Pope Francis: 'About 2%' of Catholic clergy paedophiles

Earlier this month the Pope begged forgiveness from victims of child abusers within the Church

(BBC) Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that "about 2%" of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles.

The Pope said that abuse of children was like "leprosy" infecting the Church, according to the Italian La Repubblica newspaper.

He vowed to "confront it with the severity it demands".

But a Vatican spokesman said the quotes in the newspaper did not correspond to Pope Francis's exact words.

The BBC's David Willey in Rome says there is often a studied ambiguity in Pope Francis' off-the-cuff statements.

Analysis: David Willey, BBC News, Rome

He wants to show a more compassionate attitude towards Church teaching than his predecessors, but this can sometimes cause consternation among his media advisers, our correspondent adds.

When is a papal interview not an interview? Sunday's edition of La Repubblica devotes its first three pages to an account of a conversation between Pope Francis and editor Eugenio Scalfari, which took place last Thursday. Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a sharp note that it was not an interview in the normal sense of the word, although he admitted it conveyed the "sense and the spirit" of the conversation.

Mr Scalfari does not use a digital recorder, and Father Lombardi said Pope Francis never checked the accuracy of the interview.

Until now, the Vatican has declined to quantify the extent of clerical sexual abuse scandals in the worldwide Church. Statistics are usually available only for countries in the developed world. In the developing world, information is usually only sketchy.

In the interview, Pope Francis was quoted as saying that the 2% estimate came from advisers. It would represent around 8,000 priests out of a global number of about 414,000.

While the incidence of paedophilia as a psychiatric disorder in the general population is not accurately known, some estimates have put it at less than five percent.

"Among the 2% who are paedophiles are priests, bishops and cardinals. Others, more numerous, know but keep quiet. They punish without giving the reason," Pope Francis was quoted as saying.

"I find this state of affairs intolerable," he went on.

Above the interview La Repubblica ran the headline: "Pope says: Like Jesus, I shall use a stick against paedophile priests."

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi denied that Pope Francis had said that there were cardinals who were paedophiles.

Last year Pope Francis strengthened the Vatican's laws against child abuse and earlier this month begged forgiveness from the victims of sexual abuse by priests, at his first meeting with victims since his election.

Many survivors of abuse by priests are angry at what they see as the Vatican's failure to punish senior officials who have been accused of covering up scandals.

Asked in the same La Repubblica interview about the celibacy rule for priests, Pope Francis recalled that it was adopted 900 years after the death of Jesus Christ and pointed out that the Eastern Catholic Church allows its priests to marry.

"The problem certainly exists but it is not on a large scale. It will need time but the solutions are there and I will find them."

Father Lombardi also denied that these were the Pope's exact words.

Link:

• Pope Francis: 'About 2%' of Catholic clergy paedophiles

Pope says about two percent of priests are pedophiles: paper

ROME (Reuters) - About two percent of Roman Catholic clerics are sexual abusers, an Italian newspaper on Sunday quoted Pope Francis as saying, adding that the pontiff considered the crime "a leprosy in our house".

But the Vatican issued a statement saying some parts of a long article in the left-leaning La Repubblica were not accurate, including one that quoted the pope as saying that there were cardinals among the abusers.

The article was a reconstruction of an hour-long conversation between the pope and the newspaper's founder, Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist who has written about several past encounters with the pope.

"Many of my collaborators who fight with me (against paedophilia) reassure me with reliable statistics that say that the level of paedophilia in the Church is at about two percent," Francis was quoted as saying.

"This data should hearten me but I have to tell you that it does not hearten me at all. In fact, I think that it is very grave," he was quoted as saying.

The pope was quoted as saying that, while most paedophilia took place in family situations, "even we have this leprosy in our house".

According to Church statistics for 2012, the latest available, there are about 414,000 Roman Catholic priests in the world.

The Vatican issued a statement noting Scalfari's tradition of having long conversations with public figures without taking notes or taping them, and then reconstructing them from memory. Scalfari, 90, is one of Italy's best known journalists.

While acknowledging that the conversation had taken place, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi issued a statement saying that not all the phrases could be attributed "with certainty" to the pope.

Lombardi said that, in particular, a quote attributed to the pope saying cardinals were among the sex abusers was not accurate and accused the paper of trying to "manipulate naive readers".

Last week, the Argentine pope held his first meeting with victims of sexual abuse by priests.

He told them the Church should "weep and make reparation" for crimes that he said had taken on the dimensions of a sacrilegious cult. He vowed zero tolerance for abusers and said bishops would be held accountable if they covered up crimes by priests in their diocese.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Link:

• Pope says about two percent of priests are pedophiles: paper

Related:

• It's official: Pope has not abolished sin, says Vatican
• Pope calls for fresh Church approach to children of gay parents
• Cardinal Burke Out; Cardinal Wuerl In 
• Pope Francis Named Time's Person of the Year
• There Is A Reason That The Pope Is Called the Holy Father.
• Guess the Saint
• Assent and Papal Magisterium
• Pope, in new interview, vows to change Vatican mentality
• Pope convenes cardinals for church reform talks
• Pope Offers Beach Ball to Our Lady at Santa Maria Maggiore Before WYD 
• Vatican prelate in 'gay romance' with Swiss guard?
• Pope Francis: `Gay lobby' exists inside Vatican
• Back Off the Benny Bashing 
• Father Z: I am thinking about those red shoes

Atheists Don't Have No Songs

h/t Fr. Peter West

When Christmas Was Banned in Massachusetts

By Kevin Seamus Hasson

(The Wall Street Journal) Does it sometimes seem as if the Christmas wars—namely the battle between secularists and believers over how and where Christmas and Hanukkah (not to mention other faiths' holidays) should be recognized—have been around forever? If so, you're not far off. The opening shots of the war, at least in America, were fired in Plymouth Colony itself. And after nearly 400 years, it's past time we learned our lesson and ceased hostilities.

Both factions still make the same fundamental mistake the Pilgrims did in Plymouth Colony. In Plymouth, culture was served up in one simple, strong flavor: Pilgrim. The Pilgrims were in charge and they knew it. Dissidents, and they were few, were not allowed to voice their dissent, let alone protest.

The contrast between October and December 1621 in Plymouth is a telling illustration of culture Pilgrim-style. In October, the Pilgrims held what has come to be called the First Thanksgiving. It lasted several days, featuring marksmanship and other contests in addition to good food. In short, it was about as communal and festive as the Pilgrims could ever be. Two months later, however, on "the day called Christmas Day," their leader, Governor William Bradford, recorded in his journal that he "called them out to work."

That was normal. For the Pilgrims, Dec. 25 was a day just like any other. Christmas, they thought, was a "papist" invention. Unlike their feast days, they couldn't find it in the Bible, so they wouldn't celebrate it. The previous year, they had spent their first Christmas in Plymouth splitting lumber.

But a year later not everyone agreed. Some newly arrived colonists objected that "it went against their consciences to work" on Christmas. So Bradford grudgingly excused them "till they were better informed" and led the wiser, more veteran colonists away to work. Returning at noon, however, he was horrified to discover the newcomers "in the street at play, openly" engaged in various sports.

In other words, the newcomers were doing exactly what the Pilgrims had done two months earlier. But this was different. This was no Pilgrim-proclaimed holiday. This was that dangerous innovation—Christ's Mass.
The governor knew what he had to do. He confiscated their sports equipment, telling them that if they insisted on celebrating Christmas as a "matter of devotion" they could do so privately at home, "but there should be no gaming or reveling in the streets." It was no isolated tantrum. A generation later, the colony formally outlawed Christmas for 22 years.

The double standard was blatant. Only two months before they suppressed the Christmas revelers, the Pilgrims had held their own "gaming and reveling" for Thanksgiving. They knew well that it's only natural for people to want to celebrate special times together. A holiday spent in enforced privacy is not much of a holiday at all.

Suppressing the Christmas revelers was obviously a cruel thing to do. But here we are, nearly 400 years later, still debating whether to allow religious holidays out in public or, God forbid, on public property. Some alarmists fear public display of any faith tradition but their own. Others seek to paper over the nation's diversity of traditions by insisting on a homogenized, religion-free culture. (If they had lived in Plymouth Colony, no doubt their answer to Christmas would have been to ban Thanksgiving, too.)

All the alarmists agree on this much, though: Others' holiday celebrations are tolerable only in private, and never in the public square—a vintage 1621 solution. "Ah, but you see," they all say, "religion in public is uniquely divisive. That's why the Constitution restricts it."

Nonsense. Elsewhere in the world, people fight and even slaughter each other over ethnic differences at least as much as they do over religious ones. And our Constitution bars government ethnic preferences just as stringently as it does religious ones. Yet our courts are not clogged with English-Americans seeking to enjoin St. Patrick's Day parades. It's obvious that municipal embrace and even sponsorship of them is not a harbinger of ethnic cleansing to come. It's simply government acknowledgment of one of many ethnic elements in our culture.

There's no reason—constitutional or otherwise—why governments cannot do the same and welcome public displays of menorahs, Christmas trees, nativity scenes and the like as simply some of the many religious elements in our culture.

Four hundred years is plenty long enough. Let's climb out of the 17th century and call a halt to the Christmas wars.

Mr. Hasson is the founder of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the author of "The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War Over Religion in America" (Image, 2012), from which this is adapted.

Link:

• When Christmas Was Banned in Massachusetts 

Related:

• The First Thanksgiving: A Tale of Squanto of The Dawn Land

Atheists Step Up 'It's Time to Quit the Catholic Church' Campaign

FFRF Plans to Run Full Page Ad to Fight Catholics' 'War Against Contraception'

By Alex Murashko , Christian Post Reporter

(The Christian Post) An atheist activist group is fighting the Catholic Church's "war against contraception" by stepping up its campaign that suggests believers should end their faithfulness to their religion.

The Madison, Wis.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation plans to run a full-page ad in The New York Times that states, "It's Time to Quit the Catholic Church." FFRF is conducting a fundraiser to pay for the $52,000 ad and has collected $45,000 so far, according to a chart on the group's website.

The FFRF campaign began last month in light of opposition from the Catholic Church to the Obama administration's decision that seeks to guarantee employees of church and ministry-affiliated institutions reproductive health coverage, including contraception, abortifacients and sterilization.

"Dear 'Liberal' Catholic," an open letter written by the group's co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, begins. "It's time to quit the Roman Catholic Church. It's your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?"

Gaylor called the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops' opposition to mandatory free contraception to employees of religious organizations a "ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception."

"If you're part of the Catholic Church, you're part of the problem," she continued. "Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers? When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One."

Last Thursday, the Senate rejected by a 51-48 vote a bill that would have permitted religious employers to refuse to cover medical services that violated their moral and religious convictions.

A Catholic political action group is targeting the 13 Democratic senators who supported the contraception mandate and is making plans to defeat those who are up for reelection in November.

"Faithful Catholics should take the opportunity to thank those Senators supporting our religious liberties," said Matt Smith, president of the Catholic Advocate, a group that encourages Catholics to be active in the political process. "It is our duty as laity to hold those who did not support our values accountable and vote our conscience when the time comes."

Evangelical columnist Chuck Colson recently argued that the way the issue of free contraception through health care has played out among its supporters is deceitful and "downright shameful."

"They say this is all about protecting women's access to contraception. This is, folks, the biggest red herring I've seen in politics. It's garbage, and they know it," Colson said. "Shame on them. Nobody is saying they shouldn't have access to contraceptives. Any woman can go to virtually any drug store and purchase them. Even drugs that induce abortion. As I told you last week, these things are even available in vending machines now!"

The scathing letter against Catholics by Gaylor included a paragraph that reads: "You're better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)?"

Gaylor continued, "It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church's bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception. No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."

However, Colson wrote that the national debate is not really about contraception.

"Folks, women's access to contraception is not the issue here. They have it. In spades. What's really going on is that the Obama Administration wants women to have access to FREE contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. It's an ideological imperative for them. And such niceties as the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom just don't matter in comparison," Colson stated.

"Make no mistake: What we are witnessing is indeed the leading edge of tyranny," Colson concluded.

• Link

U.S. Atheists Reportedly Using Hair Dryers to 'De-Baptize'

(Fox News)  American atheists lined up to be "de-baptized" in a ritual using a hair dryer, according to a report Friday on U.S. late-night news program "Nightline."

Leading atheist Edwin Kagin blasted his fellow non-believers with the hair dryer to symbolically dry up the holy water sprinkled on their heads in days past. The styling tool was emblazoned with a label reading "Reason and Truth."

Kagin believes parents are wrong to baptize their children before they are able to make their own choices, even slamming some religious education as "child abuse." He said the blast of hot air was a way for adults to undo what their parents had done.

"I was baptized Catholic. I don't remember any of it at all," said 24-year-old Cambridge Boxterman. "According to my mother, I screamed like a banshee ... so you can see that even as a young child I didn't want to be baptized. It's not fair. I was born atheist, and they were forcing me to become Catholic."

Kagin doned a monk's robe and said a few mock-Latin phrases before inviting those wishing to be de-baptized to "come forward now and receive the spirit of hot air that taketh away the stigma and taketh away the remnants of the stain of baptismal water."

Ironically, Kagin's own son became a fundamentalist Christian minister after having "a personal revelation in Jesus Christ."

"One wonders where they went wrong," he chuckled to the TV show.

• Link