In reply to the Catholic Church’s misuse of the word-Consent

In reply to the Catholic Church’s misuse of the word-Consent

   According to some British newspapers and a few International newspapers “The Roman Catholic Church Says Some Child Abuse Victims Gave their "Consent" When Assaulted” -Now let us be clear here, even if a child or underage child gives permission or acts willingly, this never implies consent. A child is never accountable. Sometimes people justify their sexual activity with children by saying the child “wanted” to or the child touched them first. They may misread a child's affection as sexual. The law in most civilise countries recognises that children are developmentally not able to make decisions about some things, including when to engage in sexual behaviours, but the average age of consent is 16,  which is the general rule in most civilised countries. Engaging in sexual behaviours with children under the age of consent is illegal and is treated rightly as a criminal act, commonly known as “Stature Rape”. So “Statutory Rape” is sexual activity in which one of the individuals is a child below the age required to legally consent to the behaviour in most common law jurisdictions. Although it usually refers to adults engaging in sex with children under the age of consent. Child Rape or any type of Sexual rape is unacceptable, period, and especially the rape of children.

    A child’s permission or even request to play a sexual touching or watching game never excuses the adult or teen from taking full responsibility for the interaction. It is always the adult’s responsibility to set boundaries with children and underage teens. Adults may misread a child’s affection as sexual. They may tell themselves “Age is just a number” or “the child looks and acts older,  so it’s okay to rape them with or without consent. The United Nations heavily criticised the Vatican repeatedly for what it said was a systematic adoption of policies allowing Catholic Priests world wide to rape and sexually abuse tens of thousands of children. The devastating report published by the U.N. Committee in 2017, on the Rights of a Child said, the Vatican must "immediately remove" all known or suspected child abusers within the Clergy. The United Nations, said the Vatican, had systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims, this The United Nations said was and is unacceptable. 
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     In response, The Vatican said that some points made in the report were an "attempt to interfere with Roman Catholic Church teachings."  The Vatican didn’t accept the report by The United Nations, but said it would examine the Report thoroughly and reiterated its commitment to defending and protecting child rights in accordance with the U.N. guidelines with "the moral and religious values offered by Roman Catholic doctrine." 

   Now we have what was always known for many years by many people around the world about the Roman Catholic Church is that, Catholic Priests have been openly saying, raping a child is ok, because the child gave us consent. We also know from the many court trials of child sexual rape cases, both in Ireland and Internationally that the Roman Catholic Church views on the Church's sex abuse scandals are. But in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, a child molested by a Catholic Priest has committed a sin, but can seek absolution, by his rapist Priest. Sadly the belief by many Catholic Priests is  also that "The child is culpable," This answer by many clerics provides rare insight into the thoughts and opinions of many of the highest-ranking Roman Catholic Church Officials. The Roman Catholic Church believes children, themselves are responsible and are to blame for leading the holy men on, and for being sexually abused, and raped by teasing holy men. I know that this is so absurd, It's like saying a child who's beaten is responsible for the beating. We know this is the Roman Catholic Church view. The United Nations wrote a Report about it and the Roman Catholic Church rejected it.

    Another absurdity is that the Roman Catholic Church holds that the age of reason and consent is 7 years old, but that pertains to deciding between right and wrong. When a Catholic Priest tells a child that having sex with him is right, the child should not be held responsible, but in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church the child is clearly responsible for giving consent and egging on the poor, hard working, holy Priest. Then again, according to the Vatican, the child is always to blame and not the hard working Catholic Priest. Yes it's preposterous, but Catholic Church doctrines and moral theology and even in their Canon Law, says that a child can give consent, after all the Roman Catholic Church holds that the age of reason and consent is 7 years old. The Roman Catholic Church says, the age of reason is 7, so if you're at least 7 you're culpable for your actions,' now thats absurd. It implies that the child has power in any relationship with a Catholic Priest, many Catholic children believe and are thought to believe that the Catholic Priest is the closest person to God, and if the child has sex with the Catholic Priest, its the same as having sex with God. What the Roman Catholic Church need to understand is that child abuse and rape can not be justified by saying that their God says it's OK.

    Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, as the Boss of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" (formerly known as the Inquisition). Issued a confidential letter a few years ago to every Catholic Bishop throughout the world, and in his letter, Cardinal Ratzinger reminded every Bishop of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the child rape and torture to the secular authorities. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the Roman Catholic Church's own exclusive jurisdiction and Canon Law. Any sharing of the evidence with legal secular authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. 

       All charges of the rape and torture of children were to be investigated in the most secretive way, by the Roman Catholic Church, and the Catholic Bishops were to be restrained by a perpetual silence and everyone in the Roman Catholic Church was to observe the strictest secrecy which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office of Roman Catholic Church, under the penalty of excommunication. As is now known, no Roman Catholic Priest has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offence of child rape would get you into serious trouble, like excommunication. And this is the Roman Catholic Church that warns us against moral relativism!

   Not content with shielding his own priests from the law, Cardinal Ratzinger's office even wrote its own private statute of limitations. The Roman Catholic Church's jurisdiction, claimed Cardinal Ratzinger, "begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age and then lasts for 10 more years. As you can see this clearly is an obstruction of justice. You can't investigate a case if you never find out about it. If you can manage to keep it secret for 18 years plus 10, the Roman Catholic Priest will get away with it. Something else, child rape and torture were always part of the Christian liturgy. When later as Pope Benedict XVI, with his long campaign of obfuscation says, many Catholic Priests were "efficacious guide to youth." this according to Pope Benedict. The Roman Catholic Church was headed by a mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat who was once tasked with the concealment of the foulest iniquity, whose ineptitude in that job now shows him to us as a man personally and professionally responsible for enabling a wave of child rape crime and concealment. Pope Benedict whole career had the stench of evil, a clinging and systematic evil that is beyond the power of Catholic Church exorcism to dispel. What is needed is not medieval incantation to invoke or praise a dubious deity, or a ritual of charms or spells either, but the application of secular justice, and speedily at that and put to rest once and for all, the idea held by many within the Roman Catholic Church that the rape and torture of children by Roman Catholic Priests is acceptable even sanctioned by their own Church and their God. Also to chant a magical spell really doesn’t work anymore, divine invocations and sacrifices also don’t work. Arcane quackery, or hiding behind uncertain latin lies also doesn't cut it anymore. The usage of words like Priest, Holy, Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal, and Pope should never be an excuse or given a shield or a grand title to intimidate nor to hide behind the raping and torture of any child, period. Irish society has yet to grapple with the social and political impact of the sexual violence committed against vulnerable children in the Irish Catholic Church run Institutions. 

   A unknown fact, in the Catholic Church run Institutions in Ireland, 96% of Irish Industrial Schools boys reported being raped or sexually tortured. Many official government reports found that male rape was commonly underreported to the Irish State Investigative Commissions, setup, years later, like the Ryan Report, (The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse), in most cases the boys now grown men only spoke or told of abuse, and humiliation at the hands of the Male Religious Orders, without specifying physical rape. Sadly both perpetrator and victim entered a conspiracy of silence and why male survivors today often find, once their story is discovered, that they lose the support and comfort of those around them. Worse still once wives or girlfriends discover their husbands dark secrets decide to leave them. In the Institutionalised women case, their husbands and boyfriends abandoned them, as used, soiled, even whores. All Rapes "should not go unpunished, and especially by the Clerics.

    And finally, in some Catholic Church run Institutions in Ireland, rape was used to control and humiliate vulnerable children. It is known that the Irish Christian Brothers for example, equated masculinity with dominance and control.The gang rape of vulnerable boys as a socialisation tactic used by the Christian Brothers to maintain complete control, like for example;-
    1.    Their prompt feelings of power and achievement.


    2.    Establish status and a reputation for aggressiveness, with brute force and rape.


    3.    The Christian Brothers created an enhanced feeling of masculinity through bonding and bragging, both among themselves and the boys.


    4.    Demonstrate dedication to the brotherhood of the order of The Christian Brothers and a willingness of many of them to take risks. 


    5   While Institutionalised rape may-not be an apparent tool or weapon, the Christian Brothers still used it to serve as a primary tool and weapon to create a cohesive Christian Brothers group and to establish effective fear among the vulnerable boys in the Irish Industrial Schools and other Religious Institutions they ran. 


Note;-
    Crimen Sollicitationis was a 1962 decree issued by the Vatican that laid out the procedures for dealing with Roman Catholic Priest who solicit sex from parish congregants during confession. It was also used as the instruction manual for investigating Child Sexual Abuse by Priests.This updated a similar decree issued in 1922. Written in Latin the Crimen Sollicitationis was sent to every diocese around the world, where it was locked away from all eyes except for those Priests who were commissioned with investigating accusations of sexual abuse by Priests. Instead of using the Crimen Sollicitationis to punish and dismiss Priests, diocese investigators used it to silence the accusers. Section 11 of the Crimen Sollicitationis required that all testimony given in such cases be sealed. Anyone caught discussing the testimony at these tribunals was to be excommunicated. This included the victims of the abuse and their parents, families and friends.. During the last 20 years that the Crimen Sollicitationis was enforced, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger -- later Pope Benedict XVI-- was the edict's lead enforcer. Owen Felix O’Neill