Slavery, Cultures of Systemic Child Abuse and The Church
The Church has a LOT to answer for, including but not limited to centuries of suffering — the pogroms, crusades, inquisitions, so-called ‘witch-hunts’ (excuses for clerics to kill Jews, gypsies, homosexuals , free thinkers, scientists and women as ‘heretics’ en-masse), genocides in the Americas, Residential Schools, institutionalized mental and emotional sadism and cruelty, two millennia of formulated doctrines of personal and universal shame, self-loathing and the doctrine of ‘Original Sin,’ the Doctrine and very concept of The Virgin Birth (birth is dirty, death is holy and knowledge is evil), religiously rationalized misogyny, the inauguration of early modern slavery in the Americas by the Jesuits to enrich the Church by means of the sugar trade, the sugar trade, rampant clerical child sexual abuse, elite male protectionism beyond the pale, the enforcement of mentally/spiritually/emotionally and ideologically injurious beliefs and intellectual pathologies worldwide, the erasure and destruction of Indigenous languages and cultures worldwide, the monopolizing of spiritual agency, the enslavement of souls and organized spiritual terrorism, religiously justified torture and sexual punishments, penances and behavioural extortion upon pain of Hell — that the Church has inflicted upon humanity.
The Church sheltered and protected a known child sex abuser, for YEARS — and gave him a top ranking position at the Vatican Bank (which the perp similarly abused). Meanwhile, Pope Francis, himself a Jesuit, has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope’s own advisers question, thus putting himself and his historically corrupt and abusive Church into the perpetrator role of a massive and egregious criminal conspiracy, the WRONG side of history, and manifold Crimes Against Humanity.
“One case has come back to haunt him: An Italian priest who received the pope’s clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against children as young as 12. The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him, The Associated Press has learned.
“The Inzoli case is one of several in which Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canon lawyers and a church official told AP. Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.” ( Nicole Winfield, ‘Pope quietly trims sanctions for sex abusers seeking mercy,’ The Associated Press, Feb 25, 2017)
Fat lot of good THAT will do. Neither will apologies alone do it.
