The voice I was waiting for

[eumelia]

I've been keeping up to date on the Vatican's horrendous treatment of the victims of their pastoral system, as we witness what appears to be an endemic child rape and abuse practice all over the world.

In 1992 I was 7 years old. I remember I heard about Sinead O'Connor ripping up Pope John-Paul II's photograph on live television.

It is still powerful moment.

O'Connor is a deeply religious and spiritual person, you don't have to have heard her in interviews, you just have to listen to her rage, her healing, her prayer in her songs.

O'Connor was abused by the Church and I was wondering over the past few weeks when she'd speak up and she has. She is articulate, precise and uncompromising as ever:

Benedict's apology gives the impression that he heard about abuse only recently, and it presents him as a fellow victim: "I can only share in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them." But Benedict's infamous 2001 letter to bishops around the world ordered them to keep sexual abuse allegations secret under threat of excommunication -- updating a noxious church policy, expressed in a 1962 document, that both priests accused of sex crimes and their victims "observe the strictest secret" and be "restrained by a perpetual silence.
[...]
Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and in a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics -- even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore -- should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.

Emphasis mine.
"Saving God from Religion" has been a slogan I've heard from Sinead O'Connor ever since I've listened to her sing.

While I don't understand the clinging to an organisation that assumes total authority over one's life, mind and soul - I understand that many glean meaning from these people who assume to represent a super power on Earth.

Paedophiles appear in all walks of life, much to our misfortune, and we really don't know how to deal with them other than incarcerate them.
The problem here, as many have already said and better than I (I'm just adding my voice to the masses), is that the Vatican assumes no responsibility or accountability on the fact that not only did they allow the abuse to go on, they basically blame the victims for allowing it to happen to them, by virtue (vice?) of covering up the fact that child rape is endemic and, in fact, legitimate in the eyes of the Church.

As someone who has no connection to Catholicism whatsoever, I cannot imagine the crisis that is going on in people's lives now, though honestly, it doesn't have to be this way. The Church is there to serve God, not the other way around, as people upon whose faith the Church relies, you do have the power in your hands.

The Vatican, the Church, any Authority that relies on the compliance of fear or the removal of love (which is the threat used when speaking about the love of God towards his believers) can be over thrown, changed and be made redundant by faith in yourself.

That's what I believe.

Comments

[starlady]

The Vatican, the Church, any Authority that relies on the compliance of fear or the removal of love (which is the threat used when speaking about the love of God towards his believers) can be over thrown, changed and be made redundant by faith in yourself.

You're so right.

Thanks for sharing this. Catholicism needs more Catholics like Sinead O'Connor, not less. (Which I say as someone who was nominally raised Catholic, but upon whom the faith and the Church essentially failed to make any inroads.)

[majoline]

The Church is there to serve God, not the other way around, as people upon whose faith the Church relies, you do have the power in your hands... [It's] faith in yourself.

Word. Thank you for not approving and being loud!

There is no way I could go back to Catholicism. Not after all of this stupidity.

I have always loved Sinead O'Connor.

OT: Nice new theme!

[eumelia]

Re OT: Thanks :) I wanted something a bit more me!

Yeah, Sinead is someone with whom I love to discuss religion :D She's actually one of the reasons I wanted to be more spiritual, but it was still, you know, believing in something I don't think exists outside yourself. So, I just enjoy her :)

[majoline]

She is very enjoyable! I love her music and her spirituality isn't caustic. Go her!

[eumelia]

Because Judaism has no central Authority, I can't imagine a crisis of this magnitude happening, I mean there people in positions of authority abuse their power every where, but the system here is more of structure and less of hierarchy.

Still, this must be a nightmare for the victims. What a betrayal.

[miss_haitch]

Thank you for posting this. I hadn't seen that clip of Sinead O'Connor - it's immensely powerful.

[eumelia]

I've watched that clip so many times over the years since I discovered it on Youtube and it still gives me goosebumps.

[silveradept]

I would argue against the idea that there's a crisis going on in Catholicism's adherents, because while they deplore and detest the priests being caught with the children, they still believe the Church is never wrong and that when the Pope speaks, he's telling the truth, always. So there are some sinners, but there are no corrupt institutions. That's my guess, anyway.

[mllesays]

Thank you for posting that quote. I hadn't seen it anywhere else.

I'm a lapsed Catholic who was somewhere near maybe going back to the church, and then this happened. Now I don't know what to do. Part of the problem is that those who could and would stand up to papal authority are too often the ones to leave. They become no longer the concern of the church. When all your congregants are those who don't see what's wrong with what you've done, there's very little motivation to change, to fix the endemic problems within the organization.

I want more people to fight for change within the church. I halfway want to do it myself, but that's a commitment I don't know if I can make.

[eumelia]

*nods* I imagine that if enough people leave the Church will simply lose it's power, but not enough people leave and the Vatican holds not only spiritual dominion but actual geographical sovereignty.

I can see how difficult it would be to try to change that kind of organisation from within, especially when those in authority don't consider their parishioners worth listening to in matter of structure.