A Priest on Trial

A Priest on Trial PDF Author: Bernard Lynch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Limited
ISBN: 9780747510369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
On 13 May 1988 Father Bernard Lynch was indicted on five charges of child abuse. On 21 April 1989 the prosecution case collapsed, as it became apparent that the evidence against him had been fabricated.;Since 1977 Father Lynch had ministered to the Catholic gay community in New York, whose members were, and still are, forbidden to worship on Catholic Church property. The upsurge of AIDS in the 1980s prompted Father Lynch to found a Catholic AIDS ministry, but his work with AIDS sufferers incurred severe censure from Rome. Specifically, his attempts to explain homosexual relationships as acceptable and loving, sometimes even in the face of death, were at odds with the strict teaching of the Church, and provoked bitter conflict with New York's Cardinal O'Connor, who ordered Father Lynch to end his ministry.;Determined to continue his work, even if it meant doing so without official Church blessing, Father Lynch remained undiscouraged. "Being identifed with the oppressed', he has observed, 'means that I am going to be oppressed". A relentless persecution campaign was mounted in a bid to get him removed from his post at a boy's school, and this led to hie false indictment.;In this book

A Priest on Trial

A Priest on Trial PDF Author: Bernard Lynch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Pub Limited
ISBN: 9780747510369
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
On 13 May 1988 Father Bernard Lynch was indicted on five charges of child abuse. On 21 April 1989 the prosecution case collapsed, as it became apparent that the evidence against him had been fabricated.;Since 1977 Father Lynch had ministered to the Catholic gay community in New York, whose members were, and still are, forbidden to worship on Catholic Church property. The upsurge of AIDS in the 1980s prompted Father Lynch to found a Catholic AIDS ministry, but his work with AIDS sufferers incurred severe censure from Rome. Specifically, his attempts to explain homosexual relationships as acceptable and loving, sometimes even in the face of death, were at odds with the strict teaching of the Church, and provoked bitter conflict with New York's Cardinal O'Connor, who ordered Father Lynch to end his ministry.;Determined to continue his work, even if it meant doing so without official Church blessing, Father Lynch remained undiscouraged. "Being identifed with the oppressed', he has observed, 'means that I am going to be oppressed". A relentless persecution campaign was mounted in a bid to get him removed from his post at a boy's school, and this led to hie false indictment.;In this book

Priests on Trial

Priests on Trial PDF Author: Alfred W. McCoy
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Father Brian Gore and Father Niall O'Brien and their experiences as priests in the Philippines. The theology of liberation and the politics of religion.___

The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Legal Responses

The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Legal Responses PDF Author: James T. O'Reilly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199350124
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
The sexual abuse of children and teens by rogue priests in the U.S. Catholic Church is a heinous crime, and those who pray for a religious community as its ministers, priests and rabbis should never tolerate those who prey on that community. The legal disputes of recent years have produced many scandalous headlines and fuelled public discussion about the sexual abuse crisis within the clergy, a crisis that has cost the U.S. Catholic Church over $3 billion. In The Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis and the Legal Responses, two eminent experts, James O'Reilly and Margaret Chalmers, draw on the lessons of recent years to discern the interplay between civil damages law and global church-based canon law. In some countries civil and canon law, although autonomous systems of law, both form part of the church's legal duties. In the United States, freedom of religion issues have complicated how the state adjudicates both cases of abuse and who can be held responsible for clerical oversight. This book examines questions of civil and criminal liability, issues of respondeat superior and oversight, issues with statutes of limitations and dealing with allegations that occurred decades ago, and how the Church's internal judicial processes interact or clash with the civil pursuit of these cases.

Killer Priest

Killer Priest PDF Author: Mark Gado
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Catholic criminals
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Details the murder of the pregnant wife of a secretly married priest, Father Hans Schmidt, a German immigrant, in 1913 New York City. Knowing his secret life would soon be exposed, on "the night of September 2, 1913, he cut Anna's throat, dismembered her body, and threw the parts into the Hudson River. The body was discovered, however, and Schmidt was arrested and charged with murder ... The case proved a spectacle for the media and captured the imagination of the City. Not only did Father Schmidt kill his young, pregnant bride, but further investigation proved he had a second apartment where he had set up a printing press and counterfeited $10 bills. In Louisville, [Kentucky], the dismembered body of a missing nine-year-old girl was found buried in the basement of St. John's church, where Schmidt had previously worked. In addition, German police wanted to talk to Father Schmidt about a murdered girl in his hometown. Though he was never charged, it was strongly suspected that Father Schmidt committed these murders as well."--Jacket.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

Lead Us Not Into Temptation PDF Author: Jason Berry
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252068126
Category : Child sexual abuse
Languages : en
Pages : 446

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Book Description
While seminaries, by many accounts, admit an increasing number of homosexuals, women are strictly barred from ministerial roles. The church's time-honored tradition of "avoiding scandal" also backfires. For by the shielding of fallen clerics, Berry shows, the suffering of the abused is often compounded.

America on Trial

America on Trial PDF Author: Robert Reilly
Publisher: Ignatius Press
ISBN: 1642291145
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
The Founding of the American Republic is on trial. Critics say it was a poison pill with a time-release formula; we are its victims. Its principles are responsible for the country's moral and social disintegration because they were based on the Enlightenment falsehood of radical individual autonomy. In this well-researched book, Robert Reilly declares: not guilty. To prove his case, he traces the lineage of the ideas that made the United States, and its ordered liberty, possible. These concepts were extraordinary when they first burst upon the ancient world: the Judaic oneness of God, who creates ex nihilo and imprints his image on man; the Greek rational order of the world based upon the Reason behind it; and the Christian arrival of that Reason (Logos) incarnate in Christ. These may seem a long way from the American Founding, but Reilly argues that they are, in fact, its bedrock. Combined, they mandated the exercise of both freedom and reason. These concepts were further developed by thinkers in the Middle Ages, who formulated the basic principles of constitutional rule. Why were they later rejected by those claiming the right to absolute rule, then reclaimed by the American Founders, only to be rejected again today? Reilly reveals the underlying drama: the conflict of might makes right versus right makes might. America's decline, he claims, is not to be discovered in the Founding principles, but in their disavowal.

The Conspiracy

The Conspiracy PDF Author: Monsignor William McCarthy
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1450239668
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
The Conspiracy chronicles the monumental struggles of an innocent priest, Monsignor William McCarthy, falsely accused in 2003 of molesting two young sisters more than 23 years earlier. On the eve of his retirement from a stellar career as a priest and pastor, for the next five tortuous years, he was the victim of an anonymous complaint that was accepted as true by his bishop and friend of 40 years. Share his travails and see how ones faith can overcome the worst injustices that man can heap on a holy and totally innocent person." -- Jack Kraft, Esq. Monsignor William McCarthy paints a picture embracing a situation that is almost impossible to comprehend. Had I not stood by him throughout the years of pure hell he experienced, I would not have believed the outright calumny by a detective, and how the subsequent action of his bishop and diocesan staff could have occurred. Child abuse is a terrible thing, but equally horrible is when innocent priests are unjustly condemned and destroyed by the hierarchy of their church. -- Arthur N. Hoagland, M.D. This book is a must read for any Catholic who loves their Church but is concerned about its often self-destructive response to the tragedy of clerical pedophilia. It is story about tragedy and triumph. The tragedy of the Church that Monsignor McCarthy loves deeply, and into which he has selflessly devoted his entire life, but is sometimes governed by people who have lost all sense of justice. It is a Church that betrayed him. In its attempt to protect the victims of child abuse, it established a new category of victims: its faithful priests. The triumph of Monsignor McCarthy is his faith and love of Jesus, which saw him through his terrible ordeal in spite of the evil that was perpetrated against him. -- Deacon Joseph Keenan

Potiphar's Wife

Potiphar's Wife PDF Author: Kieran Tapsell
Publisher: ATF Press
ISBN: 1921511486
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
English summary: The cover-up of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church has been occurring under the pontificate of six popes since 1922. For 1500 years, the Catholic Church accepted that clergy who sexually abused children deserved to be stripped of their status as priests and then imprisoned. A series of papal and Council decrees from the twelfth century required such priests to be dismissed from the priesthood, and then handed over to the civil authorities for further punishment. That all changed in 1922 when Pope Pius XI issued his decree Crimen Sollicitationis that created a de facto privilege of clergy by imposing the secret of the Holy Office on all information obtained through the Churchs canonical investigations. If the State did not know about these crimes, then there would be no State trials, and the matter could be treated as a purely canonical crime to be dealt with in secret in the Church courts. Pope Pius XII continued the decree. Pope John XXIII reissued it in 1962. Pope Paul VI in 1974 extended the reach of pontifical secrecy to the allegation itself. Pope John Paul II confirmed the application of pontifical secrecy in 2001, and in 2010, Benedict XVI even extended it to allegations about priests sexually abusing intellectually disabled adults. In 2010, Pope Benedict gave a dispensation to pontifical secrecy to allow reporting to the police where the local civil law required it, that is, just enough to keep bishops out of jail. Most countries in the world do not have any such reporting laws for the vast majority of complaints about the sexual abuse of children. Pontifical secrecy, the cornerstone of the cover up continues. The effect on the lives of children by the imposition of the Churchs Top Secret classification on clergy sex abuse allegations may not have been so bad if canon law had a decent disciplinary system to dismiss these priests. The 1983 Code of Canon Law imposed a five year limitation period which virtually ensured there would be no canonical trials. It required bishops to try to reform these priests before putting them on trial. When they were on trial, the priest could plead the Vatican Catch 22 defencehe should not be dismissed because he couldnt control himself. The Church claims that all of this has changed. Very little has changed. It has fiddled around the edges of pontifical secrecy and the disciplinary canons. The Church has been moonwalking.

Pedophiles and Priests

Pedophiles and Priests PDF Author: Philip Jenkins
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195145976
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
If we can believe the six o'clock news, there has been an epidemic of sexual abuse among the clergy, and especially among the Roman Catholic clergy. This study looks at the entire history of this mushrooming scandal, from the first rumblings to the explosion of headlines. -- Provided by publisher.

Case of Witchcraft

Case of Witchcraft PDF Author: Robert Rapley
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773567119
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
As a Catholic priest, Grandier was an influential figure in the Loudun community and local government. A brilliant speaker, he was popular with his parishioners. But he had enemies, including Cardinal Richelieu and Louis XIII, who was trying to wrest political autonomy from local governors and centralize power in Paris. Grandier's support of the governor of Loudun meant that he was seen as an enemy of the crown. In addition, the debonair priest's romantic intrigues brought him into conflict with some of the town's most influential power brokers. When a nearby convent of Ursuline nuns began experiencing strange visions and hallucinations, Grandier's enemies seized the opportunity to orchestrate his downfall. These mass possessions, which spread through the convent despite attempts at exorcism, were regarded as witchcraft and Grandier was accused of having caused them. Condemned by Richelieu and the king, Grandier was tortured and burned at the stake for his alleged crimes. He maintained his innocence to the end. This tale of conspiracy, corruption, and mass hysteria provides a fascinating exploration of human behaviour and community dynamics.