Quote:Who are the victims of abusive priests?
The general consensus is that the vast majority of priests do not abuse young people. Among those who do, most fall within the following definitions:
Abusive pedophiles who have a heterosexual orientation and are sexually attracted to pre-pubertal girls, less commonly to boys, and sometimes to both boys and girls. They often have sexual feelings to children of a particular age group -- e.g. 7 and 8 year olds.
Abusive hebephiles (a.k.a. ephebophiles) who are priests with a homosexual orientation. They are sexually attracted to post-pubertal young men, aged 13 to 17 years. 9 Most are also probably attracted to adult males.
Nobody knows, with any degree of accuracy, what percentage of priests fall into each category.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/clergy_sex8.htm
I don't know anything about the site or its biases.
This site, from the Conference of Catholic Bishops, suggests there may be more female than male abuse.
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/abuse/abuse19.htm
Disclaimer: I received this article along with several others. I neither accept or reject that which is written therein. Nor will I defend any of the statements herein. However, he did make some interesting comments
I'm surely going straight to hell if I say anything critical of the late pope John Paul II, but according to him, I was heading there in a handbasket anyway, so what the ****. The truth is I am a bit fed-up with the wall-to-wall lionization of this man, who admittedly brought inspiration and faith to millions, but who also propagated some ancient, reactionary viewpoints that—just my humble fag opinion here—fanned the flames of widespread oppression, all in the name of God's will. Not since Ronald Reagan's death last year—when the dead prez became painted as a forceful, flawless leader, with nary a reference to his callous, longtime refusal to acknowledge AIDS deaths—has there been such a wacky whitewash of someone's controversial canon. This time around, all the cable channel phonies—few of whom have been known to live lives of quiet piety, especially the gays—took on a nauseatingly hushed, reverent tone as they indulged themselves in nonstop slobbering over the icon they exclusively portrayed as noble, divine, and even well accessorized. As evidenced by the overwhelming response to his passing, the guy surely tapped into the hopes and dreams of loving throngs around the world, all fighting for hotel rooms in Rome. But as I've clicked the channels for days on end, I haven't heard a single person question the "man of the people" 's rabid anti-abortion stance, his aggressive anti-condom platform, or his intense demonization of gay marriage as "a new ideology of evil, perhaps insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man." Of course maybe someone's death might not seem like the right time to say, "He furthered sexual guilt, disease spreading, and hate crimes," but actually, when there's exhaustive, weeks-long coverage of a man's life, what better time could there be? (At least a pundit on an ABC special did note that the pope may have disliked democracy as much as he hated Communism.)
The reality is that, as the world—and even the church—started inching forward and becoming more accepting, John Paul II tried to hold things together with a moral vise that often proved intolerant and unrealistic. As women gained more control over their bodies and gays developed some rights of their own, he was frantic to push down the progress by promoting absolute respect for human life, except for individualists and "deviants." This was no shock—religion has traditionally specialized in messages of love that double as tools of persecution, and fanatics have always picked sections of the Bible at random in order to oppress unpopular people, while ignoring other parts that might put a damper on their own fun.
Just recently, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim leaders all got together to denounce the upcoming Jerusalem WorldPride march and to agree on one thing—gays suck. The protest was an eye-popping reminder that so many of the different gods people pray to seem to have the very same queers-are-the-devil message. Even these groups' usual distaste for each other was effectively buried as they united in fear of the common gay enemy.
As a shameless queen myself, I was brought up on strict Catholicism, but strayed after brilliantly sensing I wasn't that welcome in my own religion. Not only did the ruler-wielding nuns seem scarier than the flames of hell, but the church clearly wanted me to stay and be terrorized only if I'd admit I was a sinner and grovel for forgiveness. Given a choice between "immoral" nightclubs where people shrieked, "Girlfriend! You look fabulous!" and a place of worship where everyone snarled, "Heal your soul!" I chose the clubs and haven't looked back since.
John Paul couldn't have been too upset about losing one more messy miscreant. A 2003 document issued by the Vatican reminded the world that "homosexual acts go against the natural moral law." (So what, I always wondered, should someone growing up with gay feelings do? Get electroshock treatments? Become a priest? Or simply be honest about them and live as a papal disgrace?) The report compassionately took pains to add that "allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children." This from the church that silently condoned abuse of children for centuries.
The beloved pope was also dead set against the use of condoms to curb disease and unwanted pregnancy. After all, that would be acknowledging that humans actually have sex. Instead, the pontiff stood for the loftier goals of abstinence and/or marital monogamy, the kind of family values that, when preached too fervently, often result in scandal headlines. To further this no-nooky agenda, the church has long promoted the idea that condoms can cause disease more than they prevent it! Yes, listen to the Vatican and you'll believe that scumbags are inherently unsafe (gee, so is pushing abstinence or monogamy) and they actually encourage promiscuity (though the more scientific-minded tend to recognize that condoms don't cause sex any more than a coat brings on the cold).
To the pope so mourned on cable, any kind of contraception was an absolute no-no because it blocks children, as if the world is somehow lacking in people. (And if condoms don't work anyway, then what's the problem?) You'll recall that his recent book went so far as to equate abortion with the Holocaust because both are supposedly a result of usurping the law of God. So an indigent woman who considers aborting an unaffordable baby (which, let's say, exists because Mama wasn't able to use condoms, and has AIDS for the same reason) was suddenly Satan and Hitler combined.
And then there was the pedophilia-in-the-church scandal, which blew up in 2002 after decades of hush money payoffs and the transferring of accused child molesters to different parishes the way you'd move a rotting vegetable from the fridge to the freezer. The priesthood has long been a place for ashamed gays to hide (along with the truly devoted). In the old days, you usually couldn't make your Catholic family proud by coming out, but you certainly could do so by stuffing your sexuality, marrying God, and becoming a man of the cloth. The church loved the deception too—so much so that it turned a blind eye to the twisted intergenerational acts these self-loathing closet cases perpetrated while abusing their power. When it all finally exploded, the media erupted in GLAAD-protested reports that gleefully equated gay with evil, triumphantly playing right into the church's long-held theory that homos are bad people.
I'm certainly not rejoicing that the pope has passed on—I'm not a big fan of human suffering and death, even if it brings one closer to God. Still, it's hard to forget that John Paul's love of society's fringe characters always had a big but attached. You know, we care for PWAs, but they're in this predicament because they're sinners. We denounce gay bashing, but—according to official doctrine—"the proper reaction to crimes committed against homosexual persons should not be to claim that the homosexual condition is not disordered." Oh, yeah? Well, I think a lot of your moral decrees were disordered, O holy Father. I certainly loved you for the sanctity and uplift I kept hoping I could turn to you for. But . . .
by Michael Musto
From the Village Voice.
Killer priest?
By DAVID J. KRAJICEK
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
On the last day of her life, Irene Garza went to confession.
The lovely 25-year-old drove her father's Ford 12 blocks from her family's home in McAllen, Tex., to their Catholic church, Sacred Heart.
The date was April 16, 1960, the day before Easter Sunday.
Garza enjoyed a modest celebrity among the parishioners, and many people noticed her at the busy church that afternoon.
She had been the first Latina head drum majorette at McAllen High School. She was prom and homecoming queen while studying at Pan American College in nearby Edinburg, and in 1958 she won the title of Miss South Texas.
Her parents, who owned a dry-cleaning business, were admired for raising a proper, devout daughter. She was active in the parish Legion of Mary, and after college she took a job teaching school on the poor, Hispanic side of town.
Garza had made plans with a girlfriend to see a movie that night, and she may have been impatient while waiting in the long confessional line. At some point, she left the church and went to the adjacent rectory, where she made a confession to a young priest, the Rev. John Feit. At 27, he had recently been ordained and was at Sacred Heart for a year of pastoral training.
Feit later said Garza left the rectory at 7:15 p.m.
But she did not return home that night. Her parents called police, and officers found her car still at Sacred Heart.
Grim find
Five days later her corpse was found in an irrigation canal off the Rio Grande.
The body was clothed except for shoes and underwear. Her blouse had been unbuttoned. She had two black eyes and bruises to her face and genitals. She had been raped.
McAllen police and the Texas Rangers interviewed more than 500 people and administered lie detector tests to 61 potential suspects.
One of them was Feit.
The priest explained that he heard Irene Garza's confession at the rectory - a breech of procedure - because she had asked to speak with him about a "matter of conscience." Investigators noticed scratches on Feit's hands. He explained he scraped himself while climbing a tree.
Feit denied any knowledge of the murder, but the polygraph did not go well for him.
"He was, in my opinion, consistently giving deceptive responses," the polygraph operator recently told the Dallas Morning News. "He was untruthful on the relevant question."
That question: Did you kill Irene Garza?
Meanwhile, Feit was being scrutinized in another crime.
On March 23, three weeks before Garza was killed, a man wearing black priest's trousers accosted Maria Guerra, 20, while she was praying in another McAllen area church.
The young woman escaped by biting the man's hand. She said her assailant was Feit.
Authorities brought attempted rape charges, but a jury deadlocked, and Feit agreed to plead guilty to aggravated assault. He was fined $500 and was hustled out of Texas by Catholic authorities.
Although public opinion pinned the murder of Irene Garza on the priest, prosecutors failed to bring charges.
The pastor of Sacred Heart, the Rev. Joseph O'Brien, advised the Garza family to let it be.
"He told us that the church's punishment was greater than any sentence handed down by the courts, and we believed him," the victim's aunt, Herlinda de la Vina, told Texas Monthly magazine. "Who were we to question a priest?"
Feit was sent to an abbey in Ava, Mo. In 1966 he joined the Servants of the Paraclete religious order and was assigned to run a treatment center for troubled priests in Jemez Springs, N.M. While there, Feit gave glowing recommendations for the Rev. James Porter, a notorious pervert. Feit helped Porter get a job at a parish in Fall River, Mass. He later molested more than 100 boys and girls and was defrocked in 1998.
Feit quit the priesthood in 1972. He moved to Phoenix, married and had a family, working as a spokesman for a Catholic charity.
An ugly secret
Over time, Irene Garza was forgotten by all but her loved ones.
But in 2002, amid the national priest sex abuse scandal, another former priest stepped forward to reveal a secret he had lived with for 40 years. Dale Tacheny said Feit had confessed the Garza murder to him when the two priests lived together at the Missouri abbey.
Investigators then tracked down the Rev. O'Brien, the former Sacred Heart pastor, by then retired. He admitted that Feit had confessed the murder to him just days after it happened. O'Brien withheld the information from authorities under the Catholic clergy's version of omerta.
When it learned of the new evidence, the Brownsville Herald asked prosecutor Rene Guerra whether he planned to try to solve the murder by calling a grand jury.
Guerra's reply was astounding.
"Can it be solved? Well, I guess if you believe that pigs can fly," he said. Guerra later added, "Why would anyone be haunted by her death? She died. Her killer got away."
For two years Guerra stubbornly refused to impanel a grand jury in the case. When he finally relented, his presentation was bizarre.
The grand jurors heard testimony not on consecutive days but on 15 consecutive Wednesdays in 2004, according to Texas Monthly. No cop was called until the 11th week, and Tacheny and O'Brien were not called at all. Not surprisingly, the grand jury declined to indict Feit.
Many in Texas believe the Catholic Church continues to influence the case, just as it did 45 years ago.
"Church officials told me that [Feit] was a priest and that he didn't have to talk to anyone, but only to the Pope," one investigator, Harry Cecil, now long retired, told the Brownsville Herald. "I think the Catholic Church did everything they could to cover this up ... [Feit] looked at me and said, 'You will never convict me of anything.' He was a very arrogant man."
Feit, now 72, has denied the murder in a series of odd comments to the Texas media.
"I'm just hanging out and having fun," he told the Brownsville paper. "I'm not going to sweat it."
And he told Texas Monthly, "The speculation intrigues me."
