How has the Pennsylvania scandal affected you personally?

  • Thread starter Thread starter SacredHeartBassist
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I’ve never been an altar boy so I missed out on this part of Catholic experience. I’m fine with missing out but I’m sad for all victims because they deserved better than how they were being treated for many years. I expect a highest ethical standard in the Catholic Church & no more excuses to move “problem” around the world.
 
Yes! We have to insist on change and protection for our youth of all ages!

There was corruption among some clerics at the time of St. Francis of Assisi. He focused on reforming himself and becoming exceedingly holy. St. Francis and his followers helped to reform the Church at that time.

That reminds me that I must become holier with the help of the grace of the Lord.
 
TheOldColonel said:
I cancelled my vacation to Pennsylvania. I was looking toward to going there in January to experience the forlorn, frozen wasteland of post-industrial urban living. But that’s off now.😎
Click to expand...
There’s a reason so many Eastern Europeans settled here. 😁
 
Wow!

Please, give me a link to the official documents. I’ve never heard this.
 
The abused deserve some form of compensation, and money seems to be the only thing that can be offered. They probably need it to pay for counseling.
 
Victims need, and deserve, some form of compensation. After all they’ve been through, at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, do you really want to send the message to them that their pain is worthless?
 
Last edited:
No, no amount of counseling will change what happened to them. But they deserve compensation as well as therapy. Sine no one has a time machine, they deserve money in addition to counseling. The Catholic Church is the wealthiest institution in the world. Time to use some of that money to do good for these victims. They deserve to know the pain and horror they went through at the hands of representatives of the RCC is worth something. Their lives are worth something.
 
Last edited:
Good question. Lots of diverse responses as well.

For me, as a husband and father of 2 children, our family is very involved with our local dioceses. My wife teaches CCD, we volunteer, charity events, etc. etc.

While I won’t say this has shaken me to the core, it has very much tested my faith in the Catholic Churches leadership. While the crimes themselves are horrendous and should be dealt with swiftly and fairly, what has shaken me most are the cover ups. The reassignments. The blatant lies by our very own church leaders.

Honestly, it makes me questions pretty much everything from the Pope all the way down the line. It makes me realize these are only men who cannot be trusted anymore than the thug on the corner. How are we to take any of it anymore? Infallibility? Tradition? Church teaching? How much of it is a lie? The worst part is that for decades they shunned the laity reading scripture on their own.

It makes me wonder if the Sola Scriptura crowds aren’t right. Hell, if my Grandfather, God rest his soul, wasn’t right when he said the only one he answers to is God. He was the holiest man I ever knew, and he barely ever attended “church” on Sunday’s. I’d have a hard time believing he’s not in heaven sitting next to Christ after learning of all these happenings.

In the end, I will stay with the Church as it is all I have ever known. However, I will definitely not follow so blindly on anything they ever say, teach, or promote any longer. I’ll pray as I always have. Read the Bible as I have for years, and begin making more of my own decisions on how to properly live and raise my family.
 
Indeed. They find themselves amid these damp and drizzly evenings, within the yet still grim embrace
of this forlorn and vacant city possessed only of night’s cold fingers. They wander through its corridors directionless and lost in empty streets, in vacant parks, in overgrown cemeteries where they pause longingly as if to greet their own procession to oblivion.Yet that procession does not break into vision.
Through the rising fog of night, the city takes on a loneliness and secrecy only these residents may truly know. Nothing penetrates this empty silence. For it is echoed back eternally upon itself. So, they are left only to stand in the ruins of this moment, in the ruins of memory, in the ruins of self, without hope, without meaning, without purpose but to be touched by this drab and empty embrace.
 
I can only tell you that I’ve been rehearsing “Living” all my life, the art of waking and sleeping, eating and caring. No doubt, I’ll be rehearsing until I’m led away. I have become a master of the dark sleep of day, the well timed nod and the subtle smile. It all looks real. But my dreams are more real than life as I drift through this contiguous absence of self. No one ever seems to notice I’m not really there, that I am a mere placeholder for a real person. I am more space than substance, more pleasant that sincere. I am clouded by these hours, this flow of empty hours, where my outline is drawn and defined by the expectations of the self-absorbed and their encroachments of neediness which fine-tune my indifference to pure static, making me complete in my improvisation of purposeless matter, hovering in the darkness, hollow and vacant, before them.
 
I am a Shade that Haunts the Living…

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
The Pennsylvania study is just a piece of the puzzle of clerical sexual abuse around the world. It is incredible how widespread this sexual abuse was even in one state, the state of brotherly love.

I’m glad it puts more pressure on the bishops and the vatican to stop trivializing the sexual abuse as mere paperwork to be shuffled by the CDF.

P Francis says that clericalism has produced all the clerical sexual abuse and the related abuses. OK, I’m waiting for him to fix it. It must be fixed from the top down, and now is the time. Although the delay, waiting for a February synod, is agonizing to me, perhaps a delay is really needed to do the large job that has to be done.

CLEARLY, the bishops have to have more oversight over who they admit to seminaries and have to take a retrospective view of who might be abusers among all clerics. The Church has to stop being a criminal organization, by being accessories to the crimes by covering them up and moving around abusive priests. I will not support a criminal organization that is supposed to be or masquerades as the Body of Christ.

I am insulted by the admonitions to pray and fast. For what? So that the bishops, cardinals, and pope simply do their jobs? We’re always supposed to pray. What’s required, as C. DiNardo says, are “concrete actions.” The USCCB better order a lot of concrete for the November conclave in Baltimore.
 
Last edited:
I enjoy your post here. There is so much legalism, abuse of authority, and infiltration by people who do not respect the Holy Bible as well as the catechism. Today’s gay issues make many feel that the church must teach it’s teachings to accept their desire to not respect God’s written will. While I love others as myself, I will not submit to pressure or change boundaries. I desire to live for Christ and follow Jesus’s teachings. I also attend a bible church where all things are scripture based. If people disrespect the Bible, then they should leave. I will continue to love them also. The 30-40% level of gay priests is simply unacceptable for me. We see the results of this permissiveness and it is ruining our country.
 
BoomBoomMancini said:
Made me seriously consider leaving the Church for the first time in my life.
Click to expand...
I’ve considered leaving also, but the Church I’ve been thinking about checking out (non denominational) as an alternative might not be for me. I’ve been learning a bit about it and while I’d still like to attend a service sometime, I doubt I’d like it.
 
adamhovey1988 said:
Keep in mind, those types of things happen in Protestant churches too. There is a Protestant website, I can’t remember if it’s reformation.com or reformation.org that actually flat out says that people shouldn’t pretend like it’s a Catholic problem. One of the churches mentioned, in the list they gave, is a Baptist Church, a very large one near where I live. It’s a human problem.
Click to expand...
I realize that it isn’t a Catholic problem, but are the numbers of offenses higher in the Catholic Church as opposed to Protestant ones?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top