Maybe I have watched one to many Dateline specials or read one too many books on the subject or perhaps it was the influx of coverage on the issue that the media presented a few years back. Or perhaps maybe I am just a bad Catholic; I do not trust priests or men of the cloth; maybe it is just my hightened awareness of the many children who suffered at the hands of the bad apples. It is said it takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch; than what do a thousand bad apples spoil? I suppose if it had been one or two cases it would have been a sad situation but an ioslated one perhaps even a curable one. The fact that it was thousands of stories and when they came to light they uncovered years of systematic abuse of the worst kind made it an unforgiveable one. Abuse at the most intimate level and done to the most vulnerable population resulting in years of suffering, countless suicides and hundreds of lost souls. Abuse that did not just occur in one parish, in one town, in one city but rather in hundreds of parishes, in thousands of towns and in more than one country. No, I cannot trust priests anymore and I definately have lost any faith I once had in the Catholic church. Any institution that not only hides evil but protects evil and nurtures it deserves it's own undoing in the worst way. Any individual or insititution who uses God or the bible as a facade too perform acts of evil deserve to burn in the same pits of hell they so readily condemn others too.
Many victims of the Catholic Church have come forward but many still remain faceless; people whose childhoods were full of fear and self loathing. Children who reached out to those supposed to protect them and instead of recieving the help they so desperately needed were told that there was no way a man who gave his life to God could do the horriable things they were allegeding. After all it was probabily their fault they asked for it; they continued to spend time with the individuals, they allowed themselves to be victimized maybe they even secretly wanted it. After all that kind of evil would never be inside of a man who took his vows. So they were silenced and carried the burden for years many unable to trust another human being, many unable to marry, many who drank and did drugs until they were numb to the World, many who thought their lives were worthless enough to end, many who left bruises on the faces of their wives and children so many who just wanted somebody to tell them they did nothing wrong and did not deserve what happened to them.
Where or where was the Vatican in all of this; after all weren't they supposed to be sheperding their flock? Instead they acted like a drunk sheperd who became so intoxicated that they fell asleep and let their flock desacrate the neighbourhood where they lived. Than when the mob of angry torch wielding villagers came for retribution they pulled out their cheque books and tried to silence them with money; that very thing which the holy book teaches us is the root of all evil. They tried to smooth over the situation after all what is a child's innocence in comparison to a priests good name? Think of the shame the priest would have to go through if their good name was dragged through the mud. Think of what would happen to all they worked for. Won't somebody think of the priests in all of this! The vatican had a solution after all they would remove the abuser priests from their current assignment, send them for "help" where they would be magically cured and move them to another parish where a whole new group of trusting families with children awaited them. This is the kind of situation a whole registry of sex offenders dream of. Absolute power, nobody to answer too, protetion from criminal law and ready access to children.
People who sit in the pews of the Catholic churches today who turn a blind eye to the fact that pedophila is very much alive in the church today need to wake up. Chances dictate there are probabily good priests out there but when I see a man dressed in his holy robes WARNING lights flash in my head.
I don't know what the cure is but I know it is not silencing the victims or blaming them; no victim of sexual assault ever asked for what they got or deserved what they got. I also know that it is not the protection of priests by the Vatican from prosecution it's time to put these spineless beings in cages where they belong; and don't preach any of your "they can be cured" nonsense too me. The only man I ever heard of who could cure anybody was Jesus Christ and I doubt even a man of such forgiveness would offer a cure to someone who caused an innocent child to hate their own skin. I also know that pouring more money into the Catholic Church is not the cure either. No sheperd needs to live in a house with a ceiling made of gold while members of their flock make innocent children feel like sheep excrimint.
(I wrote this article because statistics show one in four individuals will suffer from sexual abuse in their lifetime; many of them will never have justice and will live and die feeling as though they deserved what happened to them. If your childhood, teenage years or adulthood was scarred by sexual abuse you do not have to suffer in silence. It's time to find your voice and to use it; it will not be easy but you do not have to do it alone anymore. Nobody is going to judge you, nobody is going to think any less of you what happened to you is not your fault and it is not who you are...you can overcome it the first step is acknowledging it...)
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