The cruelty of the Catholic church
This week I heard the authentic voice of the Catholic Church I was brought up to believe in. I heard it twice. The first time, everyone else heard it too. The second time, only I heard it - and I want to tell you about it.
But first, what everyone heard. Cardinal Keith O'Brien's statement on abortion was everything the Jesuits taught me to believe in: a cruel, harsh faith in which a politician must either vote the way the church tells you, or fry in Hell forever (for that's what people do if they are denied the sacrament of holy communion); and in which life, however unbearable, must be lived right up until the point where God chooses to relieve you of it. I have not heard it more clearly since Father Bamber sent me to be beaten for failing to memorise the exact words of the creed, in order to teach me about a loving God.
Then I spoke to Graham Wilmer. Wilmer, a man in his fifties, was abused as a child by a teacher at his Salesian school in Chertsey. (Salesians are an order of Catholic priests.) "Abused" is a euphemism. He was buggered, several times, and his life was detroyed.
The many who did the deed, Hugh Madley, owned up to the principal of the Salesians in England after Wilmer at last complained. Wilmer was expelled from school. Madle he was moved to another Salesian school, in Battersea, and his personnel records wiped clean. The Salesians did everything they could to block Wilmer's quest to find out what had happened to him and get justice.
But at last, decades after the event, Madley confessed. Wilmer's remarkable book Conspiracy of Faith (Luttorworth, 2007) is able to name him. The Salesians have now given Wilmer £10,000 a year for four years to run his charity, The Lantern Project, which helps victims of child abuse. And the stories that come to him through this project suggest that the cancer in the Salesians went much, much higher than the wretched Hugh Madley. It's as though the church is determined to ensure a constant supply of children for the likes of Madley to abuse.
The church had compassion for Hugh Madley - so much so that it knowingly put children at risk from him. It has none at all for girls who find themselves pregnant, perhaps as a result of rape, when they have neither the means nor the maturity to cope. The Catholic Church really is the cruel, self-righteous, stalinist outfit I was brought up to believe in.
But first, what everyone heard. Cardinal Keith O'Brien's statement on abortion was everything the Jesuits taught me to believe in: a cruel, harsh faith in which a politician must either vote the way the church tells you, or fry in Hell forever (for that's what people do if they are denied the sacrament of holy communion); and in which life, however unbearable, must be lived right up until the point where God chooses to relieve you of it. I have not heard it more clearly since Father Bamber sent me to be beaten for failing to memorise the exact words of the creed, in order to teach me about a loving God.
Then I spoke to Graham Wilmer. Wilmer, a man in his fifties, was abused as a child by a teacher at his Salesian school in Chertsey. (Salesians are an order of Catholic priests.) "Abused" is a euphemism. He was buggered, several times, and his life was detroyed.
The many who did the deed, Hugh Madley, owned up to the principal of the Salesians in England after Wilmer at last complained. Wilmer was expelled from school. Madle he was moved to another Salesian school, in Battersea, and his personnel records wiped clean. The Salesians did everything they could to block Wilmer's quest to find out what had happened to him and get justice.
But at last, decades after the event, Madley confessed. Wilmer's remarkable book Conspiracy of Faith (Luttorworth, 2007) is able to name him. The Salesians have now given Wilmer £10,000 a year for four years to run his charity, The Lantern Project, which helps victims of child abuse. And the stories that come to him through this project suggest that the cancer in the Salesians went much, much higher than the wretched Hugh Madley. It's as though the church is determined to ensure a constant supply of children for the likes of Madley to abuse.
The church had compassion for Hugh Madley - so much so that it knowingly put children at risk from him. It has none at all for girls who find themselves pregnant, perhaps as a result of rape, when they have neither the means nor the maturity to cope. The Catholic Church really is the cruel, self-righteous, stalinist outfit I was brought up to believe in.
posted by Francis Beckett at
1:34 AM
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