May. 26, 2002 - 10:59 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Phantasmagoria

In science fiction and fantasy one often encounters 'shape shifters' and it seems as if we are overcome by the storied folk.

Looks as if "the good old boy' network is alive and well. Every one in the organization will back up and lie for a brother/sister in that area. That network is good at supreme shape shifting, I guess they call them 'spin doctors' now which to me is another way of describing one who can tell the truth but slanted in such a way as to make people believe just the opposite.

'Spin doctors' exist in all organizations I guess, their titles are a spin in themselves, never giving away what will be attempted. 'Spin doctoring' has affected the way history is shown in our history books. So maybe we must know that this particular activity is being pursued by most any organization and learn to look at things and say, Yeahhh---riiight !

There is one thing I have been thinking about recently. It has to do with the upper echelon of Catholicism. That denomination is truly a world wide organization which, until they divorce themselves into little separate groups, has wealth unimaginable at its disposal. There have been retreats (Yeahh --- riiight) one in New Mexico where deviant priests have been sent to keep them out of the public eye and supposedly to reform them. There is the fact that priests have been transferred to other places where they can do the rinse and repeat procedures.

There is the quibble about pedophilia which ignores the fact that abuse has been done to teenage people. Somewhere in there is the argument that it was not abuse because it was consensual. Then there is the claim that those priests who have offended were all homosexuals. Man what a spin that is.

I guess the thing that irks me the most is the massive circling of wagons in the attempt to disprove the truth. It seems to me that true issues are being ignored, glossed over and perverted to the point that the Big Organization seems to ignore the actual facts.

There is an article in our Denver Sunday Paper by Geraldine Ferraro who states at the beginning of her article that she is Catholic, but has also spent time as Chief of the Special Victims Bureau in the Queens District Attorney's Office, which handled all the sex crimes, including the sexual abuse of children. She says in part, "In that role, I heard stories, straight from the mouths of the victims, that haunt me to this day. If the tragedies I encountered daily taught me one thing, it is that sexual abuse is not about the perpetrator, its about the victim -- boys and girls, men and women who have to live with it forever." She says further, "That's why it outrages me that the voices of the victims seem not to have reached the council in Rome or, for that matter, the debates in the media and in many Catholic circles. We hear about the institutional impact on the church, about the financial costs, about the harm to congregations and again and again about the impact on innocent priests. I don't hear about the children, however, except when the church hierarchy admonishes us that many of these cases don't actually involve pedophilia, because the victims were teenagers, not children or infants."

To my way of thinking sexual abuse can happen to all ages, all sexes. I remember that once attractive women who wanted to keep their jobs had to put out for the boss or foreman yadda, yadda on into ancient history. And the lady further says, "Another sign that the cardinals don't get the point is their claim that homosexual priests are the problem here, that this is a crisis not of sexual abuse but of homosexuality. Either they don't undestand the issue or, as heterosexual men, they'd prefer to blame gays for what is obviously their own failure." Further on she has this to say, "That most of these predator's victims were boys does not mean that the abusers were gay, it simply means that boys were available and girls were not. Until recently there were no "altar girls," so predatory priests had far fewer opportunities to be alone with girls. If they had, I'm sure that at least as many girls would have been victimized."

Geraldine Ferraro has written quite an extensive article which covers many points that are truly controversial, some of which I agree with and some not. But to the extent I have covered her article, I say, "RIGHT ON ! !

There have been cases where the things happened in Protestant denominations, an abuser is an abuser regardless of the clothes he wears. But most of them don't have the massive backing and covering up and transferring that has been taking place in the subject under discussion.

I think also that harm has been done to the believing people that probably never will be resolved because when a worldwide organization covers up to the extent they have and shifting abusing priests from place to place it seems to me to be a scar forever.

I think it would only be fair for me to bring out another thing. In civil life if a man is accused of child abuse, especially sexual child abuse his real life is pretty well over even though in the end it is proved that he is not guilty. Those who falsely accuse someone of abuse of that kind are of the lowest sort of creature to my way of looking at it.

So the 'shape shifters' are present today in the current Phantasmagoria . . . . . . . . . .

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