Mark Foley Speaks Out About Vatican Sex Abuse

Remember Mark Foley? The six term Congressman who was forced to resign in 2006 for hitting on teen aged Senate pages?  Until now I thought he was just another sleazebag ( check out a transcript of one of his IM conversations with an ex Senate page here), but after what Mark Foley revealed about himself last week, I feel real compassion for the guy.

It's a well known fact that sexually molested children often grow up to be abusers themselves. Seems that Mark Foley is a perfect example of this.

In an interview last week  Foley commented on the ongoing Vatican pedophile priest scandal by describing  his own molestation at the hands of a priest at the age of eleven.

It takes a brave man to be so honest about what must have been a shameful secret carried for years. Few survivors are able to come forward and make themselves so vulnerable. I salute Mark Foley for having the guts to do so.  Here's a direct quote .  It is quite chilling to read.

 "The priest befriended me, started slowly, making me feel like a special child and as time went on things advanced and then we were going to steam rooms and places where I had no idea what we were doing but nonetheless, it was happening," Foley told WPTV's Jim Sackett.

  It was 40 years ago that as an 11-year old Catholic altar boy, Foley, met Father Anthony Merceica at his Lake Worth Church. "Virtually every commandment you've been taught is now violated, don't tell your parents, I'll kill myself if you do, nobody can know about our secret," Foley said the priest told him. Foley said the abuse lasted two years...stopping when Merceica left the parish and Foley was left with guilt."    source: TCPalm.com

 image source

How do I know that Foleys' abuser was transferred out of the parish to avoid scandal and sent on to do the same thing somewhere else by a bishop who was " just obeying orders" from the Vatican?We are not just talking about sin here, we are talking about a soul-killing crime against a child  as well as an illegal cover-up of unconscionable proportions.

Mark Foley may have left Congress in disgrace, but clearly some long delayed healing has begun. May he find in his self-honesty the spiritual sustenance denied him so many years ago by his church.  Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I hope the Vatican will figure that out soon.

Sex, Satan and The Vatican

Satan is at work in the Vatican according to Father Gabriele Amorth,the Vatican's chief exorcist. In a recent interview with CNN(see the video below) Fr. Amorth affirmed that Satan tempts everyone, but tempts religious leaders and those in high places more. Thus, we should not be surprised that priests succumb to Satan's blandishments just like everyone else.

When asked if he thought priest pedophiles were possessed by the devil and in need of exorcism, Fr. Amorth said no-- explaining that such priests were tempted by Satan, not possessed by him. In his own words:

"I have carried out exorcisms on some priests who had been molested by the devil," he said, without going into details.
"But cases of pedophilia exorcised, no. ... Pedophiles are not possessed by the devil, they are tempted by the devil,"
"They don't need exorcism, they need to be converted, to be converted to God, that's what they need. They need to confess, they need true penitence, true repentance, that's what they need. They're not possessed."

I think the Vatican spin machine is going to have to come up with something better than that to fix its tarnished image. I mean in the wake of all the major sex scandals around the world involving pedophile priests and going back decades, the idea of putting it all down to temptation is just too crazy for words.

Maybe a married woman who uses artificial birth control instead of playing Vatican roulette, or a teenager who masturbates is sinning, but honestly, sodomizing the choirboys is on a whole different level, especially if you are a priest and the choirboys are still singing soprano.

So far the pope is writing letters and issuing apologies while still distancing himself and the Holy See from the debacle in Ireland, the recent German scandal and the rather absurd uncovering of a male prostitution ring in the Vatican itself. No responsibility has been taken. No priests have been defrocked and it's business as usual as far as I can see.

If the Vatican spin machine thinks that trotting out a sweet old exorcist to make apologies for the sins of the " Fathers" is a good idea, I think it had better think again. I don't know what these guys are smoking, but they are certainly not dealing with objective reality. This is the twenty first century, not the Middle Ages. Get a grip, guys. We are dealing with crime as well as sin here. Stop beating around the bush: Take responsibility and DO something. You are the folks who orchestrated the Inquisition, after all. You know how to root out the bad news bears when you want to. Stop dragging your feet.

If I am possessed by a demon I'll give Father Amorth a call. But if my child is molested by a priest, I'm calling the police.

source: CNN.com

Sex, Lies, Ireland and The Vatican

The Vatican is at it again. Another sex scandal involving pedophile priests has surfaced, this time in Ireland. The Pope responded immediately by calling a big meeting of senior Irish clergy in Rome and writing a letter expressing shock, surprise, and a lot of blahblah blah. It's a replay of the response to similar scandals in the USA and Australia. It's what the Vatican always does when it gets caught. Mea Culpa and more of the same.

Let's get real folks. Horny priests have been molesting the choirboys since the Middle Ages and they aren't about to stop now. It shocked Martin Luther too. The Pope can repent all he wants to, and call all the meetings in the world, but it won't do any good until a truly corrupt sexual culture of mysogeny, homophobia, and homo-eroticism that is part and parcel of clerical celibacy is addressed.

The current scandal in Ireland is neither unexpected nor surprising. It is merely the latest expression of an old old problem. The Church's official attitudes towards sex are twisted to begin with. Sadly, they encourage young men of faith, frightened about their own proclivities, to enter a celibate clergy to avoid facing the problem. That is mistake number one.

So they are immersed in a skewed culture, out of the mainstream where they can tell themselves that what they are doing is OK. I have a friend who was molested by his parish priest starting at the age of 7. I'm not talking just a bit of groping here, although that would be bad enough. This went all the way to sodomy which, given the priest's position, carried the weight of incest. This pedophile priest managed to molest at least 25 boys in my friend's parish before being discovered and transferred by the bishop to a new parish, where he could start all over again. There are millions of stories like this all over the world.

I know that there are wonderful priests and religious who are true to their vows and who have embraced a life of giving that deserves respect, and I know that they too are being betrayed by their leaders and the sexual creeps among them. Time for this culture of secret perversion and corruption to see the light of day and be recognized for what it is.

The bottom line is that in Ireland, North America, Australia or Vatican City, secrets and lies are not only just plain wrong, they are evil and the antithesis of what the Church says it is about. Time to open the windows and let in the truth.

Time for the Vatican to stop writing letters and start cleaning house.

photo from http://ivarfjeld.wordpress.com/