Of all the journalists in the world they had to send THIS one!

.. Bob that is absolutely fabulous .. a great pickup mate .. me and she laughed our heads off .. I mean the poor guy must've copped it all his life surely ..

WoZ still laughing

Traditionally, boys sought to enter the priesthood rather than vice versa.

Hello everyone,

This situation with pedophile priests is a logical consequence of simplistic reasoning dictated by created mass psychology,that is,adopted set of values in the societies of the modern times.Fear of established authorities and their actual role in hushing up these things coupled with the militant propaganda for "political correctness"are possibly the main reasons this situation is revealed after the years of silence.

The victims managed to reach media and the story about the child abuse spread through the world as the main informative dish on the menu for the people throughout the world to chew on.I can imagine a heated debate over this in even the most remote tribe in Africa's jungles:).

Now,we have mass hysteria against the Irish church and tons of articles written analyzing the problem from all possible aspects.People are now remembering the priest gave them a naughty look,being touched strangely by the priest or so.I've found one touching(some might say funny though) testimony of such case here http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/03/28/ ... ic-church/.

With due respect to devoted catholic Christians(priests or laymen),I won't be "politically correct" as is demanded by the modern democrats and I'll say that personally I don't have respect for the catholic church's historical role or their heritage.The history of selling indulgences,burning people at stakes,inquisition,"saintly" fascist Stepinac,loathsome role of the catholic priesthood on the Balkans during the WW2, and who knows what else was enough to me to have my opinion of that organization before the sex abuse scandal.Before I see the Pope-Holly Father (the concept of which is truly nonsensical to my mind by the way)telling the world his piece of mind on those problems I'll have my doubts about the true mission of that church in the present too.


But,the problem is not in Catholic church,and certainly isn't in catholic christian religion.There's no doubt that in all churches in the world bad things happened this way or another.Finally,those priests couldn't have done those things if they hadn't been given a chance to do that.They felt so safe with their position of God's missionaries that the society gave to them that they didn't fear any reaction.

The aspect of real interest for me here is the role of the parents of the abused children as individuals in all this, not clergy and "jack of all topics" newspaper analysts' grasp on the problem.Did the parents know about this? Did they fight it?Did they stand up for their children?

There's no doubt that they failed somewhere,whatever the reason was for it.What's the possible reason for that? Did they fall for ridiculous social dogmas of "saintly" priests?Did they fear to act antisocially?Did they fail to raise their children to feel free to talk about their problems in the family?Something was deeply wrong there and whatever the answer,that problem in upbringing is socially ubiquitous of course.

Sexual deviation being in the heart of the problem again ( Freud knew his craft obviously:),one fresh situation has come to me, which also reflects modern social dogmas and so called "political correctness" Yesterday I made a joke about homosexual people on a chat and I was accused of homophobia.I got so much criticism for that and by so many people there that I was stunned.People had their stories about the liberty,equality,gay rights,human rights,the boy in the neighbourhood who is so nice and he is a gay, and so on.

I'm truly against any bigotry and truly for equality among people and I found the situation absurd.The thing of interest for me there was again the creation of mass psychology.How is the public-mass opinion created and how it becomes prevalent in one society? How is it possible for example that prevalent public opinion in the southern states of the United States during the fifties in the last century was against black people entering public transportation or going to schools with white people,and today you will hardly find anyone subscribe to that point of view.

My guess is that most people adopt most of their views through social interaction and much less through cogitation on the problem in question.Those views are rarely more than a simple social dogma, multiplied many times,which contains little substantial personal knowledge,lacking personal processing,and often contradicted by the other views of the same person who,often vehemently,advocates their position.Most importantly,those social dogmas are disseminated by those who have political power,maybe predominantly influencing people's ability to decide what's right and what's wrong.

People should avoid becoming a puppet in a puppet-show (or puppetmaster for that matter),which they do when they succumb to mass histeria of any kind.

Happy Easter to all the christians celebrating it today.

The Pope's remarkable qualities as an inspiring leader of humanity are described in this article.

I can't believe this text is serious Erik :)

I can't believe it either. :-)

When power and authority are exercised without meaningful accountability, especially in secret, then rule-bending, corruption and abuse inevitably follow. This is a familiar pattern in all authoritarian and totalitarian states, as well in those parts of democratic societies that are not transparent and open to scrutiny.

It is especially so where there is no effective mechanism for remedying abuses of power and/or where there is a strict hierarchy of command. We have seen this situation play out in the armed forces, in orphanages and children's homes, in psychiatric hospitals, in monasteries and nunneries, in Guantanamo, in prisons (especially secret prisons), in private schools, in Britain's police forces (among others), in the institutions of almost all faiths, in the criminal underworld, in official procurement, in social services, in the judiciary, in local and national government, in the arms trade, in Wall Street and the City of London, in corporations of varying sizes, in charitable organizations, and in the profiteering and clandestine deals of those who are in a position to influence the legislative process or the interpretation or execution of legislation.

Until fairly recently, the majority of people in the post-World War II societies of the West have found it convenient to assume that the people in charge of most of these institutions basically knew what they were doing and could be allowed to get on with it with minimal supervision. It is becoming daily more obvious that this assumption is profoundly mistaken.

Unfortunately, where the unaccountable, undesirable activities of people in such institutions are sanctioned by the wider society or accorded a blind eye, as in the case of the Catholic church, they become very difficult to eradicate. Only when a problem becomes so large or obtrusive that the individuals or institutions responsible for keeping it in check (who are often guilty of creating, ignoring or actively contributing to it in the first place) are forced to take remedial action or subject themselves to some outside mechanism of accountability is there any hope of effective reform.

I believe the current pedophilia crisis in the Catholic church, which has been building up for many years, could represent such an opportunity for reform. Either the Catholic leadership will decide, after the token attempts to sweep multiple revelations of the wrongdoing of its priests under the carpet have been seen to fail to quell the criticism, that real and radical reform is necessary, or their church will implode under the burden of public scorn, criminal and civil prosecutions, financial ruin and the evaporation of both its officers and congregations.

At this point it is anyone's guess as to which direction the Vatican and its senior officials will take, but so far the omens for the institutional future of the faith are not good. It seems to me that the Catholic hierarchy is too entrenched in the habits and expectations of unquestioning deference to authority to be capable of conceiving and implementing serious reforms. The church may even fall apart regardless of whether its leaders embark on them; in other words, it may be too late to save it.

As Dante pointed out above, what is also disturbing is that the clandestine abuse of power is not limited to the culture of organizations or institutions. Where there is an imbalance in the power structures of the family, which is often accompanied by psychological denial and rationalization, similar abuse also occurs. I suspect that in the aggregate, the scale of such abuses may rival that occurring in the institutions I have listed, with women and children suffering most from such mistreatment.

Perhaps it is partly the prevalence of domestic abuses of power, and the habits of mind and feeling that accompany them, that have contributed to making the public as tolerant as it usually has been of institutional failings and misuse of power. In western societies, the public has additionally been trained by its entertainment industries (especially the American-based ones) to accept, and even demand, a relentless torrent of violence on its screens and to some extent in its sports and games (especially electronic games).

I am convinced that this ultimately has a brutalizing effect on us as individuals, and I suspect that the experience of allowing other people and corporations to organize our thoughts and emotions to such a considerable extent greatly increases our probability of unthinkingly copying the herd when influential public figures try to get us to follow and support them, regardless of what they are trying to get us to do. It is much easier to rationalize our own bad behaviour when everyone around us is also behaving badly and someone who commands our respect is telling us that we are doing the right thing.

Such groupthink seems to me to have made a substantial contribution to some of the world's greatest fiascos. Among more recent examples have been the implosion of Enron, the decision to invade Iraq, the failure to take climate change seriously, and the economic crisis, which first attracted widespread notice when the US housing market started to collapse in the summer of 2007 and turned out to be a many-headed monster with a thousand greedy and/or self-serving progenitors.

Whenever there is some kind of systemic clusterfuck, its perpetrators and enablers can be guaranteed to have been acting on the basis of delusions and self-delusions that are supported, propagated and perpetuated among the wider public by equally delusional or biased media reporting and commentary. This creates an atmosphere of hyperbole and hysteria in which rational decision-making becomes almost impossible. I think the health care debate we have had in the USA during the past couple of years is a good example of this.

That's all I have to say for now about this complex subject.

Hello again,


I wasn't pointing to the cases of family mistreatment exactly although I agree that it's also a common problem of course and may have put an additional pressure on the abused children in those cases.

My guess was that there must have been terrible failures in parenting which made possible that the whole problem came to light decades after those things happened,and only when those abuses were revealed by the victims themselves. I can imagine only two scenarios(although I can't say for sure if it's what really happened):

1.First possibility,more probable to me,the parents didn't know what was happening to their children.This means that parents didn't put enough care in raising their children for whatever the reason might have been:

-they were simply neglectful of their children
-worked a lot and didn't have time to take better care of their children problems,feelings and behaviour
-didn't know how to establish proper communication with their children and get involved into their life and problems

2.The second possibility,less probable and even more terrifying to me,the parents knew or suspected what had happened but they didn't raise their voice against it.Speculating about the possible reasons for parents to stay mute in this case,I could think of a few explanations:

- the parents thought it's better to let the sleeping dog lie because revealing the truth may have made more troubles to their children and maybe ruin his life by being laid bare in front of the society by breaking the tabu.In other words the reason for keeping quiet is avoiding "social pressure".I elaborated on this in the previous thread and I won't repeat myself here

- the parents didn't trust their child

Whatever made those parents fail in their parenting it is clear that it would have taken only one conscious,caring,determinate and responsible parent to stop victimizing at least some of the other children suffering the abuse by pushing towards public condemnation of those loathsome abusive bastards.It didn't happen unfortunately and the attention should be paid to indicating failures in parenting more than the failures of catholic church.



I agree with you on this hundred percent Erik. I guess that no living man can avoid being influenced in his decision making or thinking in general by the atmosphere created in his surrounding.

The whole scandal with pedophile priests,in my opinion,necessitated updating New Testament,Gospel of Matthew in particular, where it says :

"..If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Now the updated version should contain warning which reflects the contemporary needs:.."..but don't turn your butt cheeks to anyone,and keep a special eye on those in priest's cloaks."