Double-barreled attack on Pope Francis: SNAP's Joelle Casteix (l) and David Clohessy (r)
Recognizing perhaps that whether they like it or not, the sex abuse story line is getting so long in the tooth that they will soon be out of business, the bigots at the anti-Catholic group SNAP have now become more and more unglued in their public statements, if that were even possible.
When Pope Francis recently announced that he would be personally meeting with abuse victims in the near future (something Pope Benedict repeatedly did, by the way), SNAP's National Director David Clohessy – who was recently feted by the radical, pro-abortion group Feminist Majority at a high-priced Hollywood gala in Los Angeles – derided the Pope's gesture as simply "another savvy public relations move" and claimed the meeting would be "just utterly, utterly meaningless."
Then Joelle Casteix, SNAP's "western regional director," actually went as far as to claim that Pope Francis' gesture was actually "intended to promote complacency," without, of course, providing any evidence for her claim.
(These statements from Clohessy and Casteix came on the heels of another recent wild media statement from SNAP which claimed that the Church's groundbreaking and unprecedented abuse prevention programs were somehow intended "to trick parishioners." "Trick parishioners"??)
Church cranks finally jump ship on SNAP
Persistent Church critic
Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea
In an opinion piece in the Reporter by the psychologist Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea (best known for her appearance in the discredited 2006 documentary Deliver Us From Evil), wrote that SNAP's stance towards Pope Francis' gesture was "arrogant and guilt-inducing."
"Neither David [Clohessy] nor anyone else can predict ahead of time with such certainty what the outcome of this meeting will be for anyone involved in it or for the wider church and [it's] hubris to say otherwise," Frawley-O'Dea continued.
Could it be possible that more people are finally realizing that SNAP will always savagely attack the Church no matter what it does with regards to child safety or any other issue for that matter? We are reminded of a terrific quote from C.J. Doyle at the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts a few years ago:
"If the Catholic Church were to put out a press release today saying that they were going out of business, SNAP would say, 'Why didn't they do this sooner?' No matter what the Church does, it will never satisfy SNAP."
Amen.
Hopefully it is the beginning of the end for Clohessy
Kudos to TMR for pointing out this interesting development.
But I will make a couple of observations (and explain how I have come to them).
The NCR editorial writer (Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea, hereinafter: MGFO) uses the terms ‘victims’ and ‘survivors’ without any qualifications (such as, for example, any distinction between ‘genuine’ and ‘otherwise classifiable’). Thus she avoids the vital and utterly fundamental problems lying at the core of this whole issue: i) how can one establish whether an individual allegant is one or the other (and how can any professional not tackle this problem of ‘establishment’); and ii) just how many genuine cases of abuse actually took place (as opposed to the Stampede fever-vision that dozens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of cases actually took place).
MGFO neatly avoids any enumeration whatsoever. Thus we are spared the usual hyperbolic tropes such as ‘countless’ and ‘untold numbers’ and so on as well as any wandering in the swamps of ‘unreported victims’ and so on. But by the same token, her thoughts along this line can be considered as applying to very very many or – thinking about it for a moment – very very few.
Thus she puts out some interesting ideas, but those ideas may refer-to and deal-with only a miniscule number of actual genuine cases.
And for that matter, one can only wonder how she herself, as a clinician, establishes and has established the veracity and genuineness of such patients’ claims; for all we know, she simply accepts as true whatever ‘presenting problem’ (or at least any ‘presenting story’) that any prospective patient claims to have (e.g. ‘Doctor, I was raped by a priest when I was ten’). But even for a ‘nonjudgmental’ clinician it is necessary to establish veracity, because to simply accept the ‘presenting story’ as veracious and to then conduct extended therapy on that basis, fails as clinical best-practice on a number of levels: it’s not really healthy for the patient, it’s dishonest for the clinician, it is a waste of the patient’s time and money and it is a waste of the clinician’s time and skills.
There have always been such problems posed to clinicians by persons seeking to be patients: some people – for whatever reasons – want and need to ‘be a patient’. There is even a specialized diagnostic term for this professionally: ‘malingering’.
But this professionally-acknowledged garden-variety and occasional phenomenon was given a vicious catalytic boost by the dynamics of the Stampede in the Catholic Abuse Matter: suddenly, rather than the relatively infrequent psychological or emotional need to claim the status of ‘patient’ for one’s individual internally-deranged needs, there existed the possibility (or near-certainty) that if one could ‘pass for’ a “victim”, then one could get an impressive payday out the gambit; and thus there existed the possibility of persons who did not ‘need to be patients’ because of their individual personal derangements, but rather there suddenly and increasingly existed persons who ‘needed to be considered as victims and survivors’ because of the economic payoffs consequent upon acquiring a doctor who would grant them confirmation in that status.
For the clinicians involved, this is a ticking time-bomb of a question waiting for its historical inquiry.
And yet the ideas she puts forward in terms of clinical theory and treatment of such genuine “victims” and “survivors” as there may be are also somewhat slyly presented: while she uses the terms “victims” and “survivors”, and while she tosses in all the layperson-addling tropes like “PTSD” and “recovery road”, and while she even manages to toss in the relatively recent and very trendy trope of “trigger events”, yet she evades the vital and utterly fundamental problems (already discussed in comments here) as to the ‘potentiality’ – and thus not the ‘certainty’ – of such numerous and ominous psychological and emotional sequelae as might ensue from a (genuine) case of child sex abuse at the hands of a cleric.
And we also see what is apparently a new Abusenik way to try and change course without raising uncongenial questions about their old course: MGFO agrees (she says) with the still-Father Doyle that this Pope is different – and thus the course can be changed without admitting any problems with the old course; or – in other words – the Abuseniks aren’t changing (and were never wrong in the first place), and instead the Church has changed to a ‘good’ Pope (and was wrong all along). Nice.
SNAP is nothing more than a Catholic cleric sex abuse pimp. Whatever the situation, SNAP "whores" the occaision to rip the Church for publicity so it can make a buck! This latest unstubstantiated attack on Pope Francis shows their true colors. Poor Clohessy and his co- pimps at SNAP are simply getting desperate because they know they will either eventually bleed their Catholic Church cash cow dry, or start attacking other less hierarchical organizations with much less deep pockets. In either case they know their money scavenging scheme will dry up in the not too distant future! We know they wont dare pursue the real source of deep pockets – state institutions where sex abuse is far more rampant!
Robert comments, on June 4th, that the Catholic Church 'cash cow' may eventually be milked dry by Abuseniks and enablers like SNAP. Can understand his apprehension and his sense of injustice. In the daily newspaper today (Australia) there was a 'revelation' about a scandal in Ireland. Under the arresting headline "Septic Tank Mass Grave" we were informed that records of 796 young children at a nun-run home in Tuam indicated that the bodies of babies, of unwed mothers, may be buried there. As a result of this research, by Catherine Corless the Catholic Church was facing fresh accusations of child neglect. Shock, horror!
Now journalists understand that their readers lead busy lives and skim through the news without thinking too deeply. Moreover the public are not averse to having their personal prejudices re-enforced. They believe what they want to believe, I guess. But what happens when we do pause and think it through? Well the Catholic Church has been opposed to abortion for as long as I can remember, so we can rule that out as possible motive. And just nearby to my place of residence, I know that there is a shelter, run by nuns, for unwed mothers. This was set up for those young women who wanted to have their babies. These girls had refused the suggestion by some health professionals that abortion was the best way out for them. The existence of that shelter tells me that nuns are not in the business of killing babies. On the contrary they want babies to live, and show that by their selfless dedication to help the pregnant girl. So the Ireland news report is almost certainly to be proven false. But will the mainstream media report this outcome?. Not if they run true to form. It will not be reported because it doesn't suit their agenda. The object is to discredit the Church… not to exonerate the Church when falsely accused. So this, in a nutshell, is what we are up against.
Malcolm, you are so preoccupied with saving the church's money. Do you know how much money the church has??? No, niether does anyone else. So fiegning bankruptcy where none is shown necessary is nonsense and obfuscatory. (if that's the word). Quit blowing smoke Malcolm.
Horn-swaggle!
I'll call your horn-swaggle and raise you two horn-swaggles.
http://the-american-catholic.com/
And, not a Catholic clergyman in sight.
Bupkiss is what bigots use to justify their hatred of Catholicism and Catholics.
You, P, seem to confuse your "discussing" of things; to their being settled by you.
If anyone is a "nik" around here it's you.
You are an Excusenik; an Apologist and a Defensnik. You are not a Factsnik however.
Your rationals are bupkiss.
By the way ever hear this quote from Leo X?:
" How well we know what a profitable superstition this fable of Christ has been for us and our predecessors."
See http://www.thedevineevidence.com/skeptic_quotes.html
The quote is from a Protestant satirist of the 16th century, John Bale, not from Pope Leo X.
Rege really? Here's my link: http://www.nairaland.com/372231/pope-leo-x-most-infamous
NCR is a puppet show. SNAP is a puppetshow. TMR is a puppet show. The catholic church is a puppet show.( You being the puppets).
Come to think of it; Jesus did look a lot like Jim Henson.
Also, How about all those dead children in Tuam, Co. Galway? The bones were thrown in a septic tank. That's what happens when you pretend to be moral without ever being called to account for your actions.
How do you dare pretend to be morally righteous?
Nice analysis, Publion. Have to smile when the NCR(eporter) calls out the crackpots at SNAP. The last, psychotic throes of an evil, manipulative pressure group.
Mary Gail Frawley-O'dea is a renown phsychologist who has worked with hundreds and hundreds of abuse victims AND a staunch Catholic, David, you failed to mention it was she who the Bishops invited to speak to them during the Dallas Charter and she did not mince words….but yes you call her a "church crank" then you trumpet the fact that she was upset about what David Clohessey said about the Popes PRESS STATEMENT that he would meet with victims. You are correct Benedict did this as well, but have you spoken to the victims who took part in this orchestrated media event when Benedict meet with Survivors? A fellow Bostonian survivor who was one who met the Pontiff can tell you what he thinks of it now and it wasn't good. What evidence does Miss Casteix have for saying this is menat to promote complacency. Plenty of evidence there is, no real action has been taken thus far, we have heard only words, so I too think she has a valid point. David Clohessey of SNAP is just trying to protect survivors from being re-victimized by empty promises of reform.
Another Mark: “A fellow Bostonian survivor who was one who met the Pontiff can tell you what he thinks of it now and it wasn’t good.”
Really?
From http://www.independent.com/news/2008/jun/19/pedophile-priest-victim-describes-meeting-pope/ :
“[Boston survivor Olan] Horne said he was favorably impressed by the pope’s response. ‘Here he is, four feet from us. He spoke to the pain and suffering this caused, and said how he wakes up every day thinking about it and praying about it,’ Horne recounted. ‘He said he dealt with these cases more than anyone and that he understood how terribly huge the issue was. He said he understood from the bottom of his heart. It felt real‘.”
Bernie McDaid who said at the meeting with Benedict. "he looked into my eyes and saw my pain" is probably the Boston survivor referred to by Another Mark.
I thought it was a crap response. Given that Benny had been in charge of abuse cases for st. JP2 for 20 YEARS and had never reached out to victims.
Mr. McDaid was never the sharpest tool in the shed. The church would never pick educated, no longer religious catholic victims to meet the pope. Only those easily impressed by popes. Bernie was the latter.
However,st. JP2 had met and celebrated the fascist child rapist and morphine addict Maciel to the heavens many many times before he publicly met any victims if he ever did.
Mary Gail and I are wonderful friends and colleagues. We grow and enrich each other in our continued discussion. Of course we don't agree on every detail … people who are passionate about a cause never do. But we continue to work together, respect each other and strive toward our ultimate goal of child safety. She's a smart and savvy woman who challenges me – that is why I love every minute we are able to work together.
Isn't that the ultimate goal: Working together for child safety and change? I would hate to be surrounded only by people who agree with me 100% of the time.
[edited by moderator]
No the "ultimate goal" is NOT "child safety and change". Why do you say it is, Casteix?
Who said, who told you that was the ultimate goal?
Did victims vote that a goal at all; regarding we who were already raped? Sure as a ancillary goal but "ultimate" goal for individual rape victims. How about compensating the injured first and formost?
Let the church and police and now well warned parents protect their children.
Let the goal for victims, be victims.
More pitch-perfect material.
On the 4th at 638PM we get nothing more than a collection of old socks. First, I don’t “confuse … ‘discussing’ of things; to their being settled by [me]” – rather, I don’t confuse JR’s irrelevant comebacks as any sort of elements in a discussion at all. This is a typical confusion that JR not only makes but actually seems to rely on consistently.
Then we get nothing more in the comment but a series of juvenile word-play riffs that merge into epithets. And all of it mere plop-tossing.
And at the end we might note that not a single point I made has been ‘discussed’ by JR. As usual.
Then at 647PM we get what is purported to be a quote from Leo X. No, I have never heard it. Any verification or sourcing for it? Or is this just another whackjob creation from the more primitive levels of the Web?
Then at 650PM we get another epithetical riff. And nothing more.
Then at 655PM we get a reference to the skeletons of babies discovered on the former site of a Catholic orphanage.
Readers may wish to read up on it here
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/3/mass-grave-800-children-found-near-irish-home-unwe/
Several points are relevant:
The site was a Catholic orphanage and home for unwed mothers from 1925 to 1961, run by the Bon Secours Sisters.
An Irish government report from 1944 noted that the children in the orphanage were living in squalor and there appeared to be a number of contagious diseases among them as well as some probability of mental defects among the children.
The bones were discovered in 1975 by villagers who were not surprised since there had been a famine.
There had once been a septic tank there and its removal had left a large ready-made hole in the ground. The bodies were apparently wrapped in burial shrouds and buried there, a statue of the Virgin Mary erected, and the grass kept cut – much like a cemetery, although with one mass grave rather than numerous (it would have required digging almost 800) separate graves.
The ‘researcher’ who now claims to have discovered the site wants the site to be excavated archeologically and – but of course – “investigated”. The Bishop had proposed putting up a memorial plaque.
What can we glean from these facts?
That not long after the erection of the Irish Republic, in circumstances of significant national financial distress, an Order of nuns undertook running a combination orphanage and home for unwed mothers – apparently because there was a desperate need for both types of institution.
That as early as 1944 the Irish government was aware of the serious financial needs of this place – although what if any action it took we do not at this point know.
That the Sisters were faced with the care of children who were gravely and in some cases contagiously ill and even mentally “defective” (as that era’s government report said).
That over the course of 36 years almost 800 of those children died.
That the nuns made the best use of a ready-dug near-by site on the property where the children might be buried, buried them, and created what for all practical purposes was a cemetery.
That the nuns had neither the resources nor physical capability nor perhaps space to dig almost 800 separate graves.
What precisely does JR find morally objectionable to all this? He will have to be specific. Because the facts don’t support … what? That the nuns killed the children and in the middle of the night carted the bodies to an active septic tank and dumped them in? That the children were all offspring of the nuns and the priests? That in a country that was at the time fully capable of supporting the care of the children had it only been informed, the Sisters and local hierarchy instead chose to deny the children such succor and instead simply let them die and then stashed their bodies in a septic tank?
Upon what conclusions does JR make this claim that any of the nun’s performance under those conditions was not “morally righteous” on the part of the hard-pressed Sisters in that hard-pressed land in those days?
But if his prior performance on this site is any indicator, JR – like so very many Abuseniks – simply likes to pose insinuating questions and leave it at that. Let him show us that he is a “Factsnik” – if he can.
You have balls of brass.
800 dead in 36 years? that's roughly 22 child deaths a year! Where were the masses for the dead children? Masses both in the human sense and the religious sense.
Letting children die is the samething as murdering them. But let the investigation run it's course and we will see what the truth is.
I do not believe there were that many pregnant nuns' babies in the ceptic tank ,if any.
You forget I have lived in Galway before; during and after the rise and fall of the Celtic tiger (Ireland's economic bubble).
People weren't starving in Galway. It's on the sea and surrounded by small farms. People were poor but there was food.
Irish emigrated to find jobs to build families. They could have stayed in Ireland and would have been fed but very poor.
What has the childrens mental capacity got to do with whether they lived or died?
If 22 children a year were dying in a church run anything where are the death certificates?
Where are their birth certificates. Why no requiems for these children? I can understand having no money for funeral costs but a cess pool?
I hope this does prove to be explainable by the Irish church, for your sake and for humanity's sake.
In the 20th century Irish emigrated to find jobs to create wealth for themselves and their families.
As the body of , The Hypostatic Union, is lifted-up, so ,The Mystical Body, must be. Darkness falls, the earth quakes, the dead rise to bear silent witness, the veil is torn that the secret hearts of many men might be revealed. " How well have they cared for ,MY, ewes? How tenderly have they treated, MY, lambs?" Then justice and mercy kiss and true peace reigns. A long period of peace. But as ever, Good Friday, before Easter Sunday.
The "Famine" was 1847 not 1947. Blaming those dead on the famine is bunk.
On the 4th at 10PM ‘Another Mark’ (hereinafter: AM) simply tries to start the play at first-base rather than home-plate: MGFO “is a renowned psychologist” [corrections supplied] (which is merely the Argument From Authority) and she has “worked with hundreds and hundreds of abuse victims” (but we precisely do not know how many “victims” were genuine and how many otherwise classifiable, which leaves us still no further along in determining a) how many genuine victims she has worked with and b) how many genuine victims there have possibly or probably been).
It is interesting, certainly, that the Bishops invited her to address them – and the fact speaks well of the Bishops. On the other hand, if she made the same type of comments to them that we have seen her make here, then there is every possibility that she helped create what we now must call a Second Stampede, i.e. she stampeded the Bishops into taking actions.
And while this Second Stampede might have worked some serious reform in the Church, it also has surely worked some derangements (see the most recent articles on the These Stone Walls (TSW) site for a discussion of how the same American Bishops who urge the President to exercise more fairness in dealing with those imprisoned yet also now petition Rome to suspend – and retroactively – the canonical rights of accused priests in sex-abuse allegations).
And we still don’t know how MGFO has managed to solve the genuine/otherwise-classifiable problem, or whether she hasn’t solved it at all, but rather has simply presumed that every story is true (and thus has started her own professional play on first or second base and not with a demonstrated at-bat at home plate).
Then we get the exaggerated-format “PRESS STATEMENT” bit – and what can be made of this? Does ‘Another Mark’ see a problem with ‘press statements’? Are we to imagine that they are not veracious? They are SNAP’s stock-in-trade, certainly. And if SNAP’s press statements are not to be trusted, then where does that leave the initial ‘basis’ for the Stampede’s getting started in the first place?
And I would say that – in the milieu of the Stampede – any organized meeting between ‘victims’ and a major hierarch almost by definition is going to smack of some sort of ‘orchestration’ or ‘orchestrated media event’ (even if merely on the level of what would more accurately be called ‘organization’). And once again, an ‘orchestrated media event’ is and always has been a key Playbook gambit. (And for that matter: to what extent is the ‘discovery’ by this ‘researcher’ in Ireland itself an ‘orchestrated media event’? The locals seem to have known about it for at least 40 years, there is a rather rational explanation for the bones being there and how they got there – so just what is so earthshaking in this ‘orchestrated media event’?)
Nor do we have any way of verifying AM’s assertion of his alleged personal experience in which a putative “fellow Bostonian survivor” reported to AM that – with suspicious vagueness – the friend’s impression of a meeting with Pope Benedict “wasn’t good”. Were the sandwiches bad? Were there no sandwiches? How can we know with a vague statement like this (to say nothing of the initial veracity-problems with the assertion to begin-with)?
(And do we now have another ‘Boston Survivor’ here or do we have the same one under yet another screen-name?)
And the assertion that “no real action has been taken thus far” and what we have is “simply words” and “empty promises of reform” merely needs to be left hanging out on the limb on which it was put. The allegations of Catholic clerical abuse here have now dwindled to 7.6 or so a year (and then one has to start assessing those allegations’ veracity). Something has clearly been ‘reformed’ (even if it has only been the creativity of allegants and the willingness of many torties to keep trying to implement the Anderson Strategies).
In regard to the ‘Joelle’ comment (the 5th at 1209AM): we are placed in precisely the same position as we are placed by AM’s putative connection to some other “fellow Bostonian survivor”, i.e. we have no way of knowing or corroborating the statement.
But if we presume the veracity of ‘Joelle’s claim about their being “wonderful friends and colleagues” then a) I would ask ‘Joelle’ how MGFO has resolved the patient-credibility problem and b) since Joelle names herself a “colleague” then is ‘Joelle’ also a professional dealing with these matters, and if so, then how has ‘Joelle’ herself dealt with the patient-credibility problem here?
And while it is certainly of interest that ‘Joelle’ and MGFO “don’t agree on every detail”, it would be substantially more informative to know in what way they disagree and about what they disagree.
Although the characterization about “people who are passionate about a cause” does set whiskers twitching. Is this some oblique way of admitting that there is more ‘passion’ than objective clinical principle involved? And if one has allowed oneself professionally to become “passionate about a cause” then might one share the principles by which one has professionally concluded that the cause is real enough and large enough to become so “passionate about”?
And while I do not in any way doubt that i) there have been some instances of priest-perpetrated sexual abuse (however defined) and ii) there thus must exist some genuine victims, yet on what grounds have these two professional “friends and colleagues” determined that “the cause” is as extensive as the Abuseniks would have us presume and believe? Or have these two persons not allowed themselves any serious assessment as to how widespread the problem (and “the cause”) actually is?
And while “child safety” is certainly a worthy and vital goal, yet we are still at square-one in terms of assessing just how much “child safety” has been compromised in the past and how much “child safety” remains compromised now.
Rationally, one would only allow oneself to become “passionate” about effecting “change” in “child safety” if it can be rather solidly established that “child safety” has been or still remains sufficiently compromised. After all, “change” is never presumptively good simply because it is a “change”. But that simply brings us back to square-one, as so often in this Catholic Abuse Matter.
And the comment concludes with another tantalizing if oblique reference to ‘agreement’ or the lack of it between ‘Joelle’ and MGFO. Might the nature and extent of those differences be material worthwhile to share for the purposes of analysis?
I have come across a BBC article that includes photographs of the Irish burial site.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27710206
As the photos indicate, clearly this site was set up and maintained as a cemetery. And it was hardly hidden.
I doubt the local public or even parish cemetery would have had room for this many burials, especially of indigent and perhaps diseased individual bodies.
Let;'s compare the percentile of child deaths in Tuam (an outlying suburb of Galway) to the percentile of children's deaths from" illness and malnutrition" at the same time through out Ireland.
A plaster statue of the virgin does not a catholic cemetery make. The bbc report you linked said they died of illness and or malnutrition????? It also said they were never baptized!!!!! What's up with that?
In regard to the 5th at 1220PM:
Twenty-two deaths of children per year, in an Irish Republic that was hardly in that era capable of providing the levels of care that have been common today, and where the Sisters were not possessed of current-day medical skills and resources, and where the children had come from very unhealthful circumstances … are we to infer that in JR’s considered opinion that number is excessive? And against a base number of how many children is JR’s assessment based? How many children were housed at the orphanage at any one time or in total? Or is that thinking too much?
And on what basis is it presumed that no Masses were said for the children? And then we get the almost-senseless riff on ‘masses’ (as in the Marxist sense?) and ‘Masses’.
And on what basis do we get “letting children die”? Does JR presume that death doesn’t come regardless of such efforts as humans in a particular time and place can make? Or is this silly bit simply a lead-in designed to pretext the concluding bit about “letting children die is the same thing as murdering them”? Which bit itself demonstrates yet again the play-dough and silly-putty approach Abuseniks take to definitions and concepts.
I did not “forget” that bit about JR having claimed to have been to Ireland (although the “lived in” part is new, unless passing through town constitutes “living in” the town … which, on second thought, may be the type of wordplay we are dealing with here); I simply don’t find all these amazingly coincidental bits credible. And of what use is JR’s living anyplace useful in the first place? Surely he wasn’t there in the period 1925-1961, which is the era under consideration.
Thus JR’s recollections or observations of Galway in the era of the Celtic Tiger are irrelevant on their face.
Ditto the quickie-tour of Irish immigration history.
The “mental capacity” of some of the children demonstrates – as the government report of 1944 was seeking to do – the conditions under which the Sisters had to work: the children were complexly challenged along a number of axes, not only physiological but neurological.
The children came from unwed mothers or perhaps were foundlings – how would the orphanage have their birth certificates? And again: on what basis does JR presume that no Masses and requiems were said for them?
And – good grief – again: the burial site was either the hole left by the removal of the septic tank or the concrete structure that had once been used as a septic tank but no longer was; the site was surely not a cess-pool, and not even an active septic tank.
Then the final stab at the high-ground (an assortment of Wigs donned for the occasion here): “for humanity’s sake”.
As for the comment of 1233PM: JR can take that up with the reporter who got that bit from the villagers. (And how does the famine square with the prior Galway bits about “people weren’t starving and there was enough food”? Or do these assertions only apply to the Galway of the Celtic Tiger era, thus irrelevant here?)
Then at 712PM we are proffered this: “Let’s compare the percentile of child deaths in Tuam … to the percentile of children’s death from ‘illness and malnutrition’ at the same time throughout Ireland” [grammatical corrections supplied]. Well, let’s see JR do that. (Although this is somewhat advanced thinking for JR’s usual performance.)
But since JR (or somebody who is the source for this bit) wants to go the research and statistics route: one would have to compare the numbers of child-deaths in Tuam to the number of deaths in other venues that also sited so intense a concentration of life-challenged children as existed in the Tuam facility. Because the deaths of children who were living in intact families would not constitute an accurate basis of comparison. And of course all of this would have to be focused on the era 1925-1961 and not on any subsequent era.
The site in the photographs depicts a respectful and maintained and specially-enclosed site for the dead. That is for all practical purposes a functioning definition of a cemetery. What in JR’s mind constitutes a “catholic cemetery” is anybody’s guess, although the centrality of that statue of the Virgin is certainly not something one would find in a secular cemetery.
I have no idea of the relevance of the questioning bit about “illness and malnutrition” (i.e. “What’s up with that?”). They were living in an orphanage that was strapped for funds – and the government knew about it. Those points had already been made. When orphanages are under-resourced that’s what happens: illness and malnutrition. I imagine that the only alternative in the Ireland of that era was to leave the children to their own devices.
In fact, the site – as the second article notes – has been under public control of the County Council for over half a century now, and that local authority certainly hadn’t found anything amiss in those 50-plus years.
Whether the children were or were not baptized is an interesting question, given Church practice in that era, but it is hardly relevant here. Whether the infants or children were baptized when they were in extremis (as any Catholic can do) is not something any reporting today is likely to be able to definitively pronounce upon. Nor JR, as if anyone needs to be reminded.
But once again we see the usual Abusenik play to toss innuendo questions around without actually trying to explain the significance of the questions themselves. What does JR see as the significance of the Baptism question?
But I would also note that in that second article (the one with the photos) we can also see how quickly various politicians have tried to make some hay. The local Member for Tuam wants an apology to the mothers to be issued; but these were the people who abandoned the children to an orphanage in the first place (presuming, of course, that the Sisters didn’t go out like vampires in the night and simply kidnap otherwise well-situated children).
But – interestingly – the Member wants “the government” to issue the apology. Why the government? What role does the government have in all of this that the Member realizes but the media don’t mention?
And is the Member calling for an investigation because the government failed to fund the institution? Because if the Church were directly and solely responsible, then why would the Member – especially nowadays – not demand an apology from the Church instead? Are we seeing here a media effort – for whatever reasons – to make this about the Church rather than the government?
And did any unwed mothers living in the facility not realize the difficult conditions under which everyone in the institution was living? And when the children were buried, were the mothers (if they were present in the institution) not present?
There are far too many questions in all of this that don’t have answers, despite all the ‘reporting’ by the media. But – as we see – it simply creates an opportunity for various types to come up to the surface to squirt their usual ink in the usual direction.
Here's a link to analysis of the Tuam orphanage catastrophe
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5779902/how-mid-century-ireland-dealt-with-unwed-mothers-and-their-children
And now instead of an analysis with the article available for reader review we simply get a link to an article. One wonders if the article was even read before it was posted here; it surely didn’t prompt any ideas that were deemed worth typing them up here.
A simple way to deal with this would be to say that the article isn’t any good without some commentary as to what the commenter finds worthwhile in it, but then if that route were taken we would get nothing from JR and the article would go unexamined.
So what have we got here?
The piece is not actually an “analysis” but rather an interview. And the woman being interviewed is the co-founder of a group with issues against the Magdalene Laundries (which, as she admits, is what she knows something about).
But the Magdalene Laundries – as a brutal outrage ‘of choice’, as it were – is a subject that has already been substantially deflated.
To recap: borrowing the concept from the Protestants, Catholic Sisters developed a way to provide housing and something of a life for unwed mothers (and their children) and young women with no prospects who might otherwise have been tempted into the streets at night: the Sisters would house and provide an almost boarding-school type structured living situation, which would support itself by the residents doing laundry for various customers, organizational even more than individual.
Given the realities of the time and place it was not a bad business-model that would effectively serve to achieve the main goals of offering i) life-sustaining opportunities and ii) the chance to make a better life while iii) minimizing the chances that the young women would have no other options but the life of the streets.
In the hands of various media-savvy interests in the present-day the whole enterprise has been made to look like some sort of precursor to Nazi death-camps, based largely on assertions and claims and imaginings proffered by the aforementioned various interests. Gobbled up greedily, as always, by an outrage-hungry media for its own purposes and spawning the recent highly-inaccurate movie version.
Nothing new there.
But the interview does reveal – relevant to questions arising here from the Tuam matter – that it was the government that was responsible for funding these institutions. Before the Republic was created, that would have been the Brits – and one can only imagine how much funding was forthcoming from the hard-pressed imperial coffers for ‘fallen Irish women’ and Catholic Sisters. And after the establishment of the Republic it would have been the cash-strapped Dublin government, working through the various County governments. And one can imagine that the situation confronting the Sisters did not then greatly improve.
The interviewee then mentions the work of a Boston College faculty member “and activist” who refers to Ireland’s “architecture of containment”, which strategy she describes as being a “basic model” that would “contain and segregate anything that was deemed morally inferior by society”.
Societies have a fundamental need to try to shape themselves as they deem best, and the Boston College faculty member of today might want to consider the pros and cons of a society (and any university) that would try to solve that problem by simply re-defining any moral standards down until just about everything was ‘morally acceptable’. But that was not the route taken by most societies in the pre-World War 2 era.
And the Boston College faculty member – at least as he is discussed here by this other “activist” – takes no thought for how creatively the Sisters worked to somehow provide these women with perhaps the only alternative to life and death on the streets.
Was there “discipline”? I expect there would have to be some. Achieving ‘shape’ in a human life requires a certain amount of self-discipline, and not everybody comes along with a ready-made sufficient store of it. ‘Shape’ works its vital task precisely by creating boundaries – if you think about it. (Which also calls attention to a comparison with societies that figure to keep themselves coherent and together by simply declaring no-boundaries and then wishing and hoping that by doing whatever they feel like doing with their personal ‘autonomy’ everyone will be ‘free’ and everything will work out fine for everybody (sort of a trendy social-science version of Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’).
I am personally not a fan of the Irish worldview to the extent that it concentrates so heavily on the externals of Shape and Order rather than on a more internalized individual sense of Shape and Order. But then again, the problem of the internalization of a worldview rather than merely depending on external controls is a problem that many if not most human societies face and have faced.
Indeed, the Church has worked with this profound human problem by emphasizing the interior fonts of Shape and Order within the individual-engaged-with-God while simultaneously maintaining the external supports to the ‘identity’ of the society of her believers. It’s not an easy high-wire act to sustain.
Fascism, as we have seen, tried to solve the problem by deifying the Volk and the Reich and providing as well the every-handy opportunity for taking the unifying path of war against this or that ‘enemy’. Communism deified itself and would allow no rivals to remain alive. As Mussolini pithily put it: nothing outside the State, nothing against the State, nothing above the State.
The interviewee refers to a reminiscence published in 1989 by an Irish doctor who visited an orphanage and found that the Sisters had put out clean linens but that there was a great deal of streptococcus infection. And yet the same sort of point was made by an Irish government team that visited an orphanage in 1944 and filed a report (and possibly this doctor was part of some such team in the 1940s).
But the institution was dependent on government funding and what were the Sisters to do?
The interview concludes by getting back to the interviewee’s primary focus, which is that adoptees and descendants of adoptees still cannot get to see their records of adoption, which is – she notes – a problem with Irish and American law. Which is as may be. But doesn’t work to indict the Sisters who in their time did what they could with what they had. The alternative to their ministry was … what? What would have happened to all those who at least had a roof over their heads and some gainful employment? I venture to say that absent the Sisters’ ministry there would not be anywhere near as many now-living adoptees and descendants of adoptees.
Now … what were the points JR saw relevant in this article to which he has linked?
I told you all p does is make excuses for the church.
The mortality rate at the Tuam orphanage was twice to three times Ireland's average.
You have no shame P, sociopaths never do. Even a rank amatuer in psycology would know from your behavior here; you just aren't right.
the order of nuns was French not Irish. the birthplace of the nuns is not specified.
Your opinions of the Irish are biggoted.
As far as my being a Marxist goes. I was a catholic long before I was a Marxist. I know the rules of catholicism; and the sacrament of Baptism is considered rather important in said rules. There should be baptismal records if the children were baptised. But if you can't bother to feed them why bother to do anything else.
And again why attack me personally? What have i got to do with any of your church's bad behaviors? I only mention them? Or is mentioning them verbotten?
I need to correct myself about the location of Tuam which is in county Galway about 20 miles from Galway city. It is not a suburb of Galway as i had said above. I called my cousin and got the right info. Sorry about that.
Well I think that on the 6th at 1158AM and 1205 the comments are certainly from JR’s mind.
If JR can point out one or several elements of my comments that fly in the face of what we know and thus can be considered nothing more than “apologetic”, then he can – as he clearly has not – put them up here.
Rather, though, what we see is simply the epithetical attempt to paint anything Abuseniks don’t agree-with as mere apologetics in the service of the Church.
And – marvelously – my warning that in order to establish a valid basis of comparison has been completely ignored: one would have to compare the death rate at Tuam with comparable sites which also had such institutions. The County of Leavenworth, KS, for example, contains far far more persons behind bars than almost any other American County. But it is the site of a Federal penitentiary, the military Disciplinary Barracks, a County lock-up, and also – if I am rightly informed – a State prison. But it is silly to compare it to ‘average’ American Counties because of the intensity and concentration of inmates within its boundaries. So too with these institutions (and it would be more useful to compare the death rate in Tuam to the death-rate in some of the other similar facilities situated in the Irish Republic. Back in that era, of course.
Thus JR’s merely tossed-off assertion about the “mortality rate” at Tuam remains, as he created it, nothing more than an unsupported assertion with no support or corroboration. Readers may make of it what they wish.
Then more epithetical stuff to the effect that I am a “sociopath” which “even a rank amateur in psychology” [corrections supplied] “would know” that “from your behavior here”. Although all that I put up here are ideas and questions, none of which JR either refutes or answers.
And then the further epithetical bit that my “opinions of the Irish are bigoted” [correction supplied]. Are they indeed? In what way?
Thus at the end of the plop-tossing we get mostly plop. No surprise.
Then in the 1205PM comment we are proffered the timetable of JR’s adoption of this and that world-view. It is what it is and I don’t see the relevance of it.
The bit about the Baptismal records needing to exist “if the children were baptized” – already of only tenuous relevance to begin with, as I mentioned in a prior comment above – would need to know the practice of the Church for emergency or in-extremis Baptisms and how that was dealt with in Ireland in that era and in the circumstances of the institution’s condition and also its standing vis-à-vis the local parish and the local Bishop. Also, for all we know, after over half a century, the records may still exist, or may have been lost. But whatever the case may be in this, its relevance has neither been established nor even explained by JR.
As for JR ‘knowing’ “the rules of Catholicism”, I’ll just leave that claim up there where it was put, to be compared with his lengthy record of prior assertions about Catholicism.
And then the repellent characterization to the effect that the Sisters “can’t bother to feed them” – a characterization increasingly unsupported and cast into doubt by what we are discovering about the government’s responsibility to fund the institution. But it’s a nasty bit of plop-tossing indeed, with not a scintilla of evidence or argument to back it up.
Apparently aware – however dimly – that he had just gone over the edge in his prior characterization of the Sisters, JR then tries to maneuver back onto the victim-y high ground by then declaring himself plaintively to be “personally” ‘attacked’. Because – of course – if you don’t agree with Abuseniks and ask question about what they have tossed up, then you are ‘attacking’ them; whereas when they toss stuff about the Church and priests and so forth, they are just ‘truth-tellers’. Yah.
It is not that JR has “anything to do with any of [the] church’s bad behaviors”; it is that we can establish very little indeed from his assorted unsupported claims and stories and characterization. He has a great deal to do with that because – as he claimed recently – everything posted under his name is written by him.
And he then tries to cut himself some slack by characterizing his various material as merely “mentioning” (thus not ‘asserting with support or corroboration and not making responsive answers, but instead merely tossing off one-liners and all the rest of the stuff we have seen here).
If all he is going to do is “mention” then how can he then take umbrage at his material not being taken seriously? Riddle us that, Riddler, and so on and so forth.
Oh that's right there are no bad behaviors by the church in your world or very few. It's all one big scam against the church to you.
When in reality the church is the biggest scam of all.
The fun part is the truth keeps coming out.
stJP2's canonization speaks for itself. when you need a cover for your coverups change the rules and make a saint.It's so cost efficient too. you're so obvious.
It's such a gift you have P. Deny Deny Deny and if you can't fool 'em confuse 'em by blowing smoke. You're so down home dysfunctional. I almost wish there were an afterlife where you would be rewarded for your "work" but there's not and anyway if there were, Jesus would spit in your eye. Hoping to heal you from your blindness. Of that i have no doubt. If there was a Jesus he'd spit in your eye.
On the 7th at 1050AM we given a slyly-packaged commercial for JR’s world-wide ‘contacts’ and readers may make of it what they will. It is a correction for a point with precious little substantive relevance to the matters under consideration here – as always.
Then on the 7th at 1002PM JR creates a thought that I have never made, and then proceeds – as so often – to have a pillow-fight with it in his mind. But I will say that from the material we have seen from Abuseniks on this site, there is precious little to induce the thought that the Stampede is not to some significant extent a “ big scam”.
Then another typical assertion about “truth” that need only be left hanging where it was put.
And the slick manipulative trope to the effect that something “speaks for itself” (i.e. that it proves JR’s position so obviously and clearly and completely that he needn’t bother himself with actually explicating it).
And then back to creating quotations I never made in order to have more pillow-fights and appear to be responsive to the issues raised: in this case, that I simply “deny”. What, exactly, have I denied? I have simply pointed out facts and probabilities and offered possible or probable explanations – none of which JR has actually demonstrated to be unworkable or even improbable.
And then more with the psychological epithets, this time about “dysfunctional”; once again, we see the trusty deployment of ‘projection’, as so very often with Abuseniks and this one in particular.
The rest is some sort of personal fever-vision that can also stay right up where it was put.
[edited by moderator]
Now you deny you don't deny. My what a spin your in!
Clearly we have reached a point in the JR exchanges where nothing substantive is to be expected and – as we see on the 9th at 902PM – epithets and one-liner word-play is going to be the gambit.
It is what it is.
And perhaps some readers would simply shake their heads and say ‘leave it at that’.
But this is a good moment to state again that my purpose in following the thread – such as it is – of certain commenters is simply to draw out into clearer view precisely what sort of mentality and what sort of Playbook govern and have governed in so very much in the Abusenik world, especially in the era of the Anderson Strategies.
As we see in the 902PM comment, we actually get no indication whatsoever of whatever was supposed to have been ‘denied’ in the first place; simply a repetition ad absurdum that I am now ‘denying that I deny’. Any parent can say that when one has reached this point rational discussion is no longer really the path of choice. And I would not disagree.
Readers can see for themselves that in addition to JR, I had posed on this thread questions for ‘Another Mark’ and MGFO and ‘Joelle’ in response to the material that they had put up. And readers can see for themselves that no answers have been forthcoming.
While this is not so surprising from the likes of JR and ‘Another Mark’, it is a somewhat more curious omission from the likes of such professionals as MGFO and ‘Joelle’.
And I think this demonstrates a distinction among Abuseniks: the ‘professionals’ pretty much drop in here and there and simply issue some statements (sort of the internet-comment equivalent of a ‘press release’) and then that’s it; they don’t come back to answer questions arising from what they have put-up. And as I have often said, this is hardly surprising: what responses can be made to questions that were not supposed to have been raised in the first place?
But then there is another tier of the Abusenik grouping which – especially on the internet – is certainly robust: the tier of mentality that simply recreates the cafeteria ketchup-slingers of high-school days of yore, with all the distractions, diversions, distortions and epithetical whackeries and frakkeries any parent or teacher would recognize.
The media can browse along this multi-tiered buffet, picking up a solemn bit of press-release here, and a chippy one-liner or story there.
But that’s pretty much it.
What’s next? What’s left – if the Playbook be followed – is to now claim to have been somehow victimized about the quality of one’s material. And thus try to shift and distract the issue from the quality of the material to the claim of being victimized on the basis of one’s material being (pick one or several here: assessed, questioned, judged, assaulted, attacked).
This weekend George Will published a piece about the current spike in the sexual-assault brouhaha on college campuses (it’s also being waged in the military, I would add). Readers may read Will’s piece here:
http://nypost.com/2014/06/07/colleges-mad-with-political-correctness-over-campus-rapes/
Since most of the discussion we have had on this site is focused tightly on the Church, it seemed to me a good idea to bring the Will article forward because it demonstrates that the Catholic Abuse Stampede is in large (but not complete) part an element of larger national ideological-political goings-on.
Will’s overall point is that universities and colleges – which have for so long striven mightily to make themselves hospitable to various aspects of Political Correctness agendas – are now finding that the Beast they have served is now turning on them (as the military has also been discovering, I might add).
There are some thought-provoking bits indeed (especially for the average reader who doesn’t follow the apparently numerous ‘developments’ of the larger national Playbook in this area): Colleges, Will says, are now discovering that “campus victimizations” now include “’micro-aggressions’ often not discernible to the untutored eye”.
As you might quickly realize, this bit about “micro-aggressions” (invisible unless you are ‘trained’ to ‘see’ them) increases the potential field of grievance and ‘victimization’ by a near-cosmic exponent.
And it reminds us of the Michigan Protocols and such similar bits (discussed at some length here in prior comments), whereby certain self-interested ‘experts’ insist that they must be hired (at great public expense) in order to provide the oh-so-necessary ‘special training’ to law-enforcement and legal and even judiciary personnel (in military as well as civilian forums). And that this ‘special expert training’ basically consists in un-training such personnel in the fundamental principles of Western evidentiary and justicial principles and processes.
Will makes the perfectly acute point that, having for so long bought into the PC/progressive agenda, these institutions are now “intellectually defenseless” against the omnivorous engorgement of “the regulatory state” (against many of whose secularist agendas, we recall, the Church has stood firm in conceptual opposition).
He also makes the point that having erected the “hook-up” culture by effectively deconstructing traditional moral principles, progressivism (and its academic acolytes) now has to face – hardly illogically – an upsetting amount of sexual activity among the young. And – I would add – having created the problem in an earlier phase of its engorgement, the regulatory or Nanny State will now further engorge itself in attempting to impose the solution to that problem.
(Will’s deeper point here: the regulatory Nanny State is not a creature of the Right (so to speak) but rather a logical outgrowth of the revolutionary 1960’s New Left, which began so winsomely with Boomers gamboling and frolicking in the Summer of Love and campus radicals whoofing and blowing into the mouthpieces of battery-operated bullhorns instead of going to class.)
Will then does some of ‘the math’ and the stats that demonstrate an exaggeration exponent of 9 or 10 in claims of ‘sexual assault’ at the particular university he examines. And he then further makes reference to “Department of Education lawyers” who “disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process” and who are seeking to enforce a new lowering of the bar with “minimal ‘preponderance of evidence’” regulations (that will work to reduce ‘old’ and ‘traditional’ due-process and rational evidentiary principles in college disciplinary hearings for sex-assault cases and investigations). Readers may find such tropes familiar from various comments proffered on this site.
He continues by noting “the language of pre-judgment” evident in consistently referring to female (allegants) as “survivors”. Then, he says, “combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault” and “then add a doctrine that” the consent of a female can never be considered utterly and permanently reliable (meaning that she can change her mind retroactively at some later date and bring charges).
I would also add that recent military legal praxis has come to include the foregoing of charges against a sex-assault allegant who might have violated a military law by engaging in activity which resulted in that allegant’s then bringing the allegation. The possibilities for ‘mischief’ here (to use the neutral formal legal term) are rife: an individual who has broken a military regulation might seek to avoid legal difficulties by simply claiming sexual-assault or rape after-the-fact; or an individual who subsequent to an encounter feels insufficiently appreciated and wishes to ‘punish’ the partner can bring a subsequent sex-assault or rape allegation against the partner; or an individual who wishes to get out of a unit (one which is perhaps slated for onerous or unpleasant assignments) can simply make such a claim and may by operation of current military regulations be transferred, if desired, out of the unit forthwith.
Anyhoo, my point in bringing this to the table here is to point out that what is happening to the Church is, to no small extent, part of the working out of larger national agendas.
And, lastly, I have to say that I am still concerned about what the These Stone Walls site has recently revealed about the American Bishops engaging in what I have called the Second Stampede: i.e. the American Bishops are urging the new Vatican-level sex-abuse authorities to suspend, and retroactively, canonical due-process rights of accused priests.
Aww! You don't like the'60's. Must have been the lack of hypocricy you're so used to pulling your forelock to.
Speaking of hypocrisy- the 60s "hippies" and "love child" pseudo-psychedelic (bored rich kids) misfits (all social outcasts) are todays' "oppressors".
What did these magical beings do for your 'downtrodden"? They enslaved them in entitlements, like the good socialists they are, that is what they did. Alas, that caste treatment is good enough for the masses, but not for the elites, ask Algore/Igor as he jets around from estate to estate while lecturing you on how to use a single panel of toilet tissue, while bicycling to work for your minimum wage. You idiots!
Get a clue already- you are old enough to know better than to peddle your lefty tripe here.
Yea, I mean, what if someone was 'asking for it.' Right? And anyway, many/most reports of rape or sexual assault are just exaggerations, if not outright lies! Where is the privilege, I mean protection for white males here? It is terrible that anyone gives into the propaganda about sex crimes, when there is no discernable truth but only 'political correctness.' And that the bishops of the RCC should succumb! It's true. I read it on a blog written by a prisoner. Oh, I know, but don't worry the prisoner is innocent. He said so. Everyone was just out to get him and stuff, so . . . Neat!
Brilliantly said LDB, IMO.
Are you down on your knees when your praise LDB (for repeatedly contributing nothing of value)?
On another front, here's another interesting alliance on the left-
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/satanic-temple-leader-seeks-religious-exemption-to-pro-life-laws-offers-to
In regard to the 9th at 1056PM: I have no idea how “the 60’s” got into this. One might ask the author of the comment, but I seriously doubt he can explain his remark either. The second sentence makes no sense as written – which simply reinforces my initial thought here.
Then on the 10th at 145PM we get another nice example of creating a pillow of one’s own to have a fight with, in order to make it look like one is addressing an issue at hand.
But the point about there being no “discernable” truth (did the Harvard Philosophy department and whatever law school LDB putatively attended require no fundamental spelling competence?) is (accidentally, no doubt) well-made.
Yet apparently we are to consider trustworthy the profferings in the record here from JR and the many-monikered (and for the purposes of this afternoon’s matinee) LDB, rather than “a blog written by a prisoner”.
What precisely in my discussion of the material from that blog (TSW) is it that we are not supposed to trust? The (putatively) elite-educated and professionally qualified author of this comment has chosen not to say – or at least the thought of explicating his point did not occur to him.
You brought up the"60's and negatively too boot.
[edited by moderator] Insulting people because some of us don't spell correctly is exactly why you don't get what the '60's were all about. Or maybe you do on some sad level get the'60's; but hate what happened then, culturally; spiritualy.
The people of the U.S. stopped obeying orders blindly just because an appointed leader was designated an "Authority". That moment of conscience/ and conciousness didn't put amatuers in charge. It liberated the majority of people and you just hate that.
People who like to play as authoritarians like you do. Don't play well to an empty hall. People woke up and left. Just like you aren't holding the young after 18. People know truth when they see it and bullshit too. No one stays around the fertilizer plant.
I think LSD freed the world to tell the truth. I think the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan; and Bob Marley freed the masses to tell the truth to their rapists and murderers. Particularly the American people. Not to cripple themselves by bearing guilt that doesn't belong to them.
Hasn't been the same for your crowd since the '60's; has it?
My spelling of discernable/discernible is fine. Check your Webster. Thanks. That you would reference any 'information', whatever it's form, from 'TSW' says enough about you on its own. Scholarly. Ironic, that you should care to read and refer to the writings of such an ultimate 'victim.' Oh yea! I was set up, I tells ya!
Really, using a convicted child rapist as a moral authority on anything, says it all about P.
Really, using an admitted atheist/Communist/homosexual/bigoted supporter and member of the community of those that are the most ardent proponents and perpetrators of child rape as a judge on moral authority on anything says it all, period.
Yes, “discernable” is a variant spelling , but I’ve seen enough of LDB’s output here to stick to my original point.
And then we see another nice example of a gambit we have seen before here, even on this thread: LDB needs to explicate nothing because the simple fact that I would reference “ ‘information’”, whatever it’s form” [sic] from the TSW site is apparently proof-positive on its face and “says enough about you”.
About that bit: a) add grammar to spelling in regard to my point about LDB’s elite/professional formation.
And b) we see the cheap old dodge that since something is so clearly obvious, then it doesn’t even need to be explained.
[edited by moderator]
Nothing need be explained when he or his owners says it; but have us, his opposition say, really; anything. Then everything we say's a lie. That's an old lawyers trick and an old church trick too. Demonize the opposition as being completely perfidious and without explaining why you judge them so.
But then we know why you do it. Your trying to save the unsaveable. To rally the troops and beat back the lesser thans, that clutter your world.
We know exactly why you do it. My question is, Do you know why you do it?
Caotic childhood? Alcohol? Church made You feel safe? There's no excuse for lying even if it's to protect something you love. Do you think you're lying to protect a family member? Aren't us victims your family too?
Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 12:1-13, Luke 4:1-13.
Satan takes on many forms; some of them are self-claimed 'victims', while others are self-claimed 'philosophers' and/or 'intellectuals'.
Wannabe's all.
Uncle Screwtape would be so proud of his two Wormwood boys.
The great majority of "us victims" ….are liars.
"Scholarly. Ironic, that you should care to read and refer to the writings of such an ultimate 'victim…". So incredibly ignorant of the reality of political prisoners and other innocents, estimated to be approximately 25% of the US prison population, especially those social outcasts forced into plea bargains.
Guessing here that "scholarly" is not a word this contributor has pointed in his/her direction very often-
The ‘discoverer’ of the Tuam site is now backing off her original material and is now saying that her claims “have been widely misrepresented” and that she never said bodies were “dumped” and that she had only “speculated” about the septic-tank bit.
Readers may read her comments and the comments of a noted Irish media type here:
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/commentator-dismisses-crazed-claims-about-ireland-child-burials/
The commentator, Brendan O’Neill, (there is a hyperlink in the above-linked article to his original editorial) points out that a) this “local historian” has been “looking into” the history of the Tuam facility “for years”; and that b) no bodies have been found; and that c) such common burial of illegitimate babies was “common practice for illegitimate children in Ireland in the early to mid-twentieth century”; and d) observes – with a refreshing bit of historical and practical common-sense – that in a septic tank that was operational up until the late 1930s such bodies in any number would have pretty much clogged the system into inoperability.
His piece also makes the revealing point that much of this brouhaha – beyond the usual media and social-media titillation – has to do with particularly Irish dynamics: that contemporary Irish society is “obsessed with its dark past”. Which, I would say, put that government into a difficult position: because while – like so many America-aping governments these days – it tries to keep au courant with contemporary American secularist ‘modernizing’ trends and excitements, yet it was the Irish government (and before that the also-America-aping British government) that was responsible for funding these types of institutions. What’s a government to do?
“What madness is this?” – O’Neill asks. How could speculation about how illegitimate children might have been buried in the Ireland of that era lead to claims of 800 little bodies in a septic tank (or “cesspool”) and attempts to equate the work of nuns with the machinations and depredations of the Nazi Holocaust?
I think the same dynamics underlying the answer to that question are those underlying the Stampede, and which have been discussed at great length here on this site.
Your so called "Stampede" as only "been discussed at great length here on this site" by you.
You talking to yourself; does not a discussion make, your highness.
What's an "illigitimate child" some one who's parents didn't have words mumbled over them by a priest? And you feign the moral high ground? [edited by moderator]
In order for Publion to stay informed on the interactions of the American bishops with the Vatican canon law powers-that-be, he consults TSW, the blog of a prisoner – some parish priest who was convicted of sexually abusing a minor. There are not that many priest convicts so this guy is special in this respect, and probably only in this respect. I will not go on and on because I know that you all know who this guy is and know about his blog, TSW.
Publion cites TSW in his post of June 9, 2014 at 4:10 pm, saying that this blog from jail 'recently revealed' information on the thoughts and actions of the Amercian bishops. 'Revealed'? Really? Some still-father convict broke the story for Publion? And the convicted sex abuser is worthy of citation so that every reader can know and presumably respect the source. Why not just say your friend told you? Or say that it has been 'revealed' to you that . . .? Would these attributions not do just as well or better? But no, you think that the still-father convict is innocent or at least not guilty – the victim of a vast conspiracy, motivated by a movement called the 'stampede.'
So the jail blog would be a good source of current high-level US bishop and Vatican insight/information? No. It would not be. I will give you credit though, your spelling is almost always correct and that is neat.
When I submitted my comment of the 12th at 103PM the comments of the 11th/703PM and 722PM and the 12th at 128PM were not up. Lest it be thought that when I mentioned “the same dynamics underlying the answer to that question are those underlying the Stampede, which have been discussed at great length here on this site” I had the aforementioned comments in front of me on the screen and was simply shooting fish in a barrel.
But here they are and as pretty a passel from the Playbook as one might reasonably (as it were) expect from that quarter.
In regard to the 1960s: I certainly gave no indication that I “miss” them nor that I approved of some of the costs and consequences flowing from them, some of which I identified in my original comment. And JR admits as much when he himself says in his 11th/703PM comment that I referred to them “and negatively too boot” [sic].
And yet again the Drang Nach dem Hoch Punkt (Push Toward the High-Ground, i.e. of victimization): JR reports himself as ‘insulted’ because his (oddly patterned) mis-spelling and punctuation is corrected if I am quoting it in my own comments.
The only thing interesting or new here is that he then tries to assert that somehow my making those corrections is – the Wig of Lecture here – “exactly why you don’t get what the ‘60’s were all about”. Or – then again – “maybe [I] do”… Well, this is certainly an acute assessment that he delivers here.
But he will then – for once – explain his assertion, but it’s impossible to follow the bouncing ball of his ‘reasoning’: is it a good thing or a bad thing that “amateurs” [correction supplied] were not put in charge? And who are and who are-not “amateurs” in this theoretical envisioning?
As far as the 60s being a “moment of conscience/ and consciousness” [correction supplied]: they could as easily be seen as a Moment when the cafeteria ketchup-squads got to take over the microphones (much as Mao was unleashing in the Cultural Revolution over there at precisely the same time). It always did strike me as curious: although this, that, and the other ‘revolutionary’ took over a ship or an aircraft, they didn’t know how to operate it – using it merely as a stage for their personal fever-vision bits and relying on the ‘bourgeois’ to keep the thing moving.
But I would say that the most disturbing thing about all that was that the government actually stroked its chin and took it all seriously (a cultural and political actuality factored into the Anderson Strategies as well).
And apparently hoping to create some sort of a wave that will float his own (somewhat rickety) personal boat, JR then tries for the theory that because I doubt or question a great deal of his material, then I – but of course – “just hate that” (i.e. that “liberation” which allowed JR and so many similar to him to get to the microphones and … say what they say). And again: the Anderson Strategies took advantage of this marvelously, as I have often discussed here.
Thus in questioning Abusenik material I prove clearly that I “hate” “liberation”. To which I would respond: if kicking dubious Abusenik tires is somehow interfering with “liberation”, then that “liberation” is a highly dubious proposition to begin with.
“Authoritarian”? I ask questions (and still await so very many answers). In what way is that possibly characterizable as being “authoritarian”. Do I tell people to shut-up? Do I deliver formal psychological diagnoses of them (e.g. “sociopath”)? Do I simply bethump people with ungrounded and un-explained assertions and then claim some flavor of outrage when my assertions are not simply accepted as true?
Although somebody around here is the source of that sort of stuff, it is not me.
Then the old Playbook attempt to spin: nobody’s listening and the hall is empty. JR knows that for a fact, does he? And how might that be, pray?
Then some truly odd bit of whackness: “Just like you aren’t holding the young after 18”. Where in any of my comments have I ever tried to do that? Or – yet once again – has JR started to address some other entity that only he can see hovering near his computer?
His approving attitude toward LSD, however, may explain more than anyone might previously have allowed themselves to think. That’s as may be.
Then – incomprehensibly – we are apparently to accept that “the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan; and Bob Marley” [sic] were ‘raped’ and ‘murdered’ and then – even in that hypothetical condition – were able to “tell the truth to their rapists and murderers”. That’s quite a fever vision. Does LSD do that to somebody? I’m not really familiar with the stuff and its effects, except in a general sort of way.
Perhaps JR will tell us that he meant something else entirely. But then we are right back at the Abusenik Story Problem: so many of them don’t really seem sufficiently competent with language or even conceptualization or rational-processing, and yet insist that their constructed productions of stories be believed forthwith and without question. And the Anderson Strategies took this into account as well.
However he has a point about so much being different since the 60s. They closed down most public mental health asylums, for one thing.
Then (the 11th, 722PM) we get something trying to mask its core incoherence with a Zen-like style: “Nothing need be explained when he or his owners say it”. Which bit of whackness is then followed immediately by “but have us, his opposition say, really; anything” … which then apparently establishes the conclusion that “Then everything we say’s a lie”.
Imagine a high school teacher confronted with these bits in a weekend-composition: if a red pen is taken to the text, then the student (and this particular student especially) will claim he is being oppressed by authority and attacked. If the material is left to stand as it is, then one more bit of whackness gets out onto the human highway masquerading as an example of intelligent discourse and the student will go around waving his not-failed composition as proof that he can write. What’s one to do?
Then, marvelously, somehow JR manages to see the tactic of ‘demonizing the opposition’ everywhere except in the mirror. So very Abusenik.
Then “we know” why I do (whatever it is I am supposed to be doing in this fever vision): I am “trying to save the unsaveable”. How kind of JR to try to imagine what it feels like for me to have to face some of the material I face – how very kind. But I am, alas, not trying to “save” the Abuseniks. To make for myself such a presumptive goal would be hubris indeed. I’m just asking questions and pointing out where dots don’t connect. Which infuriates the Abusenik mentality. As well it might.
Or was JR going for something else with this comment? Then he should express himself clearly and concisely – or take better notes from his sources.
The rest is the usual ketchup-stained stuff.
Then comes LDB (the 12th at 128PM): one can almost feel the tremendous strain of trying to mimic adult style. Did composing this comment give him a headache? I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.
But although LDB strives mightily to mimic adult form, he can’t really manage to mimic the content. All we have is a slightly more stylistically stilted repetition of his point that a blog from a prisoner … well, does whatever it does or proves whatever it proves about a) the reader, b) the blog-author, and/or c) the material under discussion. Marvelous, is it not, to see the elite philosophically and legally trained and formed mind at full gallop?
And this stilted but jaw-cracking effort at mimicry extends even so far as to offer – waittttt for itttttt! – a link as a reference (which is almost never seen with this commenter). A reference to … one of my own comments on this thread. Ah well, but he has the style down at least.
But in regard to his question to me: Yes, it was a revelation to me, gleaned from material on that site, about the American Bishops. One doesn’t hear much about it elsewhere. Had LDB heard about it before from somewhere else? Where? Or – if LDB hadn’t heard about it – then would not the TSW material have ‘revealed’ something new to him? Or am I thinking too much?
I was concerned for the idea, not for “the source”. But of course, among the bottom-dwellers lured up to the surface by the Anderson Strategies and the Playbook, it is not a matter of ideas or of facts but simply of squirting their ink and tossing their plops. As LDB so vividly demonstrates in this paragraph of his comment. Thanks for that.
Then LDB too either begins communing with some other entity only he can see hovering over his computer, or else creates yet another pillow for himself to wrestle-with: he goes on about some “you” who “think that the still-father convict is innocent or at least not guilty” and so on. I don’t recall my delivering any opinion on innocence or guilt, since my subject was the American Bishops. Again, it’s the information, not the source.
But this is all LDB’s got here so he’s going to dance with them he brung t’the dance. Thus: am I implying that “the jail blog would be a good source of current high-level US bishop and Vatican insight/information?” Well, I would say that it is more information than I have seen forthcoming from LDB in any or all of his Wigs and monikers here. Has he his own preferred sources in mind?
Ah – and then, just to make sure we aren’t liberated enough to draw any conclusion he doesn’t want us to draw, he answers his own question: “No. It would not be.” Well, we have it on his authority. His authoritarian authority. His and JR’s. Wow. What then can be said?
You say above P about my not recognizing my own demonizing of you.
Let's go back to the begining of my posting here. I demonized no one. I joked about the length of your posts (which are still endlessly dull). That was it. No attacks. Just a criticism of your droning on.
But you, on the other hand, have done nothing but attack from the get go. That's what you were sent here to do.( I say sent here because you are just too unnatural to be believed a normal poster of opinions. A normal poster would employee normal conversational technequies not a " start from attack; stay in attack; and never leave the attack mode" ala Nixon and Obama's treatment of whistle blowers. )
Look you are doing the same thing with LDB. (You used to, at the begining, be a little impressed by the fact he attended Harvard, but when he "failed" to admire you back as a fellow member of an elite "educated" class. You just went your usual [edited by moderator].)
So you're fooling no one. You were placed here to blow your smoke. Spout your nonsense; and degrade degrade degrade. Surely the rest of the readership have noted that about you and D. You haven't exactly encouraged a crowd of like minded obfuscators to show up here in agreement with you. Where's your version of the anti "stampede" stampede? Will they be comin round the mountain when they come? The mountain of your [edited by moderator] obviously.
Those wascally gay men, there they go again (nary a Catholic priest, or child-eating nun, among them…) -
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/06/13/former-boy-scouts-leader-allegedly-abused-boys-for-decades/?intcmp=latestnews
Publion—What does that statement mean:
You are not holding the young after 18?
Please explain
Me, I made that statement about the young leaving the church after 18 years of age. They don't hang in there.
In regard to the 13th at 903AM: my ideas about the Stampede have certainly not been “discussed” by JR – that much can be said. Deploying plop-tossing comebacks does not a discussion make.
I have no idea what an “illigitimate child” is. An “illegitimate child” is an old technical term associated with the era of the Tuam institution. His theology of marriage seems rather grossly off-base, but what’s new? And to think he feigns as much knowledge as he feigns.
In response to ‘Me’ (the 14th at 318PM): I don’t know what the sentence means. Since it is JR’s, one might wish to ask him.
You worship plop as long as it comes from a billionaire in a silk beany. Hypocrite.
Here's a little Irish article ye might fancy. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Horrific-truths-of-treatment-emerge-from-Catholic-mother-and-baby-homes.html
On the 14th at 228PM we are now informed that JR had something else on his mind when he segued into the young-leaving-church observation. Nothing new there. Although Christianity and the Church are growing in numbers throughout much of the world, with the exception of the West, where a decline in overt religious affiliation is general among the young. And how does that factor into his cartoon?
The one-liner from 234PM on the 14th need simply be left there for the contemplation of anyone who considers it worthwhile spending the time to do so.
I’m going to bet that this yet-again unexplained piece from the web (the 14th at 452PM) is just another bit dredged up from the bottom of the internet. Most likely it will also exemplify that curious strand in contemporary Ireland mentioned by Irish editor Brendan O’Neill: a repugnance at the squalor in the Irish past and an attack on all elements of it. And if I am correct in this surmise, then it may well also demonstrate a cavalier disregard for rational assessment of evidence in order to keep its fever-vision going … which is a dynamic hardly unfamiliar to those familiar with the Stampede and with Abuseniks.
Just another self-loathing, swill-embalmed, lefty Clinton-'Bama loving politician wanabee limo-lib. Good ol' New York is full of these dime a dozen BS "artists and poets".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rory-fitzgerald/niall-odowd-the-voice-of_b_499156.html
I missed all the references/citations to support any claims in this well-known drunks 'article'; do we have any of those 'annoying things' on which to groundtruth O'Drunky's charges?
[edited by moderator]
I noticed above, you said I was Satan. Have you no sympathy for the devil? He was stupid enough to fight God. That's as dumb as it gets. A born looser as it were.
And God still uses the devil to test mankind's love for God. The devil is a very hard worker. And evidently just another employee of the God head, whom God could fire at will; but some how seems to need.
God's still blaming us for evolving out of the trees? Our whole existence in fact was coming out from the Tree of Knowledge as we swang down to eat better.
We're monkeys kids and that's all we are. You in particular seem to hang back with the apes.
Paradoxical on my part? Of course i was raised to believe after GOD man was the center of the universe.Watch the new Cosmos series and see just how unimportant we are. No better than any bacteria compared to the universe. And you want to talk about devils?????.
I might be inclined to agree with your low opinion of yourself- if that is how you choose to roll, that is your business, but, why drag the rest of mankind down in the sludge with you? Do you hate all of creation? Is this what your religions, Atheism and Communism, do for the soul?
Let me know when some other creature in the great 'cosmos' (which, according to your illogic, banged itself into existence), including your esteemed bacteria and apes, completes any great artistic masterpiece, engineers a space shuttle, or cures a child from cancer.
I won't be waiting, "Cornelius" -
"Get your (religious) paws off of me you damned ape!"
I noticed the apes who inherited the planet didn't bring christianity with them in Planet of the Apes. Charlton Heston didn't discover God at the end of POA just the Statue of Liberty :^)
Sheesh you don't believe the Big Bang either?????? But Pie in the Sky; that you believe in. Extraordinary! You are the truest window to the past I have ever seen. Imagine, readers, living in D's world? All ignorance; incense; and inquisition.
I have just come across the JR comment of the 13th at 910AM.
And a fine little example of the JR M.O. it is.
I didn’t use anything from TSW as “a moral authority”; I simply used that site as a source about something the American Bishops have done.
And that pretty much “says it all about” JR.
I'm sorry if I was wrong about your using TSW as a moral authority.( You are so convoluted it's hard to keep up with what excuse you'll use next for the church).
Nixon's White House had the perfect plan to destroy whistleblowers: By first denying any and every thing they say. Then denegrate them as people. Call their morals and or sanity into question just as P and D have done here for years.
This is a planned behavior. Not something coming naturally. Conversation is natural. P and D's behavior is Gargantually unnatural. It's attack, attack, attack all the time. I'm not your enemy. I don't care what you believe in. I'm not stopping you from anything. I'm not stopping your church from doing anything. What's to be feared from a pacifistic "enemy" So why all the fear? Why be on the attack from the get go? It's just not natural.
"Nixon's White House" is Romper Room comapred to lefty Obama's dachau. Nixon's administration, as bad as it was, was amateurish compared with King O's hijinx.
Under which Commie regime do you wish to live? Let us know, we'll chip in for the one-way ticket.
Liars, and their lies, must be challenged. Don't take it personally. It's a dirty job, but, we're obligated to do it.
Here's another one for the "cosmos" (summarized by none other than some commenters favorite blogger)-
http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/science-faith-big-bang-theory-creation/
I want to live in an American commie regime. Where vicious little snipes like you are recognized for just who they are: vicious little snipes. :^)
"American commie" is an oxymoron. You can't be both. You may be a US citizen and [foolishly, naively] think you are or 'wannabe' a Commie (how 60s vogue of you, albeit, rather dated, aren't we? Are you still in your Neru collar and love beads, too?), but, then, you are not an American – you are anti American.
Does telling the truth, as one sees it and for which one provides evidence, make one a "vicious little snipe"? I make no dubious claims to anything, as do you. Are you a 'vicious little snipe'?
How have my comments been vicious little snipe tidbits? It would be interesting to hear it, specifically, quoted, by you.
Predicting here and now: we'll never see anything even resembling being responsive to any query in this post-
The only "query" around here is me. :^)
Your saying that being "an American Communist (sic) is an oxymoron" is a vicious little snipe-like thing to say. Your political opinions are superior to mine? I don't think so.
And since I'm as much an American as you are, who are you to say I can not be a good communist and a good American? (Pope Leo XIII( I believe) said one can be a good catholic and a communist.)The Soviet Union no longer exists. The anti commie fervor of post war America was based on it's existence; and the false construct that American Reds were more loyal to Russia than the U.S..
Were you a veteran? No. I was. Did you sacrifice 2 years of your life defending American imperialism? No I did. So quit being the gutter snipe you presently are; and clam up about what you don't know.( Which is lots.)
Go read Atlas Shrugged again. That book's your real bible anyway.
I maintain that being an American Communist is an oxymoron – that is my opinion, supported by facts, and I stand by it. It is not a 'vicious little snipe' comment, to which you uncleverly refer- it is an opinion, based on my understanding/interpretation of facts (of which you know so little), and that observation should not be insulting to one who is proud to be a Communist and ashamed/critical of being an American, as you are, and as documented.
Hung out there by your own words, poor old thing.
Nope, you are not as American as I am because you are an admitted antiAmerican – you hate this country, as documented here (and elsewhere).To love Communism is to hate America; Communism is, by definition, antiAmerican (free, republican, private property supporting, capitalistic, moral). Just as Athesim is antireligion (mostly antiCatholic).
Own it, it's all yours- not proud so much, anymore?
You know nothing of my service to this country- you do not know me, so you lie, again.
You have no idea what I read since you dont know me and I never revealed my reading list here or anywhere, so, you lie, again.
Seems as though you might be projecting [again] re: the 'gutter snipe' thing- you might wish to reread your posts to comments on this TMR article, alone, and rethink that one.
[edited by moderator]
You also "maintain' that there's a life after death with zero proof. You said you had a career in the military. I didn't say that about you. You said it.
I would rather be a Communist any day and still an American than a fantasy driven psuedo-patriot who doesn't know diddly about squat and who lies like a rug about everything. Hoping for an afterlife; no matter the complete lack of evidence for such a "life". In your case the question is: Do you have a life now?
More pitch-perfect stuff. And uncharacteristically formatted.
On the 15th at 702PM we have an apology by JR that is instantly followed by – waittttt for itttttttt – an excuse: my material is “so convoluted” – doncha know? – that “it’s hard to keep up with”. Ah but of course. Words and sentences and paragraphs appearing in bunches will have that effect on some types.
Also the bit about “what excuse you’ll use next for the church” – since apparently a reliance on demonstrable evidence is somehow making-an-excuse. Ah but of course.
Then another stab at JR’s ‘personal reality’: he is a “whistleblower”, doncha know? And anybody who disagrees with him is a revenant of “Nixon’s White House”.
Then the riffing on that theme, with more of JR’s webs artfully (and uncharacteristically so) woven in: First, that – as Nixon’s people apparently did to the “whistleblowers” – the “sanity and morals” of said whistleblowers are called into question. But I would say that the “sanity and morals” (or lack of same) of the Abuseniks are demonstrated rather vividly in their material, and have been from Day One.
This leads nicely into the assertion that “this is a planned behavior”. Alas no, I simply work with the material that is put up here by the Abuseniks. Unless the objective of seeking rationality, coherence and credibility is a “planned behavior”. Constructing stories for cash … that would be a “planned behavior”, certainly.
But then this particular riff is drawn out further: this is not only a “planned behavior” but it is also “not something coming naturally”. What on earth can this mean? Unless it is somehow meant to imply that the objective of seeking rationality, coherence and credibility is not ‘natural’. And perhaps – for congenitally truth-challenged and the habitually un-truthy – that would be true.
That then also enables the epithetical bit about being not only “unnatural” but “Gargantually” so (the Rabelaisian reference intended no doubt to demonstrate literary chops, but the unfortunately ignored dynamic of projection merely resulting in the recoil of Rabelais’s fantasy-spinning monstrosity upon JR himself).
Then – artfully weaving in a victim-y trope – “it is attack, attack, attack all the time”. And again we see the self-serving psychic economy that has been constructed here: put out and assert greatly dubious material and then claim that when that material is questioned one is merely the victim of an “attack”. Given the consistent problems with his material, this is about as close to a conceptual perpetual-motion machine as one is likely to encounter.
And surely there is some real projection involved when the incorrigible plop-tossing of the Abuseniks appears alongside the characterization of “it is attack, attack, attack all the time”.
Then – the Wig of Plaintive and Bemused Innocence – JR is “not your enemy”. And thus once again we see the typical Abusenik casting of “discussion” and analysis and assessment as a PR combat … but that is largely what the Stampede has been all along. Yet I don’t think that this casting of the Stampede as a form of PR combat is an accident; it is indeed “a planned behavior”, and Gargantua the congenitally phantasm-spinning monstrosity is actually quite relevant in reference to the Stampede.
And then – taking marvelousness to a truly manipulative extreme – this comment under JR’s screen-name goes for the idea that those who “attack, attack, attack” him actually “fear” him. And therein, once again, we see the self-serving psychic economy that has been constructed. (Because if JR is ‘feared’, then his stuff must be reely reely true and good and so the evil un-Truthies fear it, doncha see?)
And then the whole thing neatly wrapped up in a bow with a return to the base trope of natural/unnatural.
Very neatly. Too neatly. With the exception of that one single mis-spelling (“denegrate”), this comment of the 15th at 702PM is not only free of spelling and grammar errors but actually makes a credible stab at competent construction (which isn’t the same thing as saying its substance makes a good case for itself).
So, in a pretty example of recoil, a reader might well wonder: if this is actually JR’s work we are reading here, then why is such modest but real technical competence so very often hidden in his material?
Anyhoo, we see yet again how dodgy Abuseniks are in the material and stories they produce. And – yet again – the brilliance of the Anderson Strategies in simultaneously a) luring them up from their usual depths and b) ensuring that their material is not widely or deeply examined.
How do we know you are not "constructing stories" for cash? You don't tell us who you are; what you do. You good be father Schmuck working for all the abuser priests; or an opus dei affecianado groveling before your imaginary heavenly despot.
The vast majority of rapes are not performed in public. They are usually performed in private one on one.The consequences of rapes having occured do appear in public. They are as easily read as Jack and Jill and like that children's rhyme our rapes left all us so injured "tumbling down".
If your "Stampede"(and I do mean your) is so Gargantuan in scope, where are the numbers? Give us the numbers of your "enemies" ranks, please. "Gargantuan" should be at least visable and countable.
When I put up my most recent comment on this thread, the JR comment of the 16th at 1025AM was not yet up.
We notice quickly that it is yet another oddly well-formatted and extended comment, compared to the usual material from this source.
We are now informed that from the beginning here JR was (in addition to just ‘mentioning’ stuff) merely ‘joking’ (as in ‘Ha Ha, just joking, nothing to see here, folks; and wouldn’t it be obsessive and sociopathic to analyze mere ‘mentionings’ and simple ‘jokes’’? … that sort of thing). He cawn’t think why anybody might get the idea he was doing anything more or anything else than that. Unless, of course, some people are just evil and taking his stuff wayyyyy too seriously (because – Ha Ha – it was just a joke, doncha see?).
But then immediately thereafter: all he was doing was making “a criticism of your droning on”. Ooooooops – so now instead of mere ‘mentioning’ and mere ‘joking’ JR – a moment later – cops to coming into the deep end of the pool and starting to make ‘criticism’. Well, that much is true – and apparently his mind is easily put off by words and sentences and paragraphs appearing in bunches, let alone by questions put to him about his material and his assertions.
If one doesn’t like the heat in the kitchen, perhaps one should stay out of it. Rather than coming in, complaining of the heat, and then claiming that evil persons are deliberately trying to attack one by turning on the stoves and doing kitchen-y type stuff, and all the while insisting that one is an accomplished and serious chef. (But this scenario would probably make a neat SNL skit, would it not?)
Then – as usual – the “attack” bit, as if questions and noticing non-connecting dots constituted an “attack”.
But then: I do this sort of thing “because that’s what you were sent here to do”. Really? But we see here further corollaries of that self-serving psychic-economy I have been noticing: JR doesn’t show up too well here because all along he – poor innocent simple and truthy truth-teller and whistle-blower that he is – has been up against forces “sent here” for the precise purpose of making him look (fill in the blank here).
And he will explain that assertion, and he does so by referring back – in a remarkable (for him) demonstration of continuity – to a prior comment on this thread: because I am “just too unnatural to be believed as a normal poster of opinions”. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
I may not be “normal” in the lower precincts of the Webverse where JR’s type is most congenially at home. But where or why would I ever deny that?
And what are “normal conversational techniques” [corrections supplied] and do such “techniques” preclude the assessment of assertions and claims and stories? We see here a vivid example of the Abusenik confoundment when their usual stuff is even minimally assessed; according to the Playbook the Abuseniks expect nothing but ‘empathic’ ooohs and awwwws and clucks. Anything else can only be an ‘attack’ (that spoils their own attacks that were supposed to have proceeded without interference).
And again: if questioning dubious material is going to be taken as “attack”, then JR has pretty much set himself up as a permanent ‘victim of attack’. Neat.
And, in a charming fraternal shout-out, JR notes that I am “doing the same thing with LDB”. I would say, rather, that the same dynamics have occurred with LDB because he has been doing pretty much the same thing JR has been doing. (And LDB – allegedly – has an elite philosophical and professional education as well, doesn’t he?)
He came under scrutiny from me not because he “’failed’ to admire” me but because – as I explained at great length back in those days – his material reflected almost nothing of any such sort of educational and professional training whatsoever.
And what sort of type comes on the internet to make comments in order to ‘be admired’? (Short-answer: Abuseniks, who want to be personally and empathically believed because of their stories, unexamined and accepted without question, thankyuhvurrymutch.)
I have never claimed to be a member of any “elite educated class” – JR mistakes my material for LDB’s own claims about himself.
Thus the conclusion that I am “fooling no one” fails rather significantly, although I would think the assertion still has a nicely accurate if bumptious recoil.
Then mere epithets about “smoke” and “nonsense” – no examples and no explanations, but of course.
As for “degrade degrade degrade”: I would strongly suggest that as a general rule any internet commenter degrades him/herself by putting up sub-par material. All anybody else can do is point out the problems with the material.
As for whether readers choose to comment or simply draw their own conclusions about what they read here, that’s up to the individual readers and I am content simply to speak my piece and let the chips fall where they may. Which is not how Abuseniks roll at all.
"Sub-par material" what's "par", Princess? Your "marterial"? The "standard" you claim to be "standard"?
Oh! O.K. Mr Amin what ever you say.
Sorry! I must have forgotten that you are in charge of all definititions here. Did god make you the "par" setter for us all? If he did that's more proof he's a despot and dysfunctional along with it. Giving us you is completely "sub-par".
Are there any church victims you believe? If so could you give us an example?
[edited by moderator] [The title of] this post refering to "SNAP attacks the Pope's outreach to abuse victims".
What "outreach"? A press photo opp for the church's benefit? What does Sunny Jim's outreach do for victims exactly? Bupkis that's what it does for us. Saying your sorry is a far cry from amending the injuries you've created.
Pope Frank's pr ploys do exactly the same thing your work here does: nothing good.
Pretending dot's don't connect and never if ever asking any questions that don't elicit total doubt of victims makes a non attack how? You never have a good word to say about anything regarding your church's victims. Never. So you are always in attack and deny mode. I still don't see your troops rallying around you, General Con. They'll be comin' round the mountain when they come I suppose.
Readers will note two points, at least.
First, there’s nothing much new in any of JR’s recent crop of stuff.
Second, the numerous differences between the current crop of his comments and some of the better-formatted material should be clear.
That being said, we proceed.
On the 17th at 1110AM we see – I would say – the typical response of somebody who sorta knows he will never measure up to any standards and/or doesn’t wish to be held to any standards, and also has slyly entrenched himself in the idea that there are no standards or – working out to the same thing – nobody in sight who can point out any standards.
The irritation is then underlined by the typical reversion to the gender-bendy epithet and then the reference to Idi Amin (although – marvelously – JR has nothing to say about the authoritarianism inherent and obvious in his own assigning of epithets).
And then the juvenile riff on “par” and “sub-par”.
On to 1044AM: Can JR quote any “story” I have told here, for which I have demanded credibility and hurled various types of plop at whomever didn’t go along with that demand? No, he can’t. And he hasn’t. But for lack of anything better, he rummages in the mental shoebox for the old screen-name bits again, as if it hasn’t been taken apart several times already. But he spices it up with some epithets, as if the content of my ideas or of anybody’s ideas can be determined by any fantasied and self-serving innuendoes about my being “sent” here (because – doncha see? – if it weren’t for my meddling, JR’s material would instantly come off as credible, rational, and so very truthy).
That rapes are primarily not committed in public is a truism. That the “consequences of rapes” do appear in public, however, requires that we first determine a) if the rape occurred and then b) if any X can be demonstrably and clearly connected to the rape as an effect is to a single cause. And thus they are precisely n-o-t “as easily read as Jack and Jill” and so on. It’s quite apropos, however, that JR relies upon the world of fairy-tales and cartoons for his example here.
On then to 1046AM: I would believe any “church victim” who could produce demonstrable evidence. Does JR have any examples of same that he could give us?
On then to 1101AM: In what way do I – or could I – “pretend” that dots don’t connect? They do or they don’t and that point can be established by explication. Which is perhaps one of the reasons JR doesn’t do explication or explanation.
And then are given a bit about the problem being merely that my questions are designed to “elicit total doubt of victims”. How does on possibly do that? I ask questions that arise from the stories themselves – if stories look bad because the questions expose problems with them, in what way is that my fault rather than the fault of the story (or the story-teller or the story-fabricator)?
I am not here to spread “good words about” anybody (myself included). I am here to ask questions that have not been asked and that I think should be asked and should have been asked.
And so I am always in “question” mode. And rarely have the questions been answered. As the record shows.
May we be spared a recitation of the list of all the things JR doesn’t “see”. But this bit about “your troops rallying around you” is simply a repeat of material already dealt with: this site is for assessment and discussion, not for counting noses (the Argument from Numbers). But of course, for the Abuseniks, it is all about being a sort of ‘popularity contest’, counting noses and seeing who ooohs and awwwws and clucks the loudest or longest.
Then another epithet (although “General Con” is so abstruse as to be meaningless).
On then to 1119AM: Having himself introduced the Rabelaisian reference to Gargantua, and apparently realizing its recoil, JR now tries to attach the sticky thing to me: “where are the numbers” of the Stampede? That would be the number of allegants (maybe 12 or 13 thousand) plus the number of references to Catholic abuse in excess of such media references to any other denomination’s or organization’s abuse (I got 2.35 million in a search engine for ‘catholic sex abuse stories’ and 20 million for ‘catholic sex abuse’; other readers may get many more depending on the parameters they enter).
So “Gargantua” is “visable” [correction not supplied] and “countable”.
And that’s all, folks. As the Cartoonist saith.
YOU are the one who calls it a "Stampede". Stampedes require herds. Well how many victims are there in your "Stampede"? Why isn't your church giving you the number of accusations world wide?
2.35 million "catholic sex abuse" stories!!!!! You are joking. Not possible. That many victims are certainly possible out of 1.25 BILLION catholics; but 2.35 million newspaper or T.V. stories or postings of indivdual histories? Not bloody likely.
Further information about the Tuam matter is coming out.
Readers can consult this NC Register article here
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/digging-for-the-truth-about-buried-irish-babies/
The site had been a workhouse since the 1840s (and there might very well have been burials of the indigent on the site whose bones would also be somewhere on the grounds).
The County Council was the actual owner of the facility when it was run by the Bon Secours Sisters (and was responsible for funding the facility).
Two of the local children who discovered some bones in 1975 say that there were far too few bones for there to have been 800 bodies (and nobody knows whether these are bones from the site’s poor-house or workhouse era or from its time as the Bon Secours facility.
Death records indicate occasional outbreaks of infectious diseases at the orphanage; a third of the deaths occurred during the years of World War 2; there are 14 certificates listing malnutrition as the cause of death (did the decedent come to the facility in an advanced state of malnutrition?).
The ‘septic tank’ bit is merely that local researcher – Corless’s – surmise from looking at old maps of the site.
The Irish government wants to open an investigation, but only of the Catholic-run facilities and not the far more numerous completely public-run facilities (which will preclude any comparison of the Tuam/Catholic-run facilities with the public government facilities in terms of deaths and overall health conditions … and funding).
Lastly, one journalist has now gone on record as decrying the sensationalism and phantasmagoria that have effloresced on the Web and in the media about this topic and gives an example of how what he said was twisted and inflated in those venues. Readers might note the similarity to the Stampede aspects of the Catholic Abuse Matter.
How hard it must have been to find a pro Catholic "yea abuse of children" reporter in Ireland. This formerly most Catholic of countries (Poland now stands alone) buys the church's dung no more. Probably the septic tank tomb in Tuam helps in that much needed transformation from magic to meaning.
Is the Australian military run by the Catholic Church?
I sure hope they reassign that Royal Commission of theirs from drumming up lawsuits against the Church to looking into the atrocities permitted by their government…since the sixties.
Oh My- who to sue?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/18/world/asia/australia-military-boys-abused/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
You, if hit by a truck would be the first to sue and rightfully so. You act as if seeking compensation for injuries is beyond the pale simply because the defendant happens to be the one true faith, according to you. Hypocrite.
There you go, again, presuming to know me and how I might react to some tragedy. You don't know me, so how do you claim to know how I would react?
Do you also claim that the obvious and measurable injuries of being hit by a truck are akin to immeasurable and unobservable claims made by a majority of victims of dubious character generations ago? Did you also know that EVIDENCE is required to sue for damages resulting from a vehicle accident? Did you also know that there are SOLs in most states regarding such lawsuits?
Who, here, is the hypocrite?