The Big Questions BBC 21st February 2016
‘While the commission has been described as a policymaking body by some church officials – determining guidelines and best practices to avoid abuse – Saunders has long called for it to be far more aggressive, including addressing specific cases that have emerged all around the world. He has also questioned why the Vatican has not apparently made any progress on an abuse tribunal that was announced last year to hear cases of church officials who cover up abuse.
“A number of members of the commission expressed their concern that I don’t toe the line when it comes to keeping my mouth shut,” Saunders said hours after the news of his leave was announced.
“I made clear I would never be part of something that was a public relations exercise. There was a feeling around the table expressed in a vote that the commission could not work with me as things stood at the moment and unless I changed.”
“Our pope could do so much more to make things happen now. It’s incumbent on a commission appointed by him to impress on him the need to do things now, not years down the line … I don’t see movement, I don’t see action over an issue that they should be absolutely furious about.”
He also revealed that the commission had received a report that two priests from Italy recently discovered that a colleague was abusing children, but that when they alerted their bishop to the abuse, he “instructed they remain silent”.
“That itself rips my heart apart…and sadly this happens all over the world,” he said.
theneedleblog 
Dame Janet’s report: is that it???????
Whitewash!!
Thank God for impassioned and principled people like Peter Saunders, who stand up for Children, who do not have a voice. It is truly shocking that the Catholic Church is still, knowingly, allowing Children, to be be abused by members of its faith, by allowing those abusers to remain in positions of power, with access to vulnerable Children, while telling those who know, to remain silent. So the Catholic Church is still doing, absolutely nothing, to stop CSA, under the same conspiracy of silence
It is not just the Catholic Church that has been knowingly, covering up CSA though. The Church of England has been knowingly, covering up for the likes of Bishop Ball, for years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3461260/Charles-paedophile-bishop-cover-Church-lasting-23-years-Scandal-deepens-claims-religious-leaders-knew-clergymen-sexual-abuser-young-men.html
In fact, this knowing culture, with it’s conspiracy of silence, protecting the abuser, while disregarding the welfare of Children, has permeated every institutional hierarchy. How has that happened, why have Institutions defended the indefensible?
Down here in Bavaria they have erm, very strong ties to childrens homes in other parts of the world…..
I have gone along with the Catholic regimen here – my kids are baptised into it, but I wouldn’t touch the church itself with a bargepole. I heard that 150 families last year in my town have stopped paying church tax (yes this still exists down here).
Has Peter Saunders raised the subject of ex-Abbot Laurence Soper of Ealing Abbey, who is on the run from the police and appears to have been given refuge in a Benedictine monastery in Italy? The failure of the Pope to go beyond words is more likely to wreck the church than dealing with the issue would.
Keep up the work Peter, without doing more than you can – remember we remain vulnerable and need to keep our own life-jackets in place before helping others.
This is an important development and posting and needs to be considered along the film Spotlight and recent statements by the Pope on Trump, on the death penalty and arms dealers. The Pope has been in the same but better position than Jeremy Corbyn although the elected head he surrounded by those with different views and a different sense of mission. At least on those issues where is able to intervene his word is absolute where Jeremy is likely to have to deal with those who say yes boss and do the opposite.
I hope before he departed Peter Saunders wrote to the Pope expressing his concerns and if not do so now . This should be done privately and only mad public depending on the response and the explanation. It is important to appreciate that the public presentation and appearance of something is rarely the reality. No one individual or individual perspective can be the truth and the public presentation of truth usually less than the full extent of that truth. From my experience over 50 years the truth varies according to knowledge experience and agenda/mission of each individual involved, hence the need for due process, the test beyond reasonable doubt and great caution over any finding, judgement based on the balance of probabilities
Unfortunately, it is a sad fact, that not only a very high proportion of Priests are paedophiles, but also Bishop,s Cardinals as well. I have visited the Vatican many times. There is a park near the Vatican, where any night, you can find members of the Clergy looking for young men. The talk is of Seminarians. Of the Monasteries I have stayed in, the situation is the same.
”Looking for (sexual contact with) young men” is not paedophilia – ”young men” are not pre-pubescent minors. ( Neither are ”young men” teenagers below the age of consent if your understanding of the term paedophilia is conflated with ephebophilia ).
The term ”young men” implies teenagers above the age of consent or men in their twenties. Therefore the activities you describe would be those of closeted gay or bisexual men seeking consensual relations with other men.
Conflating homosexual orientation with child abuse is to perpetuation of an age-old and entirely false slur against gay men, which should not be perpetuated in this day and age.
No but the Catholic Church preach that Homosexuality is a sin, ergo all these priests, Bishops and Cardinals are hypocrites. Mind you that pales into insignificance against the institutional and systematic child abuse and subsequent cover up that this rotten institution engaged in, over decades if not centuries. Rotten to the core from the top down.
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