Posts Tagged ‘catholic’

Well here is some Chruch news that didn’t make the national media

Posted: January 6, 2011 by datechguy in catholic
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But you can read about it here:

In a stunning ten-page declaration recently submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, veteran attorney Donald H. Steier stated that his investigations into claims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have uncovered vast fraud and that his probes have revealed that many accusations are completely false.

Counselor Steier has played a role in over one hundred investigations involving Catholic clergy in Los Angeles.In his missive Mr. Steier relayed, “One retired F.B.I. agent who worked with me to investigate many claims in the Clergy Cases told me, in his opinion, about ONE-HALF of the claims made in the Clergy Cases were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse” (capital letters are his).

Mr. Steier also added, “In several cases my investigation has provided objective information that could not be reconciled with the truthfulness of the subjective allegations. In other words, in many cases objective facts showed that accusations were false.”

I would have thought something like this might have gotten a headline for two but nope the first time I hear about it is when I’m checking out this story at Lisa Graas on a different subject (Andrew Sullivan and excommunication a good read btw), where I found this tidbit from October that I missed as well:

…in a report titled “Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth” released earlier this year, a federal Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found an astonishing 10.3 percent of more than 26,000 youth held in state-operated and other large juvenile facilities complained of a “sexual incident” involving facility staff in the previous 12 months.

A few years ago, The Associated Press examined sexual abuse of students by public school teachers. Although reporters couldn’t quantify total complaints, they did discover “more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.” Perhaps more disturbing, “The AP investigation found efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse . . . . In case after case the AP examined, accusations of inappropriate behavior were dismissed,” while “deals and lack of information-sharing allow abusive teachers to jump state lines, even when one school does put a stop to the abuse.”

In other words, school districts were engaging in the same sort of institutional treatment of offenders that characterized a number of Catholic dioceses in the 1960s, ’70s and early ’80s, and which did so much to damage the church’s reputation.

Well that must be nothing compared to what’s going on in the church today right?

In 2009, by contrast, a total of only six “credible” allegations were lodged against U.S. Catholic priests or deacons for sexual abuse of a minor occurring that year, according to statistics gathered by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. That’s in a church with more than 41,000 priests and 17,000 deacons. Assuming the clergy will never be staffed entirely by saints — what profession is? — this figure may be about as low as it is likely to go for such a large organization.

that works out to about .58 per 1,000 clergy.

And Lisa has even more interesting numbers in a post from last month.

The newspaper that most attacks the Catholic Church on this issue is the New York Times. According to Laurie Goodstein, “Decades of Damage; Trail of Pain in Church Crisis Leads to Nearly Every Diocese,” New York Times, January 12, 2003, Section 1, p. 1., based on their survey, 1.8 percent of all priests ordained from 1950 to 2001 have been accused of child sexual abuse. The Associated Press found that approximately two-thirds of 1 percent of priests have charges pending against them.

Let’s compare this to Protestant ministers.

According to Philip Jenkins, Pedophiles and Priests (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 50 and 81, between .2 and 1.7 percent of priests are pedophiles. Among the Protestant clergy, the number is between 2 and 3 percent.

How about Jewish Rabbis?

According to the Awareness Center, the Jewish community is by no means exempt.

How about Public School Teachers?

According to Daniel Wishnietsky, “Reported and Unreported Teacher-Student Sexual Harassment,” Journal of Ed Research, Vol. 3, 1991, pp. 164-69, in New York City alone, at least one child is sexually abused by a school employee every day.

This will never make the national news because as the leading opponent of both Gay Marriage and Abortion in the nation (along with opposing the hook-up culture etc etc etc) the Church is and remains the leading opponent of liberalism embraced by the MSM.

The story of my parents first date

Posted: December 29, 2010 by datechguy in oddities, personal
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This may sound counter-intuitive but the great skank debate reminds me of this story of my mother’s first date with my father back in 43.

My father had a brother named Sam ( I named my oldest after him) he was never married but was very “popular” as evidenced by the group of elderly ladies in the back of the church that people avoided looking at during his funeral. He also had one son who is one of the best looking men I’ve ever seen.

One day in 1943 my mother was at I believe the Elks club with a couple of girls she knew when Sam came swaggering in. Sam noticing the three of them came over. With the exception of my mother the girls were smitten and were all over him while my mother didn’t give him the time of day. This of course peaked Sam’s interest in my mother to the point where the other girls were displeased ending in one of them spilling a drink on her dress.

After coming out of the bathroom my mother was angry and did the one thing she could think of to get back at the two of them, though uninterested in Sam she agreed to go out with them the following week.

Well Sam being Sam was all hands and although times were different in 43 my mother being my mother was having none of it. Finally she had him pull over, got out of the car and took a Taxi home having enough of his amorous attempts.

When Sam got home his younger brother (my dad) asked how his date when, and Sam answered: “Cripes Dominic I’ve never seen anything like it, let me tell you something; if you want a good Catholic girl, that Mary is the one, she wouldn’t let me get anywhere with her.”

My father laughed, Sam laughed and the both forgot about it.

Two weeks later My mother was at the Elks again, this time with her older sister Grace and her husband. My father (a good-looking man in his own right) walked in wearing his Navy blues and was getting some attention when he noticed my mother.

My father was a much different kettle of fish than his older brother and noting the three at the table assumed that Grace (10 years older than my mom) and her husband (many years older than Grace) were her parents. So he approached the man who would eventually be my uncle and asked permission to dance with his “daughter”. Aunt Grace’s husband was taken aback a sec but decided to have a bit of fun with him and pontifically gave his permission. My father having done what he considered the proper and honorable thing then approached my mother and had this exchange:

Excuse me miss, your father has given me permission to ask you to dance.

(suspicious) My father? When did you talk to my father?

(slightly confused) Just now. He gave me permission so may I have dance?

(very suspicious) What are you trying to pull? My father isn’t here!

(confused and embarrassed) But he’s right there, I asked him and he gave permission (pointing to my future uncle now laughing)

Oh, well that’s my brother in law, not my father, but I’ll dance with you.

My father made a date with my mother for next week but was very embarrassed and told the story to his brother Sam that evening. When Sam asked the girls name he said excitedly “Mary Quartarone? That’s the girl I was talking about! Boy Dominic that’s the girl for you!”

Needless to say things worked out, his future father in law was impressed by the story and my parents were married in 1947 and enjoyed 40 years together until my dad death back in 87.

Why does this remind me of the Assange case? Just this. The best way to avoid a bad situation is to avoid it. The right thing is generally the smart thing and the smart thing would have been not to have Assange in the house. Does that mean the ladies “had it coming”? Certainly not. Does that mean Assange is guilty? I don’t know the facts and frankly neither does anyone outside of the parties involved, but one of the side effects of moral norms are the protections they provide to people.

If Assange is guilty he will hopefully get what he deserves, (and given the damage his wikileaks has done he deserves a lot) but I would suggest to any star struck young lady who finds herself in a social setting with a “player”, that my mother’s 68 year old example is the one to follow.

DaTechGuy on DaRadio Christmas Show now available

Posted: December 26, 2010 by datechguy in blogs, catholic, DaTechGuy on DaRadio
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If you were busy having a life with family and / or friends on Christmas day like most people then you may have missed our excellent Christmas show.

But no worries, thanks to the miracle of uploading the file show 6 with the Curt Jester, Damian Thompson and James Marley is available online right here.

And of course it will be available in the archive on the side as long as the blog is here.

I have only one thing to say about the great Assange debate

Posted: December 23, 2010 by datechguy in blogs
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….currently documented by Stacy McCain et al:

Stacy is the father of two girls, Little Miss Attila is a person whose opinion I trust.

Let’s cut to the chase:

  • Any young woman would be well advised to take Stacy’s advice concerning avoiding hookups. It doesn’t matter how fair or unfair life is the best policy is to avoid trouble rather than try to get out of it. The fact that he was once a player puts him in the same spot as a reformed drug dealer, he knows what he had wrought and understands what it means.
  • Any young man including my two sons would be well advised to take Miss Attila’s advice concerning consent, then again hopefully I’ve brought them up well enough to delay that advice as long as possible.

The right thing is usually the smart thing, since a hookup would in fact be sin (however tempting it might be) once should avoid it, but if one won’t take said advice as part of Catholic/Christian morality once should simply take Dan’s advice:

“Don’t be stupid!”

Works for me.

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