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Even Jesus Would Frown on This One City of Angels October 5, 2009 http://cityofangels5.blogspot.com/2009/10/even-jesus-would-frown-on-this-one.html Invoking Jesus to explain away sex crimes The bishop of Nova Scotia dashes off a quick letter to his flock after the Vicar is arrested at the airport with child porn on his laptop. The bishop of Nova Scotia right away invokes Jesus to explain away priest sex crimes: "It has occurred to me that in these past few days many of us are experiencing the reality and the full implication of the mystery of our faith. We are personally going through the passion and the death which Christ experienced ..." No! You didn't say that! But he did, and he goes on then to infer that pedophile priests are just being human, succumbing to human weakness like any of us would: "One of these lessons is for all of us to have a better understanding of what constitutes a human person. People, priests, bishops are human, and failure to see, recognize and care about this will continue to produce inhuman expectations and give rise to inhuman behaviour. Another lesson is that failure in pastoral leadership is also connected to a misunderstanding of the diverse relationships which are needed to hold together the community of faith." No. Jesus, like any decent human, would not just turn the other cheek and walk away from hundreds of thousands of sex crimes against children in one continent alone. Being a pedophile is not just human nature or even human weakness, which is the underlying message here: "Hey, even priests and bishops are human." "Bishops, priests, deacons and lay ministers are not superheroes; leadership among the people of God is not about power, it is about caring. There are many areas that we must attend to in order to move forward. Some are immediate, others will take more time. Together, let us face the present crisis; let us find the heart needed to slowly reconstruct our relationships and our capacity to trust and to care. It starts by being still before God." If clergy want to be human, prove it. Get out of the robes and start paying attention to the way the rest of the human race acts. For example, you don't have sex with children. Instead this holy man writes that after decades of sex crimes by priests uncovered: He goes on to blather: "God: Why Lord? What does all this mean? What are you asking of me and of my priests?" Like the guy in the flood calling out to God for help while turning down passing humans offering rescue. "My God, what is God asking of you?" Well first stop invoking your own religion as an excuse for sex crimes to take place. AARGH I'm beginning to think it wasn’t angels who rolled away Jesus’ gravestone, the man rolled over in his grave himself, hearing future platitudes like this. When will the church start facing responsibility for its crimes instead of running and hiding from them? PS Wonder why they were searching his laptop at the airport in the first place... OROGINAL STORY: Text of the letter from Archbishop Anthony Mancini to the Catholics of Nova Scotia CANADARoman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax To the Roman Catholic Faithful of Nova Scotia, Greetings and peace. In the past days, I have been asked over and over again. What do you say to the parishioners... Thanks to Abuse Tracker *************** * Preview: Story Coming Monday: There is no evidence that the victim had any contact with the 42-inch high wall. There was no trace of white paint from the wall on the victim’s dark clothes or on his shoes. There was no clothing fibers from the victim’s dark clothing on the white wall. There were no victim footprints on the wall. There were no victim fingerprints at the scene. There is no evidence that the victim was on the hoods of any of the new cars parked next to the wall. Q: What did you think was suspicious about the crime scene where your brother supposedly committed suicide? A: Well he landed flat on his back, and he landed parallel to the building. He landed eight feet away from the building or rather ten feet from the building. His complete body was parallel and it was ten feet away from the building. So how he could have thrust himself in that position, I have no explanation for. Q: You were describing that there was no trace evidence of- JC: Yeah as far as we know, there’s no fibers on this 42-inch wall that has a narrow twelve inch ledge that would prevent anything from going over the side of the building. And he was dressed in dark clothing. The wall was obviously painted white. I don't believe there’s any trace that we know of any trace of white paint on his clothing. And no black fibers from his clothing on the white wall. Q: Did you see a police report? What did it say in the police report? (About the fibers?) JC: That wasn’t addressed in the police report at all. Q: Why wasn’t it? It seems like they assumed it was a suicide from the start. JC: Yeah it seems, you know, like that there was no contact with the building. as far as you look at the police report there’s no contact. Q: You describe a scene that to me seems kind of threatening. Where Father Lindner took your brother for a ride, and drove him around in a very strange manner, just hours before your brother’s death. Can you describe that for me again? JC: Well it seemed like Father Lindner tricked him into accepting a ride. My brother asked Father Lindner to say a Mass for him so that my brother could go to jury duty. And Father Lindner said, well you say the Mass, and then I’ll drive you. I think that my brother was very polite and he would be reluctant to turn down this favor, which would put him in a small car with a person who is credibly charged with sex abuse of young children. And my brother was very, very dedicated to young children. He had a kindergarten, he was responsible for a kindergarten in Taiwan. And when my brother and I would take walks, I mean, he would strike up conversations with young children, and here there were all these media reports of how Lindner chose these young children as his victims. Q: Did your brother mention Lindner to you as being a person who was kind of threatening? JC: I believe he told me that he was concerned that he relied upon Lindner for some help with the computers, and he thought that Lindner had seen his password. And so he asked me to give him a new password on his Yahoo email. Q: He was already not real comfortable about Lindner anyway? JC: It seems that way. And here he awesome thrust into a situation where he had to depend upon Lindner for the, should we say, the daily necessities, you know, like for email access. And my brother also made comments that he would access certain websites at the computers at the Jesuit Center and then later on these websites were not accessible. It raises the question whether Lindner might have blocked, might have gone through the history and seen some of the websites and blocked access to them, that's a question that my brother had. ************* Fr. Chevedden's Bible sat where the priest "jumped" to his death. ***************** Story coming Monday ************************ ke YES the videos are still unedited. Remember I have two other jobs... Current status is the camera uploaded videos are not compatible with the editing software on the computer. My daughter (who is City of Angels Technical Director) downloaded some new software, so now I just have to figure out where it went in the laptop ... WISH I could quit my two other jobs and just write this Blog, get in a car and travel across the country doing all these stories. |
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