Hotline Established for Catholic Church Abuse Victims in Germany Overwhelmed by Callers
April 3rd, 2010Via: Telegraph:
An abuse hotline set up by the Catholic Church in Germany melted down on its first day of operation as more than 4,000 alleged victims of paedophile and violent priests called in to seek counselling and advice.
The numbers were far more than the handful of therapists assigned to deal with them could cope with. In the end only 162 out of 4,459 callers were given advice before the system was shut down.
Andreas Zimmer, head of the project in the Bishopric of Trier, admitted that he wasn’t prepared for “that kind of an onslaught.” The hotline is the Church’s attempt to win back trust in the face of an escalating abuse scandal that threates the papacy of German-born Pontiff Benedict XVI in Rome.
On the same day as the hotline was launched came allegations of serial abuse perperated against children by Bishop Walter Mixa – an ally and friend of the pope – when he was a priest overseeing a Catholic childrens’ home in the 70’s and 80’s.
The leader of Germany’s Roman Catholic bishops said in a Good Friday message he hoped Christianity’s most solemn day would mark a “new start” for a church buffeted by scandal.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch said Good Friday, when Christians commemorate the crucifixion of Christ, must “mark a new departure which we so badly need.”
It comes in the wake of a wave of damaging allegations about cases of paedophile priests.
Pope Benedict XVI allegedly knew about one particularly disturbing paedophile case in the United States. The Rev. Lawrence Murphy spent years molesting children at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin, but when the case came to the attention of the Vatican many years later, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then led by Cardinal Ratzinger before he became pope, declined to take action.
The pope, however, made no mention of the scandal during his pre-Easter mass at the Vatican on Thursday.
An Austrian victim support group has received reports of 174 more cases of maltreatment and sexual abuse in Roman Catholic institutions since creating a hotline two weeks ago, the group said Friday.
The Platform for Victims of Violence by the Church set up the special number amid a spate of paedophile priest scandals in Europe and the United States which have engulfed the Vatican.
“We are learning daily about the methods of education in Catholic institutions in Austria during the 1960s and 1970s,” Holger Eich, a psychologist from the group, told a press conference alongside a victim.
“They can be summed up in one word – sadism.”
People here know about Holly Greig? Abused as a child by Scotland’s chief policeman, a judge, so on? They’ve paid her off to try to shut her up (she’s also been judged to be incapable of lying by 2 psychologists, as she’s got Down’s syndrome) imprisoned people who’ve looked in to it, etc.
No, I don’t know about Holly Greig.
But yesterday, I decided not to go to the Catholic Church in which I was raised a Byzantine Catholic, because in doing so, I knew I’d be a hypocrite. My mother, I think, before her stroke, loved her church. But then had second thoughts. Such as, am I bad person, e.g. sinner because I had an incapitating stroke?
Mom used to close her eyes the minute the priest came to the house to visit her. That behavior is why I say this.
The floodgates re past behaviors of the Catholic church are open, and that people were told they were “bad people” from the moment of birth – original sin – has previously shut them up. And now that people are figuring out that they weren’t born bad, but had something outside themselves impact them – at the hands of the church- oh the hell to pay.
Sure, there might be some that are only finally getting that maybe they shouldn’t have allowed a lot of things at the behest of priests and nuns in the Catholic Church – just because they were indoctrinated as bad people from the time they entered the teachings of that Church. But a kid – I don’t care how old they are or whether deaf dumb or blind. How about the elderly, preyed on as well. Leave us your money and you’ll be redeemed in heaven.
This phone bank phenomenon is just the beginning of the tsunami that will, I think, eventually bring the downfall of the Catholic Church. I for one, will not be happy to see it, but its about time the priests and the Pope start looking at the black kettle that’s been brewing on the fire since day one.
Rewriting the Bible into what they wanted it to say – just so they could have an empire.
I believe in Jesus, just like I believe in Buddha. I’m sure in my lifetime I will learn of other enlightened beings that will show me what they learned in this life on Earth.
But the Catholic Church is not an enlightened being – its an institution – just like a bank, and its beginning to have the qualities of a bubble being burst – just like the banks and the mortgage markets, and its about damn time it happened. Red Gucchi shoes for the Pope. Give me a break. Funniest thing I’ve seen is Pink Panther II where Steve Martin does his Pope thing.
We have to laugh about it eventually. And that will heal it, not for Rome, but for the rest of us.