More On The Catholic Church Sex Scandals & The Celibacy Rule

More on the growing scandal in Germany regarding young boys abused by priests.




As to the allegation in the video that then Cardinal Ratzinger was involved in authoring an effort to impede the investiation of sexual abuse charges a decade ago, that remains to be proven. But the scandal touches Pope Benedict XVI in another way. This from the NYT:

A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he had no comment beyond the statement by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which he said showed the “nonresponsibility” of the pope in the matter. . . .

In the wake of these recent scandals - and coming on the heels of similar scandals in Ireland and the U.S. - more people in the Church are calling for a reexamination of the celibacy rules for priests - this time from the Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, and Alois Kothgasser, the Archbishop of Salzburg. This from the NYT Lede:

On Thursday two senior Catholics in Austria, where reports of the sexual abuse of children by priests and nuns have been in the news, suggested that the role of priestly celibacy may need to be discussed as Catholics seek to understand and end scandals that have erupted across Europe and in the United States in recent years.

The Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, wrote in an article for a Catholic magazine that it was time for the Church to undertake an “unflinching examination” of what might be at the root of the problem of celibate clerics sexually abusing children.

As The Guardian’s religious affairs correspondent, Riazat Butt, explained on Thursday, Archbishop Schönborn wrote that the discussion should “include the issue of priest training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution,” as well as “the issue of priest celibacy and the issue of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the church and of society as a whole.”

On Thursday night, Archbishop Alois Kothgasser of Salzburg told Austrian television, “In the Church’s current situation, the question must be asked whether celibacy is an appropriate way of life for priests and an appropriate way of life for believers.”

It does not appear, however, that the Pope is willing to entertain such a discussion:

Despite all these calls for a discussion of the issue, Pope Benedict defended “the value of sacred celibacy” in remarks on Friday and said that the ancient rule would not be changed because of “passing cultural fashions.”

True, celibacy in the priesthood is an ancient tradition, but it is not as ancient as Christ himself who in fact had at least one apostle, Peter, who was married and had children. I blogged on this issue several days ago and received some interesting comments from at least one indvidual who strongly disagrees with changes to the celibacy rule or the ordination of women. You can find that post here.

The core values and morals of the Church, based on the Biblical text, must never be compromised. Having said that, the Church is foolish indeed if it is not willing to reexamine dogma not explicitly required by Biblical text when appropriate. I deeply love and respect the Catholic Church and I believe that the West, and Europe in particular, will falter and fall if it does not enjoy a resurgence in the West. Christianity is a central pillar of Western Civilization. To call the death of the Church in Europe anything other than a critical tradgedy, or to refer obliquely to the outrage and scandals of priests abusing young boys within the context of a "passing cultural fashion," is very wrongheaded indeed.

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Molding The Young Minds

Education, Education, Education . . .

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

– quotes from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The acceptance, and indeed, ascendancy of socialism across most of the Western world is a testament to the strategy of Lenin and his progeny - to control the education of children. With that lead in, consider the education of the following author, 7th grade student Claire Canfield, who won her school's contest for best essay on Earth Day:

We’re being haunted. Not by a restless spirit, but by something even more upsetting and much more real.

We’ve awoken it, and unlike supernatural haunting, it’s our fault.

Climate change.

A fear, a promise that our lives (and world) will become drastically different in the years to come. We desperately need an exorcist, but in this case, it’s not as easy as mumbling incantations.

We’ve dug and drilled (and drilled) ourselves into quite a big mess. I’m surprised the tilt of the earth hasn’t changed from all the natural cycles we’ve thrown off. We’re throwing off the nitrogen cycle so we can become fatter, and the carbon cycle so our newly fat selves can sit around all day, and not lose the weight we spent so much effort gaining.


. . . As I sit here writing, listening to Nina Persson croon, “It’s closing time, and a well known fact is that life is very short,” in my heated bedroom (with very bad insulation), I am contributing to climate change.

What’s the big deal, you say. Life is very short;, I’m not that much of an impact, right?

The average American creates about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and, although life is very short, we’ve done in about a century what normally takes millions of years. You, as you are reading this, are probably contributing to climate change.

From transportation and electricity to food and clothing, we are slowly killing our planet. And everything on it.

Seven hundred and eighty four species of plants and animals have gone extinct in recent history, and there’s no sign of slowing down. In fact, 16,938 species are currently “threatened” by extinction. Eventually, if we can’t curb our appetite for, well, everything, there will be nothing left to feed us.

“It’s closing time, and a well-known fact is that life is very short.”

So what do we do? Just let the ghosts of the future haunt us?

Yes, our actions can affect our planet in harmful ways, but we can also help – by taking the bus to work, buying local produce or simply remembering to turn your lights off – you can lessen your impact, your footprint, and, essentially, help save the world. . . .

Read the entire essay.

Claire is obviously an articulate young girl. She has equally as clearly been educated by people who are true believers in anthropogenic global warming. They have have fully inculcated their dogma in Claire. No hint of uncertainty clouds Claire's view. Carbon is evil. Catastrophe is but around the corner. Global warming is wholly man made. And there are even religious overtones in her belief. We are sinners and must repent. Claire is fully a progeny of Gore and his many acolytes who serve as the teachers to our young.

Indeed, as we sit and ponder how it is that socialism and its closely entwined radical environmentalism have achieved such success in the West, we must realize that the single greatest failing of the conservatives and classical liberals among us has been to allow the left to gain control of our system of education. How we change that, I know not.

Update: This just got much worse. This from Protein Wisdom:

“We are gathered to unveil the No Child Left Inside Act of 2009, which will support environmental education in our nation’s schools,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a lead sponsor of the bill, said Thursday at Upper Russell Senate Park (near the U.S. Capitol). “These young people will be the environmental stewards and leaders of tomorrow, and we have to prepare them today – and that’s the whole point of this legislation.”

The bill, sponsored and co-sponsored by Democrats, was introduced in the House and Senate on Earth Day, April 22. It would provide $500 million over five years to schools with approved “environmental literacy” plans for students in grades kindergarten through 12, and offer competitive grants to schools and non-profits for outdoor education projects. . . .

It would seem that our new socialists with to plant a lot of seeds.

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Teaching the Dogma of Salafi Islam

Professor Bernard Lewis, in his book "The Crisis of Islam," likened the ideology of Wahhabi / Salafi Islam to the KKK in terms of bigotry and violence (p. 129). Dr. Tawfiq Hamid, a former Salafi terrorist, has written "the civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology." The vitriol and bigotry of Salafism are taught to students in schools and madrassas.
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From a Freedom House report discussed in the Washington Post:

A 2004 Saudi royal study group recognized the need for reform after finding that the kingdom's religious studies curriculum "encourages violence toward others, and misguides the pupils into believing that in order to safeguard their own religion, they must violently repress and even physically eliminate the 'other.' " Since then, the Saudi government has claimed repeatedly that it has revised its educational texts.

. . . A review of a sample of official Saudi textbooks for Islamic studies used during the [2006] academic year reveals that, despite the Saudi government's statements to the contrary, an ideology of hatred toward Christians and Jews and Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine remains in this area of the public school system. The texts teach a dualistic vision, dividing the world into true believers of Islam (the "monotheists") and unbelievers (the "polytheists" and "infidels").

This indoctrination begins in a first-grade text and is reinforced and expanded each year, culminating in a 12th-grade text instructing students that their religious obligation includes waging jihad against the infidel to "spread the faith."

Freedom House knows this because Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Washington-based Institute for Gulf Affairs , gave us a dozen of the current, purportedly cleaned-up Saudi Ministry of Education religion textbooks. The copies he obtained were not provided by the government, but by teachers, administrators and families with children in Saudi schools, who slipped them out one by one.

Some of our sources are Shiites and Sunnis from non-Wahhabi traditions -- people condemned as "polytheistic" or "deviant" or "bad" in these texts -- others are simply frustrated that these books do so little to prepare young students for the modern world.

We then had the texts translated separately by two independent, fluent Arabic speakers.

Religion is the foundation of the Saudi state's political ideology; it is also a key area of Saudi education in which students are taught the interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism (a movement founded 250 years ago by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab) that is reflected in these textbooks.

Scholars estimate that within the Saudi public school curriculum, Islamic studies make up a quarter to a third of students' weekly classroom hours in lower and middle school, plus several hours each week in high school. Educators who question or dissent from the official interpretation of Islam can face severe reprisals. In November 2005, a Saudi teacher who made positive statements about Jews and the New Testament was fired and sentenced to 750 lashes and a prison term. (He was eventually pardoned after public and international protests.)

The Saudi public school system totals 25,000 schools, educating about 5 million students. In addition, Saudi Arabia runs academies in 19 world capitals, including one outside Washington in Fairfax County, that use some of these same religious texts:

FIRST GRADE
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" Every religion other than Islam is false."

"Fill in the blanks with the appropriate words (Islam, hellfire): Every religion other than ______________ is false. Whoever dies outside of Islam enters ____________."



FOURTH GRADE
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"True belief means . . . that you hate the polytheists and infidels but do not treat them unjustly."


FIFTH GRADE
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"Whoever obeys the Prophet and accepts the oneness of God cannot maintain a loyal friendship with those who oppose God and His Prophet, even if they are his closest relatives."

"It is forbidden for a Muslim to be a loyal friend to someone who does not believe in God and His Prophet, or someone who fights the religion of Islam."

"A Muslim, even if he lives far away, is your brother in religion. Someone who opposes God, even if he is your brother by family tie, is your enemy in religion."


SIXTH GRADE
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"Just as Muslims were successful in the past when they came together in a sincere endeavor to evict the Christian crusaders from Palestine, so will the Arabs and Muslims emerge victorious, God willing, against the Jews and their allies if they stand together and fight a true jihad for God, for this is within God's power."


EIGHTH GRADE
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"As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."

"God told His Prophet, Muhammad, about the Jews, who learned from parts of God's book [the Torah and the Gospels] that God alone is worthy of worship. Despite this, they espouse falsehood through idol-worship, soothsaying, and sorcery. In doing so, they obey the devil. They prefer the people of falsehood to the people of the truth out of envy and hostility. This earns them condemnation and is a warning to us not to do as they did."

"They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied [with them]."

"Some of the people of the Sabbath were punished by being turned into apes and swine. Some of them were made to worship the devil, and not God, through consecration, sacrifice, prayer, appeals for help, and other types of worship. Some of the Jews worship the devil. Likewise, some members of this nation worship the devil, and not God."

"Activity: The student writes a composition on the danger of imitating the infidels."


NINTH GRADE
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"The clash between this [Muslim] community (umma) and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills."

"It is part of God's wisdom that the struggle between the Muslim and the Jews should continue until the hour [of judgment]."

"Muslims will triumph because they are right. He who is right is always victorious, even if most people are against him."


TENTH GRADE
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The 10th-grade text on jurisprudence teaches that life for non-Muslims (as well as women, and, by implication, slaves) is worth a fraction of that of a "free Muslim male." Blood money is retribution paid to the victim or the victim's heirs for murder or injury:

"Blood money for a free infidel. [Its quantity] is half of the blood money for a male Muslim, whether or not he is 'of the book' or not 'of the book' (such as a pagan, Zoroastrian, etc.).

"Blood money for a woman: Half of the blood money for a man, in accordance with his religion. The blood money for a Muslim woman is half of the blood money for a male Muslim, and the blood money for an infidel woman is half of the blood money for a male infidel."


ELEVENTH GRADE
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"The greeting 'Peace be upon you' is specifically for believers. It cannot be said to others."

"If one comes to a place where there is a mixture of Muslims and infidels, one should offer a greeting intended for the Muslims."

"Do not yield to them [Christians and Jews] on a narrow road out of honor and respect."


TWELFTH GRADE
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"Jihad in the path of God -- which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it -- is the summit of Islam. This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God."

Read the article. The article was actually published in the Washington Post in May, 2006. Parts of it were reproduced today in the blog Dhivehistan Report, a blog from the Maldives, an island nation undergoing its own problems with Salifization. I blog on it here as I had not seen this initial report and think it worth of memorialization and I have seen nothing to indicate that either the text books or teachings have changed.

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