Shining the truth on the corrupt Spotlight: JoAnn Wypijewski from CounterPunch
We at TheMediaReport.com are not the only ones angered that Hollywood awarded the factually challenged movie Spotlight its Best Picture prize at the Oscars Sunday night.
Veteran left-wing journalist JoAnn Wypijewski – who herself was in Boston during the spring of 2002 reporting on the Catholic sex abuse story – has just unleashed a stinging attack on the Boston Globe, the makers of Spotlight, the media, Church-suing contingency lawyers, and so-called "survivors" in a new piece in the left-wing blog, CounterPunch. This is truly a must-read piece:
"Oscar Hangover Special: Why 'Spotlight' Is a Terrible Film"
by JoAnn Wypijewski at CounterPunch
Among Wypijewski's many notable passages:
- "[B]ecause I know some of what is untrue, I don't believe the personal injury lawyers or the Boston Globe's 'Spotlight' team or the Catholic 'faithful' who became harpies outside Boston churches, carrying signs with images of Satan, hurling invective at congregants who'd just attended Mass, and at least once – this in my presence – spitting in the face of a person who dared dispute them."
- "The Globe did not so much practice journalism as it constructed a courtroom of panic, one that reversed the presumption of innocence and spilled over into real courtrooms where real defendants didn't stand a chance."
- "I don't believe the claims of all who say they are victims – or who prefer the more tough-minded label 'survivor' – because ready belief is not part of a journalist's mental kit, but also because what happened in 2002 makes it difficult to distinguish real claims from fraudulent or opportunistic ones without independent research."
We highly recommend this article in its entirety if you want a true story of the Church abuse crisis bereft of all the hyperbole, hysteria, and bias.
Take the time. Read it.
On then to JR’s of the 7th at 1146AM:
Here he comments upon the comment of ‘Malcolm Harris’ (the 6th at 829PM). MH has quoted the Wypijewski piece’s discussion of “moral panic”, a term that is also the subject of the 1998 book Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in America by Philip Jenkins.
While the reality that the term “moral panic” seeks to describe is very real, I’ve never really liked the term itself. While it seeks to ‘go deep’ into the examination of an actual public phenomenon, exploring its originating dynamics in psychology, especially group-psychology, yet it goes so deep it doesn’t capture the actual consequences as they played out in this country over the decades since the 1970s (and also in the post-2002 phase of the Stampede, although that phase hadn’t yet taken place when the book was written).
It seems clear to me that the Doyle proposal to the American Bishops in 1985 – composed by a psychologist and an attorney and Doyle when the McMartin Pre-School Satanic Ritual Day Care Abuse phenomenon (itself certainly a form of a stampede) was still not only fresh but on-going – not only i) sensed the group-psychological ‘deep’ dimensions but also – more practically – ii) sensed how this ‘deep’ element could fuel something particularly dangerous to the Church as it synergized with legal, political, media and other developments also waxing at that time.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 7th at 1146AM:
On page 6 of his book, Jenkins refers to the theory of “moral panic” conceived by two British sociologists in the 1970s: that “a wave of irrational public fear can be said to exist ‘when the official reaction to a person, group of persons or series of events is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered’”.
It has been my thought that the 1970s in this country saw the waxing of a number of varied elements that synergized to create the perfect-storm that I would call the Stampede: the political rise of feminisim /combined with the postwar theory and doctrine and mantras of ‘victimism’ / with a hefty dollop of Soviet thought as formulated by Gramsci and translated here by academic feminists (who substituted ‘victims’ and especially female ‘victims’ for the Soviet ‘proletariat’ in their effort to attack ‘patriarchal oppression’) and practical agitprop masters like Alinsky (capitalizing on the then-fresh trend of ‘empowerment’ of the ‘oppressed’)/ and all of it dogmatically secularist /
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 7th at 1146AM:
created both the demographic and conceptual momentum which induced ‘liberals’ and especially the Democrats to embrace the whole thing with “official” policies and legislation / while ‘conservative’ pols responded to concerns about rising crime and the decline of law-and-order / and while the media leaned now to ‘soft news’ and ‘soft reporting’ and ‘advocacy journalism’ (i.e. you don’t even try to report objectively; rather you decide which side you support and then a) tell ‘stories’ provided by ‘victims’ to support the side you have chosen and b) select-out any material that would make your chosen side ‘look bad’) / and tort-attorneys ( a powerful political lobbying interest in their own right) began to realize that it just now might be possible to surf this complex synergistic wave and actually go after the ‘mother of all deep pockets defendants’, the Church, with ‘strike suits’ and make a mountainous bundle for themselves.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 7th at 1146AM:
In such a developing situation, a number of prelates found themselves in a difficult position. One of the earliest and most prestigious was Cardinal Law – who chose to decamp rather than try to swim through the storm. An astute political player, he can certainly be judged by anyone as to whether or not he chose the best course.
And although I have no sufficient familiarity with Australian Cardinal Pell, I can certainly see where he too may have realized that in a game as ‘loaded’ as the Stampede, anyone standing in its path and attempting either to stop it or to merely defend themselves (denying is admitting, we recall, is Victimist dogma) might as well go down to the beach in the face of an approaching tsunami wave and deliver rational statements to try and stop it.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 7th at 1146AM:
And as for the so-called shifting-around of priests: if we include in the assessment a) initial efforts to psychologically rehabilitate alleged offenders and b) an awareness – however inchoate – of the type of ‘tsunami’ situation they faced (as Doyle’s 1985 proposal had intimated) and thus c) an abiding concern for the larger impact of these matters and allegations on the Church … if we include all those factors then I think that the actions of Bishops are not utterly exonerated but they are certainly rendered more understandable, especially – to make the point again – when we realize that in the dynamics of the Stampede, an ‘allegation’ is an ‘accusation’ is a ‘report’ is a ‘fact’ and that’s all there is to it.
And on the ‘Spotlight’ topic, I would note again that there is a remarkable instance of the ‘dog that didn’t bark’ in this whole thing: Michael D’Antonio, author of the 2013 book Mortal Sins, which in its efforts to report on the Globe and its machinations leading up to the 2002 phase of the Stampede actually let some uncongenial cats out of the bag in regard to that paper and SNAP and noted Stampede tortie Jeff Anderson and the Boston tortie so nicely treated in the script of ‘Spotlight’ … that Michael D’Antonio has received little if any exposure by the studio-media publicity machine that embraced the film’s carefully-scripted story of heroic and truthy-truthtellers versus the Monster Church.
After the attorney general released his findings about two catholic bishops covering up the abuse of hundreds of children we have another incident come to close out of catholic affiliated institution in the Keystone State. This time it was Malvern prep involving a school teacher trying to force herself upon a 16 year old. What the hell is the catholic church teaching employees "confuse and abuse" and how stupid are those who work for catholic church's, like priests and school teachers not to learn from their colleagues mistakes. Sadly though this teacher won't see any lengthy prison sentence but for the next 15 years she has to register as a sexual predator. I guess if your catholic this is something that would want you to cheer"I standby my catholic church" Idiots.
Jeff Anderson was hand picked by the church through SNAP or other resources.
The idea of one lawyer being THE go to guy for sex abuse in the Catholic church for 25 years plus in the U.S., is ridiculous. Just like Jason Berry being the only reporter to have covered the scandal over all since the 1980's is unbelievable.
ONLY 15% OF ALL VICTIMS COMPENSATED BY THE GREEDY LYING CHILD RAPING CATHOLIC CHURCH.
When newer figures are KNOWN. I'll change my figures.
Till then Dennis I wouldn't be passing on the church's propaganda about what IT says it's paid out to it's injured. Your doing their dirty work when you report their lies.
And it's not the victims problem that the church has raped so many. What the church has to pay is their problem. You don't want to pay damages don't fuck your kids. It's that simple.
On the 7th at 725PM ‘Dennis Ecker’ will perform for us again.
We don’t know to which Attorney-General he is referring; is it that federal or the State AG? (In either case, it would be a ‘her’.)
If it’s the State (PA) AG then there is already quite a bit in comments on this thread.
But Ecker will ignore all that and get on with his scheduled plop-tossing here.
Continuing with my comment on the Ecker comment of the 7th at 725PM:
It turns out merely to be some of the bits that were apparently included in that PA Grand Jury Report recently released by the PA AG.
He can quote all the bits out of it that he wants. The problem remains: Grand Jury Reports (as we have seen and still see with the ‘Doe’ case and the other Philadelphia cases) are questionable for all the reasons previously discussed on this thread.
Thus his effort to – had you been waittttingggg forrrr ittttt? – insinuate that the Church ‘teaches’ its employees (a female, in this case) to – what? abuse? – also fails.
Nor do we even know the date and era of this alleged abuse.
But what the hey? For Ecker, it provides more than enough lead-in for his concluding epithet and that’s really what counts with him.
On then to JR’s of the 8th at 1253PM:
He repeats his patently cartoonish claim that noted and very successful Stampede tortie Jeff Anderson was “hand picked by the Church through SNAP and other resources” (whatever that final odd phrase might mean).
Regular readers of this site will recognize this hugely problematic cartoon bit as having been dealt with at great length and many times on this site, but for new readers: JR has a theory that the Church runs and always has run SNAP (and the other victim-representative organizations) and that thus the Church also picked Jeff Anderson (to create the Anderson Strategy, as I call it, of creating ‘strike suits’ against the Church and cost it around three billion dollars). They are all tools of the Church – doncha see? – and that leaves just JR to actually speak for victims. Readers may consider it as they will.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 8th at 1253PM:
But his gambit here thus opens the way for him to unload – yet again – his handy pile of 3x5s.
Jeff Anderson has not been “THE” go-to guy; he put the Strategy together and many torties simply took their cue from him (and he took it from disability scam lawsuits and the “strike suit” strategy, as it is known in the tortie trade). So JR’s bit fails here through being inaccurate.
He then – yet again – tosses up that partial and decade-old Wiki-derived number that has often been debunked here simply because it is partial and almost a decade old. He insists that he will use it until “newer figures are known”, which is no way to conduct competent research and simply works to further undermine whatever credibility as a competently-informed commenter he might still retain.
I think that he will “change” nothing, even if more recent figures are found. He has his plop-tossy agenda and nothing is going to interfere with his tossing.
He then takes ace-bud (and – I have surmised – ghost comment adviser) Ecker to task for accepting the ‘3 billion dollar’ figure as representing the cost to the Church. I would apply here Henry Kissinger’s comment about the Iran-Iraq war: ‘It’s a war you’d like to see both sides lose’. They can go at it all they want, here or in off-site consultations.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 8th at 1253PM:
He then comes up with a suitably epithetical exit line, buttressed – as so often – by adolescent scatology.
But nothing is ever “that simple”, except to the cartoon-formed mind. But JR would like everyone to think that his take on it all is indeed “that simple”. Then there wouldn’t be any need to do any thinking at all – just take JR’s advice and go from there. Readers may gauge the worth of his invitation here as they may.
Jim I agree the percentage of survivors receiving monetary damages is low. But its not what all survivors want is only a fatter wallet. Some want nothing from an Archdiocese. Others like a person who I recently help find an attorney want nothing more then his mental health sessions paid for by his archdiocese who wrongfully stopped payments to his therapist saying he no longer needs treatment. Something totally against that diocese policy.
Dennis you say things like "fatter wallet" as if we demand compensation for o reason? What the fuck?!
This money that the church ISN'T paying victims is for damages done.
If your car was hit by another driver would you say things like "fatter wallet"? No you'd want reparation. An attempt to ameliorate the damages done.
That fat wallet you talk about isn't held by the church's victims. Your using such terms in referring to victims' suing is total bullshit and only serves the P's of this world.
if that's how you really feel? Please don't "defend" victims anymore. You're only helping the church and our detractors in their continuing vicious attacks against the already harmed.
We have every human right to demand compensation. You don't want to sue? Swell! But the victims who do want compensation are completely justified in their/our doing so.
Why wouldn't you? And If you don't want money. What else do you think you will get from these assholes? Respect? Kindness ? When?
Where and when do I say if a abuse survivor sues for a monetary award its bullshit ? Those are your words. I think its a great additional punishment to those who abuse or those who failed to protect those who were abused. I just don't think it should be at the top of the list. Physical and mental health should come first with an equal priority going to the arrest, conviction and sentencing of the abuser. Everything else after that is icing on the cake. Damn, when I hear or read about large monetary settlements awarded I'm the first to jump up and down. I think instead of telling me to no longer defend victims you should start. You come to TMR and bitch that victims have not received the compensation they deserve and I would agree they are not but I read no words from you what YOU are doing about it ? There are hurdles to jump, laws that have to be changed to give victims the right to sue years later, its not as simple as telling a survivor go find a lawyer and file suit against the catholic church and you will win and if you wish to tell survivors that is how easy it is you go ahead but its wrong. I will not give any victim false hope that makes them feel they are being raped all over again. Its ashame two survivors are having such a disagreement but I can put my head down at night that everyday I am doing my best to help those who have suffered the same horror as I have and if calling me Publion or putting me on that list with everyone else who you disagree with then so be it.
They don't believe either of us. Nor have they believed any victims who've posted here. Ever. Even after we willing answered all questions they asked about what had happened to us.
We answered them. Not good enough to suit these fools. So O.K. I get it, defenders of the fake. You'll never believe us. But your lying about us doesn't make one second of our rapes any less real. They still happened.
Why do you care so much about what they think ??? In a small way you are reliving that initial abuse all over again. Proving and fighting to be believed about your abuse. I BELIEVE YOU. Stop letting them push your buttons.
Being a Catholic myself, I cannot but feel that my Church is under orchestrated attack. The following might be helpful.
Most would have heard of Stalin's famous quip…"How many divisions has the Pope?" His comrades dutifully laughed…as they knew the answer. Having no divisions the guy was powerless. So the Pope was a joke….hehehe.
Yet the ideology, that Stalin presided over, did not even survive the twentieth century. The Russian people, when finally given the vote, consigned communism into the rubbish bin of history. But the Church the Popes have presided over has survived for two thousand years. So what's my point?
I'm saying that our Church will survive the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Jeff Anderson, even the illusionists in Hollywood. How do I know that?. Well because Jesus promised the first Pope, St. Peter, at the kickoff…"and the gates of hell will not prevail against you"
"Orchestrated attack"? Who's Lawrence Welk after? There's some plot?
Who's leading it the sinners of Hollywood?
You fucked the kids you helped the perpetrators rape more kids. What the fuck don't you get about that? It aint brain surgery. Denying it happened is idiocy.
Dennis asked why I care about what you think? I don't. I do care that the ignorant will swallow your bullshit (and I'm sure you think the same of me.) The difference is in which of us is lying and which of us is telling the truth. I'll leave it up to the readers to decide.
On the 8th at 334PM, as part of a just-entre–nous exchange between ‘Dennis’ and JR, JR takes the opportunity to deliver a self-serving bleat: “They don’t believe either of us” nor “any victims who’ve posted here”.
Alas. But we’ve seen this gambit before.
Such ‘victims’ are now re-victimized by not being believed. They are victims all over again, doncha see?
But I would say that a more accurate characterization would be – certainly speaking for myself – that they have not persuaded.
Continuing with my comment on JR”s comment of the 8th at 354PM:
That’s the key here. It should never be about ‘belief’; if they have claims that they present to others about events at which those others were not present, then they have the responsibility to persuade those others of the veracity of their claims.
But – of course – it has been a core gambit of the Stampede and of the Victimism that spawned it that their claims and stories and accusations and allegations are precisely not subjects that require persuasion; rather, their claims and stories and accusations and allegations must simply be ‘believed’.
This, as I have noted before, is the key sociopathy at the heart of the Stampede: people’s natural tendency to want to believe a sad story is directly played-upon in order to manipulate ‘belief’ in the absence of any persuasive evidence or at least any persuasive presentation establishing probability.
Continuing with my comment on JR”s comment of the 8th at 354PM:
Their recited (one might almost say ‘potted’) claims and stories and accusations and allegations, masquerading as “answers” to “questions” do not persuade; indeed, if such ‘responses’ are subjected to sustained analysis, then those ‘responses’ simply raise more questions – and the cycle begins all over again.
And his bits here then lead into – had you been waittttingggg forrrr ittttt? – more epithet.
Nor is there any justification for JR’s further epithetical allegation that it is readers here – and myself, no doubt – who are “lying”. Whereas, this epithet in the recoil … does shed some possible light indeed.
I type I don't "bleet". I'm not a sheep. FYI. You're so fucking mean spirited and evil. You probably don't see the difference between a person and an animal. we are all types of a certain level to you, lower. Right Nazi boy?
You are deeply mentally ill. The fact that you aren't limited in your nonsense posts here. Amazes me. You make this site a Republican debate. Stupid; insulting and mean spoirited. That's what you've brought to this meeting place. That's all you do. Where's the morality? It's not here.
What are you gonna do attack Hollywood? You can't get one other national news source to back your anti John Doe narrative after the fizzle that was Cipriano's Newsweek fiasco.. Nobody believes you. You did that. Blame the victims if you must but no one but you is seeing this the way you do. Nobody's rallying.
On the 7th at 1137, JR will again raise a point that is apparently crucial to his entire self-conception, but – alas – isn’t what it seems.
As I have recently discussed on the “Mostly Positive Response to ‘Spotlight” thread (the 9th at 1246PM) the careful use of terms is vital in this area. There is wide variation among States as to their rape laws (the actual term “statutory rape” is not often used in the wording of State laws since it is insufficiently clear and specific).
Readers so inclined might want to start with a look at the Wiki entry for “statutory rape” to get an idea of the variations and distinctions among jurisdictions. Charges involving a minor might require sexual intercourse or might simply require the broader ‘sexual activity’; the age of the minor party varies; the charge can be brought as a misdemeanor or as a felony; charges within this type can include (using the Wiki listing here) ‘sexual assault’, ‘rape of a child’, ‘corruption of a minor’, ‘unlawful sex with a minor’, ‘carnal knowledge of a minor’, ‘unlawful carnal knowledge’, ‘sexual battery’, or ‘carnal knowledge’.
Continuing my comment on JR’s of the 7th at 1137AM:
Readers may also want to consult the listing of statutory rape laws by State (compiled in 2003):
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/olrdata/jud/rpt/2003-r-0376.htm
Readers may note that California laws (as of 2003) require “sexual intercourse”, and the age of the minor party and the perpetrator affects the severity of the charge and the punishment.
Of course, for the JR instance, one would have to know the applicable California laws for that era (sometime in the early 1960s) and the specific age of JR at the time, since those elements are essential in determining the charge.
Would the California laws of over half a century ago not required “sexual intercourse”? Or would – at the very most – the action as JR claims it to have been qualified as something akin to ‘corruption of a minor’, perhaps even chargeable only as a misdemeanor? These are questions that require answers and thus specific legal knowledge of the applicable law in that time and place.
We talk about the reality of our being raped in Catholic schools and we are an attack against the Catholic church?
Your church is perfect even when it rapes it's young? That's what you are really saying.
You are so, so sick. You are beyond description.
Instead of reaching out to ask questions of us as to what happened and being empathetic to what our answers are; you pretend it's us lying and that none of our answers are true.
So according to what's being presented here: We are either lying fraudsters out for extortion or you are the liars in all this. One of us is lying in all this. That's seems very clear. You can't have it both ways.
Since I know what happened to me; Happened to me.
I can only assume, you are all lying to gain money by not helping victims at all, ever. Unless you are forced to.
Where's your morality if you lie about us being liars?
This is how truly little you care about real morality. It's not important to you in the least.
I can see the storm clouds are being gathered by you for a big offensive. There has to be some new "evidence" you intend to produce. It wasn't in the Newsweek story; but I can feel it coming. You aren't attempting to rally the troops for nothing.
Yea! Our priests are not all legally defined rapists . . . in every state. Sometimes they are just sexual abusers of minors, 'child molesters' if you will, and/or mere corrupters of young! Show some shame, catholics.
So please join our church. We have salvation on offer! You'll probably burn in hell if you don't. What an offer!
Priests are just religious businessmen who lie to children for a living. Believing/practicing catholic adults keep on lying to themselves. You know how I know? Because they won't be happy until you and I believe as they do.
Well put LDB. imho
Continuing my comment on JR’s of the 7th at 1137AM:
But in any case, mere word-play (i.e. there is the word ‘rape’ in ‘statutory rape’ so it’s rape) cannot be sufficient, even presuming the veracity and accuracy of his description of the encounter.
Why go into this? Because the Stampede has always relied on broad terms as well as allegations without evidence and – as I sought to demonstrate with the comments on the Chicago documents on the ‘Spotlight’ thread – tossing around vivid and inciting but not necessarily accurate terms can only lead to misconceptions and further mischief.
"Alas"!!!!!!!
Who talks like that? "Alas". Oh Alack and "Alas"!
Only a priest would write such condesending crap.
I
And what do we get in today’s episode?
On the 10th at 116PM JR has a problem. How’s he going to solve it?
First, he will try to impose his preferred spin on it all: “we” (meaning ‘we victims’ – genuine or otherwise classifiable) “talk about the reality of our being raped”.
But that sly bit requires acceptance of two presumptions that have not at all been demonstrated: a) that whatever happened to them is “reality” and b) that whatever happened to JR was ‘rape’.
As for (a): we’ve been over this many times.
As for (b): although JR has constructed his entire script around it, there remains some real question if under applicable law he was actually (even if only perhaps statutorily) ‘raped’.
Perhaps – especially since it is so vital a piece in his personal construction – he has long-ago looked up the applicable California statute from that era, has it practically memorized, and can give us a reference.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 10th at 116PM:
How JR gets to “Your church is perfect even when it rapes it’s young” (sic) and “That’s what you are really saying” is anybody’s guess. This is simply an effort to avoid the actual issue at hand by exaggerating and then focusing on his own exaggeration.
And readers may consider the sum of JR’s accumulated material in the record on this site and consider whether he does or does not “attack” the Church.
And the third paragraph deploys – had you been waittttingggg forrrr ittttt? – mere epithets, again oblivious to the danger of recoil when viewed through the lens of projection.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 10th at 116PM:
And then he tries to create more stuff that would give him the victim-y high ground: nobody “reached out” in order “to ask questions of us as to what happened and being empathetic to what our answers were”. Thus he is – had you been waittttingggggg forrrrr itttttt? – re-victimized all over again (as if we had established his original victimization).
But of course this is a loaded bit indeed: in the Abuse-verse, the only “questions” one can acceptably ask are the ones that already presume the veracity of the claimed victimization; and “being empathetic” means mouthing appropriate ‘Awwwws” and “empathetic” clucks on cue.
Actual questions, of course, are nothing but “attacks” and examples of the ever-possible ‘re-victimizing’.
Then a further exaggeration for the sake of his own convenience: we “pretend” that “us” victims “are lying”. No, no pretending is involved here. Rather, from the material they/he presented, sufficient questions have arisen to justify some significant doubt. And when that is pointed out, whatever is further proffered turns out to raise even more questions.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 10th at 116PM:
Then a further attempt to create a convenient distraction from the issues actually on the table at this point: JR sets up an either/or situation: either he/they are “lying fraudsters out for extortion” or “you are the liars in all this”.
But the terms of his little construction don’t work: nobody here asserts and insists that he/they are “lying fraudsters out for extortion”. Rather, there have arisen many question, leading to a sense of the probability that what we are getting is surely not the case or all of the case, and that the possibility – or even probability – of there being more to be discovered in all of this from him/them is strong.
I – certainly – am not a “liar” because I have made no assertions; I have only asked questions. It is the Abuseniks who have made the assertions and claims and allegations and accusations and characterizations that aren’t demonstrated and backed-up with some form of credible and persuasive material.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 10th at 116PM:
Thus his little either/or bit fails here.
As for his assertion that he knows a) “what happened to [him]” so therefore b) “it happened to [him]”:
In regard to (a): he doesn’t seem to know what happened to him in light of the fact that he claims he was “fxxked” (scream-caps omitted) when the physical acts he described do not indicate that at all and the statutory definition remains – at very best – unclear at this point.
And in regard to (b): his own unsupported assertion in (a) does not and cannot definitively establish that “it happened” in the first place.
But he refuses to see the problems facing anybody who was not present at the alleged incident. Or – deploying the clever Victimist/Stampede mantra designed precisely to get around this very problem – he simply demands that readers “believe” and be “empathetic” and so on.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 10th at 116PM:
And in light of his grossly faulty logic as demonstrated above, then his attempted mimicry of serious thinking (“I can only assume …”) fails here, since his conclusion is based on faulty premises in the first place.
And again, he throws out yet another bit while remaining oblivious to its potential for recoil: it is readers who “are not helping victims” (another convenient construction) who “are all lying to gain money” … and readers may consider this bit of his as they will.
Continuing with my comment on JR’s of the 10th at 116PM:
But there’s a method to the madness here: having constructed his little blocks to his own satisfaction, he can then launch into yet another epithetical deployment: if readers consider him/them (‘victims’) to be “liars” then “where’s your morality”?
Again, the question can recoil rather dangerously. Where is the morality in preying upon people’s belief in order to distract them from the weakness of your claims? (I imagine the tortie-inspired pep talk to cover this point would be: ‘We all know the Church did this, don’t we? So it’s not really so important what happened or didn’t happen in your particular case so long as you are trying to do a good thing here by signing-on to our lawsuit and putting up a good story’.)
The rest of the comment trails off into some sort of quasi-military imagery, the relevance of which any readers so inclined may try to suss out.
On the 10th at 121PM JR will take my “Alas” and see what he might do with it in his plop-tossy way:
“Who talks like that?” he bleats. Anyone who has read nineteenth century literature might be familiar with the phrase, especially if they were deploying it a tad sardonically.
But his question was merely rhetorical; he isn’t interested in the question itself, but only in the plop he’s about to toss: I must “be a priest” – doncha see? – because “only a priest would write such condescending crap” (correction supplied). Well, since he previously claimed that I was a “nun”, then this characterization here might perhaps be taken as progress. But he’s got a long way to go.
Now comes self-declared Harvard Philosophy major and practicing attorney ‘LDB’ (the 10th at 1003AM) and proffers the closest thing to some relevant thought in the legal line that he has ever put up here.
His initial statement is both accurate and an accurate characterization of one of my points made on this thread: “our priests are not all legally defined rapists”.
He fails, however, to consider that that point is just the beginning: we then have to consider the probability of the veracity of the allegations i) against each of them so accused and ii) against the type of presumptive stereotype (convenient to the purposes of various types) that “all” priests are.
I have no doubt, personally, that there are some few who have actually raped (in the classically defined sense of the term). I have no doubt, personally, that some others have done things characterizable as ‘child molesting’ and ‘corrupting the young’. In any large human organization it would be fatuous to assume that there weren’t some sexual offenders, and a few of them seriously so.
Continuing with my comment on ‘LDB’s of the 10th at 1003AM:
But upon what does he base his inference that Catholics, in questioning what clearly needs to be questioned in the Stampede, show no “shame”? If, indeed, there are instances – and I personally think there are many – where the allegations and accusations lodged through the Stampede fail to persuade in terms of veracity and accuracy – then what is ‘shameful’ about questioning? Would it not be more shameful not to question and to allow the lack of veracity to continue and even be rewarded and acclaimed?
But the whole bit was just a lead-in to his scheduled plop-tossing and he riffs on with those bits.
Nor does this former seminarian – if I rightly recall from some years ago on this site – seem to have the Catholic theology right: only if you are given the grace to know through belief that the Church is The Way, The Truth, and The Life and then deliberately reject that grace do you face damnation.
And he then lodges an assertion characterizing priests as “just religious businessmen” “who lie to children” (but not, in his view, to adults?).
How does he “know” this? He proffers not a demonstrable (or falsifiable) answer, but simply a bit from his personal collection of tea-leaves about what will and will not make them “happy” in some nebulous “until”-time.
As I had mentioned previously on this and the succeeding thread, assessing the JR claim would require knowledge of the definition of ‘statutory rape’ in CA law of that era. I have not been able to obtain a copy of the applicable CA ‘statutory rape’ law of that era (currently the offense is covered in CA Penal Code Chapter 261.5(a)).
But in the 1981 case Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County, CA (450 US 464 (1981)) the statement is made that “in the 1980s California statutory-rape law mirrored the centuries old common law” and it goes on to define statutory rape as “an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a female not the wife of the perpetrator where the female is under the age of 18 years”.
Since that era of 1981 changes have been made as in regard to gender-neutrality but not – as best can be determined and as best one can reasonably deduce – the requirement for “sexual intercourse”.
Anything other than actual “sexual intercourse” would more likely fall under the ‘Lewd Acts with a Child’ statutes (currently addressed in Chap. 288 of the CA Penal Code).
Perhaps, then, it is more accurate to characterize the JR allegation as his having been ‘lewdly acted upon’.
I had missed JR’s of the 9th at 1022PM.
Epithet, larded with – but of course – juvenile scatology. And something about my being a “Nazi”.
Then he dons the Wig of Diagnosis to issue what appears to be one of his favorite denunciamentos: I am “deeply mentally ill”. And again, utterly oblivious to the dangers of the recoil in his making such an assertion.
And then – in that same paragraph – he starts to lose control of his material and his grammar (even more than usual). And riffs further afield to use current political events as more plop for his pile.
But then a new Wig: I have “brought” all sorts of “Republican” stuff to …“this meeting place”. This is Goody Robertson rising to deliver a J’Accuse in the meeting-house. (Perhaps JR could appropriately deliver an ‘Alas!’ at this point.)
And then we get another familiar treasure from the Abusenik hope-chest: Nobody’s listening / the Church is on the way out / Nobody sees things the way you do …
If JR says it enough then it’s true … for him. Goody for him.
"We" you write as if people are on your side P..
Where are they?
I mean more than the few stooges that post here who think you're so swell.( I notice that you never correct their misspelled words; or bad grammar)
On the 12th at 1216PM, with everything that is on the table (and there is quite a bit, and quite significant, especially in regard to JR’s claims) … what do we get?
Not a thing about any of it.
Just distraction. Just “blowing smoke”, as JR so likes to put it.
I write “we” merely in the sense of “readers”. I make no claim as to who does and doesn’t support me.
But the Abuseniks have to somehow distract, and here we see the effort to conflate ‘readers’ with ‘those who agree’, in order to have a more convenient something with which to distract everyone.
There are some who have posted in agreement with me, but – had you been waitttingggg forrrr ittttt? – they are merely “the few stooges”. Ovvvvvv courssssse.
Misspelled words and bad grammar are only the surface problems, beyond which are unsupported assertions, inaccurate claims and characterizations, and they then lead to the question as to the credibility of the Abusenik position and the reliability of the Stampede’s results.
Talk about "clinical projection"?!? Your claims about others "unsupported assertions, inaccurate claims and characterizations" along with questioning their "credibility and integrity", couldn't better describe your own shortcomings and deficiencies. Maybe it's time you focus on your own faults and stop making your poor assumptions and judgments of others.
On the 13th at 152PM – wisely avoiding his usual performance using Scripture as the prime prop for the show – ‘Dan’ will now try his hand at some good old-fashioned critique.
How nice. This must be a new adventure for him.
But alas. He simply gives a shot at deploying – yet again – the old Abusenik I’m Not/You Are bit.
What to say in response?
First, I don’t make many assertions but rather raise questions or lines of inquiry arising from the material provided.
Second, when I put up thoughts or possibilities I demonstrate the thinking I used and/or put up examples.
Third, I don’t put up “inaccurate claims” (unless my rather serious doubts as to Dan’s bits as being directly and therefore indubitably and unquestionably directed by God are “inaccurate” and my characterizations as to his sanity and integrity, explicated with copious examples from his own material, are “inaccurate” – and of course, subject to credible refutation, not yet seen here).
But – “talk about ‘clinical projection” – ‘Dan’ then provides precisely the conceptually therapeutic regimen I have often suggested he take to the bathroom mirror.
P says, "Third, I don't put up 'inaccurate claims'. " So you're admitting that they're simply flat out, blatant lies. That's the first step to realizing your faults, is finally admitting to them. I think we've made some progress. I'll see you for next week's session. We'll be working on your problems with mocking God's Word and the power of His Holy Spirit. Bring your purse, 'cause I'll be asking for a second collection for that teaching. servant Dan
On the 14th at 815PM, we get a clear demonstration of the type of whackery that we are facing with ‘Dan’ and his stuff: the juvenile attempt to claim that since I have denied the inaccurate claim, then that – his mind now grasps for – can only mean that I have admitted his even more exaggerated form of the claim.
But, really, what else has he got?
Yet it is this type of mentality for which the Stampede has provided a platform and upon which, in no small part, it relies.