Are You A Sexpat Or Do You Ride The Backwards Morality Train?

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Pope travels to transformed Ireland as abuse crises rage

By Padraic Halpin

 

People walk past a poster of Pope Francis outside the Pastoral Congress at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, Ireland August 24, 2018. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

 

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Pope Francis will arrive in Ireland on Saturday to find a society transformed since the last papal visit 39 years ago and beset by the kind of abuse scandals that have mired the Catholic Church in crisis again.

 

More than three-quarters of the Irish population flocked to see Pope John Paul II in 1979 at a time when divorce and contraception were illegal. Today, Ireland is no longer staunchly Catholic and over the past three years, voters have approved abortion and gay marriage in referendums, defying the will of the church.

 

Numbers lining the streets or joining Francis in prayer are expected to be about a quarter of the 2.7 million who greeted John Paul II, marking how the rock that was once Irish Catholicism has eroded since child abuse cases came to light in the 1990s.

 

"The Catholic Church is still very much part of our society but not at the centre of it as it was 40 years ago," Prime Minister Leo Varadkar, who last year became Ireland's first gay leader, told the BBC.

 

"Ireland has become a very different place in the last 40 years and our relationship with the church has changed principally because of so many revelations that have occurred around child sex abuse."

 

Varadkar, who remarked how some his predecessors would have consulted bishops about public policy in decades past, will meet Francis at the start of the two-day visit and has promised to challenge the pope to do more in dealing with the abuse crisis.

 

Francis, facing sexual abuse crises in several countries, wrote an unprecedented letter to all Catholics this week asking each one of them to help root out "this culture of death" and vowing there would be no more cover ups.

 

He will also travel to Knock, a small western village steeped in Catholicism that welcomes 1.5 million pilgrims a year, before finishing his trip by saying mass in Dublin's Phoenix Park where a large cross erected for the 1979 visit still dominates the skyline.

 

The 500,000 tickets issued for the mass were quickly snapped up, although an unknown number have been booked by a boycott group called 'Say Nope To The Pope' which encouraged protestors to order tickets and not use them.

 

Abuse survivors and their supporters plan to gather elsewhere in Dublin during the mass, while a silent vigil will also be held at the site of a former church-run home for unwed mothers where an unmarked grave with the remains of hundreds of babies was found in 2014.

 

The Vatican has said Francis will meet Irish victims of clergy sexual abuse, but the pope will also be under pressure to address the recent scandals that have led to the church's worst credibility crisis in more than 15 years.

 

A damning report last week into abuse in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, combined with scandals in Australia and Chile, have formed what one Vatican official called "a perfect storm" and already overshadowed a trip where the main purpose is to close a week-long international Catholic gathering.

 

"Each time a local church has found itself facing a scandal, it is as if the church must start all over again to understand the depths of this heart of darkness," Barbara Thorp, the former head of the office for pastoral support and child protection in the U.S. Archdiocese of Boston, where the first abuse crisis erupted in 2002, told the gathering on Friday.

 

"We have a raging fire within the church. Inexplicably church leaders have shown callous indifference to the suffering of children and the vulnerable and the fire rages on."

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-08-25

[bristolboy]

This pope still doesn't get it.

Pope to Visit Ireland, Where Scars of Sex Abuse Are ‘Worse Than the I.R.A.’

"According to a watchdog group that monitors the Catholic Church in Ireland, 14 priests have been accused in recent years, four of whom were convicted. They include the Rev. Eugene Greene, one of the nation’s most notorious pedophile priests, who served nine years in prison for raping and molesting 26 boys between 1965 and 1982, though the real figure may be far higher.

Yet this year, when Pope Francis needed someone to head a neighboring diocese, he chose Bishop Philip Boyce, who had been heavily criticized for refusing to defrock Father Greene when the priest was under his management in the late 1990s."

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/world/europe/francis-ireland-sexual-abuse-catholic-church.html

[overherebc]

We're losing customers, what are we going to do?

Get the boss here to make a few speeches and see if we can win some back.

[colinneil]

Sex abuse in any form is abhorrent, the Catholic church is a religion overflowing with pedos, and has been for countless number of years

The Pope should get his act together and cleanse the church now.

[Jonnapat]

If you still have doubts about the Catholic church try watching " The Keepers " on Netflix 

[ThaiFelix]

Catholicism:  history's biggest conspiracy.

[ThaiFelix]

 

The GARDAÍ have issued a health warning on a batch of extra strength communion wafers which are believed to be flooding the country ahead of the Pope’s Phoenix Park gig later this month.

 

[Mac98]

My confessor was straight. Wanted to hear every detail. I was nervous and took a break to go outside for fresh winter air. He came out and got me. They never do that. I was a young teen telling him about younger girlfriends. Would there be some kind of child porn charge these days? Probably, if I confessed by Messenger.

[rodney earl]

ALL religions are about 3 things and 3 things only MONEY, POWER AND CONTROL OF THE POPULATION and the catholic church is the worst offender.!!

[Scott]

Troll post removed.