Topic: Is the Church Above The Law? Church Double Standards

[barrister]

Do bishops here in the Philippines idolize Sarah Palin?

That doesn't make sense.  Would Catholic bishops idolize an Evangelical Protestant?  For any reason?

[sharkey360]

US church official gets prison in landmark abuse case

The highest-ranking US church official to be convicted of covering up child sex allegations, Philadelphia monsignor William Lynn, was sentenced to three to six years in prison on Tuesday.
 
William Lynn, who was secretary of the archdiocese from 1994 to 2001 and tasked with investigating abuse claims, was found guilty last month of one count of child endangerment.
 
Lawyers had pushed for Lynn to be spared prison, but Judge Teresa Sarmina imposed close to the maximum sentence of three and a half to seven years.
 
"It was three to six years," an official at the court in Philadelphia told AFP by telephone, confirming the sentence.
 
Lynn, 61, who took the witness stand for three days during his 10-week trial, was not charged with molesting children, but rather with covering up the crimes of priests who did.
 
The trial, the first in the United States involving a senior official in the Catholic Church, also centered on two more Philadelphia priests.
 
Reverend James Brennan, who was suspended from his duties as a priest, stood accused of attempting to rape a teenaged boy in the 1990's. The jury was hung over the charges dealing with Brennan, who will not face a new trial.
 
Defrocked priest Edward Avery pleaded guilty on the eve of trial. Avery was sentenced to between 2.5 and five years in prison.
 
During the trial the court heard graphic testimony describing sexual abuse in the Philadelphia archdiocese dating back to 1948, has not changed his view of the Church.
 
Lynn was found not guilty of endangering Brennan's accuser and not guilty of conspiring to endanger that accuser. He was found guilty of endangering Avery's victim, but not guilty of conspiracy with regard to that victim.
 
Victims' groups hailed the verdict as a major step forward as a court had acknowledged that someone in Lynn's position had endangered a child.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/266619/news/world/us-church-official-gets-prison-in-landmark-abuse-case

[sharkey360]

Column: Penn State case bad, but church sex abuse worse

I didn't have much sympathy for people who complained about the punishment the NCAA doled out to Penn State, until I discovered how an even larger institution in the Keystone State has escaped punishment for shielding dozens of pedophiles in its midst.

In June, Jerry Sandusky, a longtime assistant football coach at Penn State, was found guilty of raping and sodomizing 10 young boys. Top university officials were told of Sandusky's deviant behavior years earlier and did nothing to stop him. They, apparently, were more worried about the damage that exposing him would do to the school's reputation than the harm he was doing to his victims.

For its inaction, Penn State on July 23 was fined $60 million, its football team was banned from post-season play for four years and the games it won from 1998 through 2011 — the span of time during which university officials were aware of Sandusky's pedophilia and looked the other way — were wiped off the record books.

Another troubling case
The next day, an even more troubling case of child sex abuse — given that so many more predators were involved — played out in a Philadelphia courtroom without any hint that justice would reach beyond a low-level official of that city's Catholic archdiocese.
Monsignor William Lynn was sentenced to three to six years in prison for covering up the actions of pedophile priests he was supposed to root out of the church. Instead, he sent them to unsuspecting parishes where other sexual assaults took place — an action his lawyers said was ordered by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, who headed Philadelphia's archdiocese from 1988 to 2003. He died in January.

In 2011, a grand jury said it had "no doubt that (Bevilacqua's) knowing and deliberate actions during his tenure as archbishop also endangered thousands of children in the Philadelphia Archdiocese." Lynn, it said, was carrying out Bevilacqua's policies exactly as he directed. But Bevilacqua, who was in poor health, was not indicted along with his aide.

Church coverup
According to that grand jury report — and another in 2003 and 2005 — the Philadelphia archdiocese's coverup of pedophile priests started before Bevilacqua became its leader and lasted after he was replaced.
So why hasn't it been penalized in some way for its bad acts — for sending pedophile priests to counseling instead of turning them in to the cops? Why hasn't its tax-exempt status been revoked for a number of years? That might be a real deterrent against a repeat of such harmful indifference in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

But the Philadelphia archdiocese is not likely to suffer the same fate as Penn State, even though three grand juries found it left pedophile priests free to prey upon children for years after church officials became aware of them. That's because saving the church from scorn was more important to them than protecting children from those monsters.

"As powerful as Penn State officials are, their power pales before the power of the Catholic hierarchy," David Clohessy, director and spokesman for the Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests, told me. "When sex abuse happens in a religious setting, many people back away. I think a degree of fatigue has set it."

I hope for the sake of the children who were abused, and those who might be victimized in the future if nothing is done, that what happened in Philadelphia will produce enough outrage to force the archdiocese there — like Penn State — to pay a hefty price for its indifference to the sexual abuse of children.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/story/2012-07-30/priests-penn-state-sex-abuse/56595192/1

[sharkey360]

EDITORIAL - Courting disaster



How sad that the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines would choose to bring its fight against the RH bill right into the halls of Congress where the bill originated instead of fighting what the bill is all about — its substance — from the pulpit.

The CBCP even went to the extent of counting how many congressmen it has enlisted to support its cause — 140 kuno as of the latest count, including, of all people, former president and now congresswoman Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

If this is the way the country’s bishops choose to fight, then it only indicates the plain bankruptcy of its position. They have clearly ascribed the evil they see on the bill itself, apparently thinking that by killing the bill they also kill the evil.

Conversely, the bishops have trembled tremendously that should the RH bill pass, all evil will be unleashed upon this solitary Catholic land in Asia. They have forgotten that if evil exists, it exists in the human heart and it is from there that it must be expurgated.

Even if the RH bill passes and becomes law, if the Church succeeds in convincing people of its evils, the law will have no effect upon this God-fearing land and, with nowhere to go, it will but die its own natural and preordained death.

On the contrary, even if no such or similar law exists, but if people find merit it in the things the bill would have proposed or made available, then these people can be expected to move heaven and earth to partake of these evil promises.

In other words, the Church and its bishops are barking up the wrong tree. They are charging at the wrong windmill. The only fight there is is the fight for people’s hearts, and it is from the pulpit that this fight must be waged.

Aside from the folly of fighting the wrong battle in the wrong battlefield, the Church and its bishops only needlessly expose themselves to the danger of losing credibility, which is an even greater loss than the ephemeral gain they seek to gain.

Has the Church and its bishops ever considered the possibility, despite its claim of numerical superiority, that it could actually lose. Have they ever tried to imagine the consequences of losing such a high profile gambit. One can actually shudder just thinking of it.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=834219&publicationSubCategoryId=109

[rusty]

Missouri Catholic priest pleads guilty in child porn case
Reuters By Carey Gillam | Reuters – Thu, Aug 2, 2012

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - A Kansas City Catholic priest pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges on Thursday, admitting to the crimes just weeks before he was scheduled to go on trial for taking sexually explicit photos of several young girls.

Shawn Ratigan, 46, pleaded guilty to four counts of producing child pornography and one count of attempting to produce child pornography using girls as young as 2 years old. The photos, taken with still cameras and a cell phone, included close-up pictures of the children's genitals. He faces 15-30 years in prison on each of the five counts, when sentenced at a later date.

http://news.yahoo.com/missouri-catholic-priest-pleads-guilty-child-porn-case-221937667.html

[sharkey360]

Lim: Lies about the RHB

THE Catholic Church has never disappointed me more than today as it relentlessly spreads misinformation about the reproductive health (RH) bill.

The RH bill allows abortion. Read the bill. Abortion remains illegal. What the Catholic Church repeatedly refers to as “abortion” is in fact, “contraception.”

The bishops have fixated on pills which they claim are abortifacients. The truth is that the primary action of oral contraceptives is to prevent ovulation and fertilization. In a few cases, fertilization can take place but as the pill renders implantation difficult (though not impossible), no pregnancy occurs. These are the cases that the Catholic Church irresponsibly passes off as the norm rather than the aberration.

Vaccines, in a few cases, kill children. Should the availability of vaccines in medical facilities in our country thus be stopped because there “exists the possibility” that they can kill?

The pill is poison. Well, if you call all medication poison, then, yes, the pill is poison. No one is saying the pill is 100 percent safe. But so is every pill you pop in your mouth. No one is saying that the pill has no side effects. But so does every other pill in your medicine cabinet.

Should we thus NOT make medication available in our hospitals because there “exists the possibility” that they can kill? Perhaps, we should also ban pregnancies because the reality is that they “can” also kill.

It is ludicrous for the Catholic Church to harp on the pill as poison. Everything we pop into our mouths that is processed is poison depending on whose opinion you seek. But that is my point. Why don’t we allow every Filipino to decide for himself what is evil, immoral and dangerous? Why don’t we let every person decide for himself what is panacea or poison?

The Catholic Church cannot impose its morality on the population. Morality is couched on individual discernment. The bishops can preach from their pulpits but they should not threaten our legislators with a religious vote. This is no longer religion. This is politics.

Jehovah’s Witnesses do not subscribe to blood transfusion. To preserve freedom of conscience, are we to make blood transfusion inaccessible in our hospitals? Respecting the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses does not justify making blood transfusion unavailable to the rest of the population. This is the essence of a secular state.

Pills are not going to be forcibly stuffed down the throats of women. How is one’s freedom of conscience violated here? Your right to choose has not been taken away from you. The RH bill is anti-life. How is it pro-life to condemn contraception but to ignore the miserable existence of so many children, abused and abandoned on a daily basis, left to die of starvation, disease and neglect?

It is not principle but pride that fuels the Church to fight against the RH bill. It is not life they wish to save and protect but the institution they represent. It is not religion they preach rather it is political power they seek. The bishops do not want to be saviors. They want to be kingmakers.

The lies should stop now.

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/opinion/2012/08/04/lim-lies-about-rhb-235774

[sharkey360]

When religious dogma clashes with democracy
GOTCHA By Jarius Bondoc

Philippine Catholic hierarchs deem all contraceptives — including condoms, vasectomy, and tubal ligation — as abortifacients. If confronted with scientific proof to the contrary, they shift argument to the readiness of natural family-planning methods. Rhythm and Billings conform to the female’s monthly ovulation, during which the couple can avoid sex. Yet the wife also naturally feels sexiest during ovulation, and the loving husband obliges. To avoid pregnancy they might resort to sexual manipulations other than coition. There again, the hierarchs admonish that withdrawal, as with masturbation and similar ways of climaxing, are sinful because onanistic.

That’s when the most basic insistence of the hierarchs emerges: the sole function of sex is procreation. Bottom line, pleasurable sex is wrong if not for pregnancy. The only pure alternative is abstinence. Alongside it are other strictures, like chastity and marriage before procreative sex.

Unfortunately, if natural methods are so difficult to observe, then more so is abstinence. The Church intellectual Augustine understood human frailty. Not all men could live like saints. And so he quipped in confession, “Lord, make me chaste — but not yet.”

The impracticality of abstinence has led to the present situation in the 80-percent Catholic Philippines:

• a 100-million population — double what its resources presently can sustain, and still growing at more than two percent yearly;

• a 33-percent poverty rate, with the poorest households weighed down by too many mouths to feed, and too little knowledge and means to plan family size;

• eleven mothers dying each day giving birth, mostly because of one too many, too frequent unplanned pregnancies;

• a malnutrition rate of 26 percent among children below five years old; and

• 79,000 backstreet abortions of unwanted pregnancies in 2000, confirmed in government hospitals only because of serious aftermaths; meaning, the volume can only be higher through the decade, considering the unreported cases.

Again Catholic hierarchs have a way of dismissing such figures. Supposedly those are concocted by sinister western imperialistic groups that want to rein in Philippine population for easier domination. If again confronted with government and private studies, the hierarchs point to other causes. Bureaucratic corruption, tax evasion, and corporate and individual greed, they say, are to blame for the poverty and ignorance all around. The government is striving to curb the maladies. Still, the Catholic hierarchs insist that the solution is in charity — sharing everything with everyone.

Absolute chastity and charity are impossible in this imperfect world. That is why health and women’s groups for two decades have been advocating state support for reproductive rights.

Pending in Congress is a Reproductive Health Bill that would:

(1) ensure health care for mothers, newborns, and toddlers;

(2) teach the public, starting at inquisitive pubescence, about reproductive health, rights, and restraint;

(3) afford couples the freedom to learn and the means to plan families and space pregnancies;

(4) obligate the national and local governments to prioritize the citizens’ reproductive health and welfare; and

(5) slow down the runaway population growth rate.

The present version of the RH Bill would be up for voting at the 286-member House of Representatives on Tuesday. After that, rough sailing is expected at the Senate. The chamber leaders who control the agenda — the Senate President, Majority Leader, and Assistant Majority Leader — are against the proposed law.

Both the House and the Senate must assent for any proposal to be enacted. If the RH Bill passes in the House, the Catholic hierarchs would be banking on the three Senate leaders to shelve any voting in their chamber.

The bill’s proponents are praying that elected leaders would heed the sentiment of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. As stated in survey after survey, up to 85 percent of Filipinos believe that the government actively should participate in population planning. And up to 65 percent say they need help in family planning.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=835174&publicationSubCategoryId=64

[RU9]

[sharkey360]

Look who lashed out against the government and even the church

Reyes, arguably the Roman Catholic Church’s most maverick cleric, then questioned the sincerity of the Church leadership in its avowed mission to help the poor and the oppressed.
 
“Yes the Church has always been on the side of the poor. But how much has this been the case? Can the Church and the other churches also say the opposite then, that they, have not been and will never be on the side of the rich? Doesn’t this also smack of dishonesty if not hypocrisy?” Reyes said.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/243115/running-priest-hits-govt-church-for-using-poor-as-pawn-in-rh-bill-debate

[RU9]

Catholic Church has billions invested in BPI, Philex, San Miguel
May 31, 201

For most of us, it’s a given that the Catholic Church is rich. One just has to look at their sprawling acres of land, large Church structures and buildings, and millions of pesos of cash collected from mass goers every week.
What a lot of people do not know is that the Church is also a stockholder in several Philippine companies; the total investment in these publicly-listed firms comprise a sizable chunk of its total wealth. Reports submitted to the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) show that the Church and affiliate Catholic groups are, in fact, the top stockholders in companies such as the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Philex Mining Corporation (PX), San Miguel Corporation (SMC), Ayala Corporation (AC), and Phinma Corporation (PHN), among others.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, for example, is the 4th largest owner of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) with more than 300 million shares. How much are these shares worth? As of May 2011, this is valued at more than P17 billion. Yes, that’s seventeen billion pesos, with a B.
Aside from banking, the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines is also invested in mining and construction.
As of March 31, 2011, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila is the 15th top shareholder of Philex Mining Corporation (PX), the country’s largest mining firm. It owns 3.2 million shares of PX currently worth more than P66 million.


More...

http://www.pinoymoneytalk.com/church-philippines-rich-wealth-stocks/

[Klaus Weasley]

Why don't they use that money to help the poor?

[leomarley]

Why don't they use that money to help the poor?

nakakakuha naman daw sila ng donation from the goverment eh (specially nung time ni GMA) bakit pa sila gagastos ng sarili nilang pera?

[anchit]

tax free pa din ba yang mga investments nila na yan?

[Nelson de Leon]

Why don't they use that money to help the poor?

Ang alam ko, ang obligation ng church is to spread the gospel. It's the government's responsibility to help the poor.

Probabbly yan ang method nila to "go and multiply" investments and spread the gospel. 

[RU9]

CATHOLIC CHURCH MAKES A FORTUNE IN THE GERMAN PORN BUSINESS
Weltbild, one of Germany’s largest publishing companies, happens to be owned and operated by the Catholic Church. But that has not stopped it from publishing books that many of the faithful find offensive.


The cover of a romance novel published by Weltbild. - ()

By
DIE WELT/Worldcrunch
Worldcrunch *NEWSBITES
"Weltbild," Germany’s largest media company, sells books, DVDs, music and more -- and also happens to belong 100% to the Catholic Church. Few people knew about this connection until this month when Buchreport, a German industry newsletter, reported that the Catholic company also sells porn.
A Church spokesman responded: “Weltbild tries to prevent the distribution of possibly pornographic content.”

Well, it's prevention efforts have apparently not been so successful. For more than 10 years, a group of committed Catholics has been trying to point out what is going on to Church authorities, and they are outraged at the hypocrisy of the spokesman's statement. In 2008, the group sent a 70-page document to all the bishops whose dioceses have shared ownership of Weltbild for 30 years, detailing evidence of the sale of questionable material.

Read more...

http://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/catholic-church-makes-a-fortune-in-the-german-porn-business//c3s3995/#.UC0ZmlYgc8p

[RU9]

The Vatican Is Losing Money Like Crazy

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican has registered one of its worst budget deficits in years, plunging back into the red with a €15 million ($19 million) deficit in 2011 after a brief respite of profit.
The Vatican on Thursday blamed the poor outcome on high personnel and communications costs and adverse market conditions, particularly for its real estate holdings.

Not even a €50 million gift to the pope from the Vatican bank and increased donations from dioceses and religious orders could offset the expenses and poor investment returns, the Vatican said in its annual financial report.


Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/vatican-deficit-2012-7

[sharkey360]

Carvajal: Decline and fall

ALL empires of the world eventually arrive at the sunset of their power. Absolute power affords rulers an alienating up-in-the- clouds lifestyle that deludes them into believing they can resist man’s inherent drive to seek freedom. As we speak, for instance, a deluded despot is fighting a losing battle against a fiercely determined push for freedom by his Syrian people.

Among the few absolute monarchies left in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. She too, or more precisely her hierarchy, absolute power and all, will fall. No power on earth can resist man’s fight for his God-given right to basic freedoms, among them of religion and of conscience.

But isn’t the Church of divine origin? Yes and no. The faith of Catholics is a gift from God and is of divine origin. However, the monarchical form of government of the Catholic Church is a historical accretion. Early Christians started out as a community of equals presided over by chosen elders.

St. Peter, the first Pope, was not an absolute monarch in any sense of the term.

Vatican II opened the door to greater participation by the laity in Church affairs without being “infallible” about it. Since then, however, post-Vatican II popes have closed the door and asserted their power to rule absolutely. While many bishops, priests and laity in the world are resisting this backslide into medievalism, in the Philippines the local hierarchy is acting, so to speak, even more popish than the Pope.

Nowhere is this more evident than in their ever hardening stand against the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill. Unless the bishops just want to assert their waning power over a more informed laity, one cannot even start to understand their emotionally and unreasonably vehement opposition to the bill.

Why are they now talking heresy (and hellfire?) to pro-RH professors of the Ateneo when there is no infallible doctrine on artificial contraception?

Why do they have to use threats (disaffiliation, blacklist, no communion) if they had sound arguments to convince reasonable people to their side?

Why can they not re-evangelize us, as they said they would, and trust us to be formed enough to follow our consciences?

By demanding blind obedience from Church members and by trying to impose their debatable morality on non-Catholics the bishops are proving themselves to be completely alienated from people, hence disoriented and delusional. Unless they can humble themselves to accept the sense and sensibility ordinary Catholics are trying to impress on them, the hierarchy could well be on its way towards its decline and fall.

No problem. The Church will live on, this time with leaders who are short on raw power but long on moral and spiritual ascendancy.

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/cebu/opinion/2012/08/21/carvajal-decline-and-fall-238654

[sharkey360]

Ateneo and the Church

A university that commands its faculty to think alike is a shame to all academic life. In demanding from the faculty of Ateneo total submission to its anti-RH line, out of fidelity to its beliefs, the Church risks destroying the very thing that makes Ateneo a university—respect for reason.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/35470/ateneo-and-the-church

[sharkey360]

Parañaque bishop under fire

A LAITY group in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Parañaque criticized Bishop Jesse Mercado for snubbing a public forum on Monday where he was invited to explain the disposition of more than P3 million in diocesan funds that were meant to be given to disaster victims, but purportedly did not reach the beneficiaries.

Dr. Erwin Carabeo, a leader of the Lay Initiative for Transparency and Accountability, expressed disappointment at the bishop’s apparent refusal to face the public and clarify the allegations hurled against him.

“We want to hear it directly from the bishop. These people, the ordinary parishioners and the faithful, have questions that we church workers also could not answer,” said Carabeo, a former president of the pastoral council of St. Andrew’s Cathedral, the seat of the Parañaque diocese.

Carabeo told Manila Standard Today at the forum held at the Elorde Sports Complex on Sucat Road in Parañaque that he resigned as council president when the alleged irregularity broke out because the bishop has done nothing to explain the matter but issue “blanket denials.”

Manila Standard Today tried to reach Mercado for comment but was referred to a statement, signed by the diocesan chancellor Rev. Carmelo Estores, posted in the diocese’s official website which said the bishop neither endorsed nor recognized the forum.

The statement said the bishop submitted a report to Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Giuseppi Pinto, after three priests of the diocese complained.

“Moreover, the Oeconomus (or Diocesan Financial Administrator) as well as the Diocesan Finance Council have explained in detail the facts pertinent to the unfounded allegations. They have also presented in full the financial status of the Diocese. This was done in the Clergy Assembly and in a meeting of the Diocesan Council of the Laity,” the statement read.

“The Oeconomus will also present the same to members of the Parish Finance Councils on the vicariate level,’ the statement added.

But Carabeo claimed the diocesan laity were not happy with the circular because it opens more questions with no substantial answers.

“They issued a circular, but when we went to see the circular, there are still a lot of questions that remained unanswered, all blanket denials and there were no substantial answers,” Carabeo said.

“The problem is we expect transparency from the government and yet the Church also could not be equally transparent. This (forum) should have been the proper venue to talk to the laity,” he added.

Carabeo said Mercado is being questioned for diocesan funds that were mostly intended for victims of calamities that were collected at different times since 2009 when Typhoon Ondoy hit Metro Manila.

He said the funds represent the 10 percent of the mass collections of 51 parishes in the cities of Paranaque, Muntinlupa, and Las Pinas which are all under the Diocese of Parañaque.

Carabeo claimed the diocese collected P1.6 million in 2009 for donations to Ondoy victims but only more than P200,000 allegedly reached the intended beneficiaries.

There were also millions that were unremitted to the victims of Haiti earthquake in 2010 and Typhoon Sendong in 2011. The diocese also allegedly did not remit almost P400,000 donations to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines for the Palm Sunday celebrations in 2011.

Carabeo said they have written Mercado twice, once in July and the latest earlier this month, to release the audited financial statements of the diocese and other pertinent documents that could determine the real financial condition of the church.

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2012/08/28/paranaque-bishop-under-fire-2/

[rusty]

Father Benedict Groeschel, American Friar, Claims Teens Seduce Priests In Some Sex Abuse Cases
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/29/father-benedict-groeschel-teens-seduce-priests_n_1840900.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

[RU9]

Priest apologizes after sex abuse comments draw ire
By Laura Koran, CNN

(CNN) - A prominent Catholic friar has apologized for saying that child victims of sex abuse may at times bear some of the responsibility for the attacks because they can seduce their assailants, and that first-time sex offenders should not receive jail time.

"I did not intend to blame the victim," the Rev. Benedict Groeschel, of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, said Thursday. "A priest (or anyone else) who abuses a minor is always wrong and is always responsible."

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/31/priest-apologizes-after-sex-abuse-comments-draw-ire/

[devlin_waugh]

[sharkey360]

In final interview, Cardinal says church ‘200 years out of date’

The former archbishop of Milan and papal candidate Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said the Catholic Church is "200 years out of date" in his final interview before his death, published on Saturday.
 
Martini, once favored by Vatican progressives to succeed Pope John Paul II and a prominent voice in the church until his death at the age of 85 on Friday, gave a scathing portrayal of a pompous and bureaucratic church failing to move with the times.
 
"Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our rituals and our cassocks are pompous," Martini said in the interview published in Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
 
"The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the pope and the bishops. The pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation," he said in the interview.
 
In the last decade the Church has been accused of failing to fully address a series of child abuse scandals which have undermined its status as a moral arbiter, though it has paid many millions in compensation settlements worldwide.
 
Martini, famous for comments that the use of condoms could be acceptable in some cases, told interviewers the Church should open up to new kinds of families or risk losing its flock.
 
"A woman is abandoned by her husband and finds a new companion to look after her and her children. A second love succeeds. If this family is discriminated against, not just the mother will be cut off but also her children."
 
In this way "the Church loses the future generation", Martini said in the interview, made a fortnight before he died. The Vatican opposes divorce and forbids contraception in favor of fidelity within marriage and abstinence without.
 
A liberal voice in the church, Martini's chances of becoming pope were damaged when he revealed he was suffering from a rare form of Parkinson's disease and he retired in 2002.
 
Pope John Paul II was instead succeeded in 2005 by Pope Benedict XVI, a hero of Catholic conservatives who is known by such critical epithets as "God's rottweiler" because of his stern stand on theological issues.
 
Martini's final message to Pope Benedict was to begin a shake up of the Catholic Church without delay.
 
"The church is 200 years out of date. Why don't we rouse ourselves? Are we afraid?"
 
Martini was much loved and thousands paid their respects at his coffin in Milan cathedral on Saturday.

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/272197/news/world/in-final-interview-cardinal-says-church-200-years-out-of-date

[Klaus Weasley]

Unfortunately, the Church's response to that is to double-down on their social conservative positions, at times even rolling it back a bit. They have this delusion that people who fall out of the Church are either ignorant, misguided or just plain evil and that if they shout louder and be firm in their stance, they will win them back. This seems to be the attitude fostered by the CBCP here. I get the impression that if you disagree with them you are ignorant and misguided at best and evil at worst.

[jerix]

The church is not above the law, it is just trying to influence people in the government to abide with their beliefs and persuasions.

[Nelson de Leon]

The church is not above the law, it is just trying to influence people in the government to abide with their beliefs and persuasions.

To make them above the law? 

[sharkey360]

[Pillow]

Our Lady of Annunciation Parish in Mindanao Ave. is causing massive traffic during Sundays. The 4 lane traffic is converged into single lane as the other three are being converted to parking lots by parishioners. I'm sure the local baranggay is aware and of this as they even provide traffic aids to help people cross the street to/from the parish. Meanwhile, yesterday when a friend's mini-cab broke down just across the street, a tow truck showed up and to remove the vehicle after only 10 mins.

[rusty]

US bishop guilty of failing to report sex abuse
by Agence France-Presse
Posted on 09/07/2012 8:47 AM  | Updated 09/07/2012 8:47 AM

CHICAGO, United States of America - Bishop Robert Finn was found guilty Thursday (Friday, Manila time) of failing to report suspected child abuse, becoming the highest-ranking US Catholic Church official convicted in clergy sex abuse scandals.

Jackson County Circuit Court Judge John Torrence issued the ruling in Kansas City, Missouri after Finn, 59, declined to fight the charges and instead agreed to a stipulated finding of facts in the case.

Finn will not serve jail time or pay a fine for the misdemeanor charge. He was instead placed on probation, which requires him to ensure the diocese trains staff and clergy to detect and report abuse, as well as create a US$10,000 fund for counseling abuse victims.

The ruling comes weeks after Monsignor William Lynn was sentenced to up to six years in prison for covering up child sex abuse by priests in Philadelphia.

http://www.rappler.com/world/11943-us-bishop-guilty-of-failing-to-report-sex-abuse

[sharkey360]

The Ten Commandments according to George Carlin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-RGN21TSGk