Thursday, July 15, 2004

Michael Rose: The Catholic Church's Abu Ghraib

Here's more information on the sickening scandal from Austria.
Photos are the key
Homosexual sex scandals are, regrettably, nothing new to Catholic seminaries. Denial, avoidance and cover-up are also old hat in these same circles. If it wasn’t for an unnamed 33-year-old Polish-born priest who took photos of the misdeeds with his compact digital camera, there would have been no resignations, no calls for an investigation, no emergency meetings. There would only have been the characteristic obfuscation and denials on the part of Church leaders. Conservative Catholics would have defended the priests and bishop, calling the accusations false and vilifying the whistleblowers as psychologically unfit. At the same time, liberal Catholics would have dismissed the accusations of homosexual revelry as the product of an overactive conservative imagination. Or they may have simply ignored the whole issue.

Despite the fact that certain seminaries became widely known by nicknames such as The Pink Palace, Notre Flame, and the Faggot Factory, seminary rectors and bishops could think of nothing more original than to deny that anything was wrong, calling the charges scurrilous and groundless. Nothing less than compromising photos published in Newsweek would have made them eat their words.
Article here.

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