“St Galen Mafia” Cardinal primarily responsible for covering up German Church’s sex abuse problem

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Well, if he’s been dead for 2 years, isn’t that “problem solved”?

I’m more interested in whether whoever took his place is covering it up now or not.
 
Always good to know history to understand why a situation might be the way it is. The Church in Germany seems to be in crisis.
 
No it isn’t. Because there is never only one cockroach. And the fact that he is not the only menber of the St Galen Mafia to be implicated in abuse also raises questions about the motives of the whole group.
 
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OK, so shouldn’t there be an article about the ones who are still alive now and doing their dirt?

I really don’t care about people 2 years in their coffin except to pray for them.
 
Plenty of articles are posted about the current ‘problems’ in the Church. Those who have liberal tendencies choose to discount them.
 
yankeesouth said:
Plenty of articles are posted about the current ‘problems’ in the Church. Those who have liberal tendencies choose to discount them.
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Many of the Church’s scandals have been perpetrated by some of the most conservative cardinals. Cardinal O’Brien comes to mind. Preached a hard line on sexual morality and very homophobic, while at the same time doing the very things he denounced with his seminarians. And he’s not alone.

Even John Paul II refused to face the truth about Marcial Maciel.

It’s not a liberal vs. conservative issue. It’s a perversion and hypocrisy issue.
 
OraLabora said:
It’s not a liberal vs. conservative issue. It’s a perversion and hypocrisy issue.
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You are partly but not I think wholly right. Conservatives are just as likely to abuse as liberals. But unlike liberals, conservatives do not have a flexible doctrine of sexuality with which to self-justify. This makes it more risky and less convenient to form networks of sympathetic clergy who then comfort each other.
 
Maximian said:
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OraLabora:
It’s not a liberal vs. conservative issue. It’s a perversion and hypocrisy issue.
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You are partly but not I think wholly right. Conservatives are just as likely to abuse as liberals. But unlike liberals, conservatives do not have a flexible doctrine of sexuality with which to self-justify. This makes it more risky and less convenient to form networks of sympathetic clergy who then comfort each other.
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And because liberals are more open to forming support networks and likely to confront their behaviors early, unlike conservatives who try to keep issues like this hidden from sight. This leads to cover ups, isolation and intensification of the problem.
 
Sorry but bwah hah hah had I could not help myself.

Really.

You simply cannot ‘let anything go’ without turning it into ‘liberal versus conservative’ or trying to claim the moral superiority of liberals in any way.

The idea that ‘conservative’ bishops did coverups while the liberal bishops were out there draining the swamp so to speak is ludicrous. For one, during the time most of the abuse happened that is being addressed, there were far more ‘liberal’ bishops in the US than conservative due to the effects of Vatican II. Throughout the 60 and 70s not simply the ‘conservative’ culture but the LIBERAL culture as well, sacred and secular, subscribed to the idea that protection of the innocent was paramount. The Geraldo Rivera “let it out’ culture came into being in the 80s and after, not so coincidentally with the never-outwardly apologising AMA finding out that SURPRISE SURPRISE pedophilia could not be cured (something that had been assumed could be done through the 60s and 70s). The whole idea then was that after the ‘cure’ (like the ‘cure’ for alcoholism which was also found to be ‘not true’), the person should have a ‘fresh start’ elsewhere.

Was it a good idea? In hindsight, no. But people in the 60s, 70s, and 80s etc didn’t have the luxury of knowing the future now did they? How easy it is for us to judge the hearts and minds of people who are often long gone now and to determine that they had full knowledge, full consent, etc and did evil for the 21st century ‘labeled’ reasons.

It’s more complicated than that. And I’m not saying that evil things did not happen, or that, especially since the late 90s when there is really no excuse NOT to know the truth of this kind of behaviour and what it does, that coverups did not happen, but not because some ‘conservatives’ were all ‘hide this from sight’ due to their evil inflexible isolating intensifying actions.
 
stpurl said:
You simply cannot ‘let anything go’ without turning it into ‘liberal versus conservative’ or trying to claim the moral superiority of liberals in any way.
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It was @Maximian who did that, though he claimed moral superiority for the conservatives.

Basically, I was trying to show that his rationale, that conservatives would not “form networks of sympathetic clergy”, works against him. I could probably find more evidence on this side than on Maximian’s.

I really do not think liberal and conservative are relevant when discussing child abuse. (Well, except for the argument I just made, that conservatives have a more shame based culture that drives cover ups, etc.)
 
I don’t think that’s the case, really. Remember, one man’s coverup is another person’s ‘protection’. I’m old enough to remember quite well the horrific 60s and 70s rape trials where the woman was absolutely excoriated; it was assumed she asked for it, dressed for it, etc. Etc. Many women who were victims of date rape chose not to pursue justice because their good name was forever tarnished while the accused was an innocent ‘stud’.

In the event it wasn’t women who keep on pursuing justice who changed things, it was a total reunderstanding of what rape was —not ‘lust’ but a crime of POWER—and until that understanding was widely accepted, ‘bringing the issue out in public’ did not change the end result. Women were still stigmatised and men walked free most of the time. If as a woman you wanted to go on with your life without the title of ‘slut’ or ‘whore’ following you, again until the CULTURE changed, you did not so much ‘cover up’ as choose to remain silent.

I am very thankful that the culture has changed to acknowledging that victims did not ‘bring on’ assault’ etc. But I’m also grateful that until the culture did change that women could be protected, as far as they could BACK THEN, so that they didn’t have decades of abuse heaped on them on top of the rape.

I wish the change happened earlier, but I don’t blame those who chose to remain silent, or even those who advised it.

I blame the person who did the rape and to an extent I blame society for ever encouraging the whole ‘women ask for it’ ideas and being slow to accept the truth, but society is made up of individuals after all.
 
stpurl said:
it wasn’t women who keep on pursuing justice who changed things, it was a total reunderstanding of what rape was
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I find it odd that you think these are unrelated. When women became more open talking about rape, what they said caused rape to be reunderstood. This happened when we heard the victim speak, not in some detached setting apart from their voices.

With sexual abuse, I am thinking of a particular incident that retired Pope Benedict XVI brought up in a letter a few years ago. He wanted seminaries reformed so that they were no. Longer shown “pornography” as part of their training. It turns out he was talking about an incident in the 70s when a seminary showed a film about human sexuality to seminarians. As in people who are 23 years old and older being shown pictures of sex organs in a medical scientific context. Benedict referred to it only as pornography and counseled a return to the earlier practice of keeping seminarians away from learning that kind of information.

Closeting information like that leads to cover ups and shame. Openness brings opportunities for healing. It is why we confess our sins, at least in part, isn’t it? How can we be healed while we hide our wounds?
 
Has there been a legitimate source that’s proven the existence of this “St Galen Mafia”? I’ve only heard of it from conspiracists.
 
Wait, now you are implying that Pope Benedict is somehow lacking in knowledge, fostering a ‘culture of shame’,etc? Based on your anecdote? That is really disturbing … . And I mean not disturbing about Pope Benedict, disturbing about the attitude you appear to have about him.

Care to share exactly where you found this information, in context?
 
stpurl said:
You simply cannot ‘let anything go’ without turning it into ‘liberal versus conservative’ or trying to claim the moral superiority of liberals in any way.
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I have to admit, when I see this type of bias in a poster’s posts repeatedly, or in some cases the opposite bias where every post is complaining about “liberals”, it destroys the credibility of the poster in my eyes. IMHO such posters are violating the forum rule on agenda posting, but in such a subtle way that a penalty is unlikely to be enforced, so I simply mute and ignore them as they do not add much to the discussions.
 
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