Firstly just to express total solidarity with the deaf men of Milwaukee Wisconsin who suffered at the hands of serial child sex abuser Fr. Laurence C. Murphy. Secondly to say I'm an Irish Catholic and knew the singing priest Fr. Tony Walsh - 'Fr. Elvis' - as a boy. A number of pedophiles accessed my family, sexually grooming and serial abusing and in the Dublin of the day the culture of pederasty was pervasive. Thirdly allow me open by asking people to consider Fr. Murphy's excuses - offered in therapy:
A). 'There was rampant homosexuality amongst the boys. I fixed the problem'; B). I thought if I played around with a kid once per week they would have their needs met'; C). I thought I was taking their sins on myself'; D). It was self-education for them they were confused about sex'; E). Would feel penis. If erect would masturbate them'; F). Afterward I prayed and went to confession'.
The man felt he was doing good not evil. How then was his moral compass so distorted and disorientated? Would cyber porn producers and users of child porn today offer better excuses? - we've heard them and know them to be equally self-serving and delusional. Being homosexual was universally taboo up until the 1980's and it was considered better to be sexually disorientated or sexually dysfunctional with a view to a life of celibacy, secular or priestly. But for all their crimes no perverted Roman Catholic priest that I am aware of was ever charged with the crime of rape and murder common enough among pedophiles and rapists. Now this may be difficult but consider modern porn and its rapaciousness. Consider the fact that most porn is not only about the objectification and exploitation of women but also about their brutalization. Pedophilia is rampant and causally peppered through main stream cyber porn which rapidly descends from relative eroticism to utter abomination.
So what has happened is that consent is all that's is required to make sexual abuse permissible today even if the person is a minor; even if the woman simply signed up for sex and not the brutalizing desecration of her body; even if the sex was consenting but the permission to broadcast & circulate was not. Cyber porn is so controversial that Google maintains it is not responsible for acting as the international traffic cop and seemed curiously resigned to compromising its own browser Google Chrome with its competitors search engines. Because Google understand the corporate tornado on the horizon, cyber porn being a record - in most instances - of sex crime, knowing that many of the victims will sue. It makes me feel like signing up for a course in Swedish rape law because this makes the Juliann Assange case - which involved the charges 'Sex by surprise' and 'Sex with too much asking', - seem like a great idea. How about 'Sex with brutalizing & degrading consequences'; 'Sex for the purpose of making porn without consent'; 'Sex with adolescents too stoned & too immature to know the implications of what they were doing', and 'Sex for the purpose of sexually re-orientating and dis-orientating the victim'? So what has happened is that we have simply changed the definition and function of sexual terrorism from repression to 'sexual liberation'. The Catholic Church has stood up to the plate, paid the price and yet the accusatory finger still points towards the past. But the Church must reform the celibate model of priesthood which according to former Benedictine Richard Sipes 'Selects, cultivates, protects, defends and produces sexual abusers'.
This is a marvelous and sympathetic movie about a wonderfully courageous group of deaf men who show us the meaning of the word solidarity. It provides a valuable and necessary understanding of the errors of the past without seeking to agitate, animate or radicalise. But one must ask the Director Alex Gibney to consider the far more perilous issue of cyber porn and modern sexual values and just where we are heading with the rate of homosexuality rising towards 25% in Cosmopolitan & Metropolitan areas where stable 'straight',and monogamous family units are rapidly becoming vestigial. Judging from cyber porn there are those so liberated that it is a wonder they are not permanently incontinent. Can a woman really have animalistic sex with two men hung like donkeys and ever hope to function properly again; and why do women cast themselves in the role of sexual gladiators? In terms of the police phrase used in the documentary to describe pedophilia in the Catholic Church 'Noble cause corruption', might not those advocating the GLBTQ, Libertine and Hedonist agendas consider whether the term now also applies to their sexual crusade?
At the Sea of Tiberius as Jesus watched St. Peter leap from the boat with almost nothing on he knew St. Peter had sexual issues and was at least immodest in that most sublime of Biblical scenes from John 21 titled 'The Restoration of St. Peter'. He had also chastened the Disciple Nathanael at the time of his recruitment, three years earlier, for spending too much time under "The Fig Tree", (John 2: 48). And yet Nathanael is at the scene at the Sea of Tiberius to witness the risen Jesus prepare a meal for his followers and take St. Peter aside, to chasten and prepare him for the way ahead. Please God Pope Benedict XVI's successor Pope Francis is up for a restoration of the priesthood. And as a secular adult community surely we can also rise to this debate given that we see fit to rise to just about every and any other kind of bait? Let me conclude by offering a quote from the retired gay Archbishop of Milwaukee Most Reverend Rembert Weakland (1977-2002) for this is by far the wisest statement to emerge from this challenging documentary:
We're a Church of imperfect people. Jesus wasn't afraid of humanity and we shouldn't be either'
A). 'There was rampant homosexuality amongst the boys. I fixed the problem'; B). I thought if I played around with a kid once per week they would have their needs met'; C). I thought I was taking their sins on myself'; D). It was self-education for them they were confused about sex'; E). Would feel penis. If erect would masturbate them'; F). Afterward I prayed and went to confession'.
The man felt he was doing good not evil. How then was his moral compass so distorted and disorientated? Would cyber porn producers and users of child porn today offer better excuses? - we've heard them and know them to be equally self-serving and delusional. Being homosexual was universally taboo up until the 1980's and it was considered better to be sexually disorientated or sexually dysfunctional with a view to a life of celibacy, secular or priestly. But for all their crimes no perverted Roman Catholic priest that I am aware of was ever charged with the crime of rape and murder common enough among pedophiles and rapists. Now this may be difficult but consider modern porn and its rapaciousness. Consider the fact that most porn is not only about the objectification and exploitation of women but also about their brutalization. Pedophilia is rampant and causally peppered through main stream cyber porn which rapidly descends from relative eroticism to utter abomination.
So what has happened is that consent is all that's is required to make sexual abuse permissible today even if the person is a minor; even if the woman simply signed up for sex and not the brutalizing desecration of her body; even if the sex was consenting but the permission to broadcast & circulate was not. Cyber porn is so controversial that Google maintains it is not responsible for acting as the international traffic cop and seemed curiously resigned to compromising its own browser Google Chrome with its competitors search engines. Because Google understand the corporate tornado on the horizon, cyber porn being a record - in most instances - of sex crime, knowing that many of the victims will sue. It makes me feel like signing up for a course in Swedish rape law because this makes the Juliann Assange case - which involved the charges 'Sex by surprise' and 'Sex with too much asking', - seem like a great idea. How about 'Sex with brutalizing & degrading consequences'; 'Sex for the purpose of making porn without consent'; 'Sex with adolescents too stoned & too immature to know the implications of what they were doing', and 'Sex for the purpose of sexually re-orientating and dis-orientating the victim'? So what has happened is that we have simply changed the definition and function of sexual terrorism from repression to 'sexual liberation'. The Catholic Church has stood up to the plate, paid the price and yet the accusatory finger still points towards the past. But the Church must reform the celibate model of priesthood which according to former Benedictine Richard Sipes 'Selects, cultivates, protects, defends and produces sexual abusers'.
This is a marvelous and sympathetic movie about a wonderfully courageous group of deaf men who show us the meaning of the word solidarity. It provides a valuable and necessary understanding of the errors of the past without seeking to agitate, animate or radicalise. But one must ask the Director Alex Gibney to consider the far more perilous issue of cyber porn and modern sexual values and just where we are heading with the rate of homosexuality rising towards 25% in Cosmopolitan & Metropolitan areas where stable 'straight',and monogamous family units are rapidly becoming vestigial. Judging from cyber porn there are those so liberated that it is a wonder they are not permanently incontinent. Can a woman really have animalistic sex with two men hung like donkeys and ever hope to function properly again; and why do women cast themselves in the role of sexual gladiators? In terms of the police phrase used in the documentary to describe pedophilia in the Catholic Church 'Noble cause corruption', might not those advocating the GLBTQ, Libertine and Hedonist agendas consider whether the term now also applies to their sexual crusade?
At the Sea of Tiberius as Jesus watched St. Peter leap from the boat with almost nothing on he knew St. Peter had sexual issues and was at least immodest in that most sublime of Biblical scenes from John 21 titled 'The Restoration of St. Peter'. He had also chastened the Disciple Nathanael at the time of his recruitment, three years earlier, for spending too much time under "The Fig Tree", (John 2: 48). And yet Nathanael is at the scene at the Sea of Tiberius to witness the risen Jesus prepare a meal for his followers and take St. Peter aside, to chasten and prepare him for the way ahead. Please God Pope Benedict XVI's successor Pope Francis is up for a restoration of the priesthood. And as a secular adult community surely we can also rise to this debate given that we see fit to rise to just about every and any other kind of bait? Let me conclude by offering a quote from the retired gay Archbishop of Milwaukee Most Reverend Rembert Weakland (1977-2002) for this is by far the wisest statement to emerge from this challenging documentary:
We're a Church of imperfect people. Jesus wasn't afraid of humanity and we shouldn't be either'