Sex abuse scandal. Guess the religion?

[Ming]

You left part of what I said off, Ming, funny that.

Not at all.. you have proven to be total pond scum... no need to acknowledge a bribe.

[MOBIUS]

Not at all. Dodging logic this adroitly is not the work of a truly stupid person. He's just extremely intellectually dishonest, to himself and to others (which is, in my book, far worse). He has decided he is going to have certain opinions regardless of any number of reasonable objections, and approaches all arguments like a chess game; he knows the limitations of his moves, he's just trying to outmaneuver his opponent. If he is ever actually pinned down to a spot where he absolutely cannot wriggle out and the folks he's arguing with refuse to let him draw them off the scent, he treats it as checkmate and walks away. But he'll use the same moves next "game."

Surely that is a problem that everyone who is religious labours with...?

[MOBIUS]

Still, I never cease to be entertained with the rubbish that spews forth from Ben: getting annoyed with Ming that he's attacking a family that Ben doesn't even have yet must be one of his best evah...!

Is this the long awaited sequel to Minority Report? Family Report - or, more aptly in this case, Minor Report...

[rah]

That's not what I said. But go ahead, believe whatever you want to believe. I ain't gonna stop you.

Hmm I asked if you had kids and you responded

Not yet. That's all I'm going to say about it at this point.

What else can this mean? You either have kids or you don't. Not yet means no.

Knowing your beliefs, if you had a bun in the oven you would have considered it a kid from the moment of conception. SO what else could "not yet" possibly mean but no.

But then, maybe not yet means "YES" in Benverse. That might explain a lot of your twisted logic.

AND FOR THE RECORD
I never accepted your gift. I didn't play golf with your gift. I REALLY REALLY didn't want to say that in deference to the others that were involved since I do respect them. So I thought it best not to say anything, but you insist by keep bringing it up. It's obvious now, that you really didn't mean it as a gift, but as something that you could do to claim advantage later. (as evidenced by how many times you've tried to bring it up in the last week) And the main reason why I thought it best not to accept it. So please be a man and don't mention it to me again, you creep. Sorry Guy and JR. I did discuss it with JR and he understood and accepted by refusal.

It's bad enough that you're a fellow republican and there a few things that we actually agree on. Whenever we do agree now I have to look at myself and consider if I'm an idiot because of it. You give all republicans and all catholics a bad name and it makes me ashamed to be included with you in either group.

[Elok]

Surely that is a problem that everyone who is religious labours with...?

No, not at all. You just have a deranged imagination and poor grasp of logic.

[Elok]

How does the blood taste, elok?

No, this isn't a game. No, I'm not 'intellectually bankrupt' because I hold positions contrary to yours. That statement alone, I don't know what to say Elok. Yes, you hold opinions other then my own. I don't believe you are being intellectually dishonest. I used to believe that liberals were actually interested in debating, my experience with them has shown me to be phenomenally off the mark here. Liberals aren't interested in debate, they are interested in affirmation.

This has nothing to do (at least directly) with your beliefs, only with your phenomenally dishonest behavior in defending and justifying them. For example, you repeatedly implied that homosexuality and child-molesting urges are somehow identical, and that homosexuals are responsible for the vast majority of the priest-molestation cases. When asked to cite figures and presented with arguments against those statements, you say "so no homosexuals are child molesters?" Which, of course, is a claim made by nobody here; everyone acknowledges some overlap, it's your absurd statement that the two are identical, or even closely correlated, that they're fighting. Slither, slide, evade. You don't even announce that you're going to change your argument, you just switch and act like it was what you meant all along. Of course it doesn't work, but for some reason you keep doing it.

Also, I'm not really liberal, except by comparison to yourself and other conservatives. If anything, I'm a moderate, as I hold a mixture of conservative and liberal positions (as Americans define the terms).

[MOBIUS]

No, not at all. You just have a deranged imagination and poor grasp of logic.

And so you elect to use the very defence that you just accused Ben of using and scamper away.

What a ****ing hypocrite!

[MOBIUS]

This has nothing to do (at least directly) with your beliefs, only with your phenomenally dishonest behavior in defending and justifying them. For example, you repeatedly implied that homosexuality and child-molesting urges are somehow identical, and that homosexuals are responsible for the vast majority of the priest-molestation cases. When asked to cite figures and presented with arguments against those statements, you say "so no homosexuals are child molesters?" Which, of course, is a claim made by nobody here; everyone acknowledges some overlap, it's your absurd statement that the two are identical, or even closely correlated, that they're fighting. Slither, slide, evade. You don't even announce that you're going to change your argument, you just switch and act like it was what you meant all along. Of course it doesn't work, but for some reason you keep doing it.

See, that could just as easily be you defending your own religious stance right there...

[Elok]

And so you elect to use the very defence that you just accused Ben of using and scamper away.

What a ****ing hypocrite!

WTF are you talking about? I'm being dismissive here, and this is why: you read idiotic conclusions into whatever you see. So bugger off.

[Elok]

See, that could just as easily be you defending your own religious stance right there...

No, it couldn't. Ben's debating tactics are, AFAICT, unique. At least, I've never seen anyone else use them, and as nobody seems to be trying to chase me off the forum I assume I don't either.

[Asher]

I'm curious now -- did Ben pay for a round of golf for Ming, rah, -Jrabbit, and Guy for random reasons?

[MOBIUS]

No, it couldn't. Ben's debating tactics are, AFAICT, unique. At least, I've never seen anyone else use them, and as nobody seems to be trying to chase me off the forum I assume I don't either.

Well, I suppose you're right, religious people like you actually delude yourself into believing all the mumbo-jumbo your respective religions brainwash you with when it is perfectly clear to any sane person that it is just a bunch of made up horse****...!

But the outcome is the same, the stubborn refusal to admit that whichever belief construct you believe in defies all logic and reason!

So yeah, you're just like a Ben lite version.

[MOBIUS]

I'm curious now -- did Ben pay for a round of golf for Ming, rah, -Jrabbit, and Guy for random reasons?

Clearly for future blackmail opportunities!

C'mon rah, Ming et al - spill the beans!

[Asher]

Now it hits close to home.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/vatican-canadian-church-officials-tried-to-keep-sex-scandal-secret/article1528471/

Vatican, Canadian church officials tried to keep sex scandal secret

A 1993 letter focuses on protecting the church’s image by preventing public knowledge of Bernard Prince’s abuse of altar boys

More than a decade before police got wind that a priest had molested several altar boys in small towns in the Ottawa Valley, Vatican and Canadian church officials knew about the matter and discussed in a letter how to keep it secret.

The letter, written in 1993, focused on protecting the church’s image by preventing the scandal from becoming public – the very essence of an international wave of allegations now battering the Roman Catholic clergy and the Vatican.

“It is a situation which we wish to avoid at all costs,” the late Bishop Joseph Windle of Pembroke, Ont., wrote in Feb. 10, 1993, to the Pope’s envoy to Canada, Carlo Curis.

The man Bishop Windle was writing about was then-monsignor Bernard Prince, now 75, a friend of the late Pope John Paul II who had just been posted to the Vatican as a high-ranking official working with missionary societies.

The year before Mr. Prince was sent to Rome, a man had complained to the diocese that the priest had molested him when he was a child. At least one Vatican archbishop, Jose Sanchez, now a cardinal, had been warned about Mr. Prince’s problem before he was sent to Rome, Bishop Windle said in the letter.

Bishop Windle wrote that he told Cardinal Sanchez that he agreed with posting Mr. Prince to the Vatican. “While the charge against Fr. Prince was very serious, I would not object to him being given another chance since it would remove him from the Canadian scene.”

In his letter to the papal nuncio, Bishop Windle cautioned the Vatican to avoid honouring Mr. Prince because it could anger victims and prompt them to contact police.

“The consequences of such an action would be disastrous, not only for the Canadian church but for the Holy See as well,” the bishop wrote.

It would only be in May, 2005, that a victim contacted the Ontario Provincial Police. Mr. Prince is now defrocked and serving a four-year sentence after being convicted in 2008 of sexually molesting 13 boys between 1964 and 1984.

The Canadian Catholic Church boasted for years that it has been a global model in implementing protocols – specifically the recommendations of the 1992 report From Pain to Hope – that would block cover-ups by senior officials of sexual misdeeds by priests. A key recommendation was that bishops should immediately report to police allegations of priestly sexual assaults on minors.

Bishop Windle’s letter was penned the year after the report was published.

The four-page letter – an exhibit filed this week in a civil suit – is the first court document to buttress the long-held belief by victims of Mr. Prince that the clergy had known of the problem for years but tried to hush it up.

It shows that the church hierarchy was aware that the allegations were serious since they involved up to five victims, were of “considerable duration” and triggered “traumatic memories” in one or two victims who needed counselling.

The allegations were so grave that the future cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic, then archbishop of Toronto, warned Mr. Prince he was not welcome in the Toronto archdiocese unless he had undergone psychiatric treatment, the letter said.

In additional to Cardinal Ambrozic, the letter says that the Canadian church officials aware of the allegations included Anthony Tonnos, the bishop of Hamilton; Francis Spence, who was archbishop of Kingston; the late Joseph Wilhelm, the previous archbishop of Kingston; John O’Mara, who was bishop of Thunder Bay; and Marcel Gervais, then the archbishop of Ottawa.

“All of the Bishops of Ontario who are aware of this situation (and there are several) would most certainly agree with my assessment in this regard,” Bishop Windle wrote in the letter.

Bishop Windle and the nuncio had discussed the matter before, by telephone and fax, the letter said.

“The knowledge and the extent of Father Prince’s previous activity is now much more widespread among both the laity and the clergy then previously existed,” Bishop Windle wrote.

“Hence, were he to be honoured in any way, it could easily trigger a reaction among the victim(s) or others who are aware of this previous conduct, and this would prove extremely embarrassing both for the Holy See and the archdiocese of Pembroke, not to mention the possibility of criminal charges being laid and a civil suit ensuing.”

Mr. Prince, who grew up in Wilno, a Polish settlement 180 kilometres west of Ottawa, became friends with Cardinal Karol Wojtila before the latter became Pope. To Canadians visiting the Vatican, he was known as a channel to the Pope. In the autobiography of Céline Dion, there is a photo of the pop diva being introduced to John Paul II by Mr. Prince in 1984.

From 1991 until he retired in 2004, Mr. Prince worked at the Vatican as second in command at the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which promotes and supports missionary work. It was during that time that he received the honorific title of Monsignor.

The letter was written after a 34-year-old man complained to church officials in October, 1990, that he had been a victim of Mr. Prince while he was a boy.

“At that time we were under the impression that the incident was isolated, in the distant past, and there was little or no danger of any scandal ever emerging,” the letter said.

The complainant assured the diocese vicar-general, Monsignor Michael Barry, that he wouldn’t contact the police but wanted to make sure Mr. Prince would be supervised and counselled, the letter said.

The complainant had concerns because he learned that Mr. Prince had been spotted in Thailand, dining with someone from the Canadian embassy. “Hence the victim felt he [Mr. Prince] was not being properly supervised as he was travelling alone and extensively.”

The letter said it is “fortunate” that many of the victims were of Polish ancestry, devout Catholics who would be less likely to complain to secular authorities.

Charles Gibson, the lawyer for the Pembroke diocese, did not reply to a phone call and an e-mail about the civil suits.

Bernard Prince - history of a downfall

1934 April 27 - Bernard Ambrose Prince born in Wilno, Ont.
1963 May 11 - Ordained at Wilno's St. Mary's Church.
1963-1966 - Postgraduate degree in Rome in canon law.
1964 - First sexual abuse with young boys for which Mr. Prince would later be convicted.
1968 - A sexual-abuse complaint about Mr. Prince is reported to the Pembroke diocese, according to a civil-suit statement of claim.
1969-1975 - Appointed assistant general-secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
1974 - Master's degree in Slavic studies, Ottawa University.
1976 - Master's degree in history of religion, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
1976-1977 - Enrolled in a course at National Defence College in Kingston.
1981-1984 - Appointed again as assistant general-secretary of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
1987 - Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies for English-speaking Canada.
1990 October - A 34-year-old man tells area priest that he had been molested as a child by Mr. Prince. He later discusses the matter with Michael Barry, vicar-general for the Pembroke diocese.
1991 - Mr. Prince is sent to Rome as secretary-general of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
1993 February 10 - Pembroke bishop Joseph Windle writes to papal nuncio Carlo Curis.
2004 - Mr. Prince retires.
2005 May - The Killaloe OPP detachment receives a complaint from a man saying he had been molested in 1969.
2005 October - The OPP issues an arrest warrant for Mr. Prince.
2008 Jan. 14 - Mr. Prince found guilty of sexually molesting 13 boys between 1964 and 1984.
2009 May 4 - Pope Benedict XVI issues the decree defrocking Mr. Prince.

The PDF of the actual letter: http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.c...Bi_577901a.pdf

[MOBIUS]

I notice it still took the Vatican well over a year to defrock (not the most appropriate of terms under the circumstances!) him after he was found guilty...