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    Angry At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    By FRANK BRUNI
    Published: March 26, 2010

    Of the many heartbreaking details in the latest round of outrage over child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, one stands out as particularly emblematic: a tidy window into Church leaders’ mindsets; a bracing glimpse of what went wrong.

    It traces back to 1975, when the Rev. Sean Brady, now a cardinal at the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, was tending to two boys who had been molested by a priest. By Cardinal Brady’s own admission, he did not report what had happened to the authorities. It was his understanding, he said, that the church would not want that. Instead, the boys — one 14, one just 10, both surely reeling — were forced to sign an oath that such notification would never be made.

    It is doubtful that pledge helped them heal, or that he or anyone else in the church thought it might. It certainly did not safeguard other children, many of whom the priest went on to molest.

    But it served a purpose and illustrated a priority: to insulate the church from outside interference and condemnation. And it distilled the church’s profound defensiveness toward the secular world, a longstanding posture and a prominent theme in abuse cases that have recently attracted attention.

    The church’s fundamental and deliberate separation from secular society — in terms of how it sees its mission, protects itself and interprets human misbehavior — explains much of its leaders’ response, or lack thereof, to the child sexual abuse crisis. Time and again they have sought to police their own ranks in their own ways, due largely to fears of persecution that are embedded in the very genesis of the Church, supported by much if its history and evoked by its signal symbol: the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

    There are enemies of the faith, no question. And so there is a powerful impulse to protect it that can override all else — that can lead to Pope Benedict XVI’s edict in 2001, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and leading the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that exhorted bishops worldwide to aggressively report abuse cases directly to the Vatican but offered no comparable encouragement for them to report crimes to the police.

    There is also a decidedly nonsecular response to wrongdoing that paves the way for second and third chances — and serial abuse. In the secular world, the molestation of a child is labeled a crime, and a heartfelt apology for it doesn’t obviate jail time. In the Catholic Church, it is discussed as a sin, to be confessed and then, by the grace of God, forgiven. Penitence may well supplant punishment.

    “There’s the idea that you can reform yourself and be forgiven and that any confession is a true confession if you believe in your heart that you’re not going to do it again,” said David France, author of the 2004 book “Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal.” That is one of the beauties of the faith, and the fury of journalists and prosecutors can come across as an assault on it.

    David J. O’Brien, a professor at the University of Dayton who specializes in Catholic history, said that the church had so often perceived itself to be at odds with, and under siege by, the world around it that when it seemingly let down a few defenses with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, “There was a funny column by someone that asked: what will we do if we have no enemies? We won’t know who we are because we’ve always defined ourselves as over and against others.”

    Professor O’Brien and other Catholic experts noted that in Europe, the continent that harbors the Vatican and has produced every pope of the modern era, there has been a pronounced history of sometimes vicious anti-clericalism, including attacks on the Catholic Church during the French Revolution and threats posed by Communist and totalitarian governments in the early 20th century.

    “Certainly, Pope John Paul II had that experience,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington, referring to Benedict’s predecessor, under whom the child sexual abuse crisis initially festered. “His experience in Poland was that the secret police would accuse priests of sexual abuse and other crimes just to hassle them.”

    Meanwhile, in the United States, the Catholic Church has at times been regarded as a minority religion of immigrants and the working class. When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, his Catholicism was considered a liability.

    In addition, Father Reese noted, Catholic teachings about homosexuality, contraception and abortion, along with the church’s insistence on an all-male clergy, put it in ever sharper conflict with the values of many Americans, who — in the thinking of some church leaders — will amplify and exploit any messiness within the church to undermine it.

    That fear is suggested by the language that Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee used in the 1990s to try to persuade Vatican officials to defrock a priest who had serially abused scores of deaf boys over many years. As reported by The Times last week, Archbishop Weakland made his case by warning, in one letter, that “true scandal in the future seems very possible.“ In a subsequent letter, he articulated the hope to “avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the church.”

    The words of an unsigned editorial last week in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, capture the church’s suspiciousness of secular critics even more pointedly. The editorial said that Benedict had always handled abuse cases with “transparency, purpose and severity,” and accused the news media of acting “with the clear and ignoble intent of trying to strike Benedict and his closest collaborators at any cost.”

    In the German, Irish, American and other abuse cases, the decisions by church officials not to involve the police and courts and not to conduct public, transparent inquiries weren’t simple matters of coddling individual priests and bishops or blunt acts of criminal evasion. They were motivated by an array of factors, chief among them a belief that handing secular critics ammunition to be used against the church would jeopardize its outstanding work.

    “For the whole life of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, they have dealt with this question of scandal as if it were a sin in and of itself,” Mr. France said. “You can go back to the year 400 and see writings in the Catholic magisterium about avoiding scandal.”

    Partly because of that, and partly because of its resistance to yielding to secular expectations, the church has not made gestures that a corporation or government in its embattled situation would feel compelled to make. Cardinal Brady has not been stripped of his leadership position. And in a public letter of apology to the people of Ireland, the pope did not call for, or specify, disciplinary action against any of the many church leaders who covered up an epidemic of abuse there.

    But when an institution is girded so thoroughly against threats from without, can it address and remedy the threats from within? The persistence of the child sexual abuse crisis, intensifying once again, suggests that the church’s defensive posture may in fact be a self-defeating one.


    original story link;
    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/we...pagewanted=all

    Frank Bruni is a co-author of “A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church,” published in 1993, with a revised edition in 2002. He reported on the Vatican for The Times from 2002 to 2004.
    Last edited by giovonni; 1st April 2010 at 19:07.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Interesting and shocking! When the foundation is rotten, be it house or organisation, eventually the whole thing collapses!

    Carmen

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    time to build right over top of them do as the romans do !!! LOL

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    For the Catholic Church to collapse the 3rd world countries need to stop believing...that is not going to happen....The Catholic Church survived the massacres they did in the middle ages in both sides of the Atlantic

    I will love it to dissapear but somehow I think they are too powerfull and to rich to fail. It is sad


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    Exclamation Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Thank you Carmen, Susan and stardustaquarion for your comments~
    Your combined perspectives sum up extremely well the spiraling decline and situation the Roman Catholic Church finds itself within most developed countries of the Northern Hemisphere. Unfortunately, it appears two thirds of the church's supposed worldwide membership (est over a billion), reside in the under developed countries of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. One can only imagine what the smell of rottenness will be like> when it hits the fan within those regions.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Quote Posted by THE eXchanger (here)
    time to build right over top of them do as the romans do !!! LOL
    Dear Giovanni...........I thank you for posting.........it is time for EVERY vestige of Humanity to do a deep introspective look into what their actions cause............................

    Susan...........The time is now that Divine Feminine is Rising and therefore truth and knowledge is coming to the front....Again Ian Lungold's word's ring clear..........."Time of Ethics rise up over society and then Ethics falls on top as a book slamming down....."

    We are soon moving into the time of Galactic Co-Creationism......Intend, Dream, Wish the reality you'd like HUmanity to share...........: )

    In Light!!!

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    I like what you wrote Samarkis. The Sacred Feminine is indeed rising and shaking the foundations of the Old World Male dominated bastions. After the chaos, we shall come to balance, with the Sacred Male and the Sacred Female smiling at each other in recognition! With great Love Radiating between them.

    Love

    Carmen

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Quote Posted by THE eXchanger (here)
    time to build right over top of them do as the romans do !!! LOL
    LOL - AMEN SISTER!

    It's articles like these that I usually tend to ignore as I don't want to give any more of my energy to excreted poo such as the church - note the lower case 'c'.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    I truly have come to believe ~IT~ was truly> Christ's intention through his teachings > that the divine feminine was always included and part of the holy trinty in regards too the Spirit.

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    Lightbulb Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    This monk is the founder of the Abby of san giovanni in fiore italy~ my father's ancestral home.

    Joachim of Fiore~
    He theorized the dawn of a new age, based on his interpretation of verses in the Book of Revelation, in which the hierarchy of the church would be unnecessary and infidels would unite with Christians. The most spiritual Franciscan monks acclaimed him as a prophet.

    His theories can be considered millenarian; he believed that history, by analogy with the Trinity, was divided into three fundamental epochs:

    The Age of the Father, corresponding to the Old Testament, characterized by obedience of mankind to the Rules of God;
    The Age of the Son, between the advent of Christ and 1260, represented by the New Testament, when Man became the son of God;
    The Age of the Holy Spirit, impending (in 1260), when mankind was to come in direct contact with God, reaching the total freedom preached by the Christian message. The Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, a new dispensation of universal love, would proceed from the Gospel of Christ, but transcend the letter of it. In this new Age the ecclesiastical organization would be replaced and the Order of the Just would rule the Church. This Order of the Just was later identified with the Franciscan order by his follower Gerardo of Borgo San Donnino.
    According to Joachim, only in this third Age will it be possible to really understand the words of God in its deepest meanings, and not merely literally. He concluded that this age would begin in 1260 based on the Book of Revelation (verses 11:3 and 12:6, which mention "one thousand two hundred and sixty days")In this year, instead of the parousia (second Advent of Christ), a new Epoch of peace and concord would begin, thus making the hierarchy of the Church unnecessary.

    Joachim distinguished between the "reign of justice" or of "law", in an imperfect society, and the "reign of freedom" in a perfect society.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_of_Fiore

    http://www.liv.ac.uk/~spmr02/rings/trinity.html
    Last edited by giovonni; 4th February 2014 at 23:28.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Yes this leaves a bad taste in my mouth
    and it is easy to close ones eyes and
    walk away ... blinkers on ........
    and so yes its hard to take all that is being
    reveiled... i do belive in my heart
    that we have to look at this stuff .. and say
    it is ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!... and like is being done here expose it ..
    i have a very blessed life.........
    but i wont rest till its all out in the open
    as unpleasant as that is ... THE TRUTH IS
    THE TRUTH ... I ASK FOR IT AND IM GETTING IT ..
    Yes the ulitimate truth is we are all one .. and all there is ..
    is love ... but for sure this is not shared or known by
    all... tho i do trully belive that all will come to know
    who they are are .. and begin to live in accordance
    with natural law ...(service to others ) not service to self )
    as service to others in its true essence.. is service to the one self
    so i keep going ..love unconditionaly as i can .. and belive the change
    will and must come ... my new moto walk the walk .. end of bla bla ..
    love allways rhythmm........
    Last edited by rhythm; 2nd April 2010 at 11:02.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Thank you all for your comments,

    In love and fairness to all the faithful ~ those who have gone forth~
    Who attempted to walk in the foot steps of Christ Jesus~ may they be forever blessed~
    And to those who have floundered upon that path~ may they find forgiveness and peace~
    For we are they and they are us~ and we are all in the One

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    Unhappy Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Ahhhh~ the blame game!
    I believe the pope's got this all wrong

    No one is attacking the faithful members of the church ~ only those within the church that did not protect those faithful members!

    Vatican blasts anti-Catholic 'hate' campaign
    Apr 6 03:12 PM US/Eastern
    By FRANCES D'EMILIO
    Associated Press Writer
    VATICAN CITY (AP) - The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.
    Vatican Radio broadcast comments by two senior cardinals explaining "the motive for these attacks" on the pope.

    "The pope defends life and the family, based on marriage between a man and a woman, in a world in which powerful lobbies would like to impose a completely different" agenda, Spanish Cardinal Julian Herranz, head of the disciplinary commission for Holy See officials, was quoted as saying.

    Herranz didn't identify the alleged lobbies, but "defense of life" is Vatican shorthand for anti-abortion efforts.

    Also rallying to Benedict's side was Italian Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, who heads the Vatican City State's governing apparatus.

    The pope "has done all that he could have" against sex abuse by clergy of minors, Lajolo said on the radio, decrying what he described as a campaign of "hatred against the Catholic church."

    Sex abuse allegations, as well as accusations of cover-ups by diocesan bishops and Vatican officials, have swept across Europe in recent weeks. Benedict has been criticized for not halting the actions of abusive priests when he was a Vatican cardinal and earlier while he was the archbishop of Munich in his native Germany.

    The mainland European scandals—in Germany, Italy, Austria, Denmark and Switzerland—are erupting after decades of abuse cases in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and other areas.

    In Germany, nearly 2,700 people called the church's sexual abuse hotline in the first three days it was operating, a Catholic church spokesman said Tuesday.

    A team of psychologists and other experts have spoken with 394 people so far, ranging from several minutes up to an hour, Trier Diocese spokesman Stephan Kronenburg said.

    "Most callers reported cases of sexual abuse," he told The Associated Press.

    Benedict has ignored victims' demands that he accept responsibility for what they say is his own personal and institutional responsibility for failing to swiftly kick abusive priests out of the priesthood, or at least keep them away from children.

    But he has been protected by a vanguard of senior Vatican prelates who are fending off what they contend is an orchestrated attempt to attack the leader of the world's more than 1 billion Catholics.

    The Vatican No. 2 official, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, indicated to reporters who asked him about the pontiff's silence that Benedict was standing firm.

    "He's a strong pope, the pope of the Third Millennium," he told reporters shortly after his arrival in Chile on Tuesday.

    Bertone, now the Holy See's secretary of state but formerly Benedict's deputy when the future pope, then-called Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, headed the Vatican's morals office, has himself been swept up in the scandals.

    During a May 1998 meeting at the Vatican, Bertone told Wisconsin bishops to halt a church trial against an ailing priest who was accused of sexually abusing 200 deaf children, according to a Vatican transcript. The priest died soon afterward.

    "It's not true, it's not true! We have documented the opposite," the Italian news agency ANSA quoted Bertone as saying in Chile. "Let's not talk about this topic now, because otherwise we'll be here all day verifying precisely the action taken by me and by his eminence, Cardinal Ratzinger."

    On Easter, the most important day in the Catholic faith, the Vatican broke with tradition and began its service in St. Peter's Square with a ringing defense of Benedict delivered by the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano.

    In an interview Tuesday in Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Sodano said the church is "certainly" suffering because of pedophile priests but he asserted that "Benedict XVI has apologized several times."

    "But it's not Christ's fault if Judas betrayed" him, Sodano said. "It's not a bishop's fault if one of his priests is stained by grave wrongdoing. And certainly the pontiff is not responsible."

    Vatican Radio, presenting listeners with some of the most vehement counterattacks yet in the weekslong buildup of scandal revelations, depicted the church as a victim.

    "There are those who fear the media campaign of anti-Catholic hatred can degenerate," Vatican Radio said.

    It noted anti-Catholic graffiti on walls of a church outside Viterbo, a town near Rome, and reminded listeners that a bishop was attacked by a man during Easter Mass in Muenster, Germany. The bishop fought back with an incense bowl.

    The radio likened the recent campaign to the persecution suffered by early Christian martyrs. "The crowds, incited by the slanders of the powerful, would lynch the Christians," the radio said.

    In Munich, meanwhile, an independent lawyer hired by the Catholic church wrapped up his investigation of abuse allegations at the southern Ettal monastery.

    "The investigation clearly shows a system of abuse that lasted for decades," Thomas Pfister told The Associated Press.

    There were some cases of sexual abuse at Ettal but most victims who came forward were physically abused and most cases took place before 1990, Pfister said in a telephone interview.

    The lawyer declined to elaborate as his final report will be published next week.

    ___
    original story link;
    http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1
    Associated Press Writer Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.

    Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    I just hope enough are paying attention and do not leave their children alone with any priest.

    Edit: Have any of these offending priest ever been arrested?

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Quote Posted by MargueriteBee (here)
    I just hope enough are paying attention and do not leave their children alone with any priest.

    Edit: Have any of these offending priest ever been arrested?
    Greeting's MargueriteBee,

    Yes many have, i am even aware of one that was murdered.
    "Sat 8/23/2003 John Geoghan, former priest at the center of Boston archdiocese's sex abuse scandal was killed in in the protective custody unit at at Souza-Baranowski Correction Center, NW of Boston. Geoghan was followed into his cell after lunch by a fellow inmate, Joseph L. Druce, who bound and gagged him before strangling him with a bed sheet, then repeatedly jumped from the bed onto Geoghan's motionless body and beat the defrocked priest with his fists Geoghan died shortly after being taken to Leominster Hospital. Joseph L. Druce, 37, (born Darrin Smiledge) is serving life sentence for strangling a man in 1988 will be charged with murder. He was convicted while in prison of attempting an anthrax scare by sending envelopes of white powder covered in Swastikas to about 30 Jewish lawyers nationwide in 2001. Druce was born Darrin Smiledge but changed his name while in prison. Druce's father, Dana Smiledge, said his son hated Jews, blacks and gays. Massachusetts does not have a death penalty.

    Jay R. Feierman, a psychiatrist for 20 years at the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico, which treated abusive priests around the country, said 4 of the 750 priests he treated were killed after they left the program. He said, ``their behavior probably contributed to their murder.''

    On Jan. 6-7, 2002, The Boston Globe revealed the Archdiocese of Boston shuttled defrocked priest John Geoghan from parish to parish for decades, despite extensive evidence he was sexually abusing children. Geoghan's admissions of molesting children, his lack of concern for his victims and his tendency to blame them was evidence he was not a candidate for rehabilitation. In civil lawsuits, more than 130 people claimed Geoghan sexually abused them as children during his 3 decades as a priest at Boston-area parishes. In September 2002, the archdiocese settled with 86 Geoghan victims for $10 million, after backing out of an earlier settlement of about $30 million. Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk and psychiatrist who worked with abuse victims and priest offenders, said Geoghan had been through many treatment programs. ``If anyone had the opportunity for treatment, it's John Geoghan,'' Sipe said.

    More than 325 priests of 46,000 American clergy were either dismissed or resigned from their duties the following year.

    A report by state Attorney General Thomas Reilly estimated more than 1,000 children were abused by priests in the Boston archdiocese in the last 60 years. The Boston Archdiocese has offered $65 million to settle cases filed by more than 540 alleged victims.
    taken from here;
    http://karisable.com/catholic.htm
    *********************************************
    And unfortunately there's much more reported below

    Note, here are some cases reported from around the world~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    officially confirmed> but linked to the original documentated offenders case incidents.
    There's lots of info/listed in regards to this subject matter below;
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_C...ses_by_country

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    There are good priests and monks and there are not. There are good Catholic people and there are not. Having said that, what I reject is the systemic protection of criminals. Rejecting those protectors does not mean Catholics are supposed to reject the concept of the Christ. Catholics will need to separate their faith from their unquestioned devotion to a system that does not serve their highest good. The Catholics I know are having a very hard time differentiating. I wish them well, and I pray they can see that the Christ energy is not granted to them by any organization. It is personally realized. All we need is Love...

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    Exclamation Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Quote Posted by lindabaker (here)
    There are good priests and monks and there are not. There are good Catholic people and there are not. Having said that, what I reject is the systemic protection of criminals. Rejecting those protectors does not mean Catholics are supposed to reject the concept of the Christ. Catholics will need to separate their faith from their unquestioned devotion to a system that does not serve their highest good. The Catholics I know are having a very hard time differentiating. I wish them well, and I pray they can see that the Christ energy is not granted to them by any organization. It is personally realized. All we need is Love...
    Greeting's LB
    So glad to see you here.
    Your feelings and sentiments are well taken~
    No human needs any orgainization or institution too confirm (bestow) the christ energy upon them

    The pope is sadly mistaken
    if he truly believes he can keep his flock

    by deflecting and redirecting the attention away from himself or the church in taking the full responsibilies in regards to these matters.
    A flock can not be protected by a wolf ~ disguised in shepherd's clothing.

    It is time for all catholics to finally wake up!
    Last edited by giovonni; 8th April 2010 at 16:44.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    I visited the vatican 15 years ago, I had the oportunity to travel there with a catholic priest who is a very good friend of mine and had been there 8 times and also had a masters degree in history. In conversations with my good friend I asked him is it mandatory to attend church to be a good person, he said to me that some people want to go, some people need to go , and that it was my choice on how to maintain my faith in Christ.

    There is a capuchin priest here in detroit who is deceased now, Fr. Solanus Casey. My father met Fr. Solanus when he was a little boy. When the late Pope John Paul the second was pope he started the cannonization process of Fr. Solanus as a saint. I can tell you first hand of the Solanus cloth badges I give away to people as my deceased father did that there is so much good that comes from asking for intercession of the holy and yes many times the requests are fulfilled. My buddy's wife had meningitis at 30 yrs old and I told him to put the Fr. Solanus badge on her hospital gown as she was in a coma in the hospital, he did , asked for some divine help and she came out of the coma the next day.

    As with any large group of human beings there are flaws, it doesn't make the flaws acceptable but they are correctable. There is an all out assault on christianity at present . The word GOD is on assault it seems like from everyone to strip this from the United States documents and our heritage. The assault on the Vatican may be on the same agenda.

    The issues challanging the vatican do need to be corrected but the base line of faith,love, christ , prayer, and goodness need to stand firm and unwaivering as that is it's core.

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    Netherlands Avalon Retired Member Victoria Tintagel's Avatar
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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    Hello and good day to you! This is my first posting on the Avalon2 Forum and I agree with pyrangello, about the core of religion being good and sincere. It's through the ages of becoming an institution of power and materialism that the Catholic Church used its influence by burning people at stakes, ruling over indigenous people in North- and South America, proclaiming those hairy barbarians as animials that were allowed to be killed, unless they kissed the cross. Pushing women to birth as much children as possible and wanting money to pay off sins.
    I was born in a protestant reformed preacher's family as the oldest daughter of 9 children and learned pretty soon the difference between words and deeds of my father and relatives.
    So have these abused children learned the hard way and finally the truth is in the open.........close encounters of the holy ****.....
    That's how my dedication to freedom of mind and soul was formed and I hope to find it in this Forum.

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    Default Re: At the Vatican, Up Against the World

    cliff high sees language to suggest the vatican and catholicism being dead in 12 months. its been infiltrated by a nazi (darth ratzinger) and peadophiles. etemenanki has been following the end of the pope and vatican in his temporal astrological work here ... http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/

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