Dutch Catholic Church Castrated Boys in the 50s

[edfu]

...for purportedly being gay and for reporting priests who abused them to the police.  What vile savages--and despicable criminals! 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/9153676/Dutch-Roman-Catholic-Church-castrated-at-least-10-boys.html

[mecch]

How evil is that. The mind boggles.

[GSOgymrat]

How disgusting. Molesting children and then mutilating them... there are no appropriate words.

[mecch]

I am disgusted by all the shit that has come out in the last decade but also heartened by all the individual, collective, and nationally sponsored investigations. Isn't it possible to bring some sort of high profile "crimes against humanity" case against the Catholic Church / Vatican and really hold it accountable, take it to its knees, and make it pay pay pay for all these crimes.  It was so fucking organised from the highest levels on down.

[Matty the Damned]

Le sigh.

Y'all are surprised at this latest litany of the vile sins of the Whore of Babylon?

And no, I'm not doing my usual Baptist pastor spiel.

As a "cradle catholic" none of this surprises me. It shocks and horrifies me, but I'm not surprised.

Consider this assessment of the Church of a Thousand Hands:

The Catholic Church has spent two millennia demonizing human sexuality to a degree unmatched by any other institution, declaring the most basic, healthy, mature, and consensual behaviors taboo.

Indeed, this organization still opposes the use of contraception, preferring, instead, that the poorest people on earth be blessed with the largest families and the shortest lives. As a consequence of this hallowed and incorrigible stupidity, the Church has condemned generations of decent people to shame and hypocrisy -- or to Neolithic fecundity, poverty, and death by AIDS.

Add to this inhumanity the artifice of cloistered celibacy, and you now have an institution -- one of the wealthiest on earth -- that preferentially attracts pederasts, pedophiles, and sexual sadists into its ranks, promotes them to positions of authority, and grants them privileged access to children.

Finally, consider that vast numbers of children will be born out of wedlock, and their unwed mothers vilified, wherever Church teaching holds sway -- leading boys and girls by the thousands to be abandoned to Church-run orphanages only to be raped and terrorized by the clergy.

Here, in this ghoulish machinery set to whirling through the ages by the opposing winds of shame and sadism, we mortals can finally glimpse how strangely perfect are the ways of the Lord.¹

Nuff said, amirite?

MtD
¹Harris, S The Moral Landscape (2010)

[Buckmark]

It just boggles my mind that a religious institution like this which professes to be to so morally upright is replete with leaders who do the very opposite of what they profess.  Now we can add castration to the list of atrocities.  My only wonder is why so many people still believes in the Catholic Church after all of this has come out.

[Miss Philicia]

My only wonder is why so many people still believes in the Catholic Church after all of this has come out.

Because it's Satan's fault, not God's... silly boy.

[GSOgymrat]

It just boggles my mind that a religious institution like this which professes to be to so morally upright is replete with leaders who do the very opposite of what they profess.

But they were not doing the opposite! The priests were saving souls and only had the boy's best interests at heart. Better to be a eunuch and enter the kingdom of heaven than a homosexual and burn for eternity. Jesus Christ said “There are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.” - Matthew 19:12

It was a mercy really.

[Joe K]

You can bet that it wasn't just the Dutch Catholic Church that allowed this abomination.  If you consider the history of the Catholic Church, there is not much that they will not do, to remain in power.  The Crusades, the Inquisition, selling indulgences for entrance to heaven, pedophilia, etc., anything to keep those guys in Rome in those flowing robes.

I hope these revelations keep on coming, because it's long past time for all religions to lose their tax-exempt status in the US.  Why US taxpayers are required to support ANY religion through our taxes is beyond me.

Joe

[MarkB]

Nuff said, amirite?

MtD

O ya. In Antiquity, Christian 'moral theology' concerning sexuality coalesced around the worst aspects of Stoic philosophy and a dimly-understood version of the Tanakh's purity ethic and property code. It was a potent (if destructive) brew, and at its heart it was about power. From the outset it sought to define - and therefore control - human nature, and it met opposition with brute force.

Down through the ages various versions of Christianity have waged an unyielding war against independent thought and action; at the very top of their hit-list was sexuality, and those of us who happen to be naturally oriented towards loving someone of the same gender have been in their crosshairs since the first century C.E. What also happened was that this singularly destructive system drew to itself many damaged and harmful people and gave them a measure of power over others, the appalling results of which are only now becoming public.

I have met many good and loving individual Christians; the philosophical system to which they subscribe, however, I consider to be horrifying beyond belief. And as MtD aptly put it, what has happened - every time it happens - shocks and horrifies me, but I'm not surprised. The worst of it is that these tales of terror and torture are not the result of the actions of a few proverbial Bad Apples here and there: human abuse is hardwired into the very system itself, and is the result of what can only be described as systemic, institutional evil. And those who could make a difference, who have the power to change that warped system, are dragged unwillingly to the table of public accountability. They could act: but they won't.

And they have the temerity to call people like me 'perverted'?


/... edited for typos.