Introduction

Our aim is not to offend or attack Roman Catholic people; we are for Roman Catholics. Recognizing that it is Roman Catholic children who have been the victims of these breaches of trust, we want only to examine the claims and address the facts. While it is not our purpose to assail Roman Catholics, those whose allegiance is not to the irrefutable truth, justice for innocent victims, and the protection of their children and grandchildren, but to an organization or institution (no matter how guilty of corruption that institution may be), will indeed be offended. While for the sake of the victims, and of truth itself, we must speak the truth, we do so without malice for Roman Catholic people whose very own children are the victims of these unspeakable sex crimes.

We challenge any ordained member of the Roman Catholic clergy to open debate before a public audience, the press, and video cameras, to disprove these facts in light of the legally documented and photographic evidence we shall present at such a debate. We challenge any priest or any nun to openly contest these facts in such an open and publicly recorded forum.

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CLAIM: This is a limited problem involving only a small number of priests and nuns. A few “bad apples” are discrediting the Roman Catholic clergy at large because the sensationalist media are blowing this problem out of proportion.

FACT: As was accurately reported in the headlines of various publications  (including USA Today), in the U.S.A. alone, 177 of the 179 Roman Catholic dioceses and archdiocese have been proven liable in court for protecting pedophile priests or nuns at the expense of the children whose lives these religious sex criminals damage and destroy. Every diocese and archdiocese in the USA can in proportionate terms be called “small.”

Reported cases just in the United States are well into the many thousands, and this represents only a probable percentage of the overall number of cases. Many if not most investigators are convinced that this may be only the tip of the iceberg. Statutes of limitations, shame and fear suffered by the victims, community and family pressure, cultural factors – all these may prevent the actual numbers from ever being known. Popular media can indeed often be biased, but they have not amplified this tragedy out of proportion. On the contrary, as can be demonstrated – and as will be noted – the popular media have largely under-reported documented Vatican complicity in the systematic series of cover ups.

In the famous Sipes report, at least 40% of Roman Catholic priests admitted to being sexually active at any given time. But forcible sex with children is another matter. Moreover, the most comprehensive study ever undertaken shows that Roman Catholic priests in the United States have a rate of HIV infection four times that of the national average (a study whose results the Roman Catholic church has protested, but not with any other comprehensive, independent study). Statistically, most HIV infection in the United States and other developed countries is vastly more often communicated sexually – and most is communicated through homosexual activity. Given the fact that up to 80% of the proven cases of pedophilia by Roman Catholic clergy are homosexual in nature, a pediatric AIDS risk factor to Roman Catholic children whom priests victimize cannot be ignored. Moreover, if a Roman Catholic priest is more than four times more likely to have HIV than someone else, this is not statistically minute. It reveals that something is fundamentally wrong on a wide scale.

Internationally, frequency of these sex crimes perpetrated against defenseless children by Roman Catholic clergy appears no less widespread in Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere. But if anything, they seem considerably worse in Roman Catholic countries such as Ireland and, by some reports, the Philippines, Brazil, French-speaking Africa, and Austria.

It is not merely a few “bad apples,” as the Roman Catholic Church would like the public to believe, but, rather, the hard evidence points to many rotten apples. More importantly, it points to a very rotten barrel.

CLAIM: The percentage of Roman Catholic clergy alleged to have engaged in the sexual violation of children is no higher, and by some claims proportionately smaller, than the percentage of school educators doing the same things in secular state-funded school systems.

FACT: This precarious attempted defense of the Roman Catholic Church in the face of widely reported pedophilia by its clergy is absolutely warped. It represents the desperate levels to which such organizations as The Catholic League will stoop in its lame efforts to offset the ramifications of the policies of Roman Catholicism that institutionally, via its unscrupulous hierarchy, left small children as prey to vulture clergy.

To begin with, aside from the fact that this statistical argument is disputed, secular teachers who engage in such a breach of trust do not claim to be Christian clergy and do not use a religious office – or so called “holy orders” and convent vows – as means to perpetrate their perversions against little children as the pedophile Roman Catholic clergy most certainly have done in many thousands of reported cases.

More importantly however, where and when did secular school districts, boards of education, or teachers’ unions ever conspire on an international scale to protect pedophile teachers, let alone transfer them, thus allowing them to continue to prey on children, as the Roman Catholic Church is proven in court to have done?

Even if these very debatable “statistics” were proven accurate, the attempt to assuage such heinous wrongs against defenseless children by saying “others do it, too” is sick and morally perverted. It is as convoluted in its reasoning as the twisted acts of the members of their clergy performing these diabolical outrages. Moreover, given the fact that there have been nearly 5,000 alleged episodes by priests in the USA alone, and there are only at the present time 40,000 priests in the USA, such statistical claims clearly demand scrutiny and are plainly subject to serious challenge. This moreover is only in the USA; the crises is global and particularly widespread in countries such as the Republic of Ireland, Austria, and Latin America.

The issue is not only the sex crimes against children, but the policies of a religious institution that has not only shielded these pedophile sex criminals, but allowed them to continue. Witness to this is the high profile cases of countless bishops and archbishops, including cardinals Law and Mahoney. Secular education authorities have never done what the Roman Catholic Church has done in protecting such dangerous villains, nor, being cognizant of who and what they are, allowing them to continue. Only the Church of Rome is repeatedly proven in court to be guilty of that magnitude of evil.

It is the acme of religious hypocrisy for The Catholic League and other such organizations to gravitate to such low depths to defend the institution guilty of these unspeakable evils. Rather than protect those Roman Catholic children who were victimized by their priests and nuns (often acting under the protection of their bishops and superiors) such safeguarding of sex-criminal clergy makes it possible for them to molest even more children.

CLAIM: This is not purely a Roman Catholic problem; it is a broad problem within Christendom that widely affects other churches and denominations as well.

FACT: This claim is categorically implausible. No other church, denomination, or sect anywhere in the Judeo-Christian world approaches nearly the magnitude of what Roman Catholicism has repeatedly been proven guilty of and liable for. In court after court, state after state, and country after country, the sin of pedophilia is affecting virtually every Roman Catholic diocese and archdiocese in some nations. Subsequently, through their attempted cover ups, their prelates share in the sins of their pedophile priests and nuns.

With the very limited exception of Anglo-Catholicism (which is doctrinally, in sacramental emphasis, almost ritually identical to Roman Catholicism, while also practicing clerical celibacy), nothing even remotely approaches the volume of successful litigation brought by childhood victims of sexual abuse against the Roman Catholic Church anywhere in the world.

Certain polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon sects might represent a partial exception, but these are on a much more restricted scale and are mainly local in character. Women’s-rights advocates also highlight forced arranged marriages to under-age girls in the Islamic community and in Moslem nations, and forced clitorectomy (female circumcision) in various Islamic cultures. But these practices do not popularly occur anywhere in the Christian world (although in times past Roman Catholicism did likewise practice forced male genital mutilation to be sure the little choir boys could properly hit the high notes when singing soprano).

The sustainable fact is that the isolated cases of clerical pedophilia among Eastern Orthodox, Protestant, or Evangelical clergy, or by Jewish rabbis – while disgraceful and criminal wherever it has happened – are in actuality very few and far between. This is in standing contrast to Roman Catholicism where pedophilia and efforts to cover it up appear by all comprehensive accounts to be endemic.

Nor do the hierarchies of any other Christian denomination stand as publicly discredited or as legally responsible for covering up such evil crimes. No religion but Roman Catholicism has been compelled by the facts to admit legal culpability on a grand scale and to pay out what is now billions of dollars in compensation.

CLAIM: These sex crimes by priests and nuns against little children, and efforts to cover them up, have nothing to do with the hierarchy of the church, nothing to do with the Vatican state, and nothing to do with the pope or the papacy. Therefore they have nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church institutionally. It is about bad individual clergy, not about bad leaders or bad popes. Hence, the Roman Catholic Church cannot be labeled as a morally corrupt institution.

FACT: There have been many false claims by Roman Catholic spokesmen regarding the epidemic pedophilia by sexually perverted priests and nuns, as well as regarding the cover up and protection of these sex criminals, and the consequent failure to protect the victimized children. Of all these bogus claims, however, the historically- and legally-documented facts prove this claim to be by far the most ridiculous and untenable of all the unsupportable assertions made by apologists for Roman Catholicism in this shameful regard. Absolutely no one of average intelligence who reads the pertinent documentation could reasonably believe this blatantly preposterous claim of innocence on the part of the papacy, or the hierarchy in general.

To begin with, under Roman Catholic ecclesiastical law, bishops and archbishops are the custodians of most properties, and they oversee those clergy operating under the auspices of their jurisdiction. They also report to the national conferences of bishops, to papal nuncios, and to the Vatican, and are responsible for the implementation of papal policies in their diocese. When practically every single American Roman Catholic diocese has been found culpable in court of protecting pedophile clergy, it automatically means that the bishop or archbishop has been legally established as being complicit. With the exception of only two, every bishop, archbishop, and cardinal in the United States has been pronounced responsible by courts of law for failing to protect defenseless children from their criminal, sexually perverted subordinates cloaked in cassocks and habits. Prelate after prelate has also been proven guilty in court of merely transferring to other dioceses (allowing them to continue to function around children), priests they knew to be pedophiles or sex criminals. The lawsuits, complete with legal fees, court costs, and settlements, have reached into the billions of dollars.

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles alone paid $660,000,000.00 (six-hundred, sixty million dollars) in damages to plaintiffs who had been sexually violated as children by priest after priest after priest. Legal editorialists called the settlement the price of keeping Cardinal Mahoney out of prison should confidential church documents ever be presented in court. The neighboring diocese of San Diego settled for another humungous fee a week later. The archbishop of Cincinnati simply pleaded “no contest” in court.

When London’s cardinal, Cormac Murphy O’Connor, had been a bishop prior to promotion, he was similarly complicit, protecting the later imprisoned pedophile sex criminal priest Michael Hill. Yet he escaped prosecution after police investigation despite his admissions. In New Castle, England, the priest at St. Joseph’s church was arrested, convicted, and sentenced for posting the world record of internet child pornography of some 8,000 hours of children being sexually violated.

When Cardinal Law of Boston was finally compelled to leave his post, he was promoted to the position of archpriest to a Vatican cathedral in Rome by Pope John Paul II. Law then conducted the funeral Mass for his benefactor, John Paul II.

In one case in Boston it was revealed that, at a Catholic educational institution, a number of allegedly lesbian nuns from the order of Sisters of St. Joseph were accused of forcibly holding down multiple deaf and mute little girls who were unable to scream. They took turns vaginally raping these handicapped little girls with glass bottles. But the case could not be pursued.

Gynecological torture is not a new phenomenon in the Roman Catholic Church. Such practices date back to the Inquisition, when “Saint” Dominic was quoted as teaching that there is a “crookedness” in women due to the fact that a human rib is curved, and Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Priests who supervised the torture, vaginally injected boiling water into women who were tied down naked to make them confess to various heresies and practices for which they could then face possible execution. The asserted vaginal torture practiced by these nuns on handicapped little girls, however, is a more contemporary practice.

While sadistic sex torture practices are not new to Roman Catholicism, neither are inquisitions. Two Dominican nuns were criminally sentenced for their role in the Rwandan genocide where many children were systematically exterminated in The Hutu-Tutsi tribal war.

The cardinal of Honduras openly boasted he would never “betray” any priest; instead, it is helpless children being raped and violated that are betrayed by members of the College of Cardinals.

The cases of bishops in Ireland and the cardinal in Dublin surrounding disclosures of atrocities perpetrated by the order of the “Christian Brothers,” as well as the disclosure of lesbian abuse by sadistic nuns in Magdalene laundries in which over 30,000 girls were imprisoned, were nothing less than astounding.

America’s first Black archbishop, Eugene Marino, was forced to resign in disgrace over the scandals of child abuse under his watch. Worse still, bishops themselves have increasingly faced charges of sexual misconduct. This includes J. Keith Symons, bishop of Palm Beach, who was charged with molesting five children, and Robert Sanchez of New Mexico, America’s first Hispanic bishop, who was accused of improper sexual activity with young women.

To date a total of seven American Roman Catholic bishops and archbishops have been accused of sex with children and have resigned. Meanwhile, Austria’s bishop, Hans Hermann Groer, was likewise accused of molesting little boys. The accusations of various instances of sexual immorality among bishops internationally are too multiple to easily keep track of.

It was reported in the national headlines of the Irish press that a police detective who investigated a case where at least ten little girls dressed as brides for their first communion were raped on the altar by a priest, was approached through a Roman Catholic organization, the Knights of Columbus, to make the evidence disappear. The detective received a medal from Pope John Paul II. The headline-worthy scandal was uncovered in a 2006 commissioned investigation by the Irish government.

These episodes and others all involved members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, from bishops to cardinals, with the knowledge of the Vatican.

Most indicting of the Vatican and pope, however, is Criminale Solicitaciones, the papal instruction circulated to the world’s bishops. The 69-page Latin document, first uncovered by Texas attorney Daniel Shea, was distributed in 1962 by Pope John XXIII, and was reiterated by Pope John Paul II in a letter signed by Joseph Radzinger, today’s Pope Benedict. The instruction plainly refers to “the worst crimes,” stating the pope’s order to deal with obscene acts with youths and brute beasts (indicating that since at least 1962, the pope and the Vatican at large knew not only of pedophilia in the ranks of its clergy, but also bestiality). The instruction decreed that bishops should have the victims take an oath of secrecy. It is amazing that many Roman Catholics consider John XXIII and John Paul II to be saints, when these are proven to be wicked men who, in writing, ordered the shielding of the child-raping perverts in their charge instead of guarding the thousands of violated little Roman Catholic children.

Texas attorneys led by Daniel Shea in 2001 attempted to bring a private civil litigation against Pope Benedict XVI as an ancillary civil prosecution to the criminal prosecution of the priest Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, a fugitive from justice charged with pedophilia. The action contended that the Vatican instruction with the signature of Benedict XVI (at that time Vatican Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) on the implementing memo is worded to cover both sacramental secrecy (for the rite of confession) and general secrecy decreeing that tribunals for grave crimes such as sexual abuse of children will be handled by his office (as Prefect of the Congregation of Faith and Doctrine) as “pontifical secrets.” So terrified of the admissibility of this all-damning “smoking gun,” the Vatican pressed the US State Department to pressure the US Justice Department to petition the court to dismiss the litigation. This, due to legal and political complications of prosecuting a foreign head of state since, beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the U.S. has diplomatically recognized the Vatican State.

This document substantiates that the Vatican and the pope have orchestrated an international campaign to obstruct justice, protect pedophile sex criminals, and use religious intimidation to keep the victims quiet. In some cases victims and their families were threatened with excommunication if they talked.

Roman Catholicism believes in ex opere operato – salvation through rituals called “sacraments.” Excommunication is a ban from the church’s sacraments, which traditionally has meant an anathema carrying the implied prospect of eternal damnation. Telling a raped little child and his parents that if they tell anyone what the priest did they will be excommunicated and, by implication, go to hell, is the perfect weapon for safeguarding pedophiles and facilitating the perpetuating of their crimes.

However, because of political and diplomatic pressure on the American government to intervene, the Texas litigation, supported by varied legal academic and expert Latin-grammar and syntax opinion, was prevented from making the case in court that the re-issued Vatican directive, with Ratzinger’s signature on the implementation letter, contained not only sacramental but general instructions to keep pedophile criminal activity secret. The Roman Catholic church not only saw to it that pedophiles never came to justice (as in Boston), but that the case against the Vatican and the pope for de facto obstruction of justice never came to court.

CLAIM: The pedophile scandals among the Roman Catholic clergy have been addressed and corrected. It is becoming a past issue.

FACT: Nothing could be further from the truth. The massive Roger Mahoney settlement in Los Angeles, and the subsequent San Diego settlement, are recent. In the United States alone, up to 1200 charges against Catholic priests continue to surface annually.

It was Roger Mahoney who demanded the resignation of Oklahoma’s former governor Frank Keating (a Roman Catholic who headed the Roman Catholic Church’s own national investigation panel) after Keating called for the resignation of church officials caught transferring known sex offenders. As their own chief investigator, Keating found the Roman Catholic Church guilty of obfuscation, resisting grand jury subpoenas, and suppressing the names of known pedophile sex criminals among its clergy.

Prior to his pressured resignation from the panel, Governor Keating, also a former FBI agent and state prosecutor, said that these secretive bishops behave like the Costa Nostra. Mahoney called Keating’s words “the last straw.” This same Mahoney has since had to cough up $660 million to pay off victims in his own archdiocese. The current pope failed to remove him or at least nominally promote him to the Vatican as was done with the Cardinal of Boston in the sickest application imaginable of “the Peter Principal.” Other dioceses, led by that in the city of Dallas (ordered to pay $120 million to homosexually-violated altar boys), have filed bankruptcy and have been accused of hiding assets to escape financial liability.

Near Vienna, the largest Roman Catholic seminary in Europe was closed under pressure from the Austrian government after the world’s largest collection of child pornography and homosexual pornography ever uncovered – some 40,000 images – was seized from the seminary. In addition, there were found videos of priests engaging in sex with young seminarians studying for the Roman Catholic priesthood.

All of these events and developments – and more – are recent, having taken place in the last few years, or are still pending in disposition. One Roman Catholic Church official stated that if the church opted for a zero tolerance policy there would not be enough priests. By all reasonable indications, this cannot be called a past problem; it is ongoing.

At the time of this writing (April, 2008), concurrent with the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the USA, new scandals have erupted in Northern California with 65 Roman Catholic priests cited in allegations in the Oakland - San Francisco Bay area alone. Concerning this, Christian journalistic researcher and former Roman Catholic Jackie Alnor, writes:

“The Oakland Tribune reported how prevalent such crimes against children were in the Oakland diocese. In all, accused priests and members of religious orders served in 61 of the 86 parishes, or 71 percent.

“I find old feelings of resentment resurfacing from what I saw in my own Catholic school upbringing. Today we would label many of the things I saw in my classroom as child abuse – such as my best friend being slapped in the face in front of our entire second grade class because she had her tongue poking in her cheek in the class picture. (She sobbed throughout recess as I and another 7-year-old sat on either side of her trying to comfort her in her time of pain and humiliation.) And then there was the sixth grade incident of another classmate, a boy, being beaten mercilessly and thrown in the bushes by the monsignor, the parish pastor, while I and another 11-year-old watched from the church’s bathroom window in horror.

“Are all these memories flooding my mind because my mom’s funeral is going to take me back to the scene of those crimes? Maybe. I don’t know. In the flood of these emotions, I turned on my TV to EWTN, the Catholic channel. There was a priest retelling the story of a ‘saint’ by the name of St. Joseph of Cupertino. This priest was giving details to the story that I had not heard before. He was lauding Joseph of Cupertino for his unquestionable obedience to his superiors. He told the most extreme example of Joseph’s obedience in that he actually consumed human waste when ordered to do so by the abbot of the monastery. The priest made this statement without blinking an eye, demonstrating amazement and giving praise to this ‘saint’ for taking obedience to such a high level. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For a priest on EWTN today to sing the man’s praises for engaging in unspeakable acts without any criticism for the superior who ordered them is downright abominable. The priest summed up the life of this ‘saint’ by saying that at one time it was thought that he was really demon-possessed, and an exorcist was ordered for him. But the exorcist cleared him of demonization and his weird acts were then attributed to God.”

These are events televised on the news in 2008, as are the Oakland pedophilia scandals. Jackie Alnor’s comments reflect the confusion, hurt, and disgust so many Roman Catholics and former Catholics feel concerning their church when contemplating the hard, irrefutable facts they have witnessed and experienced – the absolute epitome of debauchery by Roman Catholic clergy. The damage done to children when subjected to such wicked madness in Roman Catholicism commonly affects Catholics into their adult lives. Blues singer Billie Holiday destroyed her life with drugs and alcohol abuse. A Catholic priest in her native Baltimore admitted on TV that her problems stemmed from childhood when, in a Roman Catholic orphanage, nuns locked her alone overnight at the age of 5 or 6 in a room with the dead body of another little girl. This was an act of convent discipline to teach her what happens to bad little girls. In Ireland a religious order of Roman Catholic nuns placed full page ads of apology in newspapers when such abuses as pouring boiling water on orphan girls came to light. Althea Flynt, wife of pornographer Larry Flynt, attributed her hatred of religion to being forced under fear of severe corporal punishment to engage in utterly perverted sex acts with an aged nun who wore a rosary around her neck.

With the volume of instances continually increasing, this can in no way be relegated to the status of a past problem. Moreover, with the maelstrom of cases that have already surfaced, we will never know this side of eternity the full dimension of how widespread these crimes in the Roman Catholic Church really are. What we do know is that this is a problem for Roman Catholicism that will never go away because it can’t. The Vatican has covered up its evils for too long; the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church will never recover from this and, indeed, for the sake of the children and of justice, it must never be allowed to.

CLAIM: These sex scandals in The Roman Catholic Church, no matter how evil and prolific, are unrelated to the official doctrinal teaching of the Roman Catholic church itself.

FACT: This is completely untrue. In 1 Timothy 4:3, the apostle Paul was divinely inspired to teach that forbidding marriage is in no uncertain terms “a doctrine of demons.” Not only did the apostles not make any exception for so-called “clergy,” but the Roman Catholic Church admits that Peter (whom the church claims is the first “pope”) and other the apostles were married. According to Paul, this included the brothers of Jesus (1 Corinthians 5:9). After the Roman Catholic Crusades invaded the Levant, they induced certain Eastern breakaway churches to return to the Roman papacy by allowing them to keep the Greek (as opposed to Latin) rite which allowed their priests to marry. Hence, the Roman Catholic Church says it is allowable for some priests to marry, but others may not. Many Roman Catholics find this dual standard utterly hypocritical. Even an Eastern-rite cardinal admitted publicly that theological arguments for mandatory clerical celibacy are unfounded.

The first instance of required celibacy was in Iberia in AD 306. To understand how this developed we must go back to Augustine of Hippo who had been a member of a Gnostic cult believing in theosophical dualism called “Mancheanism.” The dualistic world view to which the Gnostics subscribed saw all that is spiritual or ethereal as good, and all that is physical as evil. Thus, as sex was physical, it was evil. To Augustine, the only good thing about marriage is having children who would remain celibate.

Augustine (who taught that the church could use violence to convert people) did not give balanced emphasis to the Book of Genesis where, after creating mankind male and female, God said, “It was good,” and the first divine command that God gave to man was to be fruitful and multiply. Augustine then combined the Manchean belief he brought with him from the pagan world into the church with the voluntary celibacy Paul wrote of in 1 Corinthians 7. In time, Augustine’s belief was transformed by papal decree into a mandatory celibacy. In the Eastern church however, Augustine was never a patristic writer or recognized as a church father. Thus the papal decree that priests of the Eastern-rite may have wives, but those of the Latin-rite may not. Thus, too, when the Roman Catholic Church outlawed what God said was “good,” and which He created as natural, sex-starved Roman Catholic clergy have done what is evil and unnatural – many of them with children.

These epidemics of Roman Catholic pedophilia by its clergy are the direct consequence of Roman Catholic doctrines that God instructed Paul to teach were demonic – that is, from Satan.

Roman Catholics must face the painful and shameful facts and believe the apostle Paul, or they must ignore the facts and believe a demonstrably corrupt Vatican and what the New Testament plainly calls a “doctrine of devils.”

CLAIM: This problem could be corrected if the Roman Catholic Church admitted it has been wrong all along, and allows all – not just some – of its clergy to marry.

FACT: This could make sense only if the Roman Catholic Church were to allow its clergy to have “same-sex” marriages, given the fact that the majority of the sexual violation of children by its clergy is of a homosexual nature. While Roman Catholicism officially decries homosexuality, the Roman Catholic religious orders have always been magnets for those seeking expression of homosexuality or lesbianism. The exclusive, secretive, same-sex environments of monasteries and convents, as well as the attraction of wearing cassocks, frocks, and vestments as a socially acceptable form of a transvestite lifestyle, appeal to some homosexuals. As a spokesman for the Roman Catholic Church admitted on British TV, the Roman Catholic clergy has likewise been an avenue for pedophiles seeking trusted access to children, as well as for those trying to escape tendencies towards pedophilia and other sexual perversions by entering a celibate lifestyle. Thus, because of the strong and often overriding homosexual and lesbian elements in pedophilia among Roman Catholic priests and nuns, without same-sex marriage of their clergy, ending celibacy is not a viable solution.

Of course, we do not agree with same-sex marriage, but even that is less evil than priests sodomizing small boys, and bishops, knowing what they do, continuing to protect them instead of the children they rape. Even the Vatican itself does not view clerical matrimony as a panacea.

Moreover, if the Roman Catholic Church admitted it has been wrong all along, it would open a Pandora’s Box containing dozens of other Roman Catholic doctrines that many non-Catholics and Catholics alike contest as contrary to the original teachings of Jesus and the Apostles in the Scriptures. It would also open the door to the exposure of the Vatican’s secret archives and its coming clean about the Roman Catholic hierarchy’s involvement with Hitler’s Third Reich and global fascism. This includes the position of Jose Maria Escrive, the founder of the Opus Dei movement, now canonized as a saint by Pope John Paul II, as well as the partnership of Archbishop Stepinac with Ustashi Nazis in the Yugoslavian holocaust, and the “Rat Route” escape network of convents and monasteries. If the Vatican ever came clean and disclosed its secret records, the whole world might finally learn from the horse’s mouth about the infamous “Rat Line” protection of wanted Nazi war criminals that saw the wanted Franco-Nazi militia war criminal Paul Touvior arrested while hiding in a Roman Catholic priory in May of 1989. Then there is the notorious Calvi Affair and Ambrosiano Bank scandal that saw its president, Bishop Paul Marcinkus, at one point taking refuge inside the Vatican City with Pope John Pail II refusing to turn him over to police authorities for questioning in the investigation. By most accounts the scandal involved dozens and dozens of murders. In the end the Vatican was left to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to defrauded depositors.

Protecting vicious criminals and helping them escape justice is demonstrably nothing new at all for the Rat Line Roman Catholic Church. The same institution that protected and helped the Nazi Treblinka Death Camp commander Franz Stangl and Nazi arch killer Adolph Eichmann escape justice (and most likely Gestapo commander in Nazi occupied France Klas Barbie, and Nazi baby medical experimenter Joseph Mengele among many others), has now likewise been caught protecting pedophile sex criminals. The same Roman Catholic Church that paid its way out of the Ambrosiano Bank scandal is now paying its way out of the pedophilia scandals.

Pope Benedict XVI was indeed compelled by legal and financial reality to admit that the pedophilia scandals were mishandled, but he never admitted his own central role in the mishandling, nor the blame of bishops and the church. He rightly described the pedophile clergy as ‘filth,’ but never described the hierarchy, such as himself, responsible for protecting them as filth. It took the Vatican 500 years to apologize for the Spanish Inquisition, but in doing so it never accepted the blame of the church or the hierarchy – only of unnamed individuals. As with the wording of the belated Inquisition apology, to the complaint of a spokesman for the Survivors Network of Abuse Victims (SNAP), neither did Pope Benedict XVI really accept the blame of the Church, the Vatican, or the papacy. Nor did he specifically name the hierarchy or any bishop, archbishop, or cardinal. Neither did he hold himself, John Paul II, or John XXIII responsible for Criminale Solicitaciones. It is the same old story. What Benedict XVI euphemistically calls a “mishandling” was rather a cover up and a sacrifice of the welfare of children at the hands of deranged priests and nuns protected by the church hierarchy.

Conclusion

This maelstrom of pedophile sex scandals among Roman Catholic clergy, and the shielding of these sex criminals while sacrificing the welfare of the violated children, involves very nearly every diocese and consequently bishop in the United States. It is much the same globally. The Vatican is implicated in the policy of cover-up; this includes popes John XXIII, John Paul II, and the current Benedict XVI. The problem is rooted deeply in the history and dogma of the Roman Catholic Church. It is an ongoing problem evidenced by the Roman Catholic Church’s own lead investigator resigning after concluding that the actions of secretive bishops were akin to what he encountered with the Mafia as an FBI agent and a state prosecutor.

The majority of these crimes perpetrated by priests and nuns against children took place in Roman Catholic institutions, including during instruction for the church’s “sacraments.” By financially contributing to the support of the Roman Catholic Church, Catholics must ask if the money they are donating isn’t going to hire lawyers to keep bishops out of jail for protecting pedophile sex criminals, and to pay compensation to the victims.

More importantly, the Roman Catholic Church and its hierarchy have been proven in court case after court case to have failed in protecting its children in its efforts to protect their rapists. The same church that protected Nazi criminals with its infamous “Rat Route” under Pius XII, has protected its pedophiles under John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and now Joseph Radzinger, alias Pope Benedict XVI.

Not only did the Nazis imprison somewhere between 200 and 600 Roman Catholic priests (other priests collaborated), but several thousand young German and Austrian Catholics were persecuted by the Nazis for refusing to fight for Hitler’s Third Reich. In his youth, Joseph Radzinger however was not among the persecuted. Radzinger wore the Nazi swastika and fought for Hitler. Some argue he had little choice. Others disagree. But as Chief papal enforcer in his role as the Vatican’s doctrinal prefect, he clearly had a choice, and we know which choice he made. Yet today he is pope – the same pope whose signature is on Criminale Solicitaciones. Some ask why Pope Benedict XVI should not face criminal indictment and stand trial for conspiracy to obstruct justice, or at least face civil litigation as accessory to do so. Does being pope absolve him from his actions in signing that Vatican directive to the detriment of countless children? Even many practicing Catholics would be astounded at the shameless hypocrisy of this man. In Rome publicly, Pope Benedict referred to pedophile priests as “filth.” But in signing and implementing letters of instruction to protect what he calls “filth” in his own words and by his very own definition, is he not co-equally just such “filth” himself?

Roman Catholic parents must face the truth that the church has over and again in court proven itself unwilling to protect those parents’ children; its protection has been for only their molesters. By having their children educated in Catholic schools and allowing priests and nuns access to their children for sacramental instruction, Catholic parents must confront questions about potential risk to their children. Their church cannot be relied upon to protect them from sexual predators among the members of its clergy.

It is our belief, and the belief of many former Roman Catholics – including former priests and nuns – that Jesus and the apostles taught in the Scriptures that salvation does not come from rituals controlled by an institution whose hierarchy has repeatedly demonstrated themselves to be malevolent and corrupt in regard to pedophilia. Salvation comes only through a personal saving faith in Jesus Christ, the Word of God who came in the flesh of man to save us from our sins.

To be truly Christian it is not necessary for Roman Catholics to rely on such a scandal-scarred institution, or to place their children at potential risk from sexually-perverted clergy.

We encourage all of our Roman Catholic friends to prayerfully read and examine the Holy Scriptures for themselves, and we invite all Roman Catholics to visit our website: www.moriel.org. We also urge all who have been molested by Roman Catholic clergy in their childhood to obtain qualified legal advice and help bring these cruelest and most debased of all criminals to justice before they damage any more little children, and to bring the bishops, archbishops, and cardinals who have protected them to legal accountability.

We also recommend the following support groups:

• Joshua Children’s Foundation (www.Joshuachildrensfoundation.org)
• Bishop Accountability (www.bishop-accountability.org)

We also strongly urge readers to visit the following websites:

1. Mike Gendron (http://www.pro-gospel.org/)
2. Good News For Catholics (http://www.gnfc.org/)
3. Reaching Catholics (http://www.reachingcatholics.org/)
4. Ex-Catholics For Christ (http://www.excatholicsforchrist.com/)

There are also a number of other resources available on the “Links to Resources” page of this website.