Sex abuse of children in the church

Dear Editor

Re: Bishops accused of brushing off sexual abuse complaints

This is enough to make you cry. 

How long will we allow priests to abuse children? How long will we let them hold confessional secrets, refusing to go to authorities while young children are being abused again and again? 

Enough is enough. 

The Catholic Church has lost any claim to moral authority. The horror stories just keep coming. The Church’s obsession with sex should have told us that it was sick and dangerous on the inside, but they claimed to be “holy,” and foolishly we believed them.

Living as unmarried celibates is not “natural.” It is “disordered” behavior for most species, the same term they use to describe L.G.B.Ts. 

It’s quite clear who is really disordered. 

Removing reproduction from evolution is about as disordered as you can get, but I suppose we should be thankful that they remove themselves from the human genome (unless they rape girls and produce offspring).

Week after week, we open our papers and read of another sex scandal in the Catholic Church. 

When will it end? 

Maybe that’s why Pope Francis spoke out against capital punishment. Maybe he can tell that we’re getting fed up and ready to start terminating these despicable clergy. 

I’m not a fan of capital punishment, but for priests who rape a kid, I’m willing to make exceptions!

Now let me say something about another story in your paper titled “African migrants reel as Israel law cuts their salaries.”

The Torah lists 52 times, the commandment that Jews should treat the alien (stranger) as they would themselves. Their religion is based on something unique to the region - the idea of having care for slaves (yes, that care is atrocious by our standards) and care for the alien - the stranger, “because we were slaves in the land of Egypt.”

I have always believed the story of the Exodus to be pure myth, but it seems I was wrong. Richard Elliott Friedman, in “The Exodus” uncovers archaeological, biblical textual scholarship and DNA evidence, to compellingly argue that there was an Exodus - a small exodus of people who came from Egypt and forcibly integrated themselves into Israel, who gave them the priesthood and tithes, but no land. These people were the Levites and their DNA is different from the original Jews.

The Torah was written by 4 authors (JEPD) and three of them were Levite authors, and they said again and again and again and again, from their role as the priest class, that Jews should honor and care for the both the slave and the stranger. This was new and unique to any religion in the region.

The Levites wrote the story of the Exodus for a couple reasons. One was so their god, Yahweh could defeat all the nature gods (the plagues of Egypt) and so they could include the entire 2 million of the Jewish nation. That did not happen. The Conquest of Canaan also did not happen.

The layers of destruction that would have come from conquest aren’t there. Nobody believes the Conquest took place, and that’s a good thing, since it’s the bloodiest, most horrific part of the Torah.

The Jews need to remember their roots; to recall that their religion is based on care for the stranger. Clearly they’ve forgotten this. They need to read “The Exodus” by Richard Elliott Friedman. It may be the most important book of this decade.

 

Patrick Gannon 

Samoa Observer

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