Bad News About Christianity

Vatican official attacks 'omerta'

2012-02-11T23:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/vatican-official-attacks-omerta-3014728.html

Vatican official attacks 'omerta'

By Philip Pullella in Rome

Thursday February 09 2012

Hiding behind a culture of "omerta" -- the Italian word for the Mafia's code of silence -- would be deadly for the Catholic Church, the Vatican's top official for dealing with sexual abuse of minors by clergy said yesterday.

Monsignor Charles Scicluna made the unusually forthright comment in his speech to a landmark symposium in Rome on the sexual-abuse crisis that has rocked the church in the past decade.

"The teaching . . . that truth is at the basis of justice explains why a deadly culture of silence, or 'omerta,' is in itself wrong and unjust," Msgr Scicluna told the four-day symposium, which brings together 200 people including bishops, leaders of religious orders, victims of abuse and psychologists.

Rarely, if ever, has a Vatican official used the word "omerta" -- a serious accusation in Italian -- to compare the reluctance of some in the church to come clean on the abuse scandal with the Mafia's code of silence.

"Other enemies of the truth are the deliberate denial of known facts and the misplaced concern that the good name of the institution should somehow enjoy absolute priority to the detriment of disclosure," Msgr Scicluna added.

Victims' groups have for years accused some bishops in the church of preferring silence and cover-ups to coming clean on the scandal, which has sullied the image of the church around the world.

On Tuesday, an Irish victim of clerical abuse bluntly told the symposium that guidelines on how to root out paedophile priests and protect children needed to be backed up by penalties for bishops who failed to implement them.

Marie Collins said rules without sanctions were too easily ignored and cases were often swept under the carpet.

- Philip Pullella in Rome

Christians accused of the murder of a 'witch'

2012-01-06T09:22:00.000-08:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16427840

5 January 2012 Last updated at 17:31 GMT

Kristy Bamu 'murdered over witch claim' in Newham

Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu deny murder

A 15-year-old boy was tortured and drowned by his sister and her boyfriend because they believed he was a witch, the Old Bailey has heard.

Kristy Bamu, from Paris, was found dead in Newham, east London, on Christmas Day in 2010.

The boy had 101 injuries and died from being beaten with a metal bar and drowning, the court heard.

His sister Magalie Bamu and her boyfriend, Eric Bikubi, both Congolese and aged 28, of Newham, deny murder.

Prosecutors told jurors of acts they described as "depraved", "wicked" and "cruel".

Mr Bikubi admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, a plea not accepted by the prosecution.

'Armoury of weapons'

Kristy Bamu and his siblings were visiting London from Paris during the Christmas holidays

Kristy and his siblings were visiting the couple for Christmas, but Mr Bikubi had accused the boy and two of his siblings of witchcraft, the court heard.

All three were beaten and other children were forced to join in the attacks. But it was Kristy who became the focus of Mr Bikubi's attention, the prosecution said.

The teenager was said to be in such pain after days of being hit with an "armoury of weapons" including sticks, pliers, a metal bar, hammer and chisel that he begged to die.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said: "Eventually Bikubi took him into the bathroom, put him in the bath and started to run the water.

"Kristy was just too badly injured and exhausted to resist or to keep his head above the water.

"It was only when he [Mr Bikubi] realised that Kristy was not moving that he stopped what he was doing and pulled him from the water."

He added: "By then it was too late."

“Start Quote

He had sent his children on holiday, not to a torture chamber”

Brian Altman QC

The youngsters were forced to lie to their parents about what was happening when they phoned home, the jury heard.

Mr Altman said of Kristy's father: "He had sent his children on holiday, not to a torture chamber."

When police arrived they found Kristy and his siblings - brother Yves, 22, and and sister Kelly, 20, and other children.

Mr Altman said: "All were standing in the living room, hysterical, terrified and soaking wet.

'Sorcerers'

"None of them spoke any English."

Kelly Bamu said Mr Bikubi and Ms Bamu accused Kristy, herself and a third child of "being witches or sorcerers - practising witchcraft" which adversely influenced another child.

"Despite her own siblings' denials that they were sorcerers, Magalie Bamu joined her boyfriend in repeating these fantastic claims and participating in the assaults," Mr Altman said.

The three were beaten and refused food, drink and sleep and eventually, to stop the torture, they admitted being sorcerers, the jury was told.

Mr Altman said Mr Bikubi's admission of manslaughter was rejected by the prosecution, which argues the couple carried out "the very deliberate murder" of Kristy.

'Feral and evil'

Ms Bamu also denies two charges of causing actual bodily harm to her other siblings.

The defendants are originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The jury heard that witchcraft or sorcery - called kindoki - is practised in Congolese Christian churches.

Mr Altman said that taken out of the church's control "it may take on a feral and indeed evil character, as we suggest it did here".

The court heard that in 2008 Mr Bikubi had accused a family friend of being involved in witchcraft and had forced her to cut her hair short to purge herself.

The trial continues.

7 Charged With Hate Crimes In Amish Hair Attacks

2011-11-25T10:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/23/142712475/7-charged-with-hate-crimes-in-amish-hair-attacks

7 Charged With Hate Crimes In Amish Hair Attacks

by The Associated Press

November 23, 2011

The leader of a breakaway Amish group allowed the beatings of those who disobeyed him, made some members sleep in a chicken coop and had sexual relations with married women to "cleanse them," federal authorities said as they charged him and six others with hate crime counts in hair-cutting attacks against other Amish.

Authorities raided the group's compound in eastern Ohio on Wednesday morning and arrested seven men, including group leader Sam Mullet and three of his sons.

Several members of the group carried out the attacks in September and October by forcefully cutting the beards and hair of Amish men and women, authorities said. Cutting the hair is a highly offensive act to the Amish, who believe the Bible instructs women to let their hair grow long and men to grow beards and stop shaving once they marry.

The attacks struck at the core of the Amish identity and tested their principles. They strongly believe that they must be forgiving in order for God to forgive them, which often means handing out their own punishment and not reporting crimes to law enforcement.

The attacks had terrorized Amish communities, Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said at a news conference Wednesday.

"You've got Amish all over the state of Ohio and Pennsylvania and Indiana that are concerned. We've received hundreds and hundreds of calls from people living in fear," he said. "They are buying Mace, some are sitting with shotguns, getting locks on their doors because of Sam Mullet."

Mullet told The Associated Press in October that he didn't order the hair-cutting but didn't stop his sons and others from carrying it out. He said the goal was to send a message to other Amish that they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they were treating Mullet and his community.

"They changed the rulings of our church here, and they're trying to force their way down our throat, make us do like they want us to do, and we're not going to do that," Mullet said.

U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach said Wednesday that religious differences should be a matter of theological debate, not disputes "resolved by late night visits to people's homes with weapons and violent attacks." He said he did not know how often hate crimes involve intradenominational disputes.

The seven men were in custody and expected to be arraigned Wednesday in Youngstown. They include Mullet; his sons Johnny, Lester and Daniel; Levi Miller; Eli Miller; and Emanuel Schrock. The charges carry a penalty of up 10 years in prison.

Holmes County Prosecutor Steve Knowling, who filed state charges against five of the same defendants last month, said he would dismiss those counts and let federal prosecutors take the lead in the case.

In the state case, an Amish bishop and his son said they were held down while men used scissors and a clipper to cut their beards. Similar attacks were under investigation in Amish communities in Carroll, Jefferson and Trumbull counties in eastern and northeastern Ohio.

A defense attorney in the state case, Andy Hyde, said Sam Mullet would fight the federal charges. Hyde said he didn't know if he would represent Mullet in federal court.

The seven men were sleeping when the FBI and local police showed up at their homes before dawn Wednesday, Abdalla said. Three men initially refused to come out of their rooms, but all seven were arrested without incident, he said.

The attacks came amid long-simmering tension between Amish bishops and Mullet's group, which he established in 1995. Arlene Miller, the wife of one victim, said several bishops hadn't condoned Mullet's decision to excommunicate several members, saying there was no spiritual justification for his action.

One of Mullet's daughters-in-law and a former brother-in-law told investigators that Mullet controls everything that happens within the community outside Bergholz and that he allowed others to beat members of the group who disobeyed him, according to an affidavit filed in federal court Wednesday.

Mullet punished some by making them sleep in a chicken coop for days and was sexually intimate with married women in the community so that he could "cleanse them of the devil," the two said in the affidavit.

Both said they left the community because they did not want to live under Mullet's control.

Authorities have said some Amish refused to press charges, following their practice of avoiding involvement the courts.

One couple refused to press charges even after acknowledging that their two sons and another man came into their house, held them down, and cut the father's beard and the mother's hair. But others have said they decided to press charges to prevent anyone else from getting hurt.

Ohio has an estimated Amish population of just under 61,000 second only to Pennsylvania with most living in rural counties south and east of Cleveland.

They have a modest lifestyle and are deeply religious. Their traditions of traveling by horse and buggy and forgoing most modern conveniences distance themselves from the outside world and symbolize a yielding to a collective order.

US Atheists know more about Religion than Believers

2011-11-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx

U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, launched in 2001, seeks to promote a deeper understanding of issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs.

The Pew Forum conducts surveys, demographic analyses and other social science research on important aspects of religion and public life in the U.S. and around the world. It also provides a neutral venue for discussions of timely issues through roundtables and briefings.

POLL September 28, 2010

Executive Summary

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.

On questions about Christianity – including a battery of questions about the Bible – Mormons (7.9 out of 12 right on average) and white evangelical Protestants (7.3 correct on average) show the highest levels of knowledge. Jews and atheists/agnostics stand out for their knowledge of other world religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism; out of 11 such questions on the survey, Jews answer 7.9 correctly (nearly three better than the national average) and atheists/agnostics answer 7.5 correctly (2.5 better than the national average). Atheists/agnostics and Jews also do particularly well on questions about the role of religion in public life, including a question about what the U.S. Constitution says about religion.

These are among the key findings of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, a nationwide poll conducted from May 19 through June 6, 2010,* among 3,412 Americans age 18 and older, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. Jews, Mormons and atheists/agnostics were oversampled to allow analysis of these relatively small groups.¹

Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives, and roughly four-in-ten say they attend worship services at least once a week. But the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own. Many people also think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are stricter than they really are.

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ. About half of Protestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation, which made their religion a separate branch of Christianity. Roughly four-in-ten Jews (43%) do not recognize that Maimonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.

In addition, fewer than half of Americans (47%) know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Fewer than four-in-ten (38%) correctly associate Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about a quarter of all Americans (27%) correctly answer that most people in Indonesia – the country with the world’s largest Muslim population – are Muslims.

The survey also finds widespread confusion over the line between teaching and preaching in public schools. Out of a total of 41 knowledge questions (32 about religion and nine testing general knowledge) the single question that respondents most frequently get right is whether U.S. Supreme Court rulings allow teachers to lead public school classes in prayer. Nine-in-ten (89%) correctly say this is not allowed. But among the questions most often answered incorrectly is whether public school teachers are permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature. Fully two-thirds of people surveyed (67%) also say “no” to this question, even though the Supreme Court has clearly stated that the Bible may be taught for its “literary and historic” qualities, as long as it is part of a secular curriculum.² On a third question along these lines, just 36% of the public knows that comparative religion classes may be taught in public schools. Together, this block of questions suggests that many Americans think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are tighter than they really are.

On the other hand, most Americans are able to correctly answer at least half of the survey’s questions about the Bible. For example, roughly seven-in-ten (71%) know that, according to the Bible, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. More than six-in-ten (63%) correctly name Genesis as the first book of the Bible. And more than half know that the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – isnot one of the Ten Commandments. On the full battery of seven questions about the Bible (five Old Testament and two New Testament items) Mormons do best, followed by white evangelical Protestants. Atheists/agnostics, black Protestants and Jews come next, all exhibiting greater knowledge of the Bible than white mainline Protestants and white Catholics, who in turn outscore those who describe their religion as nothing in particular.

Factors in Religious Knowledge

What factors seem to contribute to religious knowledge? Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. College graduates get nearly eight more questions right on average than do people with a high school education or less. Having taken a religion course in college is also strongly associated with higher religious knowledge.

Other factors linked with religious knowledge include reading Scripture at least once a week and talking about religion with friends and family. People who say they frequently talk about religion with friends and family get an average of roughly two more questions right than those who say they rarely or never discuss religion. People with the highest levels of religious commitment – those who say that they attend worship services at least once a week and that religion is very important in their lives – generally demonstrate higher levels of religious knowledge than those with medium or low religious commitment.³ Having regularly attended religious education classes or participated in a youth group as a child adds more than two questions to the average number answered correctly, compared with those who seldom or never participated in such activities. And those who attended private school score more than two questions better on average than those who attended public school when they were growing up. Interestingly, however, those who attended a private religiousschool score no better than those who attended a private nonreligious school.

This survey and previous Pew Forum studies have shown that Jews and atheists/agnostics have high levels of educational attainment on average, which partially explains their performance on the religious knowledge survey. However, even after controlling for levels of education and other key demographic traits (race, age, gender and region), significant differences in religious knowledge persist among adherents of various faith traditions. Atheists/agnostics, Jews and Mormons still have the highest levels of religious knowledge, followed by evangelical Protestants, then those whose religion is nothing in particular, mainline Protestants and Catholics. Atheists/agnostics and Jews stand out for high levels of knowledge about world religions other than Christianity, though they also score at or above the national average on questions about the Bible and Christianity. Holding demographic factors constant, evangelical Protestants outperform most groups (with the exceptions of Mormons and atheists/agnostics) on questions about the Bible and Christianity, but evangelicals fare less well compared with other groups on questions about world religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Mormons are the highest-scoring group on questions about the Bible.

When education and other demographic traits are held equal, whites score better than minorities on the survey’s religious knowledge questions, men score somewhat better than women, and people outside the South score better than Southerners. The oldest group in the population (age 65 and older) gets fewer questions right than other age groups. However, people 65 and older do about as well as people under age 50 on questions about the Bible and Christianity; they do less well on questions about other world religions.

Other Findings

Other findings of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey include:

On world religions other than Christianity, about six-in-ten Americans (62%) know that most people in India are Hindus. About half know that Ramadan is the Islamic holy month (52%) and can name the Koran as the Muslim holy book (54%). Roughly one-third (36%) correctly associate striving for nirvana with Buddhism.

Around four-in-ten Americans know that the Mormon religion was founded sometime after 1800 (44%) and that the Book of Mormon tells the story of Jesus appearing to people in the Americas (40%). About half (51%) correctly identify Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as a Mormon.

In addition to questions about religious knowledge, the survey included nine general knowledge questions (on history, politics, science and literature) for comparison purposes. These show, for example, that about six-in-ten Americans can name the vice president of the United States (59%) and understand that lasers do not work by focusing sound waves (60%). More than seven-in-ten (72%) correctly associate Susan B. Anthony with the movement to give women the right to vote, while just 42% know that Herman Melville was the author of the novel Moby Dick.

Overall, people who score well on the general knowledge questions also tend to do well on the religion questions. Atheists/agnostics and Jews correctly answer an average of roughly seven of the nine general knowledge questions. Among the public overall, the average respondent correctly answers 5.2 of these general knowledge questions.

While people with a high level of religious commitment do better than average on the religion questions, people with low levels of religious commitment do better than average on the general knowledge questions.

Many Americans are devoted readers of Scripture: More than a third (37%) say they read the Bible or other Holy Scriptures at least once a week, not counting worship services. But Americans as a whole are much less inclined to read other books about religion. Nearly half of Americans who are affiliated with a religion (48%) say they “seldom” or “never” read books (other than Scripture) or visit websites about their own religion, and 70% say they seldom or never read books or visit websites about otherreligions.

Mormons, black Protestants and white evangelicals are the most frequent readers of materials about religion. Fully half of all Mormons (51%) and roughly three-in-ten white evangelicals (30%) and black Protestants (29%) report that they read books or go online to learn about their own religion at least once a week. Only a small fraction of all religiously affiliated Americans – 6% of the general public and no more than 8% of any religious group – say they read books (other than Scripture) or visit websites to learn about religions other than their own at least once a week.

The remainder of this report is divided into two parts. Section II, “Who Knows What About Religion,” focuses on differences between religious groups in eight domains of knowledge: the Bible, Elements of Christianity, Elements of Judaism, Elements of Mormonism, World Religions, Atheism and Agnosticism, the Role of Religion in Public Life, and Nonreligious Topics. Section III, “Factors Linked With Religious Knowledge,” describes factors associated with religious knowledge. Details about the survey’s methodology are available in Appendix A, and the full wording of all questions and topline survey results are provided in Appendix B.

This survey is being released at the God in America National Symposium on Religious Literacy on Sept. 28, 2010, in Washington, D.C. WGBH Television in Boston collaborated with the Pew Forum and the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum on the symposium, which will also feature a screening of the three-part PBS documentary "God in America." The series interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization and interviews to explore the historical role of religion in the U.S., including its impact on society, politics and culture.

Footnotes

1 The Pew Forum’s 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey estimated that Jews and Mormons each make up about 1.7% of the U.S. public, while atheists and agnostics combined account for about 4% of the U.S. population. Atheists and agnostics are treated as a single group throughout this report. The survey sample included too few interviews with atheists to analyze them separately. For more details on the sample sizes of religious groups, see Appendix A. (return to text)

2 Writing for the Supreme Court majority in its 1963 ruling in Abington School District v. Schempp, Justice Tom Clark made a case for the importance of the study of religion as the court clarified how public school teachers may go about it: “. . . [I]t might well be said that one's education is not complete without a study of comparative religion or the history of religion and its relationship to the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.” (return to text)

3 This may seem paradoxical, since atheists and agnostics have very low levels of religious commitment and yet score very well on the survey questions. However, atheists and agnostics account for a relatively small share of the total number of people with low levels of religious commitment; 4% of Americans describe themselves as atheists or agnostics, while fully 35% have low religious commitment. Atheists and agnostics answer an average of 20.9 questions correctly, compared with an average of 15.4 correct answers among people with low religious commitment who do not describe themselves as atheists or agnostics. (return to text)

* Correction added April 2011: Interviewing for the survey actually was completed on Friday, June 4, 2010. (return to text)

Reporter Loses His Religious Faith

2011-10-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles Times

He had faith in his job

COLUMN ONE

A reporter's work covering church sex scandals, religious tycoons and healers tests his beliefs -- and triggers a revelation.

July 21, 2007|William Lobdell | Times Staff Writer

WHEN Times editors assigned me to the religion beat, I believed God had answered my prayers.

As a serious Christian, I had cringed at some of the coverage in the mainstream media. Faith frequently was treated like a circus, even a freak show.

I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people's lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier.

But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened.

In 1989, a friend took me to Mariners Church, then in Newport Beach, after saying: "You need God. That's what's missing in your life." At the time, I was 28 and my first son was less than a year old. I had managed to nearly ruin my marriage (the second one) and didn't think I'd do much better as a father. I was profoundly lost.

The mega-church's pastor, Kenton Beshore, had a knack for making Scripture accessible and relevant. For someone who hadn't studied the Bible much, these talks fed a hunger in my soul. The secrets to living well had been there all along -- in "Life's Instruction Manual," as some Christians nicknamed the Bible.

Some friends in a Bible study class encouraged me to attend a men's religious weekend in the San Bernardino Mountains. The three-day retreats are designed to grind down your defenses and leave you emotionally raw -- an easier state in which to connect with God. After 36 hours of prayer, singing, Bible study, intimate sharing and little sleep, I felt filled with the Holy Spirit.

At the climactic service Sunday, Mike Barris, a pastor-to-be, delivered an old-fashioned altar call. He said we needed to let Jesus into our hearts.

With my eyes closed in prayer, I saw my heart slowly opening in two and then being infused with a warm, glowing light. A tingle spread across my chest. This, I thought, was what it was to be born again.

The pastor asked those who wanted to accept Jesus to raise their hands. My hand pretty much levitated on its own. My new friends in Christ, many of whom I had first met Friday, gave me hugs and slaps on the back.

I began praying each morning and night. During those quiet times, I mostly listened for God's voice. And I thought I sensed a plan he had for me: To write about religion for The Times and bring light into the newsroom, if only by my stories and example.

My desire to be a religion reporter grew as I read stories about faith in the mainstream media. Spiritual people often appeared as nuts or simpletons.

In one of the most famous examples, the Washington Post ran a news story in 1993 that referred to evangelical Christians as "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command."

Another maddening trend was that homosexuality and abortion debates dominated media coverage, as if those where the only topics that mattered to Christians.

I didn't just pray for a religion writing job; I lobbied hard. In one meeting with editors, my pitch went something like this:

"What if I told you that you have an institution in Orange County that draws more than 15,000 people a weekend and that you haven't written much about?"

They said they couldn't imagine such a thing.

"Saddleback Church in Lake Forest draws that type of crowd."

It took several years and numerous memos and e-mails, but editors finally agreed in 1998 to let me write "Getting Religion," a weekly column about faith in Orange County.

I felt like all the tumblers of my life had clicked. I had a strong marriage, great kids and a new column. I attributed it all to God's grace.

First as a columnist and then as a reporter, I never had a shortage of topics. I wrote about an elderly church organist who became a spiritual mentor to the man who tried to rape, rob and kill her. About the Orthodox Jewish mother who developed a line of modest clothing for Barbie dolls. About the hardy group of Mormons who rode covered wagons 800 miles from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino, replicating their ancestors' journey to Southern California.

Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism, with its low-key evangelism and deep ritual, increasingly appealed to me. I loved its long history and loving embrace of liberals and conservatives, immigrants and the established, the rich and poor.

My wife was raised in the Catholic Church and had wanted me to join for years. I signed up for yearlong conversion classes at a Newport Beach parish that would end with an Easter eve ceremony ushering newcomers into the church.

By then I had been on the religion beat for three years. I couldn't wait to get to work each day or, on Sunday, to church.

IN 2001, about six months before the Catholic clergy sex scandal broke nationwide, the dioceses of Orange and Los Angeles paid a record $5.2 million to a law student who said he had been molested, as a student at Santa Margarita High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, by his principal, Msgr. Michael Harris

Without admitting guilt, Harris agreed to leave the priesthood. As part of the settlement, the dioceses also were forced to radically change how they handled sexual abuse allegations, including a promise to kick out any priest with a credible molestation allegation in his past. It emerged that both dioceses had many known molesters on duty. Los Angeles had two convicted pedophiles still working as priests.

While reporting the Harris story, I learned -- from court records and interviews -- the lengths to which the church went to protect the priest. When Harris took an abrupt leave of absence as principal at Santa Margarita in January 1994, he issued a statement saying it was because of "stress." He resigned a month later.

His superiors didn't tell parents or students the real reason for his absence: Harris had been accused of molesting a student while he was principal at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana from 1977 to 1979; church officials possessed a note from Harris that appeared to be a confession; and they were sending him to a treatment center.

In September 1994, a second former student stepped forward, this time publicly, and filed a lawsuit. In response, parents and students held a rally for Harris at the school, singing, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." An airplane towed a banner overhead that read "We Love Father Harris."

By this time, church leaders possessed a psychological report in which Catholic psychiatrists diagnosed Harris as having an attraction to adolescents and concluded that he likely had molested multiple boys. (Harris, who has denied the allegations, now stands accused of molesting 12 boys, according to church records.) But they didn't step forward to set the record straight. Instead, a diocesan spokesman called Harris an "icon of the priesthood."

Harris' top defense attorney, John Barnett, lashed out at the priest's accusers in the media, calling them "sick individuals." Again, church leaders remained silent as the alleged victims were savaged. Some of the diocese's top priests -- including the cleric in charge of investigating the accusations -- threw a going-away party for Harris.

At the time, I never imagined Catholic leaders would engage in a widespread practice that protected alleged child molesters and belittled the victims. I latched onto the explanation that was least damaging to my belief in the Catholic Church -- that this was an isolated case of a morally corrupt administration.

And I was comforted by the advice of a Catholic friend: "Keep your eyes on the person nailed to the cross, not the priests behind the altar."

IN late 2001, I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend a conference of former Mormons. These people lived mostly in the Mormon Jell-O belt -- Utah, Idaho, Arizona -- so-named because of the plates of Jell-O that inevitably appear at Mormon gatherings.

They found themselves ostracized in their neighborhoods, schools and careers. Often, they were dead to their own families.

"If Mormons associate with you, they think they will somehow become contaminated and lose their faith too," Suzy Colver told me. "It's almost as if people who leave the church don't exist."

The people at the conference were an eclectic bunch: novelists and stay-at-home moms, entrepreneurs and cartoonists, sex addicts and alcoholics. Some were depressed, others angry, and a few had successfully moved on. But they shared a common thread: They wanted to be honest about their lack of faith and still be loved.

In most pockets of Mormon culture, that wasn't going to happen.

Part of what drew me to Christianity were the radical teachings of Jesus -- to love your enemy, to protect the vulnerable and to lovingly bring lost sheep back into the fold.

As I reported the story, I wondered how faithful Mormons -- many of whom rigorously follow other biblical commands such as giving 10% of their income to the church -- could miss so badly on one of Jesus' primary lessons?

As part of the Christian family, I felt shame for my religion. But I still compartmentalized it as an aberration -- the result of sinful behavior that infects even the church.

IN early 2002, I was assigned to work on the Catholic sex scandal story as it erupted across the nation. I also continued to attend Sunday Mass and conversion classes on Sunday mornings and Tuesday nights.

Father Vincent Gilmore -- the young, intellectually sharp priest teaching the class -- spoke about the sex scandal and warned us Catholics-to-be not to be poisoned by a relatively few bad clerics. Otherwise, we'd be committing "spiritual suicide."

As I began my reporting, I kept that in mind. I also thought that the victims -- people usually in their 30s, 40s and up -- should have just gotten over what had happened to them decades before. To me, many of them were needlessly stuck in the past.

But then I began going over the documents. And interviewing the victims, scores of them. I discovered that the term "sexual abuse" is a euphemism. Most of these children were raped and sodomized by someone they and their family believed was Christ's representative on Earth. That's not something an 8-year-old's mind can process; it forever warps a person's sexuality and spirituality.

Many of these victims were molested by priests with a history of abusing children. But the bishops routinely sent these clerics to another parish, and bullied or conned the victims and their families into silence. The police were almost never called. In at least a few instances, bishops encouraged molesting priests to flee the country to escape prosecution.

I couldn't get the victims' stories or the bishops' lies -- many of them right there on their own stationery -- out of my head. I had been in journalism more than two decades and had dealt with murders, rapes, other violent crimes and tragedies. But this was different -- the children were so innocent, their parents so faithful, the priests so sick and bishops so corrupt.

The lifeline Father Vincent had tried to give me began to slip from my hands.

I sought solace in another belief: that a church's heart is in the pews, not the pulpits. Certainly the people who were reading my stories would recoil and, in the end, recapture God's house. Instead, I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges, offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the victims, often to their faces.

On a Sunday morning at a parish in Rancho Santa Margarita, I watched congregants lobby to name their new parish hall after their longtime pastor, who had admitted to molesting a boy and who had been barred that day from the ministry. I felt sick to my stomach that the people of God wanted to honor an admitted child molester. Only one person in the crowd, an Orange County sheriff's deputy, spoke out for the victim.

On Good Friday 2002, I decided I couldn't belong to the Catholic Church. Though I had spent a year preparing for it, I didn't go through with the rite of conversion.

I understood that I was witnessing the failure of humans, not God. But in a way, that was the point. I didn't see these institutions drenched in God's spirit. Shouldn't religious organizations, if they were God-inspired and -driven, reflect higher standards than government, corporations and other groups in society?

I found an excuse to skip services that Easter. For the next few months, I attended church only sporadically. Then I stopped going altogether.

SOME of the nation's most powerful pastors -- including Billy Graham, Robert H. Schuller and Greg Laurie -- appear on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, benefiting from TBN's worldwide reach while looking past the network's reliance on the "prosperity gospel" to fuel its growth.

TBN's creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards.

"If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed ... you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven," Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Orange County-based network, once told viewers. Meanwhile, Crouch and his wife, Jan, live like tycoons.

I began looking into TBN after receiving some e-mails from former devotees of the network. Those people had given money to the network in hopes of getting a financial windfall from God. That didn't work.

By then, I started to believe that God was calling me, as he did St. Francis of Assisi, to "rebuild his church" -- not in some grand way that would lead to sainthood but by simply reporting on corruption within the church body.

I spent several years investigating TBN and pored through stacks of documents -- some made available by appalled employees -- showing the Crouches eating $180-per-person meals; flying in a $21-million corporate jet; having access to 30 TBN-owned homes across the country, among them a pair of Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas. All paid for with tax-free donor money.

One of the stars of TBN and a major fundraiser is the self-proclaimed faith healer Benny Hinn. I attended one of his two-day "Miracle Crusades" at what was then the Pond of Anaheim. The arena was packed with sick people looking for a cure.

My heart broke for the hundreds of people around me in wheelchairs or in the final stages of terminal diseases, believing that if God deemed their faith strong enough, they would be healed that night.

Hinn tells his audiences that a generous cash gift to his ministry will be seen by God as a sign of true faith. This has worked well for the televangelist, who lives in an oceanfront mansion in Dana Point, drives luxury cars, flies in private jets and stays in the best hotels.

At the crusade, I met Jordie Gibson, 21, who had flown from Calgary, Canada, to Anaheim because he believed that God, through Hinn, could get his kidneys to work again.

He was thrilled to tell me that he had stopped getting dialysis because Hinn had said people are cured only when they "step out in faith." The decision enraged his doctors, but made perfect sense to Gibson. Despite risking his life as a show of faith, he wasn't cured in Anaheim. He returned to Canada and went back on dialysis. The crowd was filled with desperate believers like Gibson.

I tried unsuccessfully to get several prominent mainstream pastors who appeared on TBN to comment on the prosperity gospel, Hinn's "faith healing" or the Crouches' lifestyle.

Like the Catholic bishops, I assumed, they didn't want to risk what they had.

AS the stories piled up, I began to pray with renewed vigor, but it felt like I wasn't connecting to God. I started to feel silly even trying.

I read accounts of St. John of the Cross and his "dark night of the soul," a time he believed God was testing him by seemingly withdrawing from his life. Maybe this was my test.

I met with my former Presbyterian pastor, John Huffman, and told him what I was feeling. I asked him if I could e-mail him some tough questions about Christianity and faith and get his answers. He agreed without hesitation.

The questions that I thought I had come to peace with started to bubble up again. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God get credit for answered prayers but no blame for unanswered ones? Why do we believe in the miraculous healing power of God when he's never been able to regenerate a limb or heal a severed spinal chord?

In one e-mail, I asked John, who had lost a daughter to cancer, why an atheist businessman prospers and the child of devout Christian parents dies. Why would a loving God make this impossible for us to understand?

He sent back a long reply that concluded:

"My ultimate affirmation is let God be God and acknowledge that He is in charge. He knows what I don't know. And frankly, if I'm totally honest with you, a life of gratitude is one that bows before the Sovereign God arguing with Him on those things that trouble me, lamenting the losses of life, but ultimately saying, 'You, God, are infinite; I'm human and finite.' "

John is an excellent pastor, but he couldn't reach me. For some time, I had tried to push away doubts and reconcile an all-powerful and infinitely loving God with what I saw, but I was losing ground. I wondered if my born-again experience at the mountain retreat was more about fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability than being touched by Jesus.

And I considered another possibility: Maybe God didn't exist.

TOWARD the end of my tenure as a religion reporter, I traveled to Nome, Alaska. Sitting in a tiny visitor's room, I studied the sad, round face of the Eskimo in front of me and tried to imagine how much he hated being confined to jail.

Peter "Packy" Kobuk was from a remote village on St. Michael Island in western Alaska. There natives lived, in many ways, just as their ancestors did 10,000 years ago. Smells of the outdoor life hung heavy in his village: the salt air, the strips of salmon drying on racks, the seaweed washed up on the beach.

But for now, Packy could smell only the disinfectants used to scrub the concrete floors at the Anvil Mountain Correction Center. Unfortunately, alcohol and a violent temper had put Packy there many times in his 46 years. For his latest assault, he was serving three months.

The short, powerfully built man folded his calloused hands on the table. I was surprised to see a homemade rosary hanging from his neck, the blue beads held together by string from a fishing net.

I had come from Southern California to report on a generation of Eskimo boys who had been molested by a Catholic missionary. All of the now-grown Eskimos I had interviewed over the past week had lost their faith. In fact, several of them confessed that they fantasized daily about burning down the village church, where the unspeakable acts took place.

But there was Packy with his rosary.

"Why do you still believe?" I asked.

"It's not God's work what happened to me," he said softly, running his fingers along the beads. "They were breaking God's commandments -- even the people who didn't help. They weren't loving their neighbors as themselves."

He said he regularly got down on his knees in his jail cell to pray.

"A lot of people make fun of me, asking if the Virgin Mary is going to rescue me," Packy said. "Well, I've gotten helped more times from the Virgin Mary through intercession than from anyone else. I won't stop. My children need my prayers."

Tears spilled from his eyes. Packy's faith, though severely tested, had survived.

I looked at him with envy. Where he found comfort, I was finding emptiness.

IN the summer of 2005, I reported from a Multnomah County, Ore., courtroom on the story of an unemployed mother -- impregnated by a seminary student 13 years earlier -- who was trying to get increased child support for her sickly 12-year-old son.

The boy's father, Father Arturo Uribe, took the witness stand. The priest had never seen or talked with his son. He even had trouble properly pronouncing the kid's name. Uribe confidently offered the court a simple reason as to why he couldn't pay more than $323 a month in child support.

"The only thing I own are my clothes," he told the judge.

His defense -- orchestrated by a razor-sharp attorney paid for by his religious order -- boiled down to this: I'm a Roman Catholic priest, I've taken a vow of poverty, and child-support laws can't touch me.

The boy's mother, Stephanie Collopy, couldn't afford a lawyer. She stumbled badly acting as her own attorney. It went on for three hours.

"It didn't look that great," Stephanie said afterward, wiping tears from her eyes. "It didn't sound that great ... but at least I stood up for myself."

The judge ruled in the favor of Uribe, then pastor of a large parish in Whittier. After the hearing, when the priest's attorney discovered I had been there, she ran back into the courtroom and unsuccessfully tried to get the judge to seal the case. I could see why the priest's lawyer would try to cover it up. People would be shocked at how callously the church dealt with a priest's illegitimate son who needed money for food and medicine.

My problem was that none of that surprised me anymore.

As I walked into the long twilight of a Portland summer evening, I felt used up and numb.

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago -- probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don't. It's not a choice. It can't be willed into existence. And there's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul.

Sitting in a park across the street from the courthouse, I called my wife on a cellphone. I told her I was putting in for a new beat at the paper.

william.lobdell@latimes.com

Bishop ordered to have equality training over gay discrimination

2011-09-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3338071.ece

Bishop ordered to have equality training over gay discrimination

From The Times

February 9, 2008

Hannah Fletcher

A Church of England Bishop who lost a discrimination case against a gay Christian has been ordered to undergo equal opportunities training.

Cardiff Employment Tribunal ruled that the Bishop of Hereford, the Right Rev Anthony Priddis, had discriminated against John Reaney, 42, by blocking his appointment as a church youth worker because of his sexuality.

In its final judgment yesterday the tribunal ordered the Bishop, 60, to pay Mr Reaney £47,345 in compensation. The ruling also stated that “staff [in the diocese of Hereford] involved in recruitment should receive equal opportunities training”.

A spokesman for the gay rights charity Stonewall told The Times: “There is only one member of staff involved in this case, so that is them saying the Bishop should receive equal opportunities training.”

He said that Stonewall, which funded the claim by Mr Reaney, had written to the office of the Bishop offering to help him with the training.

Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Stonewall, said that this would involve helping the Bishop, who was appointed the 104th Bishop of Hereford in June 2004, to develop an understanding of how to deal with people from minority communities as well as explaining to him that asking intimate questions about people’s private lives is not an appropriate thing to do during a job interview.

During the tribunal Mr Reaney described how in a private, two-hour interview with the Bishop he had been questioned about his personal life, previous relationships and sexuality. Despite being recommended for the job by a diocesan interview panel the Bishop rejected Mr Reaney’s application because, he said, “Mr Reaney’s lifestyle had the potential to impact on the spiritual, moral and ethical leadership within the Diocese.”

Mr Summerskill said: “Normally training would take half a day or a day but [the Bishop] might need slightly more intensive work. The key priority is not just the compensation. It is ensuring that no one else is put in this incredibly humiliating position.”

Anni Holden, the spokesman for the Bishop, said yesterday that he would not be accepting the offer of help with training from Stonewall. She said that Stonewall was completely out of order and that the diocese had already fulfilled the requirement by the tribunal for equal opportunities training. “We have an HR [human resources] person who will be present at all recruitment interviews and will give advice before and during interviews if necessary,” she said. “The HR person will implement equal opportunities training as appropriate and the tribunal is happy with that.”

Mr Reaney, from Llandudno, Wales, works for the Weston Spirit charity. He left his job as a youth worker in the Diocese of Chester in 2002 after he was asked to choose between his partner and his job.

Carolyn Salter, from Wellingborough, who had Mr Reaney as her youth worker when she was a teenager, described him as a very good role model to Christian children. “He was everything the Church could want in a youth leader and his sexuality should not have been an issue,” she said. “Attitudes like that of Bishop Priddis have no place in the church or in this century.”

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin 'ashamed' at church failures

2011-07-23T06:13:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14230086

21 July 2011 Last updated at 09:21 GMT

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin 'ashamed' at church failures

Click to play

Dr Diarmuid Martin said he was 'ashamed' of the church

The Archbishop of Dublin said there are groups in the Vatican and the Irish hierarchy trying to undermine child protection measures.

Speaking on RTE on Wednesday, Dr Diarmuid Martin said there were systems in place that were ignored.

His comments come after Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny launched an attack in parliament on the Catholic Church.

Mr Kenny said the recent Cloyne Report into allegations of priest sex abuse showed change was needed.

In an unprecedented attack, the taoiseach said the historic relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again and the report exposed the "elitism, dysfunction, disconnection, and narcissism that dominated the Vatican".

Dr Martin said he was "impressed by the emotion that the taoiseach brought into this".

He said he was also "angry, ashamed and appalled" by those "who felt they were able to play tricks" and "by anybody who does that, whether they be in the Irish church, the Vatican or anybody else who faces child protection".

'Miffed and angry'

"I'm very disappointed and annoyed. What do you do when you've got systems in place and somebody ignores them?" he said.

"What do you do when you have got groups either in the Vatican or in Ireland who try to undermine what is being done or simply refuse to understand what is being done."

Dr Martin said he had delivered over 70,000 documents to the Murphy Commission and "reported every case that I've ever known to the gardai".

Derry priest, Fr Michael Canny, said the actions of the Vatican had been a source of frustration for him.

"Many times I have felt frustrated. Some of my colleagues are actively involved with it," he said.

"The Cloyne report has really undermined them and they do feel miffed and angry about this because the carpet has been pulled under their feet of all the good that's been done here over the last number of years."

Irish PM in unprecedented attack on Vatican

2011-07-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14224199

20 July 2011 Last updated at 14:42 GMT

Irish PM in unprecedented attack on Vatican

Enda Kenny said the relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny has launched an unprecedented attack on the Catholic Church in parliament.

He said the recent Cloyne Report into how allegations of sex abuse by priests in Cork had been covered up showed change was urgently needed.

Mr Kenny said the historic relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again.

He said the report exposed the elitism, dysfunction, disconnection, and narcissism that dominated the Vatican.

"The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation'," the taoiseach said.

'Unprecedented'

"The revelations of the Cloyne Report have brought the government, Irish Catholics and the Vatican to an unprecedented juncture."

Opposition leader Michael Martin said that when he met the Papal Nuncio after the Murphy report into the cover-up of abuse in the Dublin diocese in 2009, he told him the government expected the full cooperation of the Vatican into the Cloyne inquiry.

However, he said, the Vatican chose to focus on the interests of the church rather than the children abused by its clergy and shielded by its leaders.

During the debate, the church was called upon to publish the audits currently being sent to every Catholic diocese in the country.

Sinn Fein spokesperson on health and children Caoimhghin O'Caolain said the government should consider coordinating with the Northern Ireland Executive on any future inquiries - particularly as four of the Catholic dioceses straddle the border.

2011-07-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14143822

13 July 2011 Last updated at 16:08 GMT

Cloyne report: A detailed guide

The Bishop's Residence in Cloyne, County Cork

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne is in the Republic of Ireland, and covers most of mid, east and north Cork. Its centre is the picturesque costal town of Cobh, which used to be known as Queenstown, from where millions emigrated around the time of the Irish Famine. Led by Judge Yvonne Maguire, the Cloyne report examines child safe-guarding measures within the diocese up until 2009. Here's a detailed guide of its main findings:

What is the Cloyne report?

The report (officially known as the Commission of Investigation, Dublin Archdiocese, Catholic Diocese of Cloyne) has examined how allegations of sexual abuse of children in the diocese were dealt with by the church and state.

Led by Judge Yvonne Murphy, the same commission produced a report into the Dublin diocese in November 2009.

The commission's remit was extended to include Cloyne in January 2009 after a report by the church's own child protection watchdog - the National National Board of Safeguarding Children (NBSC) - was published in December 2008.

Commissioners were not tasked with establishing whether child sexual abuse took place or whether there was a basis for suspicions or concerns.

The inquiry was ordered to look at child protection practices in the diocese and how it dealt with complaints against 19 priests made from 1996, the year in which the Catholic Church put in place detailed procedures for dealing with child sexual abuse.

What is different about this report?

This is the fourth report into abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, after the diocese of Ferns report in 2005, the Ryan report detailing abuse in residential institutions in May 2009 and the Dublin Archdiocese report in November 2009.

This 400 page report is different because of the more recent timeframe; there were clear guidelines in place when these allegations of abuse were being made.

It will be difficult reading for Bishop John Magee who stood down in March 2009 after serving as bishop of Cloyne since 1987.

What does the report say?

The report found that Bishop John Magee falsely told the government and the health service that his diocese was reporting all abuse allegations to authorities. It also found that the bishop deliberately misled another inquiry and his own advisors by creating two different accounts of a meeting with a priest suspecting of abusing a child, one for the Vatican and the other for diocesan files.
It discovered that, contrary to repeated assertions on its part, the Diocese of Cloyne did not implement the procedures set out in the church protocols for dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse. It said the greatest failure was that no complaints, except one in 1996, were reported to the health authorities until 2008.

In one case outlined in the report the diocese's second-in-command, Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, withheld the identity of a perpetrator from the authorities and attempted to have a particular garda officer investigate it.

It said the disturbing findings are compounded by the fact that the commission found that the Vatican's response to the church guidelines was entirely unhelpful and gave comfort and support to those who dissented from the guidelines. It said this was "wholly unacceptable".
The commission said that the Papal Nuncio replied to a request for information relevant to its investigation by saying he was "unable to assist you in his matter". The Nunciature said it did not determine the handling of cases of sexual abuse in Ireland and would not be in a position to assist.
While the commission considered that most gardai who were involved in investigating the complaints outlined in the report carried out their tasks well and did so while treating the complainants with compassion and dignity, the commission are very concerned about the approach adopted by gardai in three cases. The report is to be refered to theGarda Ombudsman to examine these cases.
The Department of Health claimed privilege over a number of documents relevant to the investigation. The report noted that the Diocese of Cloyne, in particular Archbishop Clifford and Bishop Magee, fully co-operated as did the gardai and the health service.

The Commission said the it offered its "deep regret and sympathy" to the victims of "this awful abuse". It continued "but those things alone amount to little more than rhetoric unless, once and for all, we embark on a comprehensive course of action to make sure that the state is doing all it can to safeguard children."

How has the government responded?

The Irish government said it expressed its "deep sorrow" to all the survivors of abuse and "for any past failings on the part of the state and its agencies". The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has published a new bill, that if passed would make it a crime to withhold information about a serious offence against a child or an intellectually disabled person. If found guilty of breaking the Heads of the Criminal Justice Bill a person could be jailed for five years.

Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, said she plans to publish a new "Children First" national guidance document on Friday. She said a raft of measures will be in place, including imprisonment and fines, for failure to comply with the child protection code.

She said: "Never again will someone be allowed to place the protection of their institution above the protection of children."

How have the police responded?

The Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan has appointed Assistant Commissioner John O'Mahoney to examine the report to see whether, in addition to action already taken, any further action can be taken against the abusers referred to in it. He will also look at how complaints were handled and investigated by church and state authorities.

Mr Callinan said: "It is a matter of regret to me that people did not receive the appropriate attention and action from the gardai to which they were entitled."

How has the Catholic Church responded?

Cardinal Sean Brady said the publication of the report was "another dark day in the history of the church" and expressed his shame and sorrow at what happened in Cloyne. Cardinal Brady said the environment for children within the church is a totally different one to that of the past.

He said all dioceses now have safeguarding personnel in each of the 1,386 parishes and that all allegations of abuse have been reported to the statutory authorities in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, who was criticised for trying to protect an accused priest's identity, said he was sorry that he became emotionally and pastorally drawn to the plight of the cleric. He said it was never his intention to add to the immense burden being carried by those who had already been abused.

Cloyne report: Church failed to report all abuse cases

2011-07-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

13 July 2011 Last updated at 22:40 GMT

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14136923

Cloyne report: Church failed to report all abuse cases

Click to play

Abuse victim: "I feel as if I have been touched by the devil

A Catholic diocese in County Cork failed to report all complaints of abuse to police, a report has said.

The Commission of Investigation into the Diocese of Cloyne investigated how allegations against 19 priests were dealt with between 1996 and 2009.

Its report, published on Wednesday, found Bishop John Magee falsely told the Irish government he was reporting all abuse allegations to authorities.

The Catholic Church and Bishop Magee have apologised.

The leader of Ireland's Catholics, Cardinal Sean Brady, said it was another "dark day in the history of the response of church leaders to the cry of children abused by church personnel".

"The findings of this report confirm that grave errors of judgement were made and serious failures of leadership occurred," he said.

"This is deplorable and totally unacceptable."

In a statement, Bishop Magee said he apologised to those affected for his "failure to ensure that they were fully supported and responded to in their time of need".

In one case described in the report, the diocese's second-in-command, Monsignor Denis O'Callaghan, was said to have withheld the identity of a perpetrator from the authorities and attempted to have an Irish police officer investigate the case.

'Inadequate'

The police officer was found to have correctly disregarded the request.

Monsignor O'Callaghan said he was sorry that in responding to allegations of abuse he had sometimes become "emotionally and pastorally drawn to the plight of the accused priest".

He said this was "to the detriment of the pastoral response I intended to make to complainants".

Bishop Magee was one of the 19 priests identified by the commission.

The Cloyne report, which runs to 400 pages, said there were concerns about Bishop Magee's interaction with a 17-year-old boy.

"The commission regrets that it has not been possible to report the case involving concerns about Bishop Magee without identifying him," the report said.

"Concerns were expressed about his interaction with a 17-year-old boy."

It said the teenager, who had been contemplating joining the priesthood, was concerned that "the behaviour of the bishop towards him, which had not perturbed him at the time, was, on reflection, disquieting".

However, the report said it was satisfied that this case had been dealt with appropriately.

The Newry-born Bishop Magee stepped aside in 2009 after an earlier report criticised his handling of abuse allegations.

The latest report, which was published by Justice Minister Alan Shatter and Children's Minister Frances Fitzgerald, said the response of the diocese to allegations of child sexual abuse for the period of 1996 to 2008 was "inadequate and inappropriate".

It said it was a "remarkable fact" that Bishop Magee had taken "little or no active interest" in the management of clerical sexual abuse cases until 2008. This was 12 years after the procedures on how to deal with such matters were implemented by the church.

It added that Bishop Magee had to "a certain extent, detached himself from the day to day management of child sexual abuse cases".

"Bishop Magee was head of the diocese and cannot avoid his responsibility by blaming subordinates whom he wholly failed to supervise," the report said.

In his statement, Bishop Magee said he now realised he should have taken "a much firmer role" in ensuring the implementation of the church procedures published in 1996.

"I accept in its entirety the commission's view that the primary responsibility for the failure to fully implement the church procedures in the diocese lay with me," he added.

Complaints

The commission said it was aware of some 40 people who may have been affected by clerical abuse in the diocese.

All but two complaints came from people who were adults at the time the complaint was made.

The report said between 1995 and 2005 there were 15 complaints against clergy in the diocese which should have been reported.

The most serious lapse was the failure to report two cases in which the alleged victims were minors at the time the complaint was made.

It also said there was no communication with a neighbouring diocese when a priest who had retired because of complaints went to live there.

However, there was no case in which the diocese moved priests against whom allegations had been made.

A number of priests whom allegations were made against were "retired".

The Irish justice minister said on Wednesday that he intended to introduce a new criminal offence with up to five years in prison for anyone who does not declare information about the abuse of a child.

He said in future, priests would not be excused for withholding information about alleged child abuse even if it was given to them during confession.

The inquiry was set up by the Irish government in January 2009 following a report published the previous month.

It was conducted by the National Board for Safeguarding Children (NBSC) - a body set up by the Catholic Church to oversee child protection policies.

It found child protection practices in the diocese were "inadequate and in some respects dangerous".

Irish President Mary McAleese on Cloyne report

"Clearly, an immediate priority today must be the abused victims, ensuring that they receive all necessary support and reassurance in the wake of the publication of this distressing and damning report.

"It is a matter of grave concern that the report's findings show that, up to 2008, the Cloyne Diocese failed in large measure to comply with the Catholic Church's own 1996 guidelines on clerical child sex abuse.

"Had these guidelines been fully honoured and rigorously adhered to (as the public had been led to believe they would), this report would never have been necessary and children need not have been rendered so vulnerable.

"The leadership of the Catholic Church needs to urgently reflect on how, by coherent and effective action, it can restore public trust and confidence in its stated objective of putting children first."

Philippine bishops to return donated SUVs

2011-07-15T11:00:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14143031

13 July 2011 Last updated at 15:51 GMT

Philippine bishops to return donated SUVs

Protesters dressed as bishops in SUVs stood outside the Senate during the hearing

Roman Catholic bishops in the Philippines are to return sport utility vehicles (SUVs) received as gifts from government funds, an inquiry has heard.

Senators are investigating claims that illegal gifts bought with state lottery money were given to the bishops by the last government to win their support.

The bishops acknowledge accepting the cars but say they did so only to help poor people in remote communities.

More than 80% of Filipinos are Catholic and the clergy are highly influential.

At the Senate inquiry in Manila on Wednesday, bishops turned over four SUVs and said others were in the process of being returned.

The bishops apologised for any pain caused to their followers or the Church, but insisted the donations were only to help them reach isolated communities.

'Sincere sadness'

"Even if it is not unlawful and even if it is not unconstitutional, we believe that it is important for us to clear everything in the air and return the vehicles," Archbishop Orlando Quevedo of the southern Cotabato diocese told the inquiry.

He expressed "sincere sadness" on behalf of the Church that many Catholics were "confused, disturbed and even scandalised".

The head of the Philippine state lottery, Margie Juico, earlier told the hearing that seven bishops received gifts during former President Gloria Arroyo's term in office.

Critics have accused Mrs Arroyo of using donations to try to secure the bishops' support. She stepped down last year after nine years in power.

Mrs Juico said an audit had showed that at least 6.9m pesos ($158,600; £98,300) in charity funds were used to buy vehicles at the request of several bishops.

Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos, of southern Butuan city, admitted that he wrote to Mrs Arroyo to ask for a sport utility vehicle costing 1.7m pesos for his 66th birthday but said it was to help him reach remote areas on Mindanao Island.

He acknowledged that the move "was a lapse in judgment on my part" that has "cast a shadow of uncertainty on my dignity as a bishop and my moral ascendancy as a leader of the Catholic Church."

During the hearing, dozens of protesters held placards outside the Senate, some wearing bishops' frocks and cardboard replicas of SUVs around their waists.

"I need my SUV to reach moral high ground," one placard read.

Spain investigates tragedy of 'stolen' newborn babies

2011-05-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12886441

31 March 2011 Last updated at 00:48 GMT

Spain investigates tragedy of 'stolen' newborn babies

By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Madrid

Antonio Barroso has been told he was bought at birth

Antonio Barroso always suspected that something in his family wasn't quite right. He was 38 when the secret was finally revealed: his parents had bought him as a baby.

"I discovered my whole life was a lie," Antonio said.

The truth came out during the deathbed confession of a family friend. Like Antonio's parents, he and his wife had been unable to conceive. Both couples had bought their babies from a nun, for "more than the price of a flat".

Antonio's mother has since confirmed the story and DNA tests have proved he has no genetic link to the couple who raised him. His birth certificate had been falsified.

'Illicit trade'

"I want to know the truth," Antonio said, flicking through snapshots of his childhood, "To find out who I am and where I come from. I want to know what happened and who was responsible. And if people need to be punished, they should be punished".

Antonio soon discovered other cases similar to his own, and signs of an illicit trade in newborn babies.

At the support group he set up in Vilanova i la Geltru, his home town on the Catalan coast, the phone rarely stops ringing. The desk is piled high with letters from Spaniards who fear they could be victims of a criminal network, thought to have operated until the 1990s.

“Start Quote

We were starting to make a family and they destroyed that completely. I have to meet my daughter. I want to tell her, girl, I'm your Dad”

End Quote Salvador Martin Father, who believes his daughter was stolen from him

In pictures: Spanish 'baby trade'

For some, that suspicion is strengthened by Spain's history. After the civil war, children were removed from Republican prisoners and given to supporters of General Franco's dictatorship. Historians estimate up to 30,000 children were affected by the 'ideological cleansing'.

'Baby-theft'

"In the 1950s, that practice was converted into mafia business," said Enrique Vila, a lawyer helping Antonio's support group, Anadir. "The goal became money. They took children from anyone, to sell."

The lawyer believes some babies were abandoned by unmarried Catholic girls or prostitutes and others were stolen after doctors told mothers that their newborns had died.

Ana Josefa Escabia died several hours after giving birth in Terrassa in 1975. Her husband clearly remembers seeing his daughter alive.

"I saw her born," Salvador Martin said, his eyes welling with tears, 36 years later. "She was gorgeous, just like her sister."

But doctors later told Salvador his baby had been stillborn. A sealed coffin was delivered to the cemetery.

Ana Josefa Escabia and her husband were told that their baby was stillborn

Last December, tormented by doubts, Salvador decided to open the family vault. DNA tests revealed the baby inside was a boy, and no relation.

Salvador is now desperate to know what happened to his daughter. No other baby was buried in Terrassa on that day. He is convinced his child was stolen.

DNA database

"It's not like a bag of oranges that you sell. It's a child," he said, holding a picture of Ana shortly before she became pregnant. "We were starting to make a family and they destroyed that completely. I have to meet my daughter. I want to tell her, girl, I'm your Dad".

Dolores Diaz Cerpa believes her son was stolen from her

That longing to be reunited has led Anadir to create a DNA database. When a scientist recently visited Seville to take swabs, the small hall was packed with people convinced that their children had been stolen.

Among those queuing nervously was 72-year-old Dolores Diaz Cerpa. She gave birth in 1973 and says when she awoke from surgery she saw 2 cots. A nurse said she'd had twins. But the boy was then removed and when Dolores woke up again she was told she'd had a girl.

"I always believed I'd had two children and they took one off me," Dolores said. "I would dream of him and wake up wondering how he was."

That conviction was compounded in 1995 when she requested her medical records and was sent papers for a baby boy. Dolores is entering her DNA in the database in the hope that the child she's so sure she gave birth to is alive.

"If he knows he's adopted, I just want him to know I didn't abandon him. He was stolen," she says, echoing the view of many mothers here.

Anadir has more than 800 members now. Other groups have more. Most are women who never saw their babies' bodies, never believed they had died and can find no record of their burials at cemeteries.

Antonio Barroso has been asked to make a statement in court

It is possible many of the children are really dead, that there are simply mistakes in the paperwork, or that mothers are confused, still raw from their loss.

Court summons

But signs of a more sinister story are mounting.

A former nurse has claimed she witnessed baby-thefts in Madrid. A cemetery worker in Granada told the BBC he had handled child coffins that were suspiciously light, and now Anadir says a woman who was told her child had died has just been reunited with her daughter in Barcelona. The family have not spoken publicly.

Spain's courts are certainly taking the claims seriously.

Anadir delivered details of 261 cases of suspected baby-theft to the state prosecutor in January. Regional prosecutors have been ordered to investigate. Across Spain hundreds of people are now being summoned to make statements. New cases are being reported all the time.

After years of fighting to get the courts to listen, Antonio Barroso has also been called to see the prosecutor. For him this is not only about trying to expose a criminal practice. It is about discovering who he really is.

Spanish call to probe Franco-era 'baby thefts'

2011-04-02T23:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12302629

27 January 2011 Last updated at 20:49 GMT

Spanish call to probe Franco-era 'baby thefts'

By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Madrid

Members of Anadir attended a news conference in Getafe, near Madrid

More than 260 alleged victims of a baby-trafficking network in Spain begun under the dictator General Francisco Franco have started legal action demanding an investigation.

A victim-support group, called Anadir, estimates that thousands of babies were stolen over decades.

Many were taken away from parents with left-wing sympathies and given to other families.

But the group says some babies were stolen after Franco's death in 1975.

Enrique Vila, lawyer for the victims' group bringing the case, describes a mafia of doctors and intermediaries he claims was trading children for cash.

The practice of forcibly removing children from their mothers began in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

The victims then were largely Republican supporters - including prisoners - whose children were handed to more "ideologically suitable" families.

"This structure, these methods allowed people to see the potential for a business," said Mr Vila.

"It all started for political reasons, but in the end it could be any child at all that was targeted."

Just imagine how many there could be in the whole of Spain - this has to be a gigantic investigation” Enrique Vila Lawyer representing Anadir

Anadir was founded by Antonio Barroso, after the man he always believed was his father made a death-bed confession.

He admitted he had bought his son, paying "more than the price of a flat" to doctors, in cash.

DNA tests later proved that Antonio and his parents were not biologically related.

"We want the prosecutor to open a national investigation," Mr Barroso said outside the general prosecutor's office.

He was accompanied by a crowd of Anadir members in white T-shirts declaring themselves "the victims of baby-trafficking" and demanding justice.

"There are cases of mothers who had their babies' graves opened and found them empty when they had been taking flowers there for 30 years. Mothers who were deliberately tricked. Then there are people like me, whose birth certificates were faked," Mr Barroso said.

He tried to get a local court to look into his case, but failed. He then founded Anadir as a campaign group and has been amazed at the scale of the response.

An Anadir banner declares: "We have the right to know our biological family"

Alberto and his mother Solidad Hernandez are both members.

Solidad gave birth to twins in the 1980s and was told one had died. But as many mothers now recount, she never saw the body. Alberto says the official paperwork does not match up.

"One set of papers says my brother was buried, others say he was cremated. One says he died of respiratory problems, another that he was malnourished," Alberto says.

The inconsistencies feed his suspicions and give him hope his twin is still alive.

"All my life I've thought there was someone out there. People always see me in places I have not been. This case could bring all that to a close," he says.

Lawyer Enrique Vila admits that not all the suspicious deaths are clear-cut thefts.

"Some mothers may be clinging to that chance, as a means of hope," he says.

"We don't know, we have to investigate. We need to check all the records, and if necessary order exhumations, to see if there is an empty grave."

But he claims a funeral parlour worker recently admitted transporting 20 empty coffins in the past.

"That is just one man," Mr Vila says.

"Just imagine how many there could be in the whole of Spain. This has to be a gigantic investigation."

'stolen' newborn babies

2011-04-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12886441

31 March 2011 Last updated at 00:48 GMT

Spain investigates tragedy of 'stolen' newborn babies

By Sarah Rainsford BBC News, Madrid

Antonio Barroso has been told he was bought at birth

Antonio Barroso always suspected that something in his family wasn't quite right. He was 38 when the secret was finally revealed: his parents had bought him as a baby.

"I discovered my whole life was a lie," Antonio said.

Antonio's mother has since confirmed the story and DNA tests have proved he has no genetic link to the couple who raised him. His birth certificate had been falsified.

'Illicit trade'

Antonio soon discovered other cases similar to his own, and signs of an illicit trade in newborn babies.

“Start Quote

We were starting to make a family and they destroyed that completely. I have to meet my daughter. I want to tell her, girl, I'm your Dad”

End Quote Salvador Martin Father, who believes his daughter was stolen from him

In pictures: Spanish 'baby trade'