Tag Archives: Child Abuse

What’s The Harm? Installment #566: Faith Healing

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Here I begin to list just a fraction of the cases in which children have been hurt or killed by parents who trusted God to do all the healing.

  • Any child of a Jehovah’s Witness who died from blood loss. (Jehovah’s Witnesses believe the blood to be holy, and refuse blood transfusions.)
  • My own uncle, who died of treatable intestinal problems when I was 3 or so years old, because his parents raised him as a Christian Scientist. He was in high school at the time. (Christian Scientists, followers of Mary Baker Eddy, refuse all medical treatment, usually.) I have no memories of my uncle. I just know how hurt my father was by his brother’s death, and by his father’s refusal to hold a funeral (it’s not the CS way).
  • This 11-year-old-girl who died from juvenile diabetes, whose parents trusted prayer to heal her.
  • Many more…

See also:

Pope Benedict XVI more closely tied with sex abuse

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A lot of you know that Pope “Palpatine” Benedict “led Vatican investigations into abuse for four years before assuming the papacy in 2005.” You may know that he makes a habit of [p2p type=”slug” value=”pope-benedict-xvi-more-closely-tied-with-sex-abuse” text=”not addressing these issues”]. Pretty incredible, considering the intentional cover-ups and reassignments of acting pedophile priests that are revealed constantly. But now he is pretending to be unaware of abuses that occurred in his homeland, Germany.

“Nonsense,” said Father Doyle, who has served as an expert witness in sexual abuse lawsuits. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.”

It gets better, too: The super-conservative Catholic church is idiotically maintaining that its mandatory celibacy for priesthood has no influence on child abuse & child rape (AP).

I feel so ashamed that so much of my extended family places their trust, faith, and money in the hands of this evil, corrupt institution!

More here on the New York Times, which is where today’s quotes are to be found. Hat tip to @vjack for first covering this.

Pope Still Ignoring Catholic Child Rape

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Absolutely disgusting, the callous insensitivity the evil Catholic Pope has.

If you haven’t seen the documentary Deliver Us From Evil Goons, do so. It makes the abuses of the Catholic leadership personal, as it documents, in particular, the effects paedophile priests have had on one family.

The following is an excerpt from Vatican heaps insult on injury for Irish abuse victims from the National Secular Society.

The Ryan Report found the Catholic Church and Irish government covered up almost four decades of sexual abuse and beatings by priests and nuns on thousands of children in State care. And the Murphy Report unveiled a catalogue of cover-ups by the Catholic hierarchy in Dublin to protect the Church. But in a Vatican statement, the Pope specifically failed to acknowledge the cover-up or formally apologise for the abuse. The Pope also failed to sack under-fire Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan – or even formally accept the resignations of other bishops, who were criticised in the Murphy Report for their mishandling of cases of sexual abuse. We understand no bishop or higher-ranking Catholic prelate has ever been laicised (sacked) for active or administrative misconduct over child abuse.

Ratzinger also ignored the failure of the Papal Nuncio to co-operate with the Murphy Commission’s investigation into abuse in Dublin.

[The] Pope had told the bishops the sexual abuse of children and young people was not only a heinous crime, but also a “grave sin that offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image”.

The … Pope had also told bishops that the “weakening of faith” was a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors.

Maeve Lewis, of support group One in Four, said the Pope’s response was inadequate. “It is deeply insulting to survivors to suggest they were abused due to failures of faith, rather than because sex offending priests were moved from parish to parish, and those in authority looked away while further children were sexually abused,” she said.

Update: See also [p2p type=”tag” value=”pope-benedict-xvi-more-closely-tied-with-sex-abuse”]