Lawyers who worked for victims of Catholic priest sexual abuse often end up divorced or have breakdowns or leave religion completely.
“No one can handle these cases and come out of it the same. What happens to kids when they’re abused and what happens to their brains when they are abused is something that we don’t know how to fix,” said one lawyer.
Another lawyer, who had been sexually abused as a child by a family friend, won a landmark settlement. But the toll on him was horrific.
He was rattled by the image of a 9-year-old boy who was repeatedly sodomized over nine hours by a priest. The boy buried his bloody underwear so his mother wouldn’t find out.
“The idea of him going off into the woods and burying his underwear, that really got to me,” MacLeish said.
This rape by priests has been so widespread and in so many countries that it clearly is institutionalized and part of their culture. That’s the really sickening part. It’s been going on for decades, as has the corruption in the Vatican Bank. Something in the Catholic Church is rotten at the core.
The catholic church has been corrupt since it’s beginnings. Look back on simple things such as the congress that decided what would be included in the bible. Look at the first popes – they weren’t religious men they were men who wanted power. Look at the inquisition and the torture of innocent people. This is just another manifestation of the evil that has always been there. What was it Pogo said? I have seen the enemy and it is us. That is what the current pope needs to see in the mirror every morning.
That the Catholic Church was corrupt from its start is no secret. The Catholic Church came into existence when they regarded the Bishop of Rome as Pope. Aside from the Lord Jesus Christ, there was never meant to be one single man ruling over the church.
But you are very wrong that the Catholic Church decided what was in the Bible. There were 10 or so councils over 100 year period that codified books that were in the Bible, based on the use of these books by the church. There was little disagreement over what books got into the Bible.
The books that were excluded were generally of late authorship, and with evidences that they were not from the apostles. There is this mythology that has grown up since the publication of The Da Vinci Code, and the scholarship there is bogus. No, the Bible as it is written is the Word of God, and there is little doubt that what is in modern Bibles is what God wanted us to know, and stuff that was left out was false.
I suggest you look at the bible from a historical rather than a religious viewpoint and while you are at it – read ‘Misquoting Jesus’, which was not written by a novelist unlike the book of Luke, which was.
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is a book by Bart D. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1] The book introduces lay readers to the field of textual criticism of the Bible. Ehrman discusses a number of textual variants that resulted from intentional or accidental manuscript changes during the scriptorium era.
The Bible was not written by God but by man, and therefore inherently flawed. The King James version is riddled with errors, many of them know at the time it was printed. Biblical scholars have found more. They have also delved into the politics of what ended up in the Bible. These are Seminarians and Theologians – so there is no atheist bias in these studies.
Excellent comment Cheryl! Thank you for that.