Hi Spikey,

"You show a touching concern for priests accused of sexual abuse and I'm sure your sympathy is genuine (albeit through highly selective quote from Paul Collins' book)."

I'm sorry but I can't take any credit. I transcribed the information without any sympathetic thought whatsoever. I am not even sure if it is correct. It did of course make me wonder if things have got that extreme.

"Now what are your sentiments in relation to the victims? Or are they all imagining that the priest interfered with them?"

I can sympathise with both victims and also priests if that is true. If a sexual assault allegation were false it would be horrible for the priest with loss of vocation and unbelievable stigma.

Naturally I don't believe the victims are all imagining. As someone who has never had the experience of being traumatised by unwanted sexual advance as a child or adult I can only imagine how horrific it would be.

Thank you mjpb. That wasn't so hard to say, was it?

Stickey,

No. If if you wanted me to say that then I'm glad it came together.

In Paul Collin's book discussed above (p172) he quotes:

"The victim is to love his butcher. A monstrous proposition. But one shedding fathomless light. How are mortal men and women to fulfill it?"

and states

"Here is the real core of Jesus' moral teaching. Everything else is secondary."

Can I ask whether or not you agree with him?

When watching The Passion of the Christ which really brought out that love of people (I'm thinking the "Forgive them Father they know not what they do" bit) I had doubts about whether I could emulate Him.

George,

I get the impression that you are an abuse victim yourself. There are advantages and disadvantages in discussing it here. An advantage is the anonymity. A disadvantage is that you might feel that people don't understand or that you struggle to get them to say what you want them to say. It is also possible but less likely that someone may be genuinely disrespectful. Just a thought.

mjpb,
No, I am definitely not, on the contrary, my adolescent recollections of priests (and nuns) - I might have mentioned it in another thread that I grew up in a Stalinist country - is as of those who were persecuted by the almighty comrades (as you would know, they controlled not only politics, but the media, education, economy, everything). If not jailed or sent to concentration camps they were, at least the priests, asked to renounce their allegiance to the Pope, professors of theology were sent to backward villages to function as parish priests, and simple village parish priests were transferred to city parishes to preach to university students (of course, there was no separation of church and state) to prevent the priest becoming popular with his congregation. You could attend mass but being seen meeting privately with a priest (unless you were an old lady) was dangerous to you as well as to him. Similarly with nuns. There were occasions when peasants tried to prevent their parish priest being taken away with scythes, reminiscent of Vendée 1793 (of course, without the ensuing massacres), etc.

So you see my youth experience with priests and nuns is almost exactly the opposite of what you suspected. The priests were not massacred as during the French Revolution, the persecution was more subtle and “humane”. The contemporary public lynching and mocking of the Church as such (not just concrete persons who might be responsible for this or that misdeed or cover up) in the West is even more subtle and “humane” than what the Communists did. And it will take the Church a while to find the right response, which is certainly not to pretend they still had a privileged, and generally respected, position in debates about what is good for the society as a whole.