The Black Vault

I could care less about your dribble over the history of Confession, it remains a part of religions not just the Catholic religion today. You yourself admitted to trying to burn down the church as a kid, so that kind of makes one think, you may be imagining any priest stories as an alter boy. As I stated and I will find it to post now, many false claims against priests generated from those abused by others, not the priests, and the resulting phycological problems they got from it, led to false claims against people of authority.


The question of this thread is should the governments and court systems, regard Confessions as confidental? I say yes and so does the US Supreme court. All your philosophy about the history of Confession is irrelevant to the question of Constitutional rights. Your personal problems Tichen have no bearing on the rest of the Catholic world, nor on the laws of the USA regarding the Constitution. I assume even Canada, your country, has the same standard for Priests or clergymen, not being forced to devulge a Confession. I also assume, your country has the same attorney/client privilage.

Well Greeney, I agree on the Constitutional grounds but I take issue with morality of it. How anyone can sit on information that could very well save a life or many and potentially protect children from becoming victims? Surely that must tear at the very fiber of one's conscience. I don't think one who comes forward with such information should be prosecuted for reaching out to the authorities.

I think its the other way around, that the premise of withholding a Confession would led to a prosocution for contempt. I am with you 100% on the moral issue, however what is the price we pay for a free society? If you do not allow Priest to remain confidential, you certainly can not allow an attorney to remain confidential. First a priest is dealing with the persons soul and absolution. A lawer is only dealing with getting his client out of jail and off scott free. There is a big difference, yet we honor the right to a fair trial in this country, and how fair would anyones trial ever be, if the attorneys were required to not represent the guilty?

It is a difficult moral issue, and I agree how can a priest honor a Confession when he knows future victims may result by keeping quiet. Its a very hard question that involves our most basic rights as Americans, the freedom of religion. Were these rights in our Constitution ever intended to reach such extremes, probably not? They never imagined pronography, burning the flag, AK47's, 30 shot 9mm's, birth control or abortion. Those who wrote this stuff thought is was Ok to own slaves, so clearly didn't get the concept of human rights. Women were not even allowed to vote.

greeney2 wrote:I could care less about your dribble over the history of Confession, it remains a part of religions not just the Catholic religion today. You yourself admitted to trying to burn down the church as a kid, so that kind of makes one think, you may be imagining any priest stories as an alter boy. As I stated and I will find it to post now, many false claims against priests generated from those abused by others, not the priests, and the resulting phycological problems they got from it, led to false claims against people of authority.


The question of this thread is should the governments and court systems, regard Confessions as confidental? I say yes and so does the US Supreme court. All your philosophy about the history of Confession is irrelevant to the question of Constitutional rights. Your personal problems Tichen have no bearing on the rest of the Catholic world, nor on the laws of the USA regarding the Constitution. I assume even Canada, your country, has the same standard for Priests or clergymen, not being forced to devulge a Confession. I also assume, your country has the same attorney/client privilage.

Yup they have the same thing here about confession.

Any how I like to see how you would feel if a serial killer would confess in killing or raping little boys and girls and one of them would have been you son John.
By the way its still going on this is in today news in Quebec
Quebec priest sentenced to three years in jail for sex assaults

http://www.canada.com/news/Quebec+pries ... story.html

QUEBEC — A Quebec priest who pleaded guilty to multiple counts of sexual assault involving 13 boys who attended a private Catholic school during the 1970s and '80s was sentenced Friday to three years in jail.

You have no idea what it is to be molested by men of the cloth. Because in your mind as a child and this in the early 60's the priests represented the path to God. After all you were brainwashed that you needed confession and holy communion to enter heaven and not go to hell.
The would whip you if they caught you playing with yourself and send you to confession. Imagine what happens in a child brains when a priests tells you its ok to let the priest play with your wewe.

When the top is deprave what do you expect from the subordinates

Top Vatican Official Praised Bishop Who Covered for Child Molester

http://www.theinquiry.ca/wordpress/rc-s ... -molester/

Top Vatican Official Praised Bishop Who Covered for Child Molester

Politics Daily (politicsdaily.co)

16 April 2010

David Gibson

VATICAN CITY — In a yet another revelation in the clergy sex abuse scandal, a French Catholic news service has published a 2001 letter from a top Vatican official praising a French bishop who covered up for a priest he knew had molested numerous boys.

In October 2000, Father René Bissey was sentenced to 18 years in jail for sexually abusing 11 boys between 1989 and 1996. Bissey’s bishop, Pierre Pican of the Diocese of Bayeux-Lisieux, had known of the abuse but refused to report Bissey to French authorities and instead sent him for psychiatric treatment.

Pican’s actions resulted in his own conviction in 2001 for “failure to report a sex crime against a minor younger than 15 years old.” The bishop was sentenced to three months in prison.

That sentence led Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, then head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy — the department overseeing Catholic clergy policies around the world — to write Bishop Pican a letter effusively praising his actions in shielding the abusive priest. At the time, Castrillon Hoyos was a colleague of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI.

“I congratulate you on not having reported a priest to the civil authorities,” Castrillon Hoyos wrote to Pican on Sept. 8, 2001. “You have done well, and I rejoice at having an associate in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all the others bishops of the world, will have chosen prison rather than speaking out against his priest-son.”

Castrillon Hoyos added that he would send a copy of the letter to all the bishops’ conferences “to encourage the brothers in the episcopate in this very delicate area.”

The French online magazine Golias published the letter on March 30, but it began making waves on Thursday, prompting a late evening statement from the Vatican’s chief spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi. Lombardi said the letter from Castrillon Hoyos underscored how important it was that earlier in 2001 all clergy abuse cases were ordered to come under the jurisdiction of the Vatican’s doctrinal office, which was then headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, who was elected pope five years ago this month.
Lombardi took the unusual step of effectively throwing Castrillon Hoyos — a once-influential prelate who retired from his last senior Vatican position in 2009 — under the bus to highlight Benedict’s actions.

The Castrillon Hoyos letter praising Bishop Pican “is another confirmation of how timely was the unification of the treatment of cases of sexual abuse of minors on the part of members of the clergy under the competence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” said the Vatican statement in a translation by National Catholic Reporter. That move assured “a rigorous and coherent management” of abuse cases, the statement said.

As a wave of revelations of past abuses swept Europe in recent weeks, Ratzinger’s track record on cracking down on abusers has come in for sharp scrutiny, with reports suggesting that he was slow to move against abusers when cases came before him from 1980 up through the early 2000s.

Many of the pope’s defenders in the hierarchy, especially here in the Roman Curia, have denounced such claims, and the Vatican has pointed to the late Pope John Paul II’s decision to consolidate all abuse cases under Ratzinger as evidence of Ratzinger’s effectiveness on the issue. They say that since his election as pope on April 19, 2005, Benedict has continued to be vigilant.

The Vatican has been scrambling to get ahead of a cycle of bad press that has raised serious questions about how it has dealt with abuse cases around the world, and what it plans to do in the future.

Earlier this week, the Vatican published on its Web site a list of papal statements and documents aimed at showing that the church has been active in ferreting out abusers. The documents included a guide to understanding Vatican procedures on dealing with abusive priests that for the first time explicitly stated that abusers who have committed crimes should be reported to the civil authorities.

The phrase on reporting was a last-minute addition to the list, and it was unclear how much weight the Vatican intended to give to the guidelines, though officials insist the church has always encouraged bishops to follow relevant civil and criminal laws on reporting.

But the Castrillon Hoyos letter on the French case shows that not everyone got the memo.

Whether Ratzinger himself was on board with mandatory reporting to authorities is also unclear.

In February 2002, Ratzinger’s top lieutenant at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, said new internal church norms he and Ratzinger just completed to help bishops deal with abusers would not compel them to hand over molesters.

“It seems to me that there is no basis for demanding that a bishop, for example, be obliged to turn to civil magistrates and denounce a priest that has confided in him to have committed the crime of pedophilia,” Bertone told the Italian Catholic monthly, 30 Giorni.

After Ratzinger was elected pope, he made Bertone a cardinal and named him his secretary of state, basically the second-in-command at the Vatican. But Bertone has continued to create more controversy, such as this week when he argued that homosexuality is a cause of pedophilia.

In a related development Thursday, Benedict himself seemed to signal a softer line as he delivered a homily at a Mass in the Vatican in which he said the church must do penance because it leads to purification:

“I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word ‘penance,’ which seemed too harsh to us,” the pope said. “Now, under the attacks of the world that speak to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace.

“We see how it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is mistaken in our life.”

Benedict’s words, delivered without notes in the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace, were the closest he has come to addressing the scandal. And it was the most conciliatory note struck by a senior Vatican official of late.

Yet the pope also had some tough words for the church’s critics, saying that while the Nazi and Marxist dictatorships no longer exist as they did in the last century, there are other pressures on people to conform to a single worldview:

“A conformism under which it becomes obligatory to think as everyone thinks, to act as everyone acts, and the subtle or not so subtle aggression against the church demonstrate that this conformism really can become a real dictatorship,” he said.

………

greeney2 wrote:I think its the other way around, that the premise of withholding a Confession would led to a prosocution for contempt. I am with you 100% on the moral issue, however what is the price we pay for a free society? If you do not allow Priest to remain confidential, you certainly can not allow an attorney to remain confidential. First a priest is dealing with the persons soul and absolution. A lawer is only dealing with getting his client out of jail and off scott free. There is a big difference, yet we honor the right to a fair trial in this country, and how fair would anyones trial ever be, if the attorneys were required to not represent the guilty?

It is a difficult moral issue, and I agree how can a priest honor a Confession when he knows future victims may result by keeping quiet. Its a very hard question that involves our most basic rights as Americans, the freedom of religion. Were these rights in our Constitution ever intended to reach such extremes, probably not? They never imagined pronography, burning the flag, AK47's, 30 shot 9mm's, birth control or abortion. Those who wrote this stuff thought is was Ok to own slaves, so clearly didn't get the concept of human rights. Women were not even allowed to vote.

Grennie you said and i quote .....First a priest is dealing with the persons soul and absolution. A lawer is only dealing with getting his client out of jail and off scott free.

This is complete fallacies, Jesus Christ never gave authority to priest to deal with peoples soul. This man made religion from the CC was for control and for pecuniary reasons to build an empire.
In my eyes the Roman Catholic Church is a big joke and a big hoax

From the bible :
"I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." —Isaiah 42:8
Well the Catholic Church is full of statues and graven images. Either you beleive the bible if you are a Christian or you beleive in a man made religion which puts out doctrines and dogmas as time went goes by the centuries.


The Bible does not compromise. If you beleive that the bible is God word and that He said what He meant and meant what He said. Many of the foundational doctrines of Roman Catholicism are not found anywhere in the Bible either in the Old or New Testament. It is wrong l to reject the plain teachings of Scripture in exchange for the traditions of men .

In the bible it is clear as night and day :
It is said that God will not share His glory with another (Isaiah 42:8). In Exodus 20:3-5 we read that God is a jealous God, so jealous that we are commanded not to even bow to a statue or image. What ARE YOU ALL DOING all of you Catholics KNELLING IN FRONT OF A DEAD Jesus ON A CROSS OR LIGHTING UP CANDELES IN FRONT OF STATUES. The Egyptians sure did the same thing during Jesus time.

The bible says "Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God" -Exodus 20:3

God is more jealous than any husband or wife could ever be. It is a dangerous thing to commit idolatry. It is a sin to bow to any saint. Roman Catholicism twists the Bible, actually condoning the idolatrous glorifying of dead people (saints). It is a sin to pray to anyone or anything in an attempt to influence God. There is ONLY One Mediator between God and men-- as a Christian The Lord Jesus Christ...should be the only exception

"For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" -1st Timothy 2:5

The ONLY Way to God the Father is through God the Son. John 14:6 declares...

"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

So tell me what are you all praying in front of statues or using priests as a mediator when the old and the new testaments forbid it.


Jesus NEVER even once asked anyone to create an image of Him dying on a cross. The Catholic Church is infested with idols, crucifixes and superstitions.

It is wrong to pray or even bow to "Mother Mary." if you are a true Christian.

John the Baptist was called the greatest man born amongst men (Mathew 11:11), yet Jesus said that he that is LEAST in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John. The same is true with Mary or anyone else.

By the way, the teaching of Catholics that Mary was born without any "original sin" is absurd. The Bible does not teach any nonsense about an "Immaculate Conception" or anything about "original sin." The word "original" is not even found in the Bible.
In fact history reveals that the Catholic religion is composed today of a series of invented heresies from over the centuries.
In fact

Cardinal Newman, in his book, "The Development of the Christian Religion," admits that ... "Temples, incense, oil lamps, votive offerings, holy water, holidays and season of devotions, processions, blessing of fields, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure (of priests and monks and nuns), images ... are all of pagan origin..."

Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, for they transgressed the commandments of God by keeping their traditions. "in vain," He said, "they worship me by keeping for doctrines the commandments of men" (Matt. 15:3,9).

In 1834, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary was proclaimed by Pope Pius IX. The Bible states that all men, with the sole exception of Christ, are sinners. This is an invented dogma less than 200 years. And by the way Mary had more than one child.

In 1439, the doctrine of Purgatory was proclaimed as a dogma of faith by Council of Florence.
The Catholic heresy of the "Assumption of Mary" isn't found in the Bible.


Matthew 23:9 in the New Testament of the Bible forbids calling any man "Father" in the sense of reverence...

"And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." -Matthew 23:9

Catholics disobey the Bible by calling the priest "Father." Only God is to be reverenced by such a title. The Pope is NOT the "vicar" of God

Are Catholics as well as you ? Or perhaps Catholics just don't read the Bible.

1st Timothy 4:1-3 clearly WARNS us about cults that forbid people to eat meat (every Friday for Catholics) that was the case for hundreds of centuries with threats of going to hell if you did not confess and get the absolution prior to your death.
1st Timothy 4:1-3 clearly WARNS us about cults that forbid people getting married (Catholic celibacy laws that forbid priests from getting married).



Where does the bible teach about reciting the rosary to be performed every day. The Rosary, or prayer beads, was introduced by Peter the Hermit, in the year 1090...copied from Hindus and Mohammedans. The counting of prayers is a pagan practice and is expressly condemned by Christ (Matthew 6:5-13).

Jesus condemned chants and recited prayers...
Jesus says in the bible :

"But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." —Matthew 6:7
The mass and its prayers are continuous repetitions that is contrary to the bible. Again either you beleive the bible and the sayings of Jesus or the Catholic church with its cultist doctrines and dogmas. You cannot have it both ways

Jesus offers restful salvation to anyone who will receive it. God doesn't require us to perform sacraments or give our lives to the Catholic Church. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within our hearts, not in temples or extravagant buildings made by men. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him MUST worship Him in Spirit and in TRUTH (John 4:24).
"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." -Matthew 11:28

Salvation is found in Christ and God alone if you are a real Christian and --NOT by baptism, NOT by the sacraments, NOT by church membership, NOT by praying the rosary, NOT by sacrificing, NOT by religion, NOT by mass, NOT by the Pope, NOT by the priest... Only by God and Jesus Christ if you are a true Christian and are good to your neighbor as yourself


The Catholic Church also claims that Mary, was a perpetual virgin all of her life. Yet the Bible says this is simply not true, for Mary was a virgin until Jesus was born, and then had normal sexual relations with her husband Joseph, and had other children, see Matthew 1:23-25:

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel" - which means, "God with us." When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her "until" she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus. [Matthew 1:23-25]


It point blank and clear that Mary had sex with her husband after Jesus was born. There goes the theory that Mary was a virgin all her life. Either the bible is right or wrong. And what is wrong with having sex .
Mary and her other children
There was an incident when Jesus' mother and "brothers" (Mary's children), went to get Jesus: "When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind." [Mark 3:21]

"Someone told Jesus, 'Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.' He replied to him, 'Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?' Pointing to his disciples, Jesus said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.'" [Matthew 12:47-50]

Why are people kneeling in front of a statue representing a so called virgin when it is not true an should not be kneeling and worshiping Mary in the first place

The point that Jesus was making is that Mary, his earthly mother, had no special position or honor over any other Christian who does God's will. Mary is blessed, as was the Apostles, they were used by God in a special way, but she was never to be worshiped and elevated as the Catholics do.

In my eyes this is a dishonor to her and to Christ. The prayers of Catholics to Mary and the other saints are worth noting because there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." [1 Timothy 2:5] according to the bible

Mary is not a mediator, she can't hear us nor intervene in any way.

You and other Catholics are caught up in a great deception,








T

So you are against any law that keeps a clergy Confession confidential, but think a lawyer should be able to get a murderer off scott free if he confesses to him he did the crime? You do also understand that this applies to any clergy, so your anti catholic agenda is shinning right through.

greeney2 wrote:So you are against any law that keeps a clergy Confession confidential, but think a lawyer should be able to get a murderer off scott free if he confesses to him he did the crime? You do also understand that this applies to any clergy, so your anti catholic agenda is shinning right through.

I never said that a lawyer should get a confession ed murderer off Scott free.
On the contrary he should denounced him and have an other lawyer represent him.

Why souldn't either the priest (or other clergy) or lawyers be forced by laws to testify if the truth is guilt?

greeney2 wrote:Why souldn't either the priest (or other clergy) or lawyers be forced by laws to testify if the truth is guilt?

Because rapist child molesters and pure bloody killers ought to have sever punishments and even death sentences in certain death sentences.
Any rapist of children of 10 years under for example should have his dick and balls cut off.

Any killers than enter a home a kills people in bed in order to rob them should be putt to death

Why do you go off on another Tichen rant instead of answering a simple question? A clergy confession, and a confession to ones lawyer is confidential and protected in our and your constitution. I asked you a specific question and you have not answered, why do you think they should not be forced to devulge such confessions? You can not justify one without the other.

I agree about severe punishments, but torture is not in our justice system, but many argue over the death penalty. You name a few crimes that should be the death penalty and I agree, but that is not the question,we are discussing the concept of Confession and if those who have ben confessed to should not have to devulge it. You could consider they become co-conspiriters, and accomplices, and commit obstruction of justice with their silence, howeever it is a protected right. Why is that, if our systems are based on truth?

By the way, if you are counting crimes, IMHO arson is attempted murder and a capital crime, like trying to burn down a church.