects and publishes.
And – can he not read – I do not “dislike in the investigations by the ‘official parties’” [sic]. What I dislike very much is the failure of the media and the official parties to do their jobs legitimately and honestly but instead give us the repellently and ominously twisted performances that we have seen clearly demonstrated in, for example, the media bits in the most recent TMR articles (and some of the comments), the fizzled but hyped document-releases, and in the recent Philadelphia cases. Not only as a Catholic but as a Citizen, I very much do dislike all that very much; I consider such derangements in such vital media and governmental praxis to be acute warning-signs of danger for society and culture.
If ‘dennis ecker’ can demonstrate by any quotations of mine where I “think [I] believe [I] am the savior of the church” then he can put them up and explain how he came to that conclusion and what he ‘thinks’ (unless of course his use of ‘think’ is simply a Wig put on over his own personal crack-dreams and Cartoons).
And I am a “one man vigilante”? Is he actually familiar with the definition of “vigilante”? Am I the one who asked for the specific personal and residential and other identifying information of another commenter?
And if simply carrying out assessment and analysis of (what have demonstrated themselves to be highly implausible) stories and the dynamics underlying the Stampede is to ‘dennis ecker’s mind merely some effort to “make all things right” then … ‘dennis ecker’ has simply revealed the quality of his own mentation (and also demonstrated his reliance on the Playbook). What we see in this comment is what I mentioned in a prior comment: the effort of various Party goons – gussied up in victim Wigs – to distract-from and discredit any substantive questioning of the stuff they have been spouting from their podium.
And has not ‘dennis ecker’ proclaimed himself here on this site to be participant-in (if not also the imagined leader-of) the Abusenik world-wide campaign to see the Church and her priests “persecuted”? Because in his eyes the process of analysis and assessment of Abusenik material is interfering with that campaign? (Was there not a module on “projection” in his Psychological Diagnosis course?)
And then he merely repeats (with the Wig of Ominous Insight) his prior bit about “clearly the warning signs are there” – although (who can be surprised?) – his comment about “warning signs” was made about “A individual who shows the ‘warning signs’ of self-destruction” [sic] (the 6th, 1149AM). So now, what are the “warning signs” warning-about, again?
But he is clearly now enamored of his new Wig of Warning-Signs, under the bouffant bangles of which he will mutter his various diagnoses with that queasy sense of some sort of underlying emotional violence. But what else has he got, really? It’s a prescribed Playbook move, under the circumstances into which he has now gotten himself.
And – again – the ominous endy bit that he “only hopes that your ‘purpose’ is limited to your lengthy comments”. Ummmm – does he mean (to repeat myself here) something like asking for any residential or other identifying information from another commenter? Yes, that would indeed be very legitimately disturbing. But … oh wait …
And lastly, at 1119PM on the 7th, a quick one-liner to the effect that he had consulted an “app”. For the serious matters we are discussing seriously here, he has – after all – not thought to consult a professional legal dictionary or even to consult a book, but rather an “app” on his personal communication device (one of the goodies gotten from the swag from the City and/or the Church, perhaps?).
And on the basis of this type of ‘knowledge’ he continues to toss out assertions, claims, characterizations, prognostications, pronunciamentos, and denunciations like they were confetti. And if one doesn’t agree with him, one will receive the evil-eye from the Wig of Diagnosis.
All of this would be laughable, except that it is a historical reality that in this country this type of mentality was raised-up by the media to be the ‘front’ and pretext on whose behalf (ostensibly) the Stampede was built and sustained.
So the readership is welcome to decide: do they “dislike” that, or do they like it? I “dislike” it.
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Dennis has not been compensated . Why don't you do something about that?
And if anyone was going to be run over in a stampede as you describe; wouldn't it be you?
Where are all your followers P? Are they somewhere out there in the dark? Waiting to get your clarion call to arm and march against the victims, you've never seen?
What will be the spark to set that powder keg of "truth and virtue" off?
If you could give me a heads up before it happens I'd appreciate it. I'll wait…….
But the pope wasn't in Germany, he was in the Vatican. He was bigger than Germany. He led I/3 of the world's population at that time to Germany's 55 million. It was his moral duty to do more than give one speech. And if you are a moral person and your death might save millions of lives what would you do? Isn't that the time to be seen, to show up; to person-up? Moral balls to the wall as it were. If not then when?
If Hitler from the "onset" ,as you've said, wanted to kill the jews. Why the treaty ? Why the Concordat? Everyone including the pope was playing Neville Chamberlin? Appease at any cost as long as it's not the catholics who have to pay?( Sounds way too familiar to me). Didn't adolf consistantly refer to jews as vermin in "mien kampf"? If your going to do state business with somebody; you might want to read the one book they've written about their beliefs.
Obviously P you've never heard the politcal line that goes, "The people united can never be defeated."
What was adolph going to do, surround the very catholic bankers and industrialists who supported him? The church could have forced him to be temperate. For some reason that didn't happen. Maybe if the pope had given 2 speeches. That might have done the trick. I know, I know; it was just too dangerous.
You say he held 55 million people hostage? Now that would be hard to do. The catering alone could bankrupt a government. To say nothing of the armament it would take to guard them he could hardly invade or annex another country.
If good men do nothing in the face of evil, what are they good for? Showing up on Sunday and dropping money into a collection basket?
You seem to like to put men in wigs. Interesting. That reveals more about you and your own "cartoon" thinking.
Mock away. That seems to be the extent of your limited ability to converse.
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The camps happened in catholic countries and the pope said one thing in 1942 and that's the kiss off? That's reason?
Oh, job well done. He probably hiccuped louder than that on his death bed. I didn't realize that the fact pius XII had said what he said leaving out the word "faiths" between nationalities and races constituted a real Hail Mary pass to save, the then mostly alive, European Jews. Well he tried…good job. Those nazi's must have been shaking in their jack boots. The pope has cast some shade on persecution. Quick stop the trains. And Merry Christmas to all in 1942.
I guess when he condemned Soviet Communism he wasn't worried about the catholics behind the iron curtain being hurt the way he was with the nazis. Isn't that what you've said? He might have harmed catholics had he spoken out?
If you think the nazi's were that hard to beat how come after D day it only took 10 months , give or take a few, to end the war. Was it for fear the Russians would sweep Europe that the second front was finally opened? I think so and so did the Russians. It only cost them 20,000,000 lives all in all.
[edited by moderator] What will make you happy? What can victims do for you? What do you want from us so that we can give it to you? How should victims behave in this situation? Or are we to pretend we didn't happen? That there are no victims; just what? Thieves, saying we were victimized when we weren't ( even though we were) . WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?
Very simply, a demand for the truth before assuming conclusions. That's what I want from you. Way too many innocent people are getting caught up in this, way too many guilty perps in other orgs. are invisible and move freely because of this myopic tunnel vision directed solely at the Church.
Julie what's "progressive extinction"? Is it like a progressive dinner? Could "progressive extinction" bode anything good? [edited by moderator] One speech huh? In 1942. Well why that extraordinary effort didn't put the kiebosh on der fuhrer, I don't know.
Ken W, What makes you think I and other victims don't want the truth out? We tell what happened to us as a way of getting the truth out. You can't name 10 priests who've been falsley accused not ten. Not five even. And we , the victims, are to pretend that that small number equates with or supercedes the thousands of real victims? That's not happening.
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The catholic religion is the largest single christian religion in the U.S. There are more protestants en mass but that's all the protestant faiths combined. As a single entity, roman catholics are 24% of all the christian faiths in America.
I do not “dislike in the investigations by the ‘official parties’” [sic]. What I dislike very much is the failure of the media and the official parties to do their jobs legitimately and honestly but instead give us the repellently and ominously twisted performances that we have seen.
You contradict yourself. "Do not dislike in the investigations by the official parties. Then you state the dislike the failure of the media and the official parties to do their jobs. Well, was it not the job of the official parties to investigate something you state that you do not dislike ?
It seems you have the same thinking of someone who runs a different site.
Well said Dennis IMO.
Everybodies wrong but the church to these people..