Now indistinguishable every year: The 2020 annual abuse report from U.S. bishops
Once again, this year's newly released annual audit report by United States bishops about abuse in the Catholic Church amplifies the rampancy of false accusations, suspicious and unprovable allegations against dead priests, dubious decades-old claims, and the determination of Church-suing tort lawyers and their allies to drain what remains of the Church's coffers.
In other words, it's time to put an end to spitting out these ridiculous and presumably expensive reports every year.
Just the facts, ma'am
Taken straight from the data in this year's audit report, we again provide you the simple facts about the Church abuse story that you will never, ever see in the mainstream media and even in the so-called "Catholic" media. In the 2020 audit year:
- 95% of all abuse accusations allege incidents from 1989 or earlier (32 or more years ago);
- well over half, 63%, of all identified priests who were accused were already long deceased (and conveniently no longer around to defend themselves);
- over 90% of all identified priests who were accused were either already dead, already removed from the clerical state, already out of ministry (e.g., retired), or simply missing; and
- only a mere 19.7% of all allegations were even deemed "substantiated" by the very lenient standards of diocesan review boards, while the vast majority of the accusations were deemed either "unsubstantiated," "unable to be proven," or still under review.
And of the only 22 current minors who came forward in 2020 alleging that a current priest abused them, only 6 of those allegations were even determined to be "substantiated." In other words, the problem is behind us, as it has been for years.
The Catholic ATM
Many in the media have misled the public by emphasizing breathlessly that there were "4,228 new allegations" made during the audit year and not mentioning that the majority of these stale accusations have come from states such as California and New York that passed "window legislation," laws that lifted the statutes of limitations and allowed any fraudster, flimflammer, or mental case to sue the Church for big bucks no matter how long ago the alleged abuse occurred.
It's easy to understand why the Church still sees so many lawsuits. With countless media headlines over the past decades advertising that the Church will readily pay out big cash on bogus claims, the message is loud and clear to many: Why not file suit? You have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
Over and done
The Church has been releasing these "annual abuse reports" for over 15 years now, and the time has finally come to put this annual media circus to an end. They have far outlasted their usefulness, and they accomplish nothing except provide enemies of the Church free fodder every year to lambaste the Church over phony accusations dating back to when The Beatles were still together.
Enough is enough.
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Important note: Some readers are unclear on what the report defines as an "unsubstantiated" allegation. Here it is, straight from the report itself (emphasis added): "'Unsubstantiated' describes an allegation for which an investigation is complete and the allegation has been deemed not credible/false based upon the evidence gathered through the investigation" (p. 34 of the pdf / p. 24 of the report).
In other words, "unsubstantiated" claims are indeed bogus claims.
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Want to learn about the rampancy of false accusations against priests?:
- "False Accusations Against Catholic Priests Are Now At Epic Proportions" (May 2019)
- The book: The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church by David F. Pierre, Jr. (Amazon.com)
Get this information out to the general public by means of interviews, editorials in local, state newspapers, and articles written with verfications of findings regarding alleged clergy accusations found to be unsubstantiated/ not credible.
Yeah, these spin techniques might work on older catholics, but they sure don't work on the next generation.
A story came out about the Catholic church getting caught hiding 3,000 priests in France who raped over 200,000 young boys, and it wasn't even a big story.
I'm in a job at a high school where I hear teenagers talk all day long, and they are not only disgusted by Catholics, they're disgusted by God. Here are some of their young brash opinions when the locker room was discussing it.
"That's like a new Larry Nassar every month for 250 years, except instead of raping girls, they're raping boys. What a disgusting cult."
This was then followed by a bunch of SAT math questions they invented like, "if a French kid raped by a Catholic told his story every day at school, how many decades would it take to hear them all". Works out to be over 500 years. Some of their other questions and analogies got much worse.
"They had a choice to protect the boys, and protected the child rapists instead. What a disgusting cult of creeps."
"Shame we don't play any Catholics schools. It would be fun to give those @#%^& a beating."
"If I saw that God, I'd give that God a beating."
And a whole bunch of other comments like that, some of which would make you cringe. It's one of the running jokes in the school right now, especially with any reference to pedophilia or gays.
http://www.themediareport.com/2021/10/12/france-clergy-abuse-report/
All that othe rarticle does is to whine about how mean they are to catholics.
330,000 little boys were raped, and you trie do tmake catholics look like the victim.
And that repeated catholic lie about the fact that it's no worse than anywhere else is just a lie. Catholics do things like comparing priests anally raping boys with teacher swearing at students, call them both "abuse", and say that schools have worse "abuse".
Kids in school laugh if a teacher uses a swear word. Kids who get raped by pedophile priests end up committing suicide or turn to drinking and drugs, and nobody knows why.
Anybody who spreads those lies to keep those kids from getting help is the devil.
Ryan,
Actually, these are not tactics; this site does the job that the media should be doing, i.e., reporting facts, not personal bias, interpretations, and groundless conclusions.
If you are really an educator, I think you missed an incredible opportunity to educate a future generation on critical thinking, instead of/after letting them express their frustration, fear, and anger (incidentally, all understandable reactions, given the sensationalistic way the so-called news is reported). You could’ve shown how, while numbers don’t lie, people with agendas use numbers to lie, or at last to present a highly distorted version of the truth. The media is anything but objective, and it has never been. By letting your students believe otherwise, you have provided them a huge disservice. You could’ve shown them countless examples from history. Real bummer.
As for their comments, I’ve seen much better. These are not cringeworthy; to me, they are the classic expression of the oversimplistic approach of a consumeristic generation that cannot focus on complex issues and mistakes one-liners for actual knowledge. Not really a good reflection on the current education system. The ironic part is that your pupils probably cheer the unmasking of the media and the government in movies, but are unable to translate that (for me, natural) mistrust in their real lives. Ironic, and sad.
One final note: if one of your students really said, "If I saw that God, I'd give that God a beating", please remind him/her that someone else in history has said something similar, with much more reason. And, it’s not “if”, it’s “when”. It’s not “that”, either. It’s “the” God, period.
This site isn't reporting facts. It's reporting excuses that comfort you, and ignoring facts or distorting facts. Examples:
1) the 330,000 French child rapes should be the #1 story in the world. Jerry Sandusky was a story for a month. The catholic story should be a story for 330,000 months. It isn't, because the world knows this is the catholic religion. Again
2) the response to the French story on this site that the guy tossed back as a response just talks about bigots, and taxes, and ding-a-lings and tangential excuses
3) another referenced article says it's worse in schools, which it isn't. That's a lie I won't address here, but that would just mean schools also aren't Gods church.
What do you think Jesus would do if He found out someone was using His name to rape His best children? He'd be a man's man – He'd find out the truth, punish them as badly as possible, and find every child and help them. Obvious, simple, and Christian.
What would the devil do? He would be a coward and a creep, but he'd use all his power to get away with it. He'd hide every single rape, let priests rape whoever they wanted, try to get catholic support for getting away with child rape, and make Jesus look like a creep. That's what catholics are doing, and have always done, like it or not. This was 330,000 child rapes in a country smaller than Texas. True Christians would have stopped it after the first child rape. Catholics did the opposite of what Jesus would do 330,000 times, just in France.
Children who didn't grow up catholic or christian look at this like any child rape cult, not like it's a special child rape cult, and they are disgusted, and this is the reputation of Jesus and God that they see. And you can't change their mind with lies or minimizing it, because they don't trust anyone that would follow that behavior, and they're smart to think like that.
Stop blaming the media – the media is the reason that the catholic church in Boston had to expose the fact that they were hiding 249 pedophile priests, some of which raped over 150 children, and a child rape cult made the choice to side with the child rapists instead of the child victims. That's what kids see,
Again – forget your presupposition that there is anything special about this child rape cult. To them, it's just another child rape cult, completely pukeworthy, and nothing that you say about "The" god is going to make them want to have anything to do with that god, and you have no proof. You hope they trust you, and you lost that battle.
Of course, there have been endless stores since from the media – with 300+ child raping priests in West Pennsylvania who did the most disgusting things to children, and hundreds in every other city. Still, catholics never doing what Jesus would do.
Catholics never followed Jesus, or even a basic sense of human morality. They ALWAYS chose to protect the lowest level of human scum, and they used Jesus to get away with it, and catholic followers were fine with it. No smart high school student is going to trust those catholic followers with a whole bunch of things catholics can't prove. Smart kids don't have "faith" in you, and it gets worse when you give them a series of skewed dishonest stories like these, and say the media is at fault for uncovering what Jesus would have hown and stopped immediately.
You find out when you die, and if you're wrong, and the catholic church isn't God's church, and it's been the devil's church all along (which the disgusting evidence shows), then everyone involved will get the worst of hell for eternity, as a reasonable God would make them do.
Hello Ryan,
Thank you for the reply – unfortunately, there are too many incorrect statements in it to address all of them. Here’s a few:
“the 330,000 French child rapes…” = actually, these are “alleged” rapes. As TMR has shown, this report (as all other ones in recent history) are extremely flawed, and the media is only reporting what matches their narrative.
“the response to the French story…” = again, incorrect. TMR’s objective look at this report immediately shows how the numbers, apparently impressive in their magnitude, are factually highly improbable and need scrubbing before taken into consideration
“another referenced article says it's worse in schools, which it isn't” = actually, it is, and not only in schools. If you don’t want to address it, it’s your choice – but it only shows your bias and unwillingness to face the truth.
Your WWJD analogy is spot on, and it’s what Jesus’ Church is doing. You could argue (as we Catholics do) that Her response and actions could’ve been harder, timelier, and so on. That doesn’t change the fact that the Church has done, and is doing, what virtually other organizations (schools included) are still refusing to do.
“What would the devil do?…” = is actually what the media is doing. The way these reports are sensationalized only helps desensitizing the readers, instead of showing the real facts and holding all guilty party equally accountable.
“True Christians would have stopped it after the first child rape” = interesting comment. So, is the first instance free? Does that also count for all other sins?
“Stop blaming the media” = I don’t. I blame the guilty ones – few Catholics, at every level, that are staining the Church with their behavior. They will be hold accountable, when the time arrives.
I am afraid that the final paragraphs in your posts are simply anti-Catholic rants that have been addressed, here and elsewhere, and I don’t have time/desire to indulge your sense of self-righteousness. I believe in Jesus’ words, that the Church He has founded wont’ be overcame by the Gates of Hell, regardless of how dark the situation may look now. Can you say the same for your church, assuming that you belong to one?
Have a blessed Thanksgiving, brother.
Ryan, I would hope that you wouldn't let the sins of the world weaken your belief or faith in the Creator and His Son. Check out His predictions of the last days in Matthew 24:1-14, and Luke even goes further to add pestilence (Covid?) to the equation in Luke 21:5-19. His predictions are infallible. I've tried to speak some common sense to this church in these comments for five years and somewhat felt it to be a waste of my time. Good luck to you!
servant of the Lord (They tend to be offended by my signing out with this moniker.)
Dan,
I am glad to see that you are well, in Covid-battered California. A little less glad, by contrast, that you are still unable to comment on the post’s topic, instead of repeating your trite and tired tirades against Jesus’ Church (and the posters on TMR).
Incidentally, His Church has survived much worst pestilence, both human and biological, in the past, and have always come out stronger than ever. The Gates of Hell have not, do not and will not overcome Her, indeed.
Finally, I don’t get offended by your silly self-assigned titles. Jesus may see them differently, however (Luke 18:9-14).
Have a blessed Christmas season, brother. He is coming.
Get this straight, I was answering to Ryan and don't care to debate deceiving hypocrites whatsoever. Quoting your false accusation against Ryan, "I don't have the time/desire to indulge your sense of self-righteousness".
Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you, for many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Messiah.' and will deceive many." Matthew 24:4-5 Now what church insists on unbiblically calling themselves Father (Matt. 23:9) and the pope, Holy Father (Vicar of Christ)? They claim he represents Christ on earth, and all his pedophile and pederast priests represent little Christs on earth. Are you kidding me? This can never be "His Church" and the "Gates of Hell" have already overcome her and she has entered fully in. "Come out of her, My people, so that you will not share in her sins, or receive any of her plagues." Rev, 18:4 Come Lord Jesus
Daniel, servant of the Almighty God and Only Father, saved and righteous thru Jesus Christ
Will stick my neck out, and make a prediction, regarding the so-called Catholic abuse scandal. One day it will be seen that the real scandal was within the legal profession. Yes I am serious. Because something must have gone seriously wrong, within the justice system, when a person can be deemed guilty just for being accused.??? There has been a derangement within the law… and this derangement springs from the mantra… "believe the vctim". Much hyped by a complicit mainstream media. The devastating effect of this is to destroy due process and our right to a fair trial. "Believing the victim " presumes the guilt of the accused person. And therefore removes the need for such time-consuming tasks as finding compelling evidence..
In the U.K. their most respected judge, Sir Richard Henriques, reported to the British Government that…. "the policy of believing the victim strikes at the very core of our justice system".
So am not entirely alone with my opinion.