Compadres (l to r): SNAP leaders David Clohessy and Barbara Blaine
and contingency lawyers John Manly and Jeff Anderson
For the last several years now, TheMediaReport.com has provided hundreds of examples of the media's biased and unbalanced coverage of the Catholic Church sex abuse story. And, unfortunately, our weekly posts provide only a small glimmer of the overall problem.
But the purpose of this site is to arm responsible journalists with the facts about sex abuse so as to improve their coverage and hopefully lower the incidence of sex abuse in our society.
What can the mainstream media do to improve its reporting of the Catholic Church sex abuse narrative? Here are five suggestions:
1. Provide context
Contemporaneous accusations of abuse against Catholic priests are extremely rare, recently averaging in the United States only eight per year even deemed "credible" by diocesan review boards. Almost all accusations against Catholic priests involve allegations from decades ago. Yet you would hardly know this from the media coverage, which almost always makes it appear that abuse is still an ongoing and current problem in the Church.
Meanwhile, sex abuse is happening unabated today in our families, our schools, and other institutions because the media is fixated only with old accusations of abuse in a single organization, the Catholic Church.
As we have relayed a number of times before:
- rampant abuse and cover-ups continue today unabated in our nation's public schools, with estimates that there has been "more than 100 times" the rate of sex abuse in schools that there ever has been in the Catholic Church;
- Hollywood still hands out coveted Emmy awards to accused child molesters and turns their collective backs on a child abuse problem that has been declared "rampant today"; and
- Evangelical missions are said to be a "magnet" for sexual abusers today, yet rarely does the media make mention of this.
Yet the media continues to endlessly harp on the crimes committed many decades ago by priests.
2. Call out the bigots
Anne Barrett Doyle
from BishopAccountability.org
One popular source for the media is SNAP's National Director David Clohessy. Clohessy is a former leader at the discredited activist group ACORN, and while he has demanded that the Church report every allegation of abuse to police no matter how flimsy or how long ago, Clohessy himself never reported to police back in the 1990s that his own brother Kevin, a Catholic priest, was sexually molesting innocent young boys. The irony that Clohessy is continually passing judgement on the Catholic Church is rich, but the media never notes it.
Then there is Barbara Blaine, SNAP's founder. Blaine was busted a couple years ago for writing a passionate letter to government licensing authorities on behalf of a friend who was arrested with over 100 images of kiddie porn on his computer.
And while these activists at SNAP, BishopAccountability.org, and the like claim their campaigns against the Church are simply about "protecting children," the undeniable fact is that almost all these groups have a not-so-hidden, radical, left-wing agenda, which they seek to advance under the pretext of fighting child sex abuse. Yet the media never makes mention of their real motivations.
3. Question the lawyers
The mainstream media invariably portrays Church-suing contingency lawyers as altruistic champions of the oppressed seeking justice for their clients. In truth, a number of Church-suing contingency lawyers are little more than buffoons in pinstripe suits in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
For starters, there is Southern California's John Manly, who, in addition to having a notable record of inflammatory remarks about priests, was cited in a shocking November 2012 news article with the claim that he was "fishing for victims" in the case of an accused priest.
Then there is the notorious Jeff Anderson, who is no stranger to readers of this site. Whether he is funneling cash to his friends at SNAP or filing another another kooky "stuntsuit" against the Vatican to get more media attention, the mainstream media never questions Anderson about his legal antics and his motivations.
4. Recognize the fraud
Suing the Catholic Church has become a multi-billion dollar industry just in the United States alone, so it should not come as a surprise to any clear-thinking person that outright fraud against the Church is occurring all the time.
Nearly half of all priests being accused of abuse today are long ago deceased, yet every time a journalist reports such an accusation, never does the journalist note the obvious: that a dead person can never defend himself and his reputation against a charge from many decades earlier.
Bizarre and mind-boggling claims of abuse are lodged against priests all the time, and even while there have been estimates that one half of accusations are "entirely false [or] greatly exaggerated," journalists continue to trumpet each and every claim handed to them without so much as a whimper of the usual journalistic skepticism.
If only accusations against Catholic priests received the same skeptical treatment as those against Woody Allen … Michael Jackson … Roman Polanski …
Extremely rare is the brave journalist such as Vincent Carroll at the Denver Post, who fearlessly took on the dominant media narrative and declared:
"[F]raudulent or highly dubious accusations are more common than is acknowledged in coverage of the church scandals – although they should not be surprising, given the monumental settlements various dioceses have paid out over the years."
See also: TheMediaReport.com: Falsely accused priests.
5. Report the progress
It is indisputable that no other organization in the entire world comes even close to implementing the measures that the Catholic Church has taken in order to ensure the protection of children. In the United States, the Catholic Church has:
- instituted a "zero tolerance" policy in which any credibly accused priest is immediately removed from ministry and law enforcement is notified;
- trained well over 5 million children in giving them the knowledge and skills to protect them from abuse;
- trained well over 2 million adults, including 99 percent of all priests, in recognizing signs of abuse;
- conducted well over 2 million background checks, including those in the intensified screening process for seminarians and aspiring priests;
- installed "Victim Assistance Coordinators" in every diocese, "assuring victims that they will be heard";
- conducted annual independent audits of all dioceses to monitor compliance with the groundbreaking 2002 Charter for Protection of Children and Young People;
- instituted in every diocese an abuse review boards – usually composed of child welfare experts, child psychologists, and abuse experts – to examine any claims of abuse.
Without a doubt, the Catholic Church in the 21st century is the model for other institutions to follow in the safeguarding of youth. Yet this fact is never mentioned by the media.
How is SNAP anti catholic? SNAP's all catholic all the time. They are catholics working for your church. They control the victims' side of things for the corporate church.
You are the ones creating "anti catholic" it's your mantra. Nobody but catholics ever think about your church. Save when you pull boners on kids then it's society's job to check your s*%t. Catholic society first of all would want to fix this, you would think. Most humans don't eat their children or sacrifice them as an offering to demented priests. Most humans protect children from such things. Evidently not you. Why, that kind of sociopathy puts you in a smaller percentage of the human population than gay folks and even the 1%.
~~But the purpose of this site is to arm responsible journalists with the facts about sex abuse so as to improve their coverage and hopefully lower the incidence of sex abuse in our society.
The quote above can only be looked at in two ways. The media is at fault for the abuse children suffered at that hands of clergy, or you are asking the media to look the other way when it comes to reporting about abusive priests in a attempt not to inform the public of additional abusive priests.
I do agree however if someone is willing to print something bad they must be willing to print the good.
You did however leave out one thing else that you can do. If you don't like to read what is printed or watching something that is on television, put the paper down or change the channel.
From your first paragraph all the way to the last one. "The Catholic Church in the 21st century is the model in safeguarding youth.
I will assume you are not aware of the protection the archdiocese of Philadelphia has shown to a recent (last week) assault victim and her alleged attacker.
Dennis your writing is better than ever. Great job. Thank you.
Thanks to TMR for continuing to consistently get the truth out on the facts of the Catholic Church 'minor abuse' statistics (actually 'minor' compared with most other institutions and hardly 'abuse' in perhaps 80% of the cases), their tremendous advances in correcting internal localized systems and processes that permitted transgressions and their precedent-setting retributive, monitoring and protective practices and programs to both enjoin justice and reduce (total elimination is impossible where men dwell) offenses; and the corrupt media's leftist political and ideological agenda, which currently uses (and abuses) the atheist, homosexual, feminist, reproductive 'rights' and entitlements/privelages 'strawman' agenda to anesthesize lazy, bigoted brains. Such simps.
The Church will be heralded (once this short-lived love affair with leftist ideology runs its viral course) as the one enlightened institution that led the way out of the darkness that is the current despicable culture that permits (and in many places, supports, encourages and/or compels) these crimes in every aspect of progressive society. As we know, this disgusting behavior has been accomodated and prevailed in most secularized institutions for generations. God permitted this human stain ('filth') in the Church so as to implore her to facilitate its expulsion from society.
Others are seeing both the dishonesty and bigotry in/of/by the main stream media (and their cronies in entertainment, e-media, non-profit orgs [ACORN=SNAP], 'village idiots/activists', etc.) and their not-so-hidden benefactors.
http://wdtprs.com/blog/
http://www.catholicvote.org/the-united-nations-uses-images-of-mother-teresa-to-promote-its-anti-catholic-agenda/
Hey, explain please your hostility in your first paragraph. You call athiests, homosexuals; feminists; pro choice defenders: evil per se. That's bigotry. you bring up the bigoted POV all the time.
Who, on our side, says you are evil for practicing your faith?. No one that's who.
You've with that one paragraph lost any credability when you shout bigot at us.
Correct direct link to wdtprs post: http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/02/have-the-civil-rights-of-any-group-besides-the-unborn-been-trampled-by-u-s-courts-more-than-catholic-priests/
Great article. Simply irrefutable. As media outlets like the manifesto rag New York Times and the lap dog Washington Post have illustrated, professional journalism in the US is largely a thing of the past. There are some serious reporters out there, though, and these points will resonate with them in particular.
I have the feeling after reading this latest article it is TMR who is giving ideas to everyone else but their own catholic church on how to improve their image in the media. One must admit they have a problem before it can be fixed and even today the catholic church has failed to do so.
I will use the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as a prime example.
Lets start with compensation to the abused. At last check the AOP is almost now 400 million dollars in debt, but in September 2015 they are hoping for a visit by the Pope. Although the city will pick up part of the tab the AOP will be paying the major portion. It has been mentioned in the media that Mayor Nutter and the Govenor of Pennsylvania maybe scheduling a trip to the Vatican to work out those issues. But where is this new found wealth coming from while the abused have not been compensated ?
Zero Tolerance – We can ask the parishioners of Our Lady of Calvary church on how they feel about this after learning they were kept in the dark for almost one full year of a priest with accusations of child abuse left to remain in their midst, only to be removed from ministry after he resigned.
The training of adults and children regarding abuse – I will be fair and say there is always the chance of a bad apple getting through but most recently it seems that too has also failed. Within six months of time two coaches for the AOP have been arrested for abuse and a priest has been arrested for the same., and a child is facing charges of abuse. Only yesterday a Montgomery County judge has ordered Charles Meredith the now ex-tennis coach for the Country Day School of the Sacred Heart to face trial on two counts of corruption of a minor. Meredith is free on $50,000 bail and faces 5 years in prison. (They must have been absent the day of classes)
Background Checks – I will let the above paragraph speak for this.
Safeguarding Youth. – I am not sure if everyone is aware of the latest events that have unfolded with a archdiocese of Philadelphia high school with a student being accused of sexually abusing another student, let me be fair and say that NO CLERGY OR TEACHER WAS INVOLVED. However the biggest idiotic event took place when the AOP sent out e-mails notifying people and parents not only the name of the abused but also of the alleged attacker. They then tried to correct the problem by sending a second e-mail asking people if they did not open the first e-mail to delete it. O.K. that really worked.
The AOP is not the only trouble spot.
But giving ideas on how other people can fix your problem is not going to work.
I was raised by a great man and he always had these great sayings and I remember most of them today. The one I would like to share regarding the catholic church. "You can do many rights but you do that one wrong that is how people will remember you"
The catholic church has a long way to go on how its remembered.
This issue always attracts the most vicious internet bullies such as Jim and Dennis. I feel empowered and joyful giving the Catholic Church money in Jim and Dennis' name, and praying for them in church. May they, and all innocent people involved have peace.
How do Dennis and I qualify as "the most vicious internet bullies", Julie? Really you can't throw out assertions like that with no proof. Be resposibile.
Responsibile, sorry.
On the 12th at 943PM we get – yet again – JR’s unsupported assertions as how SNAP is a tool of the Church. Readers may do with it what they will.
Then this marvelously illogical bit: “Nobody but catholics ever think about your church”. But “Dennis” does, and in his own mind he is ‘self-excommunicated.(Or does JR agree that “Dennis”’s self-excommunication is only a creature of his mind?) And all of those media article writers – are they all Catholic? And D’Antonio and Sipe and so many of the others who have written books as well as articles?
And has “Catholic society” not done the work to “fix this”? Or is JR once again transmitting from a past that is now very different from the present? Or are the Jay statistics “lying” – and if so, does JR have fresh statistics that can back up that assertion?
The substantive connection between the consumption of human sacrifices and the Catholic Abuse Matter is a poser – as the Brits would say – that is open to anybody out there in the reading audience.
But on the basis of that conflation, JR is able to quickly don the Wig Of Diagnosis and declaim – yet again – about “sociopathy” (people who eat children as human sacrifices to ‘demented priests’, y’a see). Neat.
Then comes “Dennis” on the 12th at 954PM, who is now going to do some analysis. Oh goody. Let’s look in and see how it works.
The quote he provides from this TMR article “can only be looked at in two ways”, he declares. Either a) it’s the media’s fault for the abuse or b) TMR is “asking the media” not to report about abusive priests.
And what – pray – about a third perfectly logical possible ‘way’ to ‘look at’ this article: that the media is being asked to examine more carefully the claims and allegations in order to separate genuine allegations (and thus accurate reports of Catholic cleric abuse) from allegations that are otherwise-classifiable, and from that examination to thus draw conclusions as to the actual extent of genuine abuse by Catholic clerics … ?
So there is certainly more than just the “only two ways” to which “Dennis” seeks to manipulate our thoughts.
Thus then “Dennis” has gotten onto the wrong track as he then rumbles along about printing good if they are going to print bad. I would say that the core matter here is not one of balance, but of original and essential accuracy. The media has done no investigation into the hardly improbable and indeed too-highly probable existence of ‘otherwise classifiable’ allegations and on that basis has claimed an epidemic of Catholic clerical ‘abuse’ (however the term is defined along that spectrum). When, actually, it remains now a clear probability that a great many of the allegations are ‘otherwise classifiable’ (JR’s unsupported assertions to the contrary here notwithstanding).
Thus then too, “Dennis”’s essential un-seriousness (or the bankruptcy of his approach in the face of the actual problem) is revealed in the rather silly suggestion that if we don’t like what we are reading or viewing we can tune-out. This is a vital public matter, in all of the aspects that I have mentioned in comments on this site, and not only no Catholic but also no Citizen can afford to tune out if the Stampede does indeed involve (and there is far too high a probability that it does) a primary and fundamental ‘crisis’ due to the “collapse of public fact” and to the concomitant and enabling fact of the media’s failure to accurately report in the first place.
And lastly in this comment of his, we see how “Dennis” doth roll: if you can find just one news report – even if it isn’t quite relevant – then toss it up and claim that it can stand credibly against the cumulative and individual weight of the many points made in the article. Thus this bit about an email somehow sent out in a Catholic school containing a police report identifying a sexual-abuse allegant; the allegant is a female student and the alleged perpetrator is a male student.
This is a) not quite the issue of actual sexual abuse allegedly perpetrated by Catholic clerics that this site has been working-with and the Church has been working-on for quite some time now; and b) not quite a clear-cut example of anything just yet, since it isn’t clear i) whether this email was sent out accidentally or deliberately nor ii) is it explained why the email was superseded by a retractive email as soon as the first email was discovered (if the original email had been sent out deliberately, why recall it?) nor iii) what if anything any Catholic clerics or nuns had to do with it (it may have merely been a lay clerical error).
But anything to Keep The Ball Rolling, no?
Then – and nicely in time for Valentine’s Day – we get a typical JR valentine to “Dennis” at 1035AM on the 12th.
Then on the 12th at 319PM “Dennis” returns with more. Well, maybe better luck this time. Let’s see.
“Dennis” feels that “it is TMR”, actually, that is putting ideas into “everyone else” except the Church as to “how to improve their image in the media”.
Which nicely reveals what – for the Abuseniks – it’s really all about: image. Whereas as the article works-toward the point, and as I noted above in this comment, it is not an issue of “image” but rather of substance, i.e. the article deals with the media’s demonstrated substantial failure to perform its obligations to report accurately.
That the Catholic Church has “failed to do so” (i.e. to improve its image) is primarily due to the fact that the Church since Dallas has not been trying to improve its image so much as it has worked to substantially improve the quality of its child-protective environment. And in that substance the Church has clearly succeeded, and far more than any other organization on the planet, including – as the Wall Street Journal points out (my second-to-last comment on the immediately prior thread here) – the U.N. itself.
But now “Dennis” will give us an example. This is a good direction to take. Let’s see then how this works out.
He starts with “compensation to the abused” – thus already derailing his choo-choo before it is out of the station since in order to make this an effective point it first has to be established who is genuinely compensable and who it ‘otherwise classifiable’. But then he keeps driving the engine even though it has left the rails, by going on and on about the economic and fiscal aspects of the Pope’s possible up-coming visit to Philly. He tries to bring this soft-shoe home by plaintively asking how the AOP can be contemplating any outlays at all if “the abused have not been compensated”, which simply brings the whole thought back to square-one and a screeching halt.
Then on to “zero tolerance”. He raises an example (I am uncertain of the date) which can have several possible explanations (and I am not familiar with the actualities of the case, and if all “Dennis” has to go on are news-reports than he may well not be very familiar with all the actual aspects either). Perhaps he can give us the link to the news-report. At this point, we only have an incoherence: a priest who has resigned is not then consequently removed from ministry, because he did that himself when he resigned.
He then seems to confuse ‘zero tolerance’ in terms of prevention – which is a near-impossibility, as even he himself admits – with ‘zero tolerance’ in terms of dealing with an abusive priest once credible allegations have been brought. In which latter case, if the AOP was instrumental in the process that brought these persons before the justice system, then it has succeeded – so the Church in this scenario has succeeded.
I have no idea of the relevance of that bit about “they must have been absent the day of classes”.
I am not certain of the relevance of the “background checks” bit. Perhaps if “Dennis” were to explain his thinking here, or offer identifying information for his information-source, we might have better luck with this one.
Then he is back to the email-incident and we have dealt with that above in terms of its non-relevance to the Catholic Abuse Matter as this site has been dealing with it. He now admits that irrelevance, but seems to have now moved on to the larger or lesser issue (take your pick) of events happening in Catholic schools even though clergy were not involved. A clerical error might well be the cause; an actual policy requirement is far less easy to credit without further information or substantiation; an individual clerical worker’s deliberate act is possible but also would require further information or substantiation.
But to simply follow the sly “Dennis” gambit (i.e. toss up something without too much substantiation or discussion and hope people will draw their own negative conclusions by following the (dubious) path you have aimed them toward) and imagine the worst is precisely the type of ‘thinking’ (or lack of it) that is a prime driver of the Stampede and – it seems – the natural and most congenial level on which Abuseniks seem to like to operate.
Then we are ominously assured that “The AOP is not the only trouble spot”. No further explanation or explication, so it remains as simply what it grammatically is: merely an unsupported ominous assertion.
Then a pitch to sentimentality about what I presume is his dear old dad – and good for him. Apparently – and by the most amazingly convenient coincidence – the gentleman quite a while ago had some wisdom about the Catholic Church. How amazing.
But then the gentleman’s insight actually works to mitigate the Church’s current predicament: for all the good the Church has done, you can never go wrong by trying to Stampede folks into focusing on “that one wrong”. It has a sort of acute relevance here after all.
But – never one to stop pushing his engine further off the rails – “Dennis” brings it all home with a reminder that for him (and for Abuseniks and for the Stampede) it is not, nor has it ever been, fundamentally about substance, but rather about image (and appearance, and spin, and stories).
I could not agree more.
The simple fact that you only hear me and Dennis asking for reparations for victims everywhere, anywhere on this planet, should prove to you who SNAP really works for. Any victims group that has never demanded reparations for victims. Aint a victims' group that's working for victims. It's that simple kids.
I feel like I've fallen into a war machine here. Who are you going to wage war against, that you haven't already? Your own victims? the press? The U.N.? Woody Allen?
Evidently Lt. Worf is aching for battle. The Prince of Peace would be proud. Kill a Commie for Christ y'all! LOL!
Dennis and I are mocked sexually again. A compliment on good writing becomes "A Valentine"
Queers are so f'ing funny. I'm just one big joke to you. Dennis is heterosexual but let's mock man love it's always good for a big yuk. This is the out dated world you live in? You rape children and want a pass on that; but homos to you are still a big joke? Your new pope's pretending different. Glad to see you still keep the homo pyres burning in your old timey catholic ghetto.
I have said it once and I will say it again. "FOR BATTLE COME TO ME!"
Is Lt. Worf O.K.?
"Homos", to use a victim-claimants lexicon (a slur that no faithful Catholic would never use), raped children, not any faithful Catholics.
'Good for goose not good for gander', again?
You complain about; that it somehow matters; that you are disliked. That's all covered under freedom of thought; freedom of and from religion. They are thoughts. Just thoughts some may have. So What? Who cares who dislikes you? You committed criminal actions. Deeds. Deeds are either legal or illegal. Your corporate officers deeds were criminal and they harmed people. You don't like what someone thinks don't listen to them. But to physically; mentally; spiritually; and criminally harm people and to not be held responsible. That equates with bigotry to you?. Well if that's the p.r. line you've paid for. stick with it, I guess. I don't think it's being bought as the truth but by a very, very small circle.
Your physical actions were criminal on level after level. Thoughts are not illegal. Your physical actions were.
You have to pretend your rape claims are all fake. Because if they aren't (and they aren't). You aren't standing on moral ground at all. THAT is why you attack all victims who post here. The lightbulb goes off,( I can be very dumb). That's why Sybaris and Scylla attack constantly and pretend that, Lordy! Lordy! We victims have come to destroy the church.
It isn't the victims who'll be healed through compensation. It's you and your church. Doing the right thing heals. And it will heal you first.
You were compensated, yet I see no evidence of your own healing. To the contrary: I see an all out demonic oppression, if not flat out possession in your postings. You have admitted to "night terrors" here before. Those did NOT come from anyone that may have abused you. Those can only come from one fallen angel, and those can only be healed by God Incarnate.
David, all this is old news, except the funny pictures. You need to dig deeper to find what's wrong with how the pedophile priest issue was covered, as in, who has been running the PR machine. News should be New, David, please dig deeper. Love always, kay
And where does SNAP fit into that PR machinery.
The sole focus of the critics of both TMR and the Church is always money, money, money- their god.
The frauds 'god' is all that matters to them- not protecting minors, not removing predators from society, not revealing the truth about the extent of this deviancy/perversion in all society; but, money.
No matter the topic, if it involves the Catholic Church, it always comes back to the money. Even when they've gotten their payout, it doesn't satisfy them, they want more. Theirs is a god of greed and gluttony.
And then, we're graced by the insightful and helpful 'teachings' by the ever-lecherous hanger-on-er 'feminist journalist' about how one is supposed to investigate and report this matter – why, according to the laws of the bigots themselves, of course! Drumming up e-business/traffic for her useless, dime-a-dozen Catholic-hating (and, not-so-demurely self-aggrandizing) blog here at TMR is so very, very 'PR', and, hopefully, financially productive for herself, yes? Because, you know, she is the expert on all matters "pedophile priest' and 'PR' and 'News', she's a regularly sought-after media expert on this (or any/every?) topic.
The main reason for the focus on the Church's relatively insignificant minor ephebophile problem is two-fold; first, it is nothing more than your run-of-the-mill antiCatholic bigotry, second it is to extort as much money as possible to punish the Church for the first reason. It has absolutely nothing to do with protecting children or minors and every honest observer of this hyper-politicized persecution knows it.
As a result of their ideologically-drive persecution, these frauds are responsible for more sexual abuse crimes being committed against children and minors than all the Catholic priests that ever existed [combined] because these leftist sheisters fomented the godless, immoral, unethical ideology that permitted, encouraged and supported/s pedophilia and ephebophilia in secular and other religious institutions, and then turned the peoples focus away from this fact (statistically verifiable) and refocused it towards the Catholic Church.
Too bad the poor kids being victimized since 2002 have been lost in your hustle-shuffle against the Church.
I wonder what this new generation of [real] victims articles, blogs and books will say – who will they blame (or sue)?
"No matter the topic when it involves the catholic church it always comes back to the money."
Yes it most certainly does. You've horrificly injured your own children. PAY THEM WHAT YOU OWE THEM!
I haven't asked for money for me. I'm demanding money for those you haven't compensated for their rapes at the hands of your clergy.
The church asks for money all the time. if they do it it's moral? but if their victims do it it's immoral? Sure.
Kay is "ever lecherous"? Why? How dare you throw all this plop? Who do you pretend you are?
[edited by moderator]
Athiests have no god, educated one; that's why we are called athiests. That includes all gods even yours: money.
Rather than sit on your claimed dirty little secrets for 30-50 years, you should have reported any crime against you at the time it was committed, which would have prevented more crimes against other minors. But, that would not have led to such a rich pay out day – right?
You are possibly complicit in any such crimes committed against every minor that had been abused after your claimed abuse.
Crime does pay, after all.
It gets a little complicated keeping up with comments because they don’t always seem to go up in chronological order; it doesn’t help when commenters don’t identify the comment(s) to which they are referring.
On the 12th at 1032PM JR starts in on some “you” (otherwise unidentified). I don’t know if it is intended to address me, but then I don’t see where it is intended for any commenter here since this “you” appears – in JR’s vision – to have “committed criminal actions”. Inexactness – of terms or analysis or even fact – seems not to be a difficulty that gives Abuseniks pause. But then the Playbook isn’t going for factuality; it is going for the manipulation of emotions and of imagination, and in the pursuit of that objective, exactness of thought and expression is most likely a definite obstruction.
The assertions about “criminality”, as about the actuality of the various asserted “rapes”, are precisely the point where everything has to be stopped until those assertions are established, because without this vital step being successfully effected, then nothing else can be further built-up. But the Playbook precisely and specifically has to move everybody over this assessment-phase without permitting any assessment at all. And that’s how the Stampede got rolling.
This “your” continues to be addressed a few minutes later in the comment of the 12th at 1046PM. Speaking for myself, I have never claimed that the “rape claims are all fake”. I’m still trying to establish which allegations (for “rape” or anything less) were genuine and which were otherwise-classifiable. Or, at least, to work out some general principle by which we might at least be able to establish such a distinction. Nor have we had any constructive input from Abuseniks in this project. So I am still working on some assessment that does not involve any “all” either way, but rather seeks to get an accurate picture of the actuality here.
“Sybaris and Scylla”? At first glance one recalls that “Scylla” is usually partnered with “Charybdis” and not with “Sybaris”. But here we suddenly see the provenance – in JR’s mind – of those odd bits about ‘sacrificing to demented priests’: he has somehow come upon the Greek myth of “Sybaris” the Greek (female) dragon to whom young men needed to be sacrificed. Although there were no “demented priests” (the sacrifice was bespoken by the Oracle of Delphi, a female), there was a guy-hero who had fallen in love with the designated sacrifice-ee and saved him, killing the dragon in the process. Just how all of this might work in JR’s mind and vision is for any reader so inclined to consider. And how “Scylla” figures in here is also anybody’s guess. The prospect of Abuseniks delving into the realm of mythology is doubly formidable in its phantasmagoric possibilities, so let the reader beware.
Then on the 13th at 101AM JR, bedecked in the combined Wigs of Morality and Therapy, informs us that while the victims apparently won’t be “healed through compensation” (which presumes allegants were seeking ‘healing’ in the first place) yet “you and your church” apparently will be because that’s what will happen when you are “doing the right thing”. Once again, we see the Abusenik ploy of trying to start the play at first base, without the batter ever having actually hit the ball: by which I mean that the Abuseniks want everybody to just agree to ‘believe’ that all the allegated claims and stories were true, and then the Game can begin from there. But as I have always said, that’s not how it works.
And we are then informed (the 13th, 1226AM) that JR and “Dennis” are and apparently always have been “asking for reparations for victims everywhere, anywhere on this planet”. Really? Readers are welcome to go back over the record here and see if they can find a sustained interest in any “rapes” (let alone any larger and less specific ‘victimization’) beyond the Catholic Abuse Matter.
But then, marvelously, he has also revealed more than he intended here. I recall reading that SNAP has recently indeed declared its brief to be anybody anywhere who has been victimized by anyone “in authority”. So here we have JR and “Dennis” now claiming to have been doing what SNAP has also been doing. An odd coincidence indeed.
But SNAP no doubt saw (or was advised by its tortie string-pullers) that the cash-bearing lode of the American Catholic Abuse Matter has pretty much been played-out and there’s too much risk, now, for torties to have the easy pickings they had back in the day. So in order to Keep The Ball Rolling, SNAP figured it had to widen its portfolio of prospective ‘victims’ – which it certainly has, making itself now (in its own mind, at least) the planet’s go-to site for anybody anywhere who has ever been ‘victimized’ by anybody” in authority”.
And it would seem that JR and “Dennis” are also signing themselves onto that bandwagon too (although they will actually be running their own band-wagon, since SNAP – but of course – is merely a tool of the Church, rather than a tool of the torties). Well, that’s very nice. As the late great Margaret Rutherford, in her take on the role of Miss Marple, once politely and consolingly said to a rather unwell interlocutor at the breakfast table who had just excitedly shared his most recent fever-vision: “It must sustain you”. Just so – this most recent (SNAP-derived?) vision and gambit must surely “sustain” JR and “Dennis”, and let it be so.
But what does this “prove” about who SNAP is working-for? That SNAP is and always has been working-for the torties? Given everything we have read and seen and discussed on this site, balanced against JR’s mere assertions and insistent repetitions of his own fever-vision, I would say that SNAP has been told by the torties that since it won’t likely be bringing in many more paying customers for the torties, then the deal’s off. And SNAP has to go find fresh fields of endeavor.
And since I don’t recall either JR or “Dennis” saying that they had pooled their variously-gotten resources to set up any such “victims’ group that’s working for victims” then I don’t see exactly how these two paragons are doing much for the victim-y cause. But no doubt the vision of their morally grand vision must indeed sustain them. And how nice for them.
And let us then leave them to it now, JR having put the final nail into the matter by going-out on that ironic exit-line: “It’s that simple, kids” [grammatical correction supplied].
Lastly, on the 13th at 421AM, ‘Kay Ebeling’ throws one in from the far outfield: “And where does SNAP fit into that PR machinery?” [grammatical correction supplied]. That had been discussed in prior comments on this site, along with the material from D’Antonio’s book (but all this took place, perhaps, during that eclipsical hiatus when ‘Kay’ didn’t know the TMR site was still carrying-on; or she just doesn’t read things and so comes to the discussion several sandwiches short of the full picnic basket).
Short-answer: The torties, prohibited by law and professional regulation from going out and drumming-up and ‘grooming’ their own clients, needed a front organization that would appear to be a grass-roots victim-advocacy organization but that would work with the torties by serving as an entry-point for collecting potential litigant-clients and aiming them toward the law offices, once SNAP had suitably fortified these prospective allegants with whatever misch of psychological, theological, legal and spiritual or religious bits had been concocted into the heady come-on-down brew. Having served the prospects such a Kool-Aid, SNAP could expect to be remunerated by the torties with a cut of the subsequent attorney fees, masquerading as ‘donations’ made out of the heart-warmed concern of the torties for any victims of Catholic clerical abuse anywhere and so on and so forth. Well, actually, only in localities within the sovereign justicial reach of the United States and its various civil court systems. Thus SNAP has not ever really been in the victim-recovery business (it expends peanuts on therapeutic treatment for anyone), but instead SNAP’s ruling staff has been dining-out on the monies provided by the various torties. SNAP had been a cipher until, one fine day a quarter-century or so ago, Jeff Anderson bumped into Barbara Blaine and they had a long long talk and suddenly her little group became the SNAP that we know today.
And while we have Ms. Ebeling on the line: her effort to link us to the Economus material (which is inaccessible on the Vatican-and-Satan website where it is claimed to be archived) didn’t seem to work. Is there some simple and direct URL she could provide that leads directly to the material itself?
Considering Publion's logical analyses of the SNAP-Torties link (which is pretty much confirmed), it really is shameful that there appears to be no real victims advocacy group, one that isn't driven by revenge, bigotry or greed, that real victims can rely on for moral support, if nothing else.
And here, TMR is constantly buzzed by so-called activist and advocate busy-bees that instead of resolving their hatred of everything Catholic Church, putting their biases aside for the benefit of others, they make the conditions even worse for actual victims that should really receive some justice (which can range from at least formal acknowledgement of their victimization, to apology, to any of the social support services required, to prosecution of the perpetrator, to compensation for damages).
The inordinate focus of the bigots on the money and the theology, the philosophy and the distortion of Church history (yada, yada, yada…) serves only to undermine any progress or recognition of justice for real victims. If you act as a hate-filled, greedy and vengeful bigot, that behavior won't be lost on any observers – it is how you will be received, and treated.
It is the fault of all the cottage-industry frauds- from SNAP, to B-A Org, to CoA, to every slimey tort attorney involved, to the hordes of Danny Gallagher 'victims', to the Seth Williams' and Sarmina's, to every other exploitive segment of the population that is simply looking for either a free ride on Church payouts or still carrying their hate-torch for the Church, but, it really untimately rests on the stooped and sloped shoulders of a lazy, complacent and complicit media – who know better, that any remaining real vicitms that are not receiving justice.
One only need revisit Suggestion 5 (add paid out $3B to date) of the subject TMR article to see all that the Church has done to rectify wrongs. It is inane (and insane) to keep repeating untruthful mantras that deny facts, but, it is also extremely detrimental to those true victims still awaiting their justice.
Greed/avarice, licentiouness- they never lead to anything good. Too bad it's the innocents, including wrongly accused priests, that will suffer the most from the sins of these destructive posers.
Oh no, Publion, not another victim-claimant unable to provide any evidence of their outrageous claims, really?
The Vatican and Satan 'site' kinda says it all, doesn't it?
Nope, no bigotry there.
Only a fool could think that by pooling my and Dennis's resources we could create a victims' group that we liked.
Contrary to the myth the church puts forward about the founding of it's victims group SNAP, 2 people can not create a victims group. Particullarly when we know so few victims.
It may take 2 to tango but introducing victims to each other requires more than that. it requires knowing who the victims are. SNAP see's to it that we don't know each other.
Where are the hoards of fake victims you claim? Does anbody but Delphin see this invisable "anti catholic" army.
$3 billion that's less than $3.00 per catholic. Oh we are so destroying your church at $3 bucks a head! LOL!
I must refer to P's statement about the "Vatican and Satan"web site. I have noticed that satanism and ritual abuse have been set up as a "logical" counter point to SNAP for victims. Victims either go along with the lie that SNAP cares about victims or if they/we don't like SNAP they / we can hit the wall that links satanism to the vatican. Cloud cukoo land (I personally believe in satan just as much as I believe in god. Not at all. They are both, flip sides of the same coin.).
So it's either SNAP's way or the highway to Hell. Those are the two poles set for victims in this polemic. That's all that's presented for victims to see. Nothing else. Nothing normal like the Birmingham boys (the victims of fr. Birmingham) created.You know individuals coming together to see what they can do together.
No just SNAP or SATAN. And you wonder how we know how the church has rigged this?
Lol!
You know what real "perversion" is? Blaming underage victims for our being raped and then attacking them for a) mentioning it. and b) for demanding compensation for our injuries. That's "perversion".
Lets set the record straight. If I was homosexual I would be proud to have Mr. Robertson as a significant other or whatever the politically correct term is being used today.
If Jim wants me to be his "valentine" so be it. I don't think that would ever happen though since Jim maybe sharing his life with someone he cares about, if he is not, this MAN has daughters and grandchildren I am sure everyday they are his Valentine.
Now Jim under no circumstance needs me to defend him, but the individual who made the cheap shot has done so because Jim lives his life in a way that makes him happy. The shot only shows again how the catholic church teaches hatred.
In conclusion here is the big eye opener. We have read time after time the reason for the clergy sexual abuse. It was homosexual priests. Why then has your own church protected at every turn these homosexual priests ? Can it be your pope, cardinals, archbishops and bishops all be homosexuals ? Would someones proper title be more like Archbishop Nancy Chaput or Pope Nancy.
Take this comment the way you wish, but the Archie Bunker mentality died decades ago.
Except in the catholic church. Archie Bunker is alive and well.
Oh Dear Lord in Heaven.
Jim, I just had a very bad thought. Can you imagine if the catholic church, the Publion's and the Delphin's and the Julie's have anything to do with the NFL. There goes another institution down the tubes.
Thanks for the kindness, Dennis. You've sussed it. I have one daughter, 2 grandkids and no relationship. All of humanity's my Valentine.
Delphin, "resolving our hatred of everything Catholic Church" to you, simply means what? Where, oh where, do we "busy bees" say or show; we hate "everything Catholic Church"?
I don't agree with most of it but how does that equate to hating it? That's the problem with the religious: you either agree with them completely or you're completely wrong. No half measures.No medium; all extreme.
How does my being "wrong" by not believing in your faith equate to "hating" your faith?
It doesn't.
You have made up me, "hating" your religion. You invented my "hatred". I don't hate catholicism. I'm related to two saints. on both sides of my protestant and catholic famlies. (St Columba or Columkill on my father's side. And the saint who brought the Vulgate bible to Ireland. (forgot his name).
You constantly must say your religion is "hated" by me; in order for you to cast yourselves as "the Victim". If your religion is not hated by me then you can not be the "Victim". You just get to be the "Oppressor" you really are.
When, really, it's your NOT being true to the tenents of your religion that's the problem for me. If you "Loved your neighbor as yourself" If you loved your own catholic children as you love yourself you'd never be hearing from me. but you don't. (Contrary to the Narcissisum you constantly show here. I don't think you love yourself very much at all) That's why I'm here. Like John the baptist crying out in the wilderness, reminding you of what you've allowed to happen to us; and how you refuse to heal it.
KenW above thinks, money magically cures victims; and that I'm an example of how that doesn't work. So according to KenW's logic. Going by me, no victims should get any money?.
Money is compensation for damage done. It's not for healing that damage. It's for the fact that damage was created in the first place. And is KenW a psychiatrist? His prejudices ever enflamed by the loving Delphin and the "down to earth" P, Makes him capable of judging my "damages"? I don't think so.
"Gee their old La Salle ran great. Those were the days" Lol!
The Ebeling comment of the 13th at 342AM is revelatory, but with that weird undertow of Abusenik thinking.She ho-hyums that everything TMR has put up in this article is “old news” – really? You wouldn’t know it by reading Abusenik commentary or media commentary on its own ‘reporting’. Has she the URL to any work along these lines that she had ‘reported’ on prior to this?
But then the next bit: she urges “David” to “dig deeper”, where – she appears to know – he will “find what’s wrong with how the pedophile priest issues was covered” and – more specifically – “who has been running the PR machine”.
First of all, “David” has just put up a heck of a lot more material at one time and in a clear and relevant format than Ms. Ebeling has ever put up here.
Second of all, if this self-declared media-type or reporter or media presence or whatever actually has the knowledge she infers to “David”, then why did she not put it up here – even in this comment of hers? Instead, in that queasily ominous and vague but insubstantial Abusenik way, she implies and infers but actually offers no thoughts, no information, no evidence. And yet she tells “David” here that he has essentially accomplished nothing, because he hasn’t investigated the real area of interest, and yet she offers us absolutely nothing about any knowledge she clearly infers she has that might be found in the direction in which she is so theatrically pointing.
This Abusenik game is part shell-game and part-Wig game, but – as with any used-car salestypes – nothing happens if you step inside and turn the key in the ignition. You were, of course, simply supposed to listen to the stories about the car and then head right to the office to sign a check. Who ever thought you would be so ‘un-empathic’ or ‘sociopathic’ as to get inside and try to turn the motor on? … That sort of thing.
Then on the 13th at 1254PM JR offers his opinion (since it is unsupported by any thinking or evidence, ‘opinion’ it remains) as to what “perversion” is. Since he has opened up the floor, I will offer my definition: persons who distort or fabricate actuality and present it as truth and then swear oaths under pains and penalties of perjury to obtain monies for that fabrication or distortion. Not that I have ever said that there is “perversion” on this site, but since JR opened the floor …
But then we get a comment from “Dennis” (the 13th at 345PM) that even in its format at first glance seems rather ‘serious’ and able to sustain a restrained tone (no screamy formatting or exclamation points). This might prove interesting.
He is going to “set the record straight” – and here we go again. And who cares whether either of them is or isn’t “homosexual”. If I haven’t made myself clear here I will: homosexuality is not any issue of interest to me in the commenting on this site; what is interesting is the disconnect between persons claiming maturity and the adolescent and queasy gender-bending jokes and stylistic tics that are indications not of a sexual orientation but of a) an unripeness in maturity and b) a certain undertow in the character; and it is such elements as these that there is relevance for what I am concerned with – because if these self-proclaimed ‘victims’ are maturity-and-character-challenged, then the entire Prime Presumption of the Stampede (i.e. that ‘victims’ are ever mature and reliable and their story can be trusted without further concern or examination) is undermined and things have to start not on first-base, but with the batter facing a pitcher back at home plate.
Then the usual bits around the matter of how JR is going to be titled today: ‘Jim’, ‘James’, ‘Jamie’, ‘James C. Robertson’, ‘Mr. James C. Robertson’, ‘Jimmy’ … whatever.
Then there’s this scream-y formatted “MAN” and clearly I was too optimistic about the performance “Dennis” was going to turn in here. (Doth he protest too much, d’ye think?)
Then I am referred to as “the individual who made the cheap shot” (which indicates just how reliable any declaration of “Dennis” actually is – he does read my material).
In what way “the catholic church teaches hatred” is an assertion left undefined and unsupported just the same way “rape” is an assertion left undefined and unsupported. But it’s vivid and might coddle a needy mind here and there.
But now but now but now … “In conclusion, here is the big eye opener”. And be assured my eyes indeed are open – I make it a point to do so when reading.
The “eye opener” is that “we read time after time the reason for clergy sexual abuse …. It was homosexual priests”. I could certainly see asserting that validly as a partial description of the causes for the Catholic Abuse Matter (to the extent that it has something to do with the priests themselves and not with the Anderson Strategies creating a Stampede), but the second Jay Report went into a much larger menu of possible causes. So if “Dennis” is under the impression that by reading what he has wanted to read he has somehow read everything that is out there to be read … then he is deeply misinformed (and under-informed).
But his ‘conclusion’ – from which term it is not to be presumed that I consider it logical – is actually a suspicion tossed out onto the waves (which is his favorite gambit when tossing his plop): are all the clergy and hierarchy homosexuals? And then a childish wrap with the “Pope Nancy” bit.
Then, as an after-bit, he tosses in the “Archie Bunker mentality” – although a) just what that mentality might be and ii) how it applies here is – as it always is with “Dennis” – left unexplained.
Still, I thought, it’s a comment above the level of his usual since at least we don’t get that queasy, teeny, catty, chatty stuff with which “Dennis” usually wraps up his comments in order to give himself what apparently to him is a zingy exit-line.
But then but then but then.
On the 13th at 441PM he seems to have to come back like a dog to its spew in order to make the “Archie Bunker” point again, although he hasn’t done anything, to explain it here either. He’s not a thinker; just a plop-tosser, but apparently some bits of plop are so fulfilling to toss that he has to do it a couple of times.
But then but then but then.
On the 13th at 703PM, he gives us a lead-in one might have expected from siome frontier-housewife on the prairie looking at the muffins just out of the oven: “Oh, Dear Lord in Heaven”. (And do you notice that for this show “Dear Lord” and “Heaven” are respectfully capitalized?)
And then – waitttttttttt forrrrrrrrrrrrr ittttttttttttttttt – we are after all treated to one of those catty chatty just entre-nous bits that would better be put in a private email except that it is intended to be a show for our benefit. And he comes up with – waittttt forrrrr itttttt – an “NFL” reference. Which is what manly-men do, don’t they?
Yah.
Princess P, let down your golden hair that a prince might climb into your ivory tower.
Dennis can call me Misty Blue Eyes (it's the cataracts [kidding!]) if he wants to. Who but you cares? Pathetic.
Dennis believes in god therefore he capitalizes god's many names. Do you pay attention to anything other than to imaginary sky denizens? Dennis has said he's a person of faith again and again and so have I.
Libel away P. Libel away.
I don't "respect" what isn't there.
Delphin, dares to say "greed and avarice never lead to anything good". Defining insanely the compensating of your raped victims with "greed and avarice" How do those two things equate anywhere in reality?
Yet at the same time Delphin consistantly attacks the left in support of right wing, ayn rand greed. Rand's the one who said "Selfishness was a virtue" and Rand was an atheist.
Make up your mind you can't have it both ways.
Clohessy gets to attack and lie about the Catholic Church via a lot of media venues that don't question him, hurting a lot of people and trying to destroy the church, while getting to present himself as a "victim." It's a sociopath's dream.
Clohessy is the catholic church. He's paid for and was created as an counterintelligence agent of the catholic church. His brother was a catholic priest victim and also, horrificly, a perpetrator.
Barbra Blaine's mother was one of the biggest conservative catholics in all of Chicago, she headed catholic group after catholic groupt here. Barbra's degrees came from catholic universities and so did Clohessy's degree.
The other, so called founder of SNAP, Mary Grant. Has no degrees from anywhere she never even went to high school. And you pretend that SNAP's not the catholic church. THEY NEVER DEMAND REPARATIONS FOR VICTIMS. Get it? They are the church.
On the 14th at 1043AM we are treated to more personal information from JR and readers can credit it as they will. Although the bit about “all of humanity’s my Valentine” is just so precious that it deserves special mention.
In regard to the rest of the comment – responding by name to various commenters – I will refrain from putting up any thoughts of mine.
But in regard to the concluding paragraph’s statement that “Money is compensation for damage done”, I heartily agree. However that presumes – how can it not? – that there is demonstrable evidence that a) damage has been done b) clearly and demonstrably by the act claimed in the allegation (and not, thus – to repeat yet again – damage that pre-existed the alleged act). And we are right back to square-one. As usual.
Also, JR asks if ‘Ken W’ is “a psychiatrist”, and yet has himself been tossing around the clinical descriptor “sociopath” as if it were confetti.
Then at 1117AM JR doth declaim and insist that “only a fool could think that by pooling my and Dennis’s resources we could create a victims’ group that we liked”.
That “that we liked” is a new bit. I suppose that with that proviso, one could go on until the Last Trumpet claiming that one has not encountered a victims’ group that one “liked”. Neat.
Also that “2 people can not create a victims group”. I don’t know about that: Blaine was sitting on top of SNAP and going nowhere and then she and Jeff Anderson had that talk and … the rest is history.
But then JR says “Particulallarly when we know so few victims” [sic]. And that’s interesting. JR has been going on quite a while about victims, and has even admitted on this site that he doesn’t know what they want, and yet now says he doth “know so few victims”. But then how does he “know” they are all so marvelously credible? How then does he “know” that so many allegations are brave, courageous and true? And “knows” it so utterly surely that he can insist that people who question that possibility are so very wide of the mark in this matter?
And it’s been quite a few years since JR took this project (or – at least – complaining about the lack of it) for his own and in all that time JR has accomplished nothing? Surely he has a hefty starting-point in the 500-plus other allegants in his own lawsuit. Couldn’t he start his project there? Or simply put up a website of his own and advertise for prospective members? This is the era of the Web, after all.
And he comes up with an excuse for none of that happening: it’s all SNAP’s fault. (One recalls that marvelous excuse of Mussolini’s in 1943 when the Fascist Grand Council had canned him: “I tedeschi sono responsabile per tutto” – the Germans are responsible for the whole thing. SNAP has somehow prevented him from knowing who any of the other victims are. (Did he not claim to have worked closely with SNAP for a while? He didn’t meet anybody?) Have no ‘victims’ sought to contact him since then? It’s altogether odd.
But then he moves right along to change the subject: “where are the hordes of fake victims you claim?”. Well, where are the hordes of real victims he claims? And the burden of proof is somewhat on the proponent of the theory here, especially since we have discussed at great length the many elements that cumulatively suggest the strong possibility that there are more than a few. Surely he cannot claim that there are almost no false-claims among the 12,000 or so – since he has already admitted he doesn’t know many victims at all in the first place.
Does anybody here but JR see this invisible genuine-victim horde? And can they demonstrate its genuine-ness?
Then an inventive but hardly relevant bit about three billion (hadn’t “Dennis” wound up with numbers closer to six?) working out to be a mere three dollars a head for the world’s Catholics. The problem at this point in this discussion is not about the amount so much as it is about the legitimacy of any monies being paid out at all on the basis of the undemonstrated allegations and stories and claims. But it sounds to me like an echo of something any tortie staffer would have reinforced: even if you have any doubts or qualms about signing-on to this lawsuit because of the odd-bits in your sworn story, don’t forget that it’s not like the Catholic Church can’t afford it.
And perhaps we see once again how much ‘about the money’ it was and always has been.
Then at 1147AM JR simply “must” address my statement about the “’Vatican and Satan’ website”. (Readers may recall that JR had mentioned this website as the archival repository of the Economus evidence to the effect that the Church had set up SNAP in some way; the site mentions the Vatican and Satan in its top banner on its homepage.)
But I have no idea what he means when he says that he has “noticed that Satanism and ritual abuse have been set up as a ‘logical’ counterpoint to SNAP for victims”. And his further comment to the effect that victims may either “go along with the lie that SNAP cares about victims” or else those victims (genuine or otherwise classifiable) “can hit the wall that links satanism to the Vatican”. What does that mean? That victims either go to SNAP or have to embrace Satanism (and the Vatican)? I can’t follow the thought process here at all, nor can I imagine how this sort of dynamic would operate. Other readers may see something here that I am missing.
But it gives him a chance to toss the classical reference from Aristophanes to “Cloud Cuckoo Land” [correction supplied]. And he riffs rather incomprehensibly on that.
He may possibly have some accurate point about the fact that “victims” have no alternative to SNAP, but even if so (and it’s not clearly established that he does), that does nothing to establish that the Church runs SNAP, rather than the torties who engaged the services of the SNAP leadership to groom and funnel prospective allegants. And it seems a stretch to imagine that in all these years and with all these putative victims (and is JR the only one who ‘knows’ that SNAP is a tool of the Church?) there has not been any movement whatsoever to form an alternative group to SNAP for themselves and for the putative myriads of still-undeclared victims that are still out there. (And I seem to recall some months ago that another group had indeed been set-up, discussed on this site if I recall correctly.)
And clearly at least one group – limited to those making allegations against a specific priest – has indeed come together or did for a while. Did that not give anybody else among the horde similar ideas and motivation?
And in response to his final question in this comment: Yes, I do “wonder how the church has rigged this”. Nor has JR given any explanation as to how the Church might have accomplished this. (Once again, as I have been saying about standard Abusenik Playbook praxis, we get an innuendo with nothing to support it at all.)
At 1152AM this manly-man refers to me yet again as “Princess” – and let it stay right up there where it was put. The Rapunzel reference however does nothing for the train of thought here except to distract by epithet. As so often.
And as I said: it’s not what “Dennis” chooses to call JR; it’s the fact that there is a disconnect between a) the self-presentation of two commenters and b) the self-revelation of two commenters. And if there is a disconnect in this rather techy area, then are we to presume without question that other assertions and claims suffer from no such other disconnects and must be fully credited as accurate and true? But JR is almost correct: in terms of their personal lives or relationship, it’s their own business and I don’t care.
I do agree I wasn't clear about the choices victims have regarding SNAP or Satanism.
What I should have said is: The only alternatives, aside from doing nothing, is either agreeing with SNAP's stupid behavior or talking about "ritual abuse" that reeks of brimstone. Either polemic is absurd.
Normal dissenters come together because they hold thoughts in common and democratically proceed together. SNAP's NEVER done that. Why?
Other blogs and self called "survivor" supporters (smartnews.com) emphazise conference afer conference around the nation about what? Ritual abuse that's what.
If victims who have been raped without playing dress up can't meet each other thanks to SNAP. and that's the majority of your victims. What miniscule percentille of victims were ritually raped? Yet they are having conference after conference all over America? While victims who weren't ritually raped only have SNAP where they meet hardly any victims only "supporters".
And does it really matter what or to who mumbo jumbo was muttered? Or is it that the rape should be the only point of major concern. Mumbling incantations wether to god or the devil means nothing; because neither is a crime. Rape however is a crime.
In all I've met no more than 25 to 35 victims. that's in all the work I've done here in L.A. with SNAP and at two SNAP conferences. Not all victims are activist in nature.
Funny though regarding the victims group that was self started, called the Birmingham Boys. They never used SNAP, and they got much farther connecting with other Birmingham victim's and getting publicity so more victims might come forword than anything SNAP's ever done.And they did it collectively.
SNAP's standing as a victims group was created through Phil Donahue; and Oprah Winfrey, both then in Chicago, as was SNAP. Victims called SNAP, SNAP was all they saw and were never connected up. Unless you could sue. Then still very few met up. SNAP could have created a public demonstrating group of victims who didn't mind going public yet still have connected the others who didn't want to be seen publicly. They did not.
SNAP's just having a celebratory conference, 25th anniversary, where again not one victim other than Blaine and Clohessy is on the speakers list. Come on now! Even you should be able to smell the smelt in that.
I still know so little about the web and computers. If there was a way to reach victims, i'd love to know how. The overall number of victims I met regularly here in L.A. was 15. Of those most were not activist in any real sense. Kay was and she believes in devils and angels. She does however know what SNAP really is. On that she and I agree.
How 'unusual' that the one thing that unites the resident atheist and the resident 'non-denominational reformed Christian self-excommunicated Catholic' believer is their well-documented hatred for Catholicism.
What strange bedfellows (sexuality aside) does bigotry make!
Other than that, same old mumbo-jumbo. Just keep 'talking', boys – you are your own worst enemy when it comes to revealing your be-devilled intentions, dishonesty and incredible irrationality…just keep chewing your own tails off (got your 'Elizabethan collars' handy?).
Delphin,
I don't know if you comprehend what you read but I at no, zilch, zero time have I ever disrespected the faith of Catholicism. Have I spoke negative about the catholic church. Now that is something you can take to the bank.
I left the church not only because the abuse I suffered at the hands of someone who I was suppose to be able to trust. I left because I also did not believe in its teachings., and like some catholics who will sit in a pew once a week and then go out and do everything the faith teaches you are not to do is being a hypocrit.
I do belong to a non-denominational church like so many other ex-catholics belong to, but rest assured we do not sit around and speak hatred of Catholicism. There is a sense of belonging your church could never offer. That is not the fault of Catholicism that is the fault of the catholic church.
There are alot of things my faith now (Christianity) offers as did Catholicism. I receive communion, I was baptized again, like my daughter will be when she turns twelve.
So, if it helps you get threw the day by calling me and others Catholicism haters, bigots or whatever else floats your boat, go for it.
Now here is a shocking tid-bit you may not know. There is an individual who has a blog similar to TMR you may know. During the Engelhardt and Shero trial he was a major voice. Can you guess what he did ? Left the catholic church for a non-denominational one.
One of the biggest defenders for your abusive priests. Will you call him a Catholicism hater ?
Who is this individual? Now you say he was a major voice and a defender of abusive priests? We know it is a blog that the individual has online, could it not be that person's personal opinion they are sharing and not your opinion that this individual is the "biggest defender for abusive priests?" Just because you write a comment does not mean that it enables you to pass judgement on others. hasn't your new church taught you anything?
Perhaps, Catholics should be compensated for the oppression they are suffering at the hands of leftists and other antiCatholic bigots?
We're all 'victims' of something or someone, aren't we?
We can all jump on the damages bandwagon – weeeee!
Lol You'd have to jump off the cukoo for coco puffs band wagon first.
What documentation of our "hate"??? Whip it out sweetie. Put up or shut up.
I personally don't believe in god, everyone here knows that. How that equates to my hating catholicism is absurd. i think it's all a bit silly but hate it? I don't even think about it anymore.
Dennis has never said word one about your faith. He like i, wonder how you can consider yourself a follower of christ with the behavior you display here; but that doesn't equal hatred of the catholic faith. Pretending it does makes you a liar. Again.
I don't capitalize, jesus or christ or god or catholic because I don't. i refuse to give any religion special defference.
Delphin, You are right. We are subject to a lot of mental distress from anti-Catholic bigots, including the two main "victims" posting on here. I question their motives entirely. I myself have been a victim, and I was a major victim, but would never dream of getting on the internet and harrassing anyone involved, either directly or indirectly by way of association. Never.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUtbzbOolnA
If you watch this link it clearly shows the thoughts of the catholic church are not clearly enjoyed by everyone when it comes to a particular subject that is mentioned here often.
Thank you for the link hetero Valentine boy, this ought to curl their hair. Lol! Oh my god, gays are normal!
Julie- you've remained a normal, heathy person (not a hate-consumed bigot), in spite of your victim experience- which is why you find the behavior of these victim-wannabe's here so offensive, and why they seem to reserve some of their worst venom for you.
You apparently didn't sign up for the 'professional victim' talking points and membership card that the other card-carrying members here renew annually-
Julie,
Please define I was a Major victim I guess compared to I was a minor victim.
I'm sorry but I believe all were MAJOR.
Major = forceful and/or violent (involuntary) rape of minor by adult; and procurement of, viewing of, or participation in such media.
Minor = statutory violation (ex. voluntary sexual relations between willing participants involving adult and post-pubescent adolescent); intentional sexual touching of minor by adult; intentional viewing or discussion of adult only pornographic sexual content with minor.
Everything else = BS
The vast majority of the Church abuse cases = Minor and BS.
I haven't seen any Catholic Church statement disparaging homosexual football players, please provide a link or reference.
I haven't seen any statement on/by TMR disparaging homosexual football players, please provide a link or reference.
For actions against Christians (many Catholic and Orthodox), please see any reliable media outlet (generally, anything that isn't CBS, NBC, ABC, NYT, WaPo and any other ideological leftist rag) for the persecution, including mass murder (holocaust), of Christians worldwide (Ref. provided upon request).
You won't see a link directed at homosexual football players. Because your church does not agree with the way of life with any homosexuals. NO discriminating there.
Check out Bill Donahue though, you know the guy who represents Catholics. You can have a field day there.
Niether have I. Nor have I seen any victims disparaging the catholic faith, including SNAP.
What was bound to happen? People would be kind? Yes I agree MLK said history ever bends towards justice. Or there abouts.
http://www.eyeofthetiber.com/2012/10/21/new-poll-shows-50-of-catholics-disagree-with-jesus-stance-on-gay-marriage-2/
It was bound to happen-
Delphin,
I find all your links to be questionable.
I think if your information came from an independent source that could back it up it would hold more weight.
The irony of victim-claimants and antiCatholic bigots finding anything questionable is beyond laughable. Are we allowed to question now? All of us, or just them?
I have an idea- why not just believe everything you're told (your words of wisdom to us?), so long as it conforms to your ideological view, don't question anything – you'll be just fine.
I must note the added bonus of the wise ones not discerning satire as being the most interesting revelation given their propensity to demand that all hearers believe – on face value, everything a claimed victim of abusive Catholic priests says. Yeah, sure.
Maybe you just didn't get the joke?
In regard to JR’s of the 15th at 1119AM, I would need to see some sort of a) evidence or at least b) coherent rationale that would credibly explain how Clohessy (or SNAP) could be a tool of the Church, given everything we do know about him and SNAP and the past several decades.
The religious affiliation of his relatives or Blaine’s relatives is hardly sufficient, and that affiliation is itself a tenuous connector at best. Ditto where they got their education: not everyone who graduates from a Catholic school at any level is automatically a lifelong and zealous Catholic.
Lastly – for this comment – there is a serious gap between i) the fact that SNAP does not demand reparations and ii) the conclusion that therefore SNAP and its main staff are tools of the Church. It can just as easily be true – and congruent with a far more comprehensive explanatory hypothesis – that the torties (and perhaps the allegants themselves) were never interested in anything but the payout check and therefore SNAP – reflecting the interests and objectives and purposes of one or both of those groups – has not demanded anything else, once the checks were cashed (and SNAP got a ‘donation’ or ‘contribution’).
However it is even more complicated to try to claim credibly that SNAP doesn’t “demand reparations for victims” in light of the fact that all of the formal allegants were given their check. Once again, JR has painted himself into a conceptual corner here: the “victims” he winds-up with in his version here turn out to be not the formal allegants (who indeed were given their check) but that utterly unproven, hypothesized (not to say ‘imagined’) myriad of still-undeclared ‘victims’ who remain ‘somewhere out there’.
And this phantasmagoric group is made to do double-duty in JR’s fundamentally iffy scenario or schematic: they are supposed to serve to a) (somehow) demonstrate that SNAP is a tool of the Church and b) create the always-necessary ‘victims’ that are so essential to Keep The Ball Rolling (i.e. we can’t stop now because there are (fill in the blank) more out there somewhere). And yet there is no evidence whatsoever that they even exist in any large numbers.
What JR needs to ‘get’ is how to logically develop a thesis or – in detective/lawyer-speak – a theory of the case. Simply going around and repeating the name of the individual (or in this case, organization – i.e. the Church) that he has decided (for whatever reasons of his own) must be guilty is no way to build or prove a case.
At 1207PM on the 15th he works to further elucidate his comment about victim “choices” in regard to SNAP and Satanism. Fair enough.
He theorizes that victims (we’ll leave aside the matter of genuine or otherwise for purposes of this discussion) have no alternatives except to go i) along with SNAP’s “behavior” (I presume it is “stupid” because SNAP doesn’t’ demand reparations) or ii) frame everything in terms of “’ritual abuse’ that reeks of brimstone”. I don’t quite understand (ii): victims must either go along with SNAP’s programs (which is to hook them up with torties, is it not?) or else talk about “’ritual abuse that reeks of brimstone” – but why is (ii) an option or the only other option?
And do most of SNAP’s attendees not hook-up with torties? (That would actually be something interesting to know: how many or what percentage of SNAP’s victim-attendees signed-up with torties and how many or what percentage did not?)
And if there are any significant number that did not sign-up with a tortie, then what prevented (and still prevents?) them from seeking help elsewhere or starting-up another victim-group?
JR’s theory seeks to deal with this problem by stating that “normal dissenters come together because they hold thoughts in common and democratically proceed together”. Assuming that his theory of how groups coalesce is accurate and sufficient, then why have these non-sign-up persons – who must clearly realize that their therapeutic needs are not being met – not come up with an alternative group?
Or is JR proposing that the hypothesized myriad of un-reported victims somewhere out there have avoided SNAP but don’t have any other alternatives or can’t come up with any alternatives? Groups – I would say – coalesce not only around issues but around somebody who magnetizes them and draws them toward him/herself like a magnet draws in loose iron filings. Why then has nobody like that arisen?
And given the fact that the Web is here, then unless one wants to further claim that the Church controls the Web, there’s no reason why some such group and ‘magnet’ should not have appeared at some point in these past decades.
SNAP has “never done that” and “Why?” … I would suggest that it is because SNAP has not wanted to nurture a rival to itself and lose ‘market share’, so to speak.
But this is hardly evidence that SNAP is a tool of the Church. This is pure organizational-dynamics or ‘business’ praxis, and could just as easily be because i) SNAP doesn’t want to lose prospective allegants for torties who ‘contribute’ to SNAP or ii) SNAP knows that there wouldn’t be much of an interest out there among ‘victims’ for mere therapy or iii) SNAP knows that without the money sent-along by the torties, there would be no budget for SNAP to continue doing anything at all.
But none of the above here constitutes evidence – or even the possibility – that the Church, rather than the torties, is behind SNAP and funding it and pulling its strings.
And if JR is then saying – as it seems to me that he is – that the only other victim group (or groups) out there simply hold “conferences” on “ritual abuse”, then that raises the question as to why there has been no demand among ‘victims’ for therapeutic services based on these hypothetical victims’ being in-touch-with their own felt needs for therapy. And yet that does not seem to have ever happened.
And for that matter: if the rather tangential (and perhaps also vaguely-defined) subject of “ritual abuse” is the only thing that this or that (can it really be all of them?) victim group is the only subject such groups can come up with, and their ‘membership’ doesn’t call the group leadership to anything more substantive, then what does that say about the interests or concerns of the ‘victims’ themselves?
And if, in order to account for that oddness, it might then be proposed that all these putative victims don’t really know what they want (and thus need a ‘leader’ or a ‘magnet’ to draw them and also shape them) then what might that say about the victims themselves? In this scenario one would have to ask: Are they really that helpless and almost feckless in terms of their own putative interests – which interests were created by the theoretically ineradicable and vivid experience of their “rape”?
And – continuing in this scenario – of what use would the Church be in somehow becoming that ‘magnet’? We have discussed several times the substantial functional and practical problems with the Church somehow ‘leading’ victim groups. (And anyway, if the Church is allegedly running SNAP (and perhaps Bishop-Accountability too?) then clearly this isn’t the way to proceed.) For that matter, one can rightly wonder how many paid allegants have actually gone and gotten themselves ‘therapy’ in any form with the monies they have received, which therapy they would theoretically need in light of the life-wrecking experience of their allegated “rape”.
I have no idea what it means to be “raped without playing dress up”.
And – again – if after all this time the putative ‘victims’ have not gotten themselves together (presuming that they are alert enough to realize that SNAP is not – allegedly – responding to their desires and needs and interests and objectives ) then why would that be? The alternative explanations on offer seem to be that either a) they have been and remain helpless in all of this and need a ‘magnet’ leader who would almost have to be something more of a complete controller of victims in order to bring them to a motivated interest in their own needs or else b) they really weren’t interested in such victim groups at all (and perhaps were satisfied with the SNAP game-plan of being helped-along to a willing tortie). I can’t see where (b) is less credible an alternative than (a).
I don’t follow the “mumbo jumbo” and “incantations” bits. And while “rape is a crime”, we – as always – have to i) be clear on the definition of “rape” and ii) establish who was and wasn’t, is and isn’t, a genuine victim of that crime.
Then at 105PM on the 15th JR reports that he has only “met no more than 25 to 35 victims”. Which means that all of this theorizing and assertion is based on a rather small sample base indeed (compared to the putative myriads of victims who are ‘somewhere out there’).
And while it is surely true that “not all victims are activist in nature”, I don’t find it credible that almost none of them have found the motivation or ability to start up an alternative victim-group. And – for that matter – it would appear that under these rubrics JR is not really an “activist” either, at least not successfully, and remains merely a commenter – however frequent.
And if – as JR asserts here – the Birmingham group was somewhat successful, then how is it that such success did not somehow prompt further developments along these lines among the myriad non-Birmingham victims?
Although it would then appear – from what this “Funny though” paragraph asserts – that the Birmingham group “got much farther connecting with other Birmingham victim’s [sic] and getting publicity so more victims might come forword [sic] than anything SNAP’s ever done”. I would really need to see some evidence to support that; SNAP has played a significant role in the Stampede and I can’t recall running across many – if any – media and publicity references to the Birmingham group in anything resembling a recent time-frame; yet SNAP is still considered – with Bishop-Accountability – the media go-to group for sound-bites when they are required.
And if very few ‘victims’ “met up” “unless you could sue” then does that perhaps indicate the actual operational objectives of the ‘victims’? Thus again: it seems highly possible (perhaps even probable) that ‘victims’ were not interested in much beyond ‘suing’ (for a settlement) and sought nothing further in terms of getting-together or getting therapy or anything else (and perhaps even felt that they didn’t need therapy and thus only needed and sought the settlement monies).
And it is equally possible that ‘victims’ who “didn’t want to be seen publicly” (before and/or after they successfully sued for settlement monies) didn’t take an interest in any such publicity-shunning victims (or perhaps figured that there are not really many more ‘somewhere out there’).
And also – of course – we are now left with a putative myriad of non-suing and publicity-shunning ‘victims somewhere out there’ whose existence is thus merely theoretical or imagined. And thus such a myriad remains a rather “spectral” entity, and possibly even phantasmagoric or fantastical.
And it would also seem that if not even Donahue or Oprah managed to catalyze such a group, then once again we have to wonder if such a myriad group existed or exists to be catalyzed in the first place.
And again: if SNAP is now running some sort of highly-selective and managed conference, then that may say a great deal about SNAP’s primary objectives, but it says nothing to support the idea that SNAP is a tool of the Church rather than of the torties.
Nor, lastly, is the bit about being unfamiliar with “the web and computers” really sufficient here. JR could easily hire the services of a web-savvy techie to do the technical work necessary to set up a website (and many ISP’s now offer an easy, step-by-step website set-up walk-through, so setting up a site is neither technically demanding nor expensive). And in saying this I am not revealing heretofore secret or arcane information about the possibilities available on the Web.
Thus – regardless of what ‘Kay’ may believe about “devils and angels” – we are in the end left with nothing more than the mere assertion that JR and ‘Kay’ “know what SNAP really is”. But whatever may be the truth of that statement, it is certainly not true that either of them have established in any sort of credible way that the Church is master-minding the whole victim-group dynamic (or lack of it) on the Web or in any other way.
Who needs an alternative to SNAP when everyone including you and the media believe SNAP is what it says it is?
Please remember Kay and I and others who loathe SNAP, started off as true believers. It took us years to get the truth. And we fought against our feelings for years, YEARS; believing SNAP to be truthful.
Do I expect you to "get it' overnight? No. Do I expect you to get it at all? Eventually.
"Raped without playing dress up" means my defining ritual rape as "dress up." Mumbo jumbo means prayers to either god or the devil or both. In other words incantations to either imaginary diety isn't the crime. rape is the crime.
Why, if you were SNAP's leadership, wouldn't you want more and more victims coming together, Why wouldn't you want more participation from the injured than less? Just to protect a "career" that might not exist if more people joined actively and voted on your leadership abilities? That's a "movement" in your mind? That's a business in mine. Leadership and policy choices chosen by who? The very same unelected leaders? Nice. SNAP and VOTF are useless for victims. What have they done for us? Compared to what they do to us.
They are however very useful for the church. It looks like people care about victims when they don't.
You are kidding right? Barbra Blaine and David Clohessy couldn't attract a refigerator magnet.
They are all that's been put forth in the media as valid for victims. Why would victims look for anything else if "trusted" media says they are the real deal?
(Both the left Phil Donahue and the right Bill Donahue say SNAP is what it says it is. They cross authenticate SNAP)
Victims wouldn't question such very crossed authentication (from both left and right). Thereby SNAP's major church directed misson was accomplished. Victims call SNAP; and a victims movement dispersed by SNAP is a Fait accomple'. No votes no questions no real movement just SNAP. Doing it's "heroic' job of repping us against our will in the media. So more victims will call SNAP only to vanish under the SNAP banner.
Victims are taken care of by SNAP in the public mind. Problem solved.
Delphin,
You won't post anything about my comment on 2/15 at 0940 because what you may have learned in that comment may have been shocking, it does not fit into your plans to call anyone who is not catholic a bigot or church hater. Why bite the hand that feeds you right ?
What I like best is the comment you made to Julie.on 2/15 at 9:19. First let me say at the time I wrote this comment Julie has failed to answer why she feels her abuse was major I will assume compared to me or Jim whose abuse in her eyes must have been minor. I would and have a concern that she is able to categorize sexual abuse of any kind.
Now I won't stand in the way how any victim wants to deal with or accept their abuse, I don't care if she wants to have her abuser over for dinner. But is it fair for someone else to tell me how I will deal with mine. Is it unfair for me not to ask the same question so many other people are still asking.
Look at the heading of this blog. What can mainstream media do to improve the reporting of the catholic church. It should read what can the catholic church do to improve the reporting of the catholic church. Why TMR posted this article confuses me, it only shows the negative feelings of the church are still there no matter what you, I or anyone else believes.
I will always accept the prayers from Julie, it can never do any harm, fact is those prayers can always make me a better husband, father and yes a fighter to see the catholic church answers to every abuse victim they created.
One thing that Julie should know is we will always be fighting for her, we will always be there for her and no membership card needed.
p.s. Julie, we already know you paid your dues for a lifetime.
Dennis, thank you; well said again.
Dennis, But you aren't fighting for me. You want to bully me for being Catholic and saying things that are way out of line and not true. That isn't helping anybody. The Catholic Church actually saved my life after what happened to me.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/kc-catholics-seek-disciplinary-action-against-bishop
These are the parishioners Delphin, Publion, Julie, KenW and everyone else should be proud of. They are saying ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Will we see them being called church haters or bigots ?
Thank you to the KC parishioners.
Julie,
No Julie, I would never bully you for being a Catholic and believing in the faith.
What I will do is make you as a parishioner accountable for the actions of your church. I have said it before and I will say it again your church is not made up of its clergy, but people like you who sit by and do nothing.
However, that is beginning to change. There are parishioners who are saying enough is enough. Please click on my link on 2/17 at 10:52. I have also been told in passing there are many archdioceses in this country with parishioners not asking but demanding that laity be involved with every decision that is made. No more secret documents, No more closed doors. The more I learn about this and the archdiocese who want to put this into place I will be sure to pass it on here.
You also state I have not told the truth. An accusation that I know is not true but if you would like to elaborate feel free.
Now if you feel the catholic church has helped you that is great. But you are one of the very single digit few they have, or is it you as a "major" victim did not rock the boat ?
This I am a Catholic and you hate me reminds me of those who play the race card.
Gimme a break,
Who are you to tell any Catholics what to do within or concerning their Church? Are any Catholics telling you or any other religions' adherents who or how to worship or be faithful to their beliefs? What arrogance!
Liberals really do believe that they should run the whole world according to their 'super-intellects and virtues' – one just need to see the US educational standing in the world, in addition to her moral status, to know how well our leftist curriculum has benefitted our society for the last two generations.
Here's an idea- you mind such matters in your own church- you know, where absolute perfection reigns (not even one 'hypocrite' to be found there, I am sure), and we'll manage our own internal matters.
How many billions have your church, or any secularists, paid out for abuse claims against minors? How many of your clergy or 'high priestess' have been imprisoned or lost their 'vocations' or reputations? None? Really? You mean to tell us that this disgusting human stain is only expressed by priests in the Catholic Church? Logic defies the bigots claims at every turn.
By the way- the grass-roots efforts by those 'good' KC parishioners are headed up by none other than the 'good' Fr. James Connell of Catholicwhistleblowers. Nope, no ideology/politics there!
http://www.catholicwhistleblowers.org/
~~
Call for Vatican to discipline Bishop Finn sprung from Kansas Citian’s effort
February 17
By MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star
If you doubt the power of one person, listen to what happens when one soul is motivated by faith.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/16/4828951/call-for-vatican-to-discipline.html#storylink=cpy
~~ their churches unfairly tarnished by the sins of ___________ priests. For too long, that hurt was intensified rather than lightened by the underwhelming response of church leadership.
Delphin, Julie, Mr. Robertson,
Here is a test for at least two of you who wish to expand their minds. If you click on a link of mine on 2/17 at 10:52 and read the article I am sure you will be able to fill in the blank.
"Putative" as in pugnacious? You're being punished by your raped victims????? You're being fought by your raped victims?? Poor poor you.
Why would any sane person, who wanted to help victims, even think about holding a"market share" regarding alternative victims groups? That's not how "movements" work. Come one come all. All are equal in movements. No market leaders. If some groups are bigger than others, wealthier, they are more inclusive of equals not less.
Movements have a matrix. Where's SNAP's matrix? fr.Tom Doyle; fr. Bob Hoatson? Jason Berry, Active catholics all. One present priest, one former priest; Blain;Clohessy both active catholics??? All heavily conservative. All catholic college degrees. All active catholics all the time. Funny that none of the victims of clerical raped who post here are active catholics, anymore. But the entire, so called, "survivors movement" is all active catholic conservatives all the time.( Give me the odds on that happenning and add to them the odds of women's leadership occuring, naturally, in that conservative milieu, when 80% + of clerical victims were male? )
Where are the rest of the accutely catholic degreeed and priestly rebels? Where are the leftist catholic priests and believers? Just this one tiny group of "pro victim" catholic conservatives fighting for victims? And no body else? Only conservative catholics? I don't think so.
Most catholic conservatives are like you guys.
SNAP lept into public conciousness fully formed; fully funded and fully authenticated by Jason Berry and Tom Doyle and VOTF., and authenticated from the left by Oprah; Phil Donahue because they, SNAP posed like leffties; only they were not.
But somehow SNAP wound up being disliked and discredited by lefties like me and everyother activist who's ever come near them. Can you name any other "movement" where that's happened? I can't. Unless I think of COINTELPRO. (look it up, those who don't know).
Do you think black folks questioned SNICC or the NAACP's authenticity they way, we victims question SNAP's?
SNAP was negatively authenticated as left, and anti "true" catholic by the right Bill Donahue.
Cross hatched authentication by everyone but real, historicly activist victims. That equals a fraud in my book.
As an example of conservative catholics leading victims "institutions', Thnk of Terry Mc Kiernan, head of Bishop Accountability. The nicest guy you'd ever want to meet. Sensative; empathetic; smart and concerned but a, up front, supporter of the Tridentine, the old latin, mass. Not exactlly coming from the left, not exactly 2nd vatican council with that stance, is he?
What exactly are the odds of that occuring "naturally"?
P Kay and my knowing that SNAP is the church came from YEARS of daily interaction with SNAP in L.A.. YEARS. Not minutes; not hours; not days; not weeks; not months but years.
How much interaction with SNAP, any activist movements; or the victims cause, have you had? Yet you believe it's all that it says it is. It's only us victims you question as authenticate not our church created representatives, SNAP. Now that is interesting.
The Birmingham Boys were successful because they had Birmingham in common. An ad was placed by one victim in an area where Birmingham had been posted, asking If any one remembered fr. Birmingham. The Birmingham boys had Birmingham as their link. The rest of us don't have a common link other than our clerical abuse. Diffrent geogrphics, differend perps. Next to immpossible to link up. But SNAP had the media behind it from the get go. Not easy to make happen. Victims called SNAP and we were and are trapped. It's evil but very smart. If you think of evil as smart. I don't.
If there are so few of us real victims; then why are you complaining about compensating us?
A bit more about the “ritual abuse” topic which JR reports some (or all) of the victim groups still deploy as a conference topic.
The term is one readers may recall from the McMartin Pre-School Day Care Satanic Ritual Abuse trials of 30 or so years ago. The idea of “ritual abuse” is that some persons perpetrate some form of abuse as a requirement for fulfilling some ritual in which they believe. (In the McMartin and similar cases, the theory was that Satanists among the day-care staffs needed the children in their care as sacrificial-victims (though not necessarily the ultimate sacrifice involved in killing the sacrificial-victims) in some of their Satan-worship rituals.
The term is hardly accurately applied to the Church. There are no Roman Catholic rituals that require the sacrifice of human victims in order to appease or worship or inveigle-the-help of God. But – no surprises here – it certainly makes for a nifty sound-bite or headline: Catholic Church and clergy ritually abuse children.
If some victim-groups tied to the Catholic Abuse Matter are still pushing this theory, then they are far far along a path that leads nowhere (presuming truth and accuracy are important objectives).
I would also make a couple of points in regard to a comment made by “Dennis” (the 16th, 758PM) in a response to ‘Delphin’.
First, he raises the indeed tantalizing question of a) just how one categorizes ‘abuse’ along the definitional spectrum from ‘major’ to ‘minor’ and then b) just who is authorized (so to speak) to do so.
From the beginning, this problem created a conceptual and tactical problem for the Victimist, and consequently the Abusenik and Stampede, playbook: on the one hand, one does not want to i) admit that there is such a thing as a ‘minor’ instance of ‘abuse’ (however defined) because in order to keep the numbers up, one wants to cast the widest possible definitional net.
Yet on the other hand, one doesn’t want to have to state unambiguously and publicly that there are absolutely no distinctions to be made in terms of assigning a place on any ‘spectrum’, because that inevitably leads to x) the clear appearance of having an over-broad and over-vague definition of ‘abuse’ (and un-congenial questions might be raised as to the competence and integrity of one’s assertions about ‘abuse’) and y) the clear indication that even the least instance of ‘abuse’ can yet be eligible for characterization as having (definitely and inevitably?) caused the most profound and permanent and life-wrecking consequences.
And while (y) is exactly what the torties would want both public opinion and a jury to infer, yet they don’t want to risk saying it outright because when you do say it outright it clearly sounds like it is indeed an over-the-top assertion.
And – as always – the Stampede is best-lubricated not by the public and any possible jury considering this whole assertion carefully but rather by the public and any possible jury simply presuming and inferring quietly among themselves that the assertion is true and can be relied-upon without any deeper questioning. Thus the Game can begin with the player already on first, rather than any allegant or tortie having to go through the painful and uncertain experience of actually stepping up to the plate, swinging, and actually hitting the ball.
It is precisely for this reason that we have seen in the past decades the sustained effort to have any and all instances of sexual ‘abuse’ or ‘assault’ referred to under the blanket term “rape”; and in order to effect that – of course – the definition of “rape” has to be expanded like play-dough.
A variant of this is to conflate the legal term “statutory rape” with the legal term “rape”. The former term is governed not by the intensity of the alleged criminal act, but merely by the age of the person upon whom the perpetration was made – such that there are in State laws some instances of “statutory rape” that qualify as misdemeanors or lowest-level felonies. The latter term is governed (in theory, anyway) by the act itself, which traditionally encompasses and indeed requires forcible penile penetration of the victim.
The sustained effort of the past decades is to conflate the two such that the vivid and rightly alarming term “rape” can be applied to instances of sexual-encounter which do not rise to the level of forcible penile penetration; naturally, all of those lesser instances of sexual-encounter are the most numerous by far, and to encompass them under the catchy term of “rape” drives up the “rape” numbers astronomically – which is the objective of this effort.
And who is ‘authorized’ to make such a distinction? The sustained effort by Victimist and thus Abusenik interests is to claim that only the (self-declared and perhaps un-proven) ‘victim’ can be allowed to make this distinction of assigning ‘major’ or ‘minor’ status to a claimed instance of perpetration. The rationale put forward for this rather counter-intuitive insistence is that only ‘the victim’ really ‘knows’ how it felt; and beneath that is the utterly subjectivist presumption that any act can only be classified according to its (declared) effect on ‘the victim’ and therefore cannot and must not be classified according to any objective rationale.
And beneath all this is the Victimist legal theorizing to the effect that sex-crimes are not primarily a matter of their relationship to any (objective) public-order but rather that sex-crimes are primarily a matter of their painful effects-on and consequence-for ‘the victim’. All the rest is patriarchal, objectivist, old-school doodoo.
We see this daffy but ominous legal theorizing played out in (among other instances) the Philly DA’s appeal of the PA Superior Court’s reversal of the Lynn conviction: the DA is working on the (Victimist/Abusenik) presumption that since there is a ‘victim’ and that ‘victim’ reports great pain and life-wrecking consequences, then there must have been a crime (why else would a ‘victim’ make a claim, except to express the ‘pain’?) and absolutely no other legal considerations should be allowed to interfere with the DA and the State acting merely and solely and primarily as the avengers for the aforesaid ‘victim’.
I once noted in comments here a statement made publicly by the ex-ADA Victimist attorney Wendy Murphy to the effect that she would be very happy if SOLs were weakened because then (I am quoting from memory here, hence the single – rather than double – quotation marks) ‘the children will get justice even if there is no evidence’. Readers may wish to contemplate the profoundly lethal problems inherent in this burbly and cheerible assertion that you don’t need evidence of a crime to justify conviction for a crime.
So I am saying that the Victimist/Abusenik play here has been to try to undermine the credibility of any objective observer (including the public and jurors) to come to any independent assessment and judgment as to the severity (or even actuality and truth) of any particular alleged instance of sexual abuse/assault. And instead the play seeks to substitute the presumption that only ‘the victim’ can be the judge of ‘the victim’s’ story and claims. Which, of course, takes us almost directly and immediately back to the pre-Modern era of “spectral evidence” such as we saw in the witchcraft trials in Salem in 1692.
And further: not only must ‘the victim’ be accepted as the only reliable reporter here, but also that ‘the victim’ absolutely must be accepted as truthful and accurate in all respects. And ditto here in regard to 1692.
My second point in regard to this “Dennis” comment is in regard to the claim that what is required in all of this is not better (i.e. more accurate) reporting by the media, but instead that the key need here is for “what the catholic church can do to improve the reporting of the catholic church”.
This assertion – neatly – brings us right back to square-one: does the Catholic Church not now report more accurately and fully than any other organization on the planet (including, as I noted on the previous TMR article’s comment-thread about a very recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, the U.N. itself ).
And even in regard to past history, we have seen and examined on this site more than enough instances where what the Abuseniks claimed from this or that released-document was not actually borne-out by the documents themselves. Which, at the very least, opens up the possibility (perhaps the probability) that Abusenik claims of Church non-reporting need to be looked at carefully before being credited as accurate.
Thus we see that careful examination has the same effect on ‘activist assertions’ (if you will) that holy-water has on vampires. Because analysis and assessment and rational objective judgment always work to gum-up the works of a good rip-roaring Stampede.
And the Victimist/Abusenik solution to that un-congenial reality is to hide behind “the children” like bank-robbers behind a hostage, in order to force the public to go along with their claims and assertions regardless of any ‘un-empathic’ or ‘sociopathic’ or fusty old-school ‘fetishizing’ of law and due-process of law and even due-process of rational and careful thought and assessment.
And yet it is by all of this hugely dubious (and profoundly dangerous) legal theorizing that assorted ‘activists’ claim to be “fighting” (note the nicely heroic and self-serving and self-aggrandizing imagery).
And if any of this “confuses” “Dennis” then I would suggest that he needs to do further serious thinking about this topic.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/Report_NJ_Archbishop_adds_big_addition_to_already_big_house.html
With this particular blog I believe TMR truly thinks the catholic church is getting an unfair image portrayed within mainstream media. Then you read a story like the one above.
While reading the story I could not help take notice from were the story originated. It came from the Star Ledger, a media outlet this site and others feels is unfair to the church like so many others. Though this story may not be a major issue to those outside of the church, reading the comments at the end of the article clearly shows it is no minor issue.
If I was TMR I would be very upset with this article, not because of the facts that have been told, but because here I am trying to do everything possible to change the negative thinking of the church, and then an Archbishop goes and plans something like this.
I can only hope that Dave or anyone from TMR who has tried and tried their best to defend the catholic church will be able to cuddle up next to one of those fireplaces on a cold night, or jump into the swimming pool on a hot day.
Tell us, again, how you're not a raging antiCatholic bigot?
Would you dig thru reams of negative press to disparage any other segment of society, say blacks or Muslims?
What does this typical leftist hit-job (aka 'facts' to you and other bigots) have to do with the abuse of minors?
Just wondering….
Well, what we have from JR now is a shower of bits; in World War 2 this was called “chaff”, little bits of aluminum foil released into the air to confuse any coherent radar readings.
I will simply go down the list in chronological order of time-stamping (all on the 17th).
1136AM: “Putative” as in ‘supposed’ or ‘alleged’. The rest of this paragraph, based on his wrongly-defined “putative”, consequently fails.
We notice again that JR – who has recently gone after ‘Ken W’ for ‘psychologizing’ or such – so easily tosses around who is “sane” and who is not.
I certainly didn’t say that SNAP or the strategy behind SNAP was a good one (let alone a “sane” one) but I will say here that it was an effective one, since the Anderson-SNAP strategic axis has certainly had its desired effect. JR’s theory of ‘movements’ seems to me to reveal his basic approach to analysis: come up with a quickie explanation that will seem responsive to the immediate discussion and call it a day’s work. Thus this bit about “all are equal in movements” is not a description but rather (apparently) JR’s idea of how “movements” should work, rather than how they do work. “Movements” quickly self-organize into hierarchies in any human enterprise. The Soviets got going by promising differently, and yet the Russians wound up saddled with the Soviet government and the old USSR.
SNAP’s “matrix”, I would say, is external to the organization: it is Anderson’s guiding strategic vision, for which all the SNAP staff are merely the factotums and fronts. SNAP’s support is exo-skeletal, and not endo-skeletal.
And I cannot accept or comprehend the assertion that all of the SNAP honchos are “conservative” – in whatever way that is meant. But apparently JR is trying to keep up in the air the ‘ball’ that while the SNAP leadership is (putatively) conservative and still-practicing as Catholic, the Abuseniks who post here are not-practicing Catholics. He then extends this trope to “the entire, so-called ‘survivors movement’” – which certainly breaks new ground and might be of interest to members of that “movement”, however it is defined. (And are we soon going to be left with this: that nobody but the Abuseniks who post here is actually genuinely speaking for the allegants?)
And he then riffs on “the odds of that happening” (and we still don’t have a clear concept of that “that” in the first place), dragging feministical thoughts into the process and somehow winding-up with the point that 80 percent or more of “clerical victims were male”. (Which point seems to work toward a homosexual interpretation of the Abuse Matter, which – although it is hard to follow the bouncing ball – he was somehow ‘against’.)
Then, in the “where are the rest of” paragraph, JR seems to be trying to support that bit by tossing up questions based on the already fallacious presumption that SNAP is “conservative”.
Then the mere global assertion that “most catholic conservatives are like you guys”. In addition to the obvious problems with that unsupported assertion, am I to imagine that I am a “catholic conservative”?
SNAP “leaped into public consciousness” [correction supplied] – according to my theory of SNAP – because it was a front comprehensively backed by the Anderson Strategies and the torties. And in the media aspect of those Strategies, SNAP quickly made itself ‘media-friendly’ and thus garnered the position of being the go-to ‘other side of the story’ in the Abuse Matter, because Anderson saw that there was no organized victim-voice, and thus SNAP filled that vacuum for the media.
As to whether SNAP “posed like lefties” [correction supplied], it appears that JR in this comment is playing with the idea that SNAP is conservative (and thus ‘right-y’) while true victim-advocates are “lefties”. Readers can make of that what they will; but it does nothing to establish that the Church was/is the power and governing force behind SNAP.
Whether JR is actually an “activist” or merely a frequent-commenter would depend on his sustained and continuous record of actions. Whether SNAP became “disliked and discredited by lefties like me and every other activist who’s ever come near them” is an assertion that would have to be demonstrated by some sort of evidence (especially since it so conveniently fits into JR’s personal vision).
Can we “name any other ‘movement’ where that’s happened”? I would suggest the Soviet Communist Party after Stalin took over and the original revolutionaries opposed his centralizing and his oppression of the proletariat and the peasants (until he eradicated all of those original revolutionaries in the mid-1930s purge-trials). I might also suggest the Democratic Party in this country, especially since its most recent banner-bearer has run afoul of revolutionary hopes and dreams.
And in that regard, the “COINTELPRO” reference doesn’t seem to be relevant at all here, except to distract us with the dodgy implication that JR is genuinely rather knowledgeable about various bits of stuff (and the rest can “look it up”).
I don’t know if JR is aware of the substantive differences of opinion as to how the civil-rights movement was to proceed back in the 1950s-60s (differences of opinion that got Malcolm X killed, among other things). Also the Cartoonish broad-brush “black folks” (as if that term accurately denoted a coherent and consistent body of opinion and theory) is not at all useful for historical assessment (although it works nicely for making Cartoons, and Cartoon-thinking is what keeps Stampedes in business).
1143AM: I have no idea what “negatively authenticated” means. But so often the incomprehensible terms hide mushy and incomprehensible thinking.
And once again JR can be seen working toward the vision that aside from himself and perhaps those whom he designates as allies, just about every other victim-voice (and “activist” to boot) is somehow illegitimate and a “fraud”. That vision must sustain him.
1152AM: We now are informed that JR and ‘Kay’ spent “YEARS of daily interaction with SNAP in L.A., YEARS” [exaggerated formatting not omitted]. And yet in all of those “YEARS … YEARS” [ditto] JR only managed to get to know, he has recently told us on this thread, 25 or 30 victims (genuine or otherwise classifiable). What sort of ‘activism’ is this? Somebody running the coffee concession down in the lobby might well have amassed a better record.
Thus his immediately-following question as to “how much interaction with SNAP … have you had?” arrives on the flight-line with a flat-tire or three before it even tries to begin its take-off roll.
Now that is interesting.
1204PM: Apparently the “common link” of the utterly life-changing and ineradicable and inconsolable experience of “clerical abuse” is not enough to ever have generated the motivation toward banding-together. Now that is interesting. So it took, in JR’s telling of it, the experience of a common personal target –Birmingham – to get things rolling with the Birmingham group. If this is true, then JR’s entire project (or vision, anyway) of creating a unified national victims-group is faulty from the get-go because (to borrow a trope) ‘all abuse is local’. In fact, as JR himself here admits, it is “next to impossible” – now that is interesting.
It was the genius of the Anderson Strategies to seduce the media (who were more than ready to be seduced) into generalizing a ‘narrative’ of Pure Innocence Assaulted (or ‘Raped’) By Purely Evil Catholic Clerics. This gambit simultaneously a) gave SNAP national traction and b) generalized a presumption of the accuracy of the Anderson ‘narrative’ that then served to neutralize the tendency to assess or analyze and specific allegations or stories or claims.
So I would say that ‘evil’ can be very “smart” and shrewd and, according to its own objectives, successful.
1207PM: We are presented with the ludicrously illogical question “If there are so few of us real victims, then why are you complaining about compensating us?”. Short-answer: because so many ‘otherwise classifiable’ victims have gotten a check from the piñata and because – as I said before – there are very few cases we have seen where there is enough evidence to create the sense that the allegation is even minimally probable and there are numerous elements and factors pushing in the direction of many of the stories and allegations being ‘otherwise classifiable’. All of which points have been discussed at length in prior comments on this site.
1220PM: We are given JR’s (convenient and) unsupported claim that Mr. McKiernan of Bishop-Accountability is “the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet” and a “supporter of the Tridentine, the old Latin, Mass” [corrections supplied] and thus – in JR’s schematic assessment – “not exactly 2nd Vatican Council with that stance, is he?” [corrections supplied]. Whatever Mr. McKiernan’s religious stance is, and depending on what constitutes a ‘conservative Catholic’, what’s the point here? That Bishop-Accountability is also a tool of the Church? That Bishop-Accountability must also be added to JR’s expansive and ever-expanding list of non-legitimate and fraudulent victim-organizations? JR is welcome to take up this matter with Mr. McKiernan and the B-A staff; but it is of no relevance to the discussion here.
1233PM: We now reach a point where it has to be wondered whether JR comprehends what he reads at all. At what point have I ever said or implied that I believe that SNAP “is what it says it is”? I have said that it is a greatly-indentured front-organization for the torties (according to the requirements of the Anderson Strategies) and that it is therefore necessary for SNAP to prevent that reality from becoming recognized.
And if – after being ‘true believers’ – it “took [them] years” to arrive at “the truth”, and that “truth” was that SNAP is and always has been somehow a tool of the Church, then I would say they need to go back to the drawing-board bigtime.
1242PM: The fact remains that “ritual abuse” (or “rape”), is not a term applicable to the Catholic Abuse Matter. Yes, “rape” is the crime (recalling however that “rape” needs to be properly defined) but again, the “ritual” element doesn’t enter into it for purposes of any discussion here. But again, the McMartin cases were classic early examples of a Stampede – and look how they turned out.
1256PM: JR sees SNAP as a “business”, not a “movement” – which is precisely what I said. (The more acute question is: for whom is this business fronting – the torties or the Church, and I have put a lot of pixels into explaining why it is greatly probable that SNAP is a front for the torties.)
JR doesn’t like the undemocratic approach of SNAP’s leadership, but that’s not our problem here. I certainly wouldn’t expect SNAP – as a front organization for the torties – to be ‘democratic’ because its entire purpose is to keep tight control over ‘the message’ and ‘the narrative’ and – not to put too fine a point on it – the victims (genuine and otherwise-classifiable).
And if JR could kindly explain how he has arrived at the (as written here) utterly unsupported assertion that “they [i.e. SNAP] are very useful for the church” then that would be very nice. Because as it has played out here in this comment or series of comments, JR has spent many pixels on irrelevancies, and none whatsoever on this one vitally relevant point.
And I would advise him that in doing so, he needs to take into account his ‘next to impossible’ statement made earlier in the day here, which would indicate that there are determining factors endemic to the victim-issue that – all on their own – prevent any comprehensive general victim-gathering, and that thus the Church’s effective role in allegedly preventing the in-gathering of victims (however defined) would be – at best – nugatory.
Thus – and lastly – to 119PM: It was precisely my point that the SNAP leadership were not ‘magnetic’ – because that would require some amount of independence and that’s the last thing high-rollers want in a front-organization’s leadership. Instead, SNAP was simply stood-up (to use the old military term) in order to get the high-ground in that vast media vacuum; after that was successfully achieved, then ‘attraction’ would be basically a matter of default, i.e. ‘victims’ would gravitate to SNAP (as did JR and ‘Kay’ – until whatever happened to sour the milk there).
The rest of this 119PM comment is just a rehearsal of JR’s objections to SNAP and he is welcome to them without any great objection on my part. Except – but yet again and again – the sly yet utterly un-supported bit about “SNAP’s major church directed mission”, which is yet again precisely the one point where JR expends no pixels whatsoever in explanation.
So – alas – no “problem solved”.
It’s convenient for JR’s Cartoon that he has glued his major bugbears – SNAP and the Church – together, so as to make it a handy two-fer. But it won’t work simply as a mere assertion (no matter how often it is repeated) and if he has any evidence or even coherent theory that he thinks can make it work, then he is going to have to put it up here.
The U.S. government killed Malcom X.
I've told you again and again. SNAP's overall purpose is to ameliorate damage to the catholic corporate church by controlling the linking up of victims.
When SNAP has it's annual conventions, where victims from all over could meet each other. The cost of attending is so prohibitive, air fare , hotels, food etc, that only a very bourgoise level of victim can attend. At these conventions "events" are schedualled one right after another (all "led" by non victims). Literally, loud music is played between events so conversation is drowned out and talks between people are forced out of the hall. It's praise SNAP all the time, no time to question SNAP leadership as to how they behave; how their policy is chosen and who chooses it. Rather important questions don't you think?
Yeah- another conspiriacy theory by the resident whacko? Who in the libby Johnson Admin killed Malcom X, Lady Bird?
We'll know the cross-over to Looneyville is complete when we see the SNAP-Church theory hooked up with the US government/Roswel/Kennedy/Malcom X/MLK /contrails and all the rest of the whacko-bird tinfoil hat theories.
Long story short, we Catholics want the guilty punished, the victims compensated, and we also want fair oversight over all of this mess. We also want innocent priests falsely accused to be vindicated, because they are victims. I think there is a mindset among the average Catholic, that if some false claims get through, so be it, as long as there is justice for the innocent victims. However, there reaches a point when we see witch hunts, and liars like David Clohessy, and need to speak up and make sure everything is fair and the lies and scam jobs don't take over. Because in that case, we the average Catholics, are being victimized.
You are being victimized because you are allowing yourself to be victimized.
Do you think Jim and myself will be able to make changes in your church ? Its people like you who are the catholic church, but you sit by an do nothing. Besides its not our job.
The words of your first two sentences need to be passed on by you and other Catholics who have had enough to the people who should listen to them.
Julie- the sole intent of the bigots that comment here is to victimize all Catholics; not for any abuse of minors, but, for our beliefs.
Their own words and actions convict them.
Julie that is exactly what we've said. There are in fact only two people here who don't want what you've just said and isn't me and it isn't Dennis.
Could the same people that created the comittee called SNAP and the comittee called VOTF. Could they somehow not influence the creation of TMR? (who is always showing the worst pictures of his deemed "enemy". SNAP; Bishop Accountability, the worst pictures they could possibly find that deamean, dehumanize their opposition (just like D and P do)) Now why all the effort?. Doesn't this very post by Dave prove my premise: The crosshatching of SNAP's "validity" in representing victims Happens by your agreeing a) they are your enemy and b) That they truely represent victims. Niether of which you have proved. You just say, they are who they say they are.
When has SNAP said word one about anything stated in your creed? Name one tenant of your faith that SNAP or any victim has denied you?
No denial of rights = no persecution.
If you, Julie, want to compensate victims, and victims want to be compensated, why doesn't your church want to compensate? Or is this some fight between the insurors and the church?
I'm sorry, to disagree but isn't the mass itself a re- enactment of the penultimate human/god sacrifice; the sacrifice god made of jesus's human life in redemption for our sins? Isn't the mass and the eucharist, in part, a rememberence and reenactment of christ coming down to man. The priest transubstanciates the host and jesus literally, returns in the mass to be eaten by mankind?
You've made my point. I think it's absurd and irrelevant compared to our rapes that ritual is even mentioned. It's great for the National Inquiror headlines and for scaring back to SNAP, or to oblivion, victims who seek community.
After finding that "the oldest and largest victims group, SNAP", out as a fraud. Why would you think I would automatically believe any other catholic led group, presented to me as all good for victims, when those groups are led by active catholics and priests? If it appears like SNAP with no victim matrix behind it, i think these "provictims" groups questionable.
As a classic example of how Abuseniks string-together surface similarities and call it ‘thinking’, we have JR’s of the 18th at 1024AM: isn’t the Mass itself “a re-enactment of the penultimate human/god sacrifice”?
Where to begin? This site is examining the Catholic Abuse Matter, which is comprised of actual allegations of sexual-abuse by clerics. The Mass utterly and absolutely neither involves nor requires any actual sacrifice of an actually-existing victim, let alone the sexual-abuse of any actually-existing designated ‘ritual victim’. Thus the theological factoid JR mentions is utterly irrelevant to anything we are working-with on this site. Nor have I ever seen any allegations or reports of allegations or references to allegations that somehow involve a cleric convincing somebody that the sex-abuse is a ritually-required essential of the Catholic Faith and that the ‘victim’ is therefore performing a ritually necessary role. (If among the eleven or twelve thousand formal allegations there are even three or five such allegations, I would be surprised.)
Nor, not to flog a dead horse, have I ever seen any allegations or reports of allegations or references to allegations that somehow involve a cleric actually eating anybody as in cannibalism.
Thus to the 18th at 1045AM, where JR asserts that I have made his point. If you are not quite sure how that happened, you will remain so after reading JR’s explanation of his assertion: that it is “absurd and irrelevant” to mention “ritual” in regard to “our rapes”. Ummmm – it was not I who raised the point about “ritual abuse” in regard to the Catholic Abuse Matter, and have we not just spent time reading JR’s 1024AM explanation of how he sees the Mass and ‘ritual abuse’ coming-together?
So JR then has just spent a second comment (1045AM) undermining the entire gist of a first comment (1024AM) – is that what has just happened here?
And as for “victims who seek community” – we have spent a great deal of time with this bit even on this thread and there appears no evidence that any such creatures exist, except in JR’s phantasm. (Or perhaps all of this is simply therapy for JR and it is merely he who would like some victim-y community and has stitched that together with the Church and SNAP to create a consoling alternative?)
He then opines that since – and I believe we agree on this point, at least – SNAP is “a fraud”, he sees no reason to trust or “believe any other catholic led group” in any of this Matter.
First, note that we are now dealing with “catholic-led” rather than Church-led. That being said, he is welcome to entertain a low opinion of Bishop-Accountability as well (and I venture that he would not be alone in that opinion).
And since he doesn’t trust “active catholics” any more than he trusts “priests” then good for him and that stance must sustain him.
And he then finds any group “with no victim matrix behind it” to be dubious. Fair enough. But he had already – and on this very thread – also asserted that any such broad-based and ‘democratic’ and ‘victim-matrix-based’ group is “next to impossible” to create.
So then and thus two questions immediately and implacably arise: how even a) entertain the possibility-of, or continually trumpet a demand-for, the formation of such a group or b) blame the Church for such a group not existing?
" and we'll manage our own internal matters".
Delphin,
You want to handle or agree with the way your internal affairs are handled so be it. You must be so proud.
But don't dare complain or call someone a church hater or bigot, or complain about the billions of dollars going to abuse victims, or how your catholic church is looked at by the media and every thing else you especially whine about.
Let your internal matters continue to be handled the way they are now. NO PROBLEM.
I could not be more proud that my Church, unlike yours and all the others, admitted a problem, cleaned it up and set a universal precedent for preventing current and future abuses.
What did your church do? What has any secular institution done?
Your church and every secular institution will follow the model implemented by the Catholic Church and more children, being abused today, not fifty years ago, will benefit from these protections. I hope they also 'compensate' claimed (not proven) victims, similarly. Do you think they will?
Not just a conspiracy theory but the one true consipracy theory.
LDB I don't quite get your drift?
Anti-Catholics do not care about abuse victims; they use abuse victims to attack Catholicism.
SAY WHAT? Quit puting words in my mouth P I never ever accused the church of anything you say I've said. I never said there were human sacrifices other than as a metaphor for what we were, the victims.. You've sacrificed and still continue to sacrifice us, your victims. You in particular do that. You say we don't exist.
Ah! that's why those cannon have been rolled into place. The nutsy bush league of devil dealing (Not giving somebody hell but giving them the fantasy that demons are real, booga booga)…let's get back to Devil Talk. THE perfect subject for the low IQ'd.
" If we can't shove 'em this way, we"ll shove 'em that.. that way they'll think they're moving forward" What the church hired PR firms think is a winning strategy.
It wasn't hard for SNAP to form and rise. Truely SNAP's is the most spectacular rise of a leadership of a so called movement in the history of movements as I have seen. I've never met more than 35 victims yets SNAP and it's consignee's rose so high (with no victims) in sight they became international! and carried the victims case to the U.N..And are always THE go to source for the media. Perfect! The Media could go to the church then the church, SNAP, again to get the "whole" picture.
SNAP, priest sponsered, Posed, as it was by national celebrities on national celebrities shows. (at a time when celebrity is king), Celebrities like fr. Andrew Greely for example. And Oprah and Donahue (Both) And Katie Couric and on and on. That's how the word got out that SNAP was "for" victims.
So for victims If there's no one else to call, no one else you've heard of , you call who's there, and SNAP was all that was there. Fully formed; unchanging; behaving exactly the same from it's begining till now. Doing exactly the same things as it was programed to do from the get go: Disperse, obfuscate, scatter victims while at the same time shoving, those of us who could sue, up to the cameras to nod our heads to what ever SNAP said and listen for the first time to the cause du Jour du SNAP( usually irrelevent to victims needs),
That's why I ask, Where's SNAP's matrix? it went from backwater to broadway overnight. What incredable connections it must have made to get that media help so quickly..
That SNAP was ready to step out and get those phone numbers and e mail addresses of victims as the scandal blew up (,SNAP was all ready long planted across the country ready to roll. Not hard to do if you have all the money in the world I guess).
Right you are, Angelonius. It is sickening that they don't care about victims.
Delphin,
Boo hoo hoo, I'm a catholic and you are picking on me. Grow up man. We are all tired of hearing it.
Look at Julie's post today. She at least admits to the problem of your catholic church, why you continue to whine. You continue to complain when the facts of one of your Archbishops wants to spend a half a million dollars of church money to expand a house with pools, hot tubs, fireplaces,and an elevator. Did the pope or did he not tell your archbishops and bishops to stop living like a prince ? Do you have an elevator in your house or do you walk up and down the steps like the rest of us ?
What is truly funny is you then get upset with me when I bring those facts to light. You want your church to be reported better by the mainstream media stop giving the media and anyone else the ammo to report different.
But why get upset with me when this is how your church deals with internal matters you agree with ?
Then with a chuckle I read the first paragraph of your comment at 6:18 when you can be quoted as saying your church "admitted a problem, cleaned it up. Must I be like Publion and take up space and remind you of how your church admitted to a problem ? Do I need to refresh your memory of the hiding of abusive priests, the moving of abusive priests, the shredding of documents, the complete denial of accusations regarding abusive priests and so on and so on. Lets not forget the fight against changing SOL's
Let me ask you did Philadelphia, Boston, Alaska, Chicago and St. Paul only to mention a few come forward and admit to a problem ? Or did they do so only after the pressure of society MADE THEM.
Now with factual information please tell me what organization is using the catholic church's model to deal with child abuse ? Or are you only saying that because Oprah said something ?
[edited by moderator]
Keep spewing your antiCatholic bigotry, it's all for the record here.
Remember, it's all about the "little violently 'raped' children".
D here's a little cartoon you won't understand, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/18/1278255/-Cartoon-The-dignity-of-work?detail=email
I was violently raped and so was Dennis. Were you ever violently raped Delphin?
Billy Graham's son has said that Evangelicals have a massive problem with pedophile clergy abuse. And a few Baptists, very few, have scrutinized what is going on in their churches, and they are horrified at the problem, and that nothing is being done about it. You can find some publications on that on the web, and a web site, http://www.stopbaptistpredators.org. Dennis never mentions, that, does he?
Julie: Matthew 7:3-5 tells us all we need to know
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Julie STOP IT!
We, Dennis; me, LDB, and Kay were victims of your own Roman Catholic Church and no other religion. We are here telling you what you and yours haven't done for us and what you all did and do to us.
You want to pretend your singled out by the media? You are delusional. Your corporate church makes the news because of it's bad behavior. It's "we didn't mean any harm" bulls*%t stance. The media isn't victimizing you. Your church leaders are.
What does the Kos-Kommie-Kartoon have to do with your antiCatholic bigotry?
If I won't understand it, why direct it toward me?
"Screw, meet Loose…"
Julie,
I was going to ignore your statement regarding the Baptist church but I respect you and I think you deserve a response.
First your response is nothing more then what we have seen before. Lets look at other faiths to minimize the crimes of your own.
Now I have never said the catholic church holds the rights to child abuse and if you can find a statement me saying that I promise to you I will never post here again.
Your own comment shows that the Baptist church is not turning a blind eye to the abuse that maybe happening .
Now you question if I am involved with any other church or organization. The answer is no.
I was raped by a catholic priest and not a Baptist minister. I was a catholic not a Baptist. I experienced first hand of the operations of how the catholic church deals with their abuse victims. So like Jim, others and myself we are EXPERTS in the catholic church abuse horror not the Baptists or any other faith.
Am I concerned about all victims of sexual abuse ? Yes. I can prove that. Look at my posting regarding the California woman who recorded her attacker admitting to abusing her, The posting that Dave Pierre was so kind to write a blog on.
The school teacher at last check because of the strength of this now survivor sits in jail on 5 million dollar bail.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/los-angeles-bishop-kept-altar-boy-list-police-n33471
L.A. Bishop kept list from police.
Oh Delphin, your own words. "Admitted a problem and cleaned it up".
Sure they did !!!
How many more years into the future will these suprises come out ?
…and Jim or I are the anti-catholic bigots ?
I picture Jim Nabors uttering those famous words of his. SUPRISE, SUPRISE, SUPRISE.
Just tell us what non-Catholic institutions (including your own) have done to clean up their mess, either currently or from 50 years ago…
…let us know when you have an answer to that, will you?
Meanwhile, I'll stand by the ONE institution that has done so much.
Yes, Julie, STOP IT, stop telling the truth about how the bigots operate!
Didn't you get those antiCatholic talking points? You're off the program, woman!
Geez…
When "Dennis" was violently raped by a Catholic priest as a minor, did he immediately report that crime to his parents, see a doctor and file a complaint with the police in his home or the Church's precinct – were any actual reports or documentation made at the time of the alleged crime?
If so, I dont know how the Church ignored such a claim, and if it did, everyone involved should be in prison – every Church employee, to including the parents, schools officials, doctor, and police for not securing justice; if not, get to the back of the line with the rest of the 'highly suspect why'd you wait 20-30 years to come forward pseudo-claimants'. The priests in the US are innocent until proven guilty.
If you waited several years (or decades) to report most any other crime you'd be laughed out onto the street, where you belong. Don't blame the Church, or anybody else, if you're not believed after so long, especially with such a nice pay out for you if someone/anyone does believe your story.
What would you do if someone showed up from your past from 20 years ago and accused you of the same crime (rape of a minor) and only their 'word' was required for a settlement or conviction because no evidence is required and there is no SOL, and the political climate is ripe for such a lynching? Ready to turn over all that bling of yours you repeatedly brag about here? How would such a public 'conviction' play out with your family and friends? How could you ever convince them that, even though you settled to avoid a sure jail term (see Fr Gordon Macrae) or total financial ruin, you were innocent?
How cooperative would you be if that adult-claimant showed up on your doorstep today?