Al Jazeera
Monday, February 15, 2010
Pope Benedict is to meet with Ireland's 24 bishops during a
two-day summit at the Vatican [AFP]
Rome - The Vatican has summoned all 24 of Ireland's Roman Catholic
bishops for talks with the pope following revelations of widespread
child abuse among the Irish priesthood.
The meetings with Pope Benedict XVI are due to take place on Monday
and Tuesday and are to include an accounting of the bishops' views,
actions or knowledge about decades of sexual abuse by members of the
clergy.
Greg Watts, a Catholic writer and author, said the purpose of the
meeting is to stress the seriousness of the issue.
"Calling all the bishops is quite unprecedented. It happened in 2002,
when Pope John Paul II summoned the US bishops to Rome, again over
the issue of sexual abuse," he told Al Jazeera.
"The pope will be reminding the bishops of their duty to ordinary
Catholics. One of the problems is that the Church has become very
much driven by power and cover-ups.
"The pope will be saying 'This can't happen again, you must remember
what your role is as a spiritual leader'."
Rekindling the faith
But Watts said the pope must also work to rekindle the faith of
ordinary Catholics.
"Many Catholics in Ireland are disillusioned. Somehow he's got to re-
inspire those Catholics to think that most priests haven't been
involved in sexual abuse, it's a small number."
The meetings come three months after the release of a damning report
into child sex abuse by priests, released by Judge Yvonne Murphy.
"A casualty of all this has been the truth. The fullness of the
truth must come out, everything must be laid on the table"
-Bishop Joseph Duffy,
Irish Bishops Conference spokesman
Issued on November 26, 2009 the Murphy Commission report found the
church had "obsessively" hidden child abuse from 1975 to 2004.
It said that of the 13 auxiliary [assistant] bishops in the
archdiocese who knew about complaints of child sexual abuse over that
period, four "dealt particularly badly with complaints".
The archdiocese had been more preoccupied with protecting the
church's reputation than safeguarding children, it said.
Among the 24 bishops expected at the summit is Martin Drennan of
Galway, who was named in the report's investigation.
But he has refused calls to step down, saying that he did nothing to
endanger children.
Graphic abuse reports
The report came six months after the release of an even more graphic
report about floggings, slave labour and gang rape in Ireland's now
defunct church-run industrial and reform schools in the 20th century.
That report documented decades of sexual, physical and psychological
abuse in Catholic-run schools and orphanages.
"A casualty of all this has been the truth," The Associated Press
news agency cited Clogher Bishop Joseph Duffy, a spokesman for the
Irish Bishops Conference, as saying on the eve of the summit in the
Vatican.
"The fullness of the truth must come out, everything must be laid on
the table."
But he said the church was "admittedly slower than in needs to be" in
dealing with a "culture of concealment."
The church's moral authority in Ireland has been eroded in recent
years following a string of clerical sex abuse scandals, many of them
involving priests molesting young boys.
Similar charges of covering up cases of abuse have dogged the
Catholic church in other countries, especially the United States.
Seven dioceses there have filed for bankruptcy protection to shield
themselves from lawsuits by abuse victims.
More at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/02/201021420236176854.html
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
o Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post may not
have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of the
poster. The contents are protected by copyright law and the exemption for
fair use of copyrighted works.
o If you send private e-mail to me, it will likely not be read,
considered or answered if it does not contain your full legal name, current
e-mail and postal addresses, and live-voice telephone number.
o Posted for information and discussion. Views expressed by others are
not necessarily those of the poster who may or may not have read the article.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This article may contain copyrighted material the use of
which may or may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. This material is being made available in efforts to advance the
understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic,
democratic, scientific, social, and cultural, etc., issues. It is believed
that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research, comment, discussion and educational purposes by
subscribing to USENET newsgroups or visiting web sites. For more information
go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
If you wish to use copyrighted material from this article for purposes of
your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the
copyright owner.
Since newsgroup posts are being removed
by forgery by one or more net terrorists,
this post may be reposted several times.
<use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)> wrote in
message news:20100214AaVB9bpIYta62739xFSqct6@G9x2O...
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
In article <4b78cf39$0$12437$bbae...@news.suddenlink.net>,
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted:
>
> habshi of course won't learn anything, he has a closed mind.
> instead of thanking you educating him, of which he is clearly incapable of,
> he gets mad at you - like a blinkered monotheist.
> Dr. Jai Maharaj posted: