skunk

A series of allegations in Germany and Holland have plunged the Catholic Church into a renewed crisis over how it has dealt with child abuse after it emerged that the Pope's brother ran a renowned choir at the centre of some of the latest claims.

Reports of systematic historical abuse by clergy have surfaced at three schools in the Regensburg diocese in Bavaria. One of them is the much-heralded Regensburger Domspatzen, a thousand-year-old male choir and boarding school, whose choral master for 30 years was the Pope's older brother, Georg Ratzinger.

Monsignor Ratzinger has agreed to testify in any eventual prosecutions – but says that he knew of no abuse. And last night the German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, joined a growing chorus of politicians in Berlin to criticise the church over its attitude to the investigation, accusing Catholic institutions of a policy of secrecy.

"In many schools there was a wall of silence allowing for abuse and violence," said Ms Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a prominent critic of the church. She pointed to a Vatican directive from 2001 which required that even the most damaging allegations should be first investigated internally and then reported to the authorities. A church spokesman called her criticisms "absurd".

A separate sex scandal has also enveloped the Catholic Church in the Netherlands after three people said they were abused at a boarding school run by priests in the 1960s. Since the allegations were published on Friday more than 200 people have come forward to a designated helpline claiming that they were also abused by monks and priests.

The new allegations are a source of major embarrassment to the Vatican, which had been hoping to draw a line under child abuse. Over the past decade the issue has enormously damaged the church's reputation and finances.

The allegations in Germany first surfaced last month when investigators began looking into a series of Jesuit schools, but the scandal broadened out over the weekend into the heart of deeply Catholic Bavaria. The allegations coming out of the Regensburg diocese are particularly awkward because the Pope and his brother spent much of their careers in senior positions there, which will inevitably raise questions as to whether they ever encountered or heard about clergy who sexually abused minors.

Throughout the 1970s Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Regensburg. His older brother Georg took over the Regensburger Domspatzen in 1964 and, over the next 30 years, helped turn the male-only choir into one of the best in the world.

But he says that he never heard of any abuse in his time with the choir. Asked by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica whether he would talk to German officials, the 86-year-old Mgr Ratzinger replied: "Obviously I'd be ready to do so, but I am not able to provide any information on any deed that could be punished, because I don't have any – I never knew anything about it."

Any abuse at the Regensburger Domspatzen, he said, occurred before he took over. He did admit that pupils at the school were subjected to a climate of "discipline and rigour" but added that this was necessary in order to reach "a high musical, artistic level".

But Franz Wittenbrink, a German composer who lived at the school until 1967, described the school as being run by "a sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust". He was also quoted by Der Spiegel as saying that it was "inexplicable" that the Pope's brother knew nothing of what was happening.

The new sex scandals have emerged just weeks after Pope Benedict XVI gave Ireland's bishops a public dressing down for failing to deal with child abuse which he described as a "heinous crime". He also called on Catholic bishops to tackle allegations with "honesty and courage". But, while the Vatican has given its backing to a full investigation of the allegations, the Pope has so far remained personally silent on the matter.

We Are Church, a prominent Christian support network for abuse victims, has now called on the Pope publicly to declare whether he knew of any abuse allegations when he was a bishop.

"He must answer the question about what he knew and what he did about it," said Christian Weisner, the group's German spokesperson.

KIWI

skunk

boycotteverything

skunk

boycotteverything

skunk

boycotteverything

Jackinthebox

Originally Posted by boycotteverything not a dude you wanna have a beer with.

Jackinthebox

Originally Posted by boycotteverything according to St Malachy the Olivine is next to the last. won't be long now...

skunk

Jackinthebox

Originally Posted by skunk What, the pope who did jack shit during the holocaust wasn't bad enough?

skunk

KIWI

Wathc where you tread. I have family that wore the Swastika.

Jackinthebox

Originally Posted by skunk Do you defend their actions? And just because you're german, doesn't make you a nazi.

skunk

As The Da Vinci Code arrives in our cinemas with its lurid accusations of a church cover-up of Jesus's life as a family man, Roman Catholic leaders have been vocal in dismissing the film of Dan Brown's bestseller as unsuitable viewing for believers. Cardinal amongst its sins according to them is its suggestion that a church organisation, Opus Dei, would attempt to manipulate history to fit its beliefs. But that, it was charged last week, is precisely what the Vatican is doing in regard of a much more recent event, the Holocaust.

An unflattering spotlight fell on God's business address on Earth when the German Justice Minister, Brigitte Zypries, announced on Tuesday that her country is finally to open its huge archive of Nazi records on 17 million concentration camp inmates and slave labourers. Germany's belated move to answer the pleas for access to its archives by Holocaust survivors and their families now leaves only the Vatican standing all alone in denying them the chance to read what is in its wartime documents.

You might expect an organisation that - as the bishops have been busy pointing out last week to counter the picture of their church presented in The Da Vinci Code - is dedicated to truth, justice, forgiveness and reconciliation to have been among the first to offer access to its files. And its refusal to open its secret files has only increased suspicion that it has something it wants to cover up - principally evidence of the alleged pro-Nazi sympathies of wartime pope, Pius XII.

In the church's official annals, Pius, who died in 1958, is painted as a saintly shepherd who led his flock with great moral courage in difficult times. For many scholars, though, he is at worst the Devil incarnate, "Hitler's Pope", and at best a coward who refused to speak out against the extermination of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in gas chambers, even when he had compelling evidence that it was happening, lest his words attract Nazi aggression.

Month by month, year by year, more evidence emerges from other sources about where the Vatican's sympathies lay in the Second World War. Earlier this year, for example, a 1946 instruction from Pope Pius to the French bishops was unearthed that ordered them not to hand over Jewish children they had been sheltering to Jewish charities now the conflict was over. According to the outspoken Harvard historian Professor Daniel Goldhagen, Pius was guilty in this instance of "having given the order to take [Jewish] children away from their parents and should be regarded as little better than a war criminal."

The Vatican's response to all such accusations is to issue a blanket denial, insisting that it was neutral throughout the conflict. Yet in the absence of any compelling documentary evidence to buttress its position, few are now willing to take its word as gospel on its war record.

And the pressure has only built since the election 13 months ago of Pope Benedict XVI. Where his predecessor John Paul II had worked during the Second World War with the Polish underground to defeat the Nazis and save Jews, the former Cardinal Ratzinger had been a member of the Hitler Youth, albeit a reluctant one. The Vatican's archives - known curiously as the Secret Archives, though their existence has been well known since 1610 - is under the personal control of the Pope. One word from Benedict and the doors could be thrown open.

While we wait for the church to catch up with the rest of the world, what is known for certain from other sources is that in 1933 as Vatican representative in Germany, the future Pius XII had agreed a treaty with Hitler, whose authoritarian tendencies he admired, to close down the Catholic -dominated Centre Party, one of National Socialism's staunchest opponents. This treaty was based on the Vatican's 1929 agreement with Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader. On being elected Pope in 1939, Pius's first act was to suppress a document denouncing Hitler, entitled Mit Brennender Sorge ("With deep anxiety ...") that his predecessor had been writing on his deathbed. And throughout the war, Pius XII made no public condemnation of the Holocaust, save for a single ambiguous sentence in a 26-page Christmas message of 1942.

Among the various disputed accusations made against him are that he did nothing to protect the Jews of Rome as the Nazis and Italian fascists carted them away to gas chambers from their ghetto in Trastevere under the very windows of the Vatican; that he forbade monasteries and convents to shelter Jews trying to escape the Nazis; that he allowed the church to profit from looted goods taken from the Nazis' victims; and that he turned a blind eye to assistance given by Catholic religious orders, notably in Croatia, to help Nazi war criminals escape to start new lives in Latin America.

The church vigorously denies all these charges, but without access to the Vatican's wartime archive, there can be no independent verification of their unblinking faith that Pius XII was free from the stain of sin. In 1964, the then Pope, Paul VI, did order that a selection of relevant documents be released. These were, however, to be chosen by Vatican historians and, unsurprisingly, tell a resoundingly positive tale of informal initiatives and deep concern about the Holocaust. As Lord Janner, formerly Greville Janner MP, and chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, has remarked, the Vatican's edited highlights have been "carefully selected to stress only positive efforts by the Vatican to resist Nazism or to save victims".

In the late 1990s, searching for a way to disarm the ever greater numbers of historians who suspected it of a cover-up, the Vatican allowed the British writer, John Cornwell, limited access to its papers about Pius XII. A cradle Catholic, ex-seminarian and the author of a book which conclusively refuted allegations that Pope John Paul I had been murdered, Cornwell, the monsignori decided, could be trusted.

However, he describes how, having read only a part of the archive about Pius, he found himself "in a state I can only describe as moral shock. The material I had gathered, taking the more extensive view of [Pius XII's] life, amounted not to an exoneration but to a wider indictment."

When Cornwell's book, Hitler's Pope, was published in 1999, it alleged that Pius was seemingly prepared to put up with any Nazi atrocity because he saw Hitler as a good bulwark against the advance across Europe of godless communism from Russia. To paraphrase more recent politicians, the deaths of 6 million Jews was a price worth paying to protect the Catholic church.

The Vatican reacted with a front-page editorial in its official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, attacking Cornwell as "unqualified" to make such judgements. The controversy wouldn't go away, however. Finally, in October 1999, the church agreed to allow access to a joint panel of six Jewish and Catholic experts, appointed by the Vatican and the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultation. By July 2001 the Jewish members of the group resigned, quoting the "lack of a positive response" from the Vatican. In short, they had refused to let them see anything new.

Despite repeated efforts since, the records remain locked away in the Secret Archive to this day. The Vatican has offered a variety of justifications. A favourite has been to use the same line as the German authorities in defending, until Brigitte Zypries's change of heart, keeping archives closed, namely privacy considerations. Now that Germany has capitulated, however, that excuse has gone out of the window.

At other times "technical reasons" have been quoted, or lack of manpower to do the cataloguing. It has also been suggested darkly that allowing free access would break the seal of the confessional. Matters were not helped in January of this year when Archbishop Sergio Pagano, Prefect of the Secret Archives, gave an interview with the Italian church magazine, Avvenire, where he bemoaned the "strange phenomenon" of all these experts wanting to poke around in the Pope's private papers.

So the archives on this much disputed period remain firmly closed. Such an unflinching commitment to secrecy has soured Catholic-Jewish relationships - overshadowing, for instance, John Paul II's historic March 2000 apology to the Jews for centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.

And many Catholics in the pews are puzzled as to why, when to say the least the jury is out on Pius XII, the Vatican is apparently proceeding with all speed to canonise him. It gives the impression that their church leaders are responding to the outside world's legitimate concern to know the truth about this man with a gesture of defiance that brings the whole canon of saints into disrepute. It is precisely the sort of behaviour that leaves readers and cinemagoers prepared to give credence to Dan Brown's conspiracy theories.

Peter Stanford's book of essays, "Why I Am Still A Catholic", is published this week in paperback by Continuum

Confession time: Low moments in the life of the Catholic church

The Vatican Secret Archives contain an estimated 2 million items, including 40,000 parchments, and take up 80 kilometres (50 miles) of shelving. They date back over 1,000 years. Some 40 scholars a day consult the archives, but no material after 1939 is available. If the archives were thrown open they could cast light on these mysteries:

Pope Joan

Did a German woman of English descent cross-dress to claim the papacy in 854, as described in many medieval church chronicles? The original source of these accounts has never been found and the church is anxious to play down the story.

The Knights Templar

Featuring in every conspiracy theory about religious history, these crusaders were banned by Pope Clement V in 1312, but his reasons remain obscure and much debated.

The Pill

In the mid-1960s Pope Paul VI sought advice from leading Catholics on whether to allow Catholics to use the Pill. Most recommended he say yes, but in 1968 he came back with a definitive no that led to an exodus from the pews. What made him take this landmark decision?

Papal Assassination Attempt

On 13 May, 1981, John Paul II was gunned down by Mehmet Ali Agca. He survived and visited Agca in prison. Official enquiries never established a definite connection to the KGB as alleged, but what did Agca tell the Pope at their meetings?

Paedophile Priests

When details of the church's cover-up of the activities of paedophile priests emerged in the 1990s, the Vatican remained tight-lipped about how much it had known and for how long.

Jackinthebox

Originally Posted by KIWI extras from "Band of Brothers" ?

KIWI

Originally Posted by Jackinthebox Dont be an ass. This is not something to fuck with me on.

Alessandra

anarch

AmkonWIKI
Isn't it ironic that the people who hate the ignore button are the ones who have an almost pathological need for attention?

Jackinthebox

Originally Posted by KIWI lol.. fuck off

KIWI

Originally Posted by Jackinthebox Squeeze a lime you fuk.

Triangle

boycotteverything

Originally Posted by KIWI lol.. fuck off

skunk

Originally Posted by Triangle Great article, It's not really news to me that they're into that stuff, but what's awesome is the fact that it's hitting the MSM.

boycotteverything

Shall we start documenting the history of the catholic church's abuses on amkon?

skunk

Hazelnut

... Magick does play a part in most, if not all, religions (in Roman Catholicism, for example, transubstantiation is pure magick)...

In itself, magick is a practice. Anyone can do magick...or, at least can attempt to do it.

This is one of the most potent forms of magick, for here we are dealing very much with the life forces. Dr. Jonn Mumford, in Sexual Occultism, states the the most important psycho-physiological event, in the life of a human, is the orgasm. Sex Magick is the art of using the orgasm - indeed, the whole sexual experience - for magickal purposes. Successful sex magick involves an interplay of four factors: 1) all aspects of extrasensory perception are heightened during sexual excitation; 2) immediately before, during, and after climax the mind is in a state of hypersensitivity; 3) consistency of peak sexual sensations facilitates access to the unconscious realms; 4) during orgasm many people have experienced timelessness and a total dissolution of the ego, accompanied by subjective sensations of being "absorbed by" their partner. The sex act is obviously the best possible, and most natural way of generating the power we need for magick.

WandererInTheWild

boycotteverything

Originally Posted by skunk Someone on amkon wasn't aware of the pedos in the church. You'll have to forgive them, they're european, and those kind of abuses do not typically make the news over there because the church tends to be "untouchable". Greater awareness is not a bad thing.

boycotteverything

Why is sexual abuse rampant in religion?

Hazelnut

WandererInTheWild

boycotteverything

Hazelnut

WandererInTheWild

Triangle

Why is sexual abuse rampant in religion

boycotteverything

I can't wait until they're all behind bars.

Pam

boycotteverything

don't you have to practice what you believe?

Triangle

That day may be approaching faster than we think.

boycotteverything

I think it'll be like the fall of the USSR.

egg

I can't wait until they're all behind bars.