Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 312 - The Catholic Church's Long History of Sex Scandals

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

Emotional episode today! At least for me.  We examine the Catholic Church's long history of sex scandals, including extremely troublesome recent coverups, how the priesthood came to be, whether or no...t celibacy is a realistic expectation, how the priesthood may entice pedophiles to join, and so much more. We'll examine the history of the church's views on sexuality. Why did they choose celibacy for priests? Does it have any scriptural basis? How does not allowing priests to have a sexual life (or at least forcing them to do so in secrecy) affect their psychological development/health? Mostly, we look into how long sex scandals within the church have been happening, how pervasive they are, and if they're going away anytime soon. Bad Magic Productions Monthly Patreon Donation:  In honor of the passing of Jeff Burton from the Rizzuto Show aka the Rizz Show on 105.7 FM in St Louis, we are donating (amount tbd) to Jeff's charity of choice - Kids Rock Cancer. Through the proven healing power of music therapy, Kids Rock Cancer helps children combat feelings of anxiety, depression, uncertainty, and helplessness.  To find out more, go to www.kidsrockcancer.orgWatch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lWE3nGAxS0oMerch: https://www.badmagicmerch.comDiscord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: store@badmagicproductions.com (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard?  Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits.

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 When you come into this crazy world of ours, who are you supposed to trust? Your parents, for one. Your family members, aunts, uncles, siblings. Probably your teachers, doctors, and law enforcement. And if you're one of the world's 1.36 billion Roman Catholics, your local priest. For Catholics, your priest is supposed to provide you with spiritual guidance, administering what Catholics call the sacraments. Special spiritual moments in a person's life like baptism, confirmation, confessions, holy communion, marriage, and a couple more. You're taught
Starting point is 00:00:29 to trust them with your very salvation. They are your link to the divine. A priest is supposed to engage with the community to bring everyone closer to God, be a model of the spiritual ideal of Jesus, someone compassionate, sacrificing their lives to serve their communities, giving to the poor and destitute, providing relief from the havoc and chaos the world can inflict upon you. In short, again, someone you can trust. But for so, so many people in recent years, not counting the millions of indigenous peoples forced to convert when they were colonized and or brutally conquered over the past dozen plus centuries, that trust has been broken in the worst of ways. plus centuries, that trust has been broken in the worst of ways. Beginning in the 1980s, the Catholic Church would begin to reckon with scandals of sexual abuse by priests that went back decades, if not centuries and millennia. First brought out of the national spotlight
Starting point is 00:01:14 here in the U.S. by a Louisiana priest named Gilbert Gosch, who pled guilty to 11 counts of molestation in 1985, accusations of priesthood sexual abuse, especially with minors, would skyrocket in the following decades. This would lead to a series of explosive articles published in 2002 by the Boston Globe, events that would later be made into the movie Spotlight, events that revealed not only were many priests being accused of sexual assaults, but the people they reported to, like bishops, archbishops, and cardinals were very aware of the situation and they were actively covering it up over and over again. To me, the continual and widespread cover-ups are the darkest
Starting point is 00:01:51 part of this whole series of scandals. Instead of doing what was obviously the right thing and making sure that the victims and families got justice, church officials, time and time again, moved accused priests from parish to parish, letting these predators start fresh in a new place with access to new potential victims. Prisoners who didn't know they'd been fed to the wolves by the very same people who were supposed to be their shepherds. While these false shepherds did disgusting damage control, offering up settlements with confidentiality clauses, and then having those documents carefully sealed and put where nobody could access them. This was the case for thousands and thousands of priests. These were not isolated incidents.
Starting point is 00:02:29 This was a pattern. New allegations and horrifying discoveries about this abuse are still coming out today. In the scandals that followed these increasing allegations, many of the accused priests were forced to resign or were laicized, meaning kicked out of the priesthood. Some, but not nearly enough, were charged and convicted of crimes. But none of them would have ever been punished had the church been left to its own discretions. Only outside secular public pressure finally forced the church to act.
Starting point is 00:02:55 And even then, the church dragged its feet and also has continued to hide the truth and try and silence victims. The dioceses in which the crimes were committed made financial settlements with the victims that are estimated to have surpassed $3 billion in total in just the U.S. and just by 2012. Still not enough. The revelations nationwide led to a supposed zero-tolerance policy by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, but even though the church claims to have turned a new leaf, it might not be the case. In December of 2019, for example, it was revealed that numerous bishops across the U.S. were still withholding
Starting point is 00:03:29 hundreds of names of known predators from the accused clergy list they were supposed to publicize, even as Pope Francis publicly denounced sexually abusive priests and higher-ups who covered for them. Sexual abuse has been a massive problem for the Catholic Church. It is still a massive, disgusting, entirely avoidable problem, and we're going to cover it today. The horrific problem of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. Please don't be foolish enough to think that God's supposed spiritual advisors can ever be blindly trusted, especially with their children. The Church does not know God's will better than we do.
Starting point is 00:04:00 Rage and vengeful wrath edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday, meat sacks. Welcome once again to the Cult of the Curious. Intense episode for you today. We'll see if this reading of the notes brings about as much anger in me as it did during the research. If so, you're going to really see this vein in my forehead if you watch this show bulge a lot today.
Starting point is 00:04:40 Dan Cummins, Suck Nasty, High Priest of Nimrod, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise Bojangles, and glory be to Triple M. Might need the help of all of you to try and stay calm today. A couple of announcements, and then, of course, another big show. Uh, last week when I recorded, I hoped I had a blast at the Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp. Well, I sure as shit did. Uh, thank any of you listening who went to camp. Man, it was fucking magical. It really was. Hard should did. Uh, thank any of you listening who, who went to camp, man, it was fucking magical.
Starting point is 00:05:05 It really was hard to describe, like blew my expectations away for a year. One event. Uh, can we improve on a lot? Sure. Are we working on that right now? Yep.
Starting point is 00:05:15 Uh, this was a test event to find out if we wanted to do it again next year. And we sure do, uh, listing off the events really just doesn't do it justice. You know, uh, silly kickoff karaoke contest on a big outdoor stage,
Starting point is 00:05:26 you know, live scared to death, you know, a podcast recording told in the dark by the lake, big, well, we'll see if the recording comes out. We told the stories for sure live. Drag show, rave dance party, arts and crafts stuff, you know, big play area by the lake, so much alcohol, so much food with all the food trucks and more, like truly like summer camp for adults, a place for childlike fun. And what made it special was the people who came, the sense of
Starting point is 00:05:49 community, a bunch of introverts, mainly showing up alone, many of them on Friday or Saturday, and then having new close friends by Sunday. People with so many different looks and beliefs from so many different places coming together and just being so supportive and fucking cool. The camp staff freaked out at first by the constant chants of cult, cult, cult. And then they said no group had ever left the campground so clean. No group had ever been so polite, treated the staff and security with so much kindness and respect. There were so many laughs, so many tears of joy. It really was a, you had to be there kind of deal. And it was just fucking special. So thanks again, again, all of you who attended.
Starting point is 00:06:26 Don't miss out next year. We hope to make it bigger and better, but still keep the heart of this year's event. So hail fucking Nimrod to that. Now for some charity information. In honor of the passing of Jeff Burton from the Rizzuto Show, a.k.a. the Rizz Show, on 105.7 The Point, speaking of good meat sacks in St. Louis, they got an awesome crew there who've always been supportive of this show. And this month we are donating to Jeff's charity of choice, Kids Rock Cancer. What an amazing man.
Starting point is 00:06:53 While Jeff was literally dying of cancer himself, instead of wanting money for his own struggle, he wanted to help others. Raised over $35,000 the last months of his life. Just a special person. Kids Rock Cancer is an innovative program that helps children successfully cope with the unique emotional challenges
Starting point is 00:07:10 that accompany a cancer diagnosis. Through the proven healing power of music therapy, Kids Rock Cancer helps children combat feelings of anxiety, depression, uncertainty, and helplessness. You can find out more by going to kidsrockcancer.org. So rest in peace, Jeff. I hope you're sipping on martinis and listening to some Blue October out there in the ether. Amount we're donating TBD due to recording this ahead of time. A little bit of merch info now, as you know,
Starting point is 00:07:36 the Suck Dungeon here in the Pacific Northwest in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which means, you know, of course we see Sasquatch all the time. You remember that elusive fellow from Suck 26? You know, David Childress and I, maybe we see him once a week. But a clear photo is still hard to get. And that's why we finally invited a local Sasquatch named Greg. Of course, Greg the Squatch, to come and sit for the world's first Sasquatch portrait. Modern photography seems to be the issue as a vintage tin type print was successful in capturing Greg's image. So head on over to badmagicmerch.com and check it out. Also celebrate the rest of Labor Day with us if you're enjoying this. Right when it comes out, enjoy 22% off the Bad Magic store.
Starting point is 00:08:15 Use code LABOR22 at checkout to redeem your site-wide discount. Today's the last day. So head on over to badmagicmerch.com and grab some savings. And finally, get some stand-up tickets. Huntsville, Alabama, kicking off the fall tour this Thursday, September 8th. The Symphony of Insanity continues. Nashville this weekend, September 9th and 10th. South Florida in just a few weeks.
Starting point is 00:08:37 The Miami-Fort Lauderdale area on September 23rd and 24th. Palm Beach on the 25th. Boston, October 6th to the 8th. Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th Palm beach on the 25th, Boston, October 6th to the 8th Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 21st, 22nd, 23rd, then Austin,
Starting point is 00:08:49 Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, Portland, Oregon, finishing the fall in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Parkway theater for a few prep shows and a special taping December 9th and 10th.
Starting point is 00:08:57 Tickets go on sale next week. I'll share info also for a big theater tour this winter, starting in January, hitting a bunch of markets. I've wanted to go to for a while now. Transitioning from Symphony of Insanity to the Burn It All Down Tour. Links to these tickets and more info at dancummins.tv. Okay, more info than usual I know.
Starting point is 00:09:18 I'm a fucking busy guy doing some different things. But now I'm going to focus on this week's topic. The Catholic Church's history of sex scandals. Before I get into it, just know that it's going to be fucking rough. If you're Catholic, also know that some of the best friends I have ever had have been Catholic. My mother-in-law, one of the finest humans I've ever known, currently a practicing Catholic, lifelong practicing Catholic. I went to Gonzaga Jesuit University.
Starting point is 00:09:44 Had a great relationship with a lot of the priests there. Didn't get diddled by a single one. No, but I truly, I received a wonderful education. But this shit we're covering today, whoo-wee. I know the church engages in a lot of great works of philanthropy, helping communities and provided hope and positive change and spiritual sustenance to many. But fucking nothing excuses the cover-ups that the heads of the church have committed and continue to commit. And I'm going to, in some moments, really tear this religion a new asshole.
Starting point is 00:10:20 Which unfortunately seems fitting based on what many representatives of the church have done. So here we go. So how are we going to cover this behemoth of a topic? We'll start by getting our lay of the land, briefly going over the structure of the Catholic church, who reports to who, what kind of oversight these religious leaders are supposed to have, and the massive scale of the church that would show just how large the sex abuse problem was and still is. Next, we'll get into the extent of the abuse before examining why this issue seems particular to priests. If, for instance, priests are more likely to be pedophiles than other people, or if there's anything about the church that would foster these issues amongst their ranks more than they happen to occur in the general population.
Starting point is 00:11:03 Then we'll briefly describe the church's response to these issues and evaluate how the responses have changed over time and if things are better and or going to get better. Finally, we'll dive into a time suck timeline detailing just some of the many stories going back to nearly the beginning of the church itself to see how this problem has evolved. The massive media coverage that would come
Starting point is 00:11:22 at the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st century, and where we find ourselves today. So let's fucking go. Church of Nimrod, deep diving on the Church of Rome today. Before we get into the sexual abuse scandal as a whole, I'm going to take a peek at the structure of the Catholic Church. One of the main things that the 2002 Boston Globe articles would expose was how the structures of the church would mobilize once a priest was accused of sexual assault. Bishops communicating with bishops to send priests to other parishes.
Starting point is 00:11:51 Officials reporting to the Vatican who did their best to keep everything under wraps and more. So overviewing the structure now. The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Rome. Still centuries after the Protestant Reformation, the largest Christian church in the world with over 1.3 living billion people baptized as of 2019. And Christianity is the largest religion in the world with almost 2.4 billion adherents. Catholicism has the biggest single church as well, St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City, most massive church on earth. Interior area of over 163,000 square feet.
Starting point is 00:12:32 Pretty impressive for a structure completed in the early 17th century. It's a big, beautiful church. I took a tour of it years ago. Very impressive. Took over 120 years to build. Replaced the previous basilica that had been built in the 4th century by Constantine the Great. The Catholic Church is the world's oldest and largest continually functioning institution of any kind, and it has played an incredibly important role in developing Western civilization. There are very few remote corners of the world that it hasn't had at least a big hand in shaping, with its missionaries even infiltrating Asian
Starting point is 00:13:01 nations, for example, that have long leaned you know, leaned towards Eastern faiths. We've covered a lot of this, or at least touched on it in our episode on the Dark Ages, as well as in many other sucks. You know, the Dante's Inferno suck, other sucks that have taken place in medieval Europe, and just about anywhere that's been touched by the Catholic Church, whether that be through colonization, conflict, and so on.
Starting point is 00:13:20 So it's basically everywhere. Who's in charge of this massive and longstanding institution? Dick is. At the top of it all is the Pope, currently Pope Richard Shiner, aka Pope Dick Shiner. He followed the previous Pope, Pope Peter Heider. Come on, JK. JK, of course. Now the current Pope is Pope Francis, aka his birth name of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, a.k.a. his birth name of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, formerly the Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Popes get to pick their name, often assuming the name of a previous pope whom they admired or whose work they hope to continue or emulate. Pope Francis chose the name Francis in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, who lived from 1181 or 1182 until 1226.
Starting point is 00:14:05 A man who lived a life of humble service to the poor. Also after St. Francis Xavier, a 16th century founding member of the Jesuit order. Tradition dictates that the names other than saints or previous popes, excluding Peter, considered the first pope, simply off limits. So yeah, you're supposed to name yourself after a previous pope or a saint
Starting point is 00:14:23 is what you're supposed to. But theoretically, a pope could pick any name. They can pick any name they want. And since they're Pope, no one can tell them to get rid of it. No one can make them get rid of it or kick them out. The Pope has supreme authority in the Catholic church, cannot be judged according to canon law. Only their voluntary self-removal or death ends their papacy.
Starting point is 00:14:45 Isn't that crazy? Some Pope could actually call themselves Pope Dick Shiner. He could jerk off in front of the faithful. There would be no precedent to remove him from the papacy. He could theoretically, during his first papal address, shit into his hand, then wipe that shit on a baby's head. Tell the cardinals to eat his dick. Strip naked, light his pubic hair on fire.
Starting point is 00:15:05 Sing a couple verses of ACDC's Thunderstrahlhook. Right? Scream Pope out. Fucking throw the mic at someone. Wave his middle fingers around. Sneak back into the Vatican and still be Pope. He could walk out later for a second address and say, sorry I'm late. Been real busy fucking some more kids.
Starting point is 00:15:22 It's never gonna stop. I'm gonna fuck all your kids before I'm done with this shit. Fuck the fuck are you going to do about it? I'm the closest motherfucker alive to Jesus Christ. Right? And then just fucking walk back up. Maybe wipe some more shit on the baby. Guessing tithing and attendance would drop dramatically if he did stuff like that. But he could do that and still be
Starting point is 00:15:38 Pope. Only one Pope has stepped down since 1415. And that was Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI who stepped down since 1415. And that was Francis's predecessor, Pope Benedict the 16th, who stepped down due to declining health. Still alive. He was 85. He's 95 now.
Starting point is 00:15:51 He is the extremely rare living former Pope. No Pope has been deposed in almost a thousand years. And canon law has changed since then to make it harder to depose a Pope. Anyway, Pope Francis has been the head of the Catholic Church and the sovereign or ruler of Vatican City since 2013. Pope is elected by cardinals following the death or resignation of a Pope. No limit to how many years a Pope can hold office.
Starting point is 00:16:17 Office of the Pope is referred to as the papacy and the Holy See is a central governing body of the church. The Roma Curia or cardinals help the Pope to complete his duties. Cardinals are leading bishops and members of the College of Cardinals. Biggest duty is participating in the Papal Conclave, which is voting for the new Pope. Technically, any Roman Catholic male can be elected Pope. But since 1379, every Pope has been selected from the College of Cardinals. The group casting the votes at the conclave.
Starting point is 00:16:46 They're not actually going to school. Many of the cardinals are bishops and archbishops appointed by the pope to assist in religious issues. Most have additional duties, including missions within the Roma Curia, governing body of the Holy See. To be eligible to attend these votes, cardinals must be below the age of 80. So they cut it off as 80. As of August 8th, 2022, there are 206 cardinals, 116 of whom are cardinal electors. The rest are too old.
Starting point is 00:17:14 A lot of fucking old ass priests, bishops out there. Most recent consistory for the creation of cardinals was held November 28th, 2020, when Pope Francis created 13 more cardinals, including nine cardinal electors. It just keeps increasing as the overall size of Catholicism keeps increasing, kind of like the Electoral College in the U.S. All cardinals made cardinals by a pope. Got to get that fucking pope stamp to be cardinal.
Starting point is 00:17:42 A pope stamp is similar to a mushroom stamp. The pope has to whip his dick on your forehead. Pa! You're a cardinal! Pa! You're a cardinal! Pah! You're a cardinal! Pah! You're a... No, I don't know No, they just name you Now moving down to the second highest, former bishop, the archbishop Archbishops are particularly important bishops They oversee large areas of churches Called archdioceses
Starting point is 00:18:00 Or archdioceses Their title comes from a Greek word meaning Sexy kids and secret fingers. You only get to be archbishop if you molest at least 100 kids. Church fact! No, or gosh dang. Archbishop comes from a Greek word meaning chief.
Starting point is 00:18:14 Has nothing to do, thank God, with pedophilia. The largest Catholic diocese in the US by Catholic population are Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Boston. A diocese is a district under the pastoral care of a bishop in the Christian church, in the Catholic Christian church. As of 2017, the U.S. had 45 archbishops
Starting point is 00:18:34 and bishops report directly to archbishops when in need of assistance or guidance. Basically, the archbishop is the manager of the bishops for a certain area. So what are bishops? Bishops are ministers who hold the full sacrament of holy orders. They're basically, they've been ordained
Starting point is 00:18:49 to the fullest extent possible by promising to proclaim the gospel and by providing to Catholics other means to achieve holiness. Catholics trace the origins of bishops to the time of the apostles, who were endowed with a spiritual gift, according to Christian lore, by the Holy Spirit.
Starting point is 00:19:04 Bishops are required to be 35 years know, lore by the Holy Spirit. Bishops are required to be 35 years old, ordained as priests at least five years prior, and to hold a doctorate in theology. They are believed to hold expertise in canon law and sacred scripture. It also seems like, unfortunately, a lot of them are experts in keeping secrets. Keeping secrets seems to be a very important and common characteristic that too many bishops have. Bishops reach their retirement age at 75 years old. At this time, they are to submit their resignation to the Pope,
Starting point is 00:19:29 who will then work with them to determine a suitable replacement. Popes, cardinals, archbishops, all different types of bishops. The Pope ordains bishops. Bishops alone have the right to confirm, ordain members of the clergy. Their main duties are to supervise the clergy within their diocese. A diocese. My gosh, that's a weird word to say. Below them are priests,
Starting point is 00:19:49 if you're not raised Catholic, I guess. To become a priest, one must undertake the rite of ordination. This ordains them into the priesthood. During the ceremony, they promise to uphold the duties of priesthood and to obey their superiors. They should maybe start also
Starting point is 00:20:02 promising to never fuck kids. I'm gonna be a great priest, and I'm not going to fuck one kid. Something like that. Not sure that would stop anything, but this is so pervasive, it feels like they should do that. Once a priest, individuals are able to perform the ceremony of the Eucharist, take confession, perform
Starting point is 00:20:18 anointing the sick. Priests are also able to perform holy matrimony. There are two types of priests within the Catholic church, religious and diocesan. Diocesan priests lead individual parishes. They serve the people within their own parish and are not required to take the same vows
Starting point is 00:20:33 as religious priests, but they do make promises of obedience and celibacy. Usually, experts say as many as 120 Catholic priests in the U.S. are currently married. Does that surprise you? It surprised me. More surprising, they're not even married to little boys. They're married to adult women. Didn't see that coming.
Starting point is 00:20:51 They're married because of a policy change made by Pope John Paul II in 1980, which offered a path for married Episcopal priests to continue their ministries after converting to Catholicism. Still very rare to have a priest who doesn't have to be celibate though. This may change in the future. It's getting harder and harder for the church in many parts of the world to find new worthy candidates for priesthood who are willing to be celibate, which makes sense because forced celibacy is fucking stupid. More on why I'm saying that later. Diocesan priests live on monthly salaries, their meals, lodging provided to them by the parish They also may wear whatever clothes they choose outside of service
Starting point is 00:21:29 This type of priest is more common in secular countries Without a strong traditional Catholic population Religious priests, however, vow themselves to a religious order Such as the Jesuits They wear a particular religious garb for that order Take additional vows, such as a vow of poverty Sometimes of silence Priests are unable to hold personal possessions particular religious garb for that order. Take additional vows, such as a vow of poverty, sometimes of silence. Priests are unable to hold personal possessions. They own very little other than their clothes. They typically live in a group house alongside other members of the order.
Starting point is 00:21:55 A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice, usually composed of lay people and, in some orders, clergy. Popular Catholic orders are the Jesuits, Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians. I started at Gonzaga, which is a Jesuit university, and loved it. Really valued my education. The Jesuits are big on education. The order was founded by Ignatius of Loyola and six companions with the approval of Pope Paul III
Starting point is 00:22:29 in 1540. The society engaged in evangelism and apostolic ministry. So many words you only read. In 112 nations, Jesuits work in education, research, and cultural pursuits. Typically, priests are not provided with a salary, must follow the orders of their superiors.
Starting point is 00:22:50 Under them are deacons, or priests in training. These men are also referred to as seminarians and are students of the Catholic Church. They are generally in their last phase of training for priesthood. They maintain this role generally for 12 months. Deacons can be married or single, but are almost always single. If they're not married at the time they are ordained,
Starting point is 00:23:09 they cannot marry afterwards and are expected to live a life of celibacy. Important to note, all these roles are limited to men only. According to Catholic doctrine, priests are supposed to represent
Starting point is 00:23:20 the likeness of Jesus, a male figure. No ladies. Dicks only, motherfuckers. God loves dicks. Never forget that. God loves dicks, hates puss. Sorry, ladies, but if you don't have a Jesus dick,
Starting point is 00:23:33 you can fuck right off. You can't talk to God. Bros before hoes and shit. And you can't lead a congregation. God's faithful. Tough titties. The Catholic argument is not, J. Kane, that women are not suitable to represent the male figure of Christ
Starting point is 00:23:45 Fuck yeah bro I mean gross Oh not cool No the Catholic church is extremely patriarchal Which if you think about it Is another way of saying extremely misogynistic Is it maybe time to end all that Out with the old
Starting point is 00:23:59 In with the new and improve maybe Hail Lucifina Women do have other important Albeit considerably lesser roles in the church. They can be nuns, for example, but none of the roles they play have the decision-making capacity and the power that the priesthood has. Nuns can do things like serve in soup kitchens, volunteer in nurseries, wear sweet hats, help build programs, work on housing for the poor. They can offer counseling for young mothers, female convicts, other women seeking spiritual
Starting point is 00:24:24 advice, but don't have the power of priests. Certainly don't have the power of any of the other positions above priests that we went over. In other words, they're denied access to the top of the hierarchy and thus cannot make important decisions like decisions that could protect some of the least powerful people in the Catholic hierarchy. People like children, who can protect the children in the Catholic church, meet sex with dicks, dudes with dicks that probably work, but who aren't allowed to come. Yes. Even masturbation is regarded as a breach of celibacy. Let's put sexually frustrated dudes in charge of kids. What could possibly ever go wrong with that? Uh, God's glorious and infallible
Starting point is 00:25:02 celestial wisdom. Amen. Uh uh now that we've covered some basic hierarchy let's talk about some of the abuse what those explosive 2002 boston globe articles and many other accounts would allege is that bishops and sometimes archbishops and possibly the pope knew about sexual abuse allegations for years maybe for centuries uh these fuckers knew this true extent of the sexual abuse problem long, long before they ever did anything about it. There have been so many allegations, like so much smoke around this fire, like a fucking crazy amount. So many allegations, it's almost impossible to conceptualize the scope of the abuse. Rampant is a word that comes to mind. Pervasive. Forget about all the abuse that likely has occurred
Starting point is 00:25:45 over the previous centuries. Let's just first look at recent reports. An independent inquiry in 2021 included that there were approximately 216,000 victims of sexual abuse, mostly young boys, carried out just by the French Catholic churches, clergy, between 1950 and 2020. This inquiry found that the number of children abused in France could rise to
Starting point is 00:26:06 330,000 when taken into account abuses committed by lay members of the church, like teachers at Catholic schools. And the abuse was carried out by somewhere between 2,900 and 3,200 abusers, the overwhelming majority of which were priests. And again, it's just, that's one country and just what one group of investigators found. How many kids never came forward from those years in that country? The real number could, I mean, literally be in the millions. Australia, a country that doesn't seem to kick out a lot of scandals when it comes to what's published in global news sources,
Starting point is 00:26:37 set up a Royal Commission, top level inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse in 2013. The commission said in February of 2017, that most of the sexual abuse carried out by the Catholic church in that country had taken place, you know, in the churches with 7% of Catholic priests accused of abusing children in Australia between 1950 and 2010 said allegations were almost never investigated,
Starting point is 00:26:59 found that 4,444 alleged incidents. It's weird that it's all fours, of child sexual abuse had been reported to church authorities and some dioceses. More than 15% of the priests were known to be, you know, perpetrators of abuse. More than 15%.
Starting point is 00:27:16 Meanwhile, a German bishops conference study in 2018 revealed widespread sexual abuse by German clergy. Basically, any inquiry into Catholic sex scandals in any country has revealed a lot of abuse. This found that 1,670 clergymen had committed some type of sexual attack against 3,677 minors, mostly boys under the age of 13, between 1946 and 2014. While saying this was almost certainly a gigantic underestimate of the real total. In Ireland, one of the world's most Catholic countries, the number of underage victims estimated in one investigation at nearly 15,000 victims between 1970 and 1990 alone.
Starting point is 00:27:55 Again, this is based on just reported abuse. In the 20th century, there was so much stigma when it came to male-on-male sexual abuse. I have to think that the numbers, the real numbers are way fucking higher than these. More than 70 bishops and priests accused of either abusing or covering up abuse have been legally punished so far for their crimes in Ireland. How many hundreds or thousands have not though? In the US alone, according to lawyers, more than 11,000 complaints have been lodged by victims of priests. Dioceses have paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in court settlements.
Starting point is 00:28:28 Well, I mean, now it's billions. Grand jury investigation into Pennsylvania dioceses in 2018 exposed a systematic cover-up by the Church of Abuse by over 300 predator priests. More than 1,000 child victims cited, right? That's one fucking state. Over 300 predator priests. Wonder how many of them are in prison right now. Less than 10 for sure. From what I can gather snooping around online,
Starting point is 00:28:51 there's a good chance that zero, zero of them currently behind bars. Everything's been handled with lawsuits or just, you know, really not handled. One year alone, in one year alone, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reported over 4,000 child sexual abuse allegations. These allegations filed by 3,924 abuse survivors from July 1st, 2019 through June 30th, 2020.
Starting point is 00:29:15 Further investigation revealed incidents involving more than 27,000 individual clergy members from across the country. So more than 27,000 faithful Catholics, priests, pastors, Sunday school teachers, all of them, you know, probably fucking kids. To date, more than 6,000 Catholic clergy members have been credibly accused of sexual abuse in the U.S. That's a lot. Many of these accusations of abuse date back decades. And many of the clergy members who have been accused by multiple victims are now deceased.
Starting point is 00:29:41 They died as revered men of God, never punished for their heinous transgressions. These U.S. numbers come from only a limited number of dioceses. Many of them haven't reported. So again, the real number is probably way higher than any of these numbers. Many dioceses and religious orders still haven't released their list of priests accused of abuse.
Starting point is 00:30:01 They refused. So what the fuck are they hiding? And yeah, and again, how many victims, you know, even in the areas that have been, where there's been reports, just never came forward with their allegations. Look at all these numbers. Easy to see that the Catholic church has,
Starting point is 00:30:15 you know, a fucking huge problem with sexual abuse. And that begs the question, why? Why are so many priests complete fucking scumbags? Well, the answer is clear. David Icke, many of the other most brilliant minds of our time have been saying for years that the church of Rome, the Vatican, long ago bought and paid for by the Illuminati, all Catholics worship Satan. Church fact, you can print that, all of them. It's amazing that they even ever have time to talk considering how
Starting point is 00:30:41 often Satan has his dick in their mouth. The reptilian elites have owned the papacy since the very beginning. Of course they diddle, kids. They have to torment them to make their adrenochrome more powerful, potent, and tasty. The fear and pain feeds the reptilians. The adrenochrome keeps the evil priests and bishops quasi-immortal, powerful enough to continue to suppress the darkest of their secrets. These molestation scandals fucking tip the iceberg. Wait until the mainstream press realizes how many kids are working as slaves inside the hollow earth right now, getting tortured, fucked daily, when not building more tunnels and dwellings and mining monatomic gold for the lizard people. Wait until most people realize that most cast of kids past the age of 13
Starting point is 00:31:18 are fucking clones of the real original kids now trapped inside the hollow earth, living in fuckboy cages. Wake up, sheeple. JK. But looking into all of this, I mean, it is pretty easy to see why the Catholic church and the Pope, why they show up in all kinds of conspiracies involving Satanist sexually abusing kids. I mean, right? For real, why do so many priests appear to be scumbags? Why are so many priests being leveled with these heinous accusations? Why does the Catholic church seem to have such an unhealthy relationship with sex in general? Well, it's something that's hard to untangle, but many researchers have suggested it goes back to
Starting point is 00:31:52 some of the foundational ideas the church has about sex. So let's examine some of those ideas now. The Catholic church, and sorry, my voice is just a little different than normal, blew it out at summer camp. The Catholic church claims to maintain the idea that, the ideas that Jesus set forth in the gospels about how to live a good godly life, including ideas on how to handle one's sexuality. So what does that look like? Let's look at some of the ideas that came before Jesus
Starting point is 00:32:17 to compare and contrast, right? Long before Jesus, in the early days of Middle Eastern civilization, the Hittite empire of the second millennium BCE, the Hittites were generally open about sexual activity, but they also believed that it made a person ritually unclean and that the Hittite gods were fussy about that. To use the Hittite scholar, Trevor Bryce's term.
Starting point is 00:32:42 He describes how a Hittite priest who had sex with his wife and presented himself to the gods without spending the night purifying himself first would forfeit his life. So here we go. Here's this idea. Sex is dirty. Why? Because pussy's dirty.
Starting point is 00:32:58 Ancient misogyny. Ancient fear and confusion surrounding the complexity of female genitalia, I'm guessing, is the cause of some of this. It bleeds, it secretes lubricant, it is, if not properly taken care of, a breeding ground for bacteria. So, you know, it's dirty. It must be dirty. And in ancient times, I'm sure dirtier than a lot of other body parts because, you know, it's a wet hole that a lot of people didn't know how to take care of yet. Ancient women, they had it rough in that regard. They had it rough in a lot of regards, parts because, you know, it's a wet hole that a lot of people didn't know how to take care of yet. Ancient women, they had it rough in that regard. They had it rough in a lot of regards, but also in that regard. But that doesn't make sex an insult to God.
Starting point is 00:33:31 It just makes it something confusing to ancient people. It's almost like God is usually created in man's image, not the other way around. Ancient man is afraid of pussy, so God must be too. Hail Lucifino. She says, fuck that noise. Nimrod loves her pussy, by the way. Nothing dirty about it Hail Nimrod as well
Starting point is 00:33:47 God who loves pussy, ass, dick All the body parts that feel good When you know how to use them Anyway the ancient Israelites Had similar ideas as the ancient Hittite empire Though they had less drastic remedies For example during their years in Sinai A man who had a nocturnal omission
Starting point is 00:34:03 Had to leave camp for the day, then thoroughly wash himself before returning that evening. That is weird that they chose to write about that. If you have a wet dream, you got to fucking get away from camp. Get that dirty cum away from us. Again, they probably just really didn't know what it was. A lot of confusion. Josephus, a first century Romano-Jewish historian, military leader, does tell a story of a high priest who had a conversation with his wife in a dream on the night of Yom Kippur
Starting point is 00:34:30 and then had to be hurriedly replaced by a substitute priest for the morning service. Weird. I guess that conversation must've involved some fucking. So wet dreams frowned upon in the quest for purity in ancient times. How fucking stupid. Sex can be so much more than just a base carnal desire.
Starting point is 00:34:48 It can also be divine. These guys really had the wrong angle on fucking back then. It also feels like the mainstream Western religions of today were created by ancient sex-hating weirdos. Ever think that the apostles might have been a big group of sexually frustrated social outcasts? I mean, at least some of them. These examples reflect ancient laws of ritual purity and cleanliness,
Starting point is 00:35:07 not accusations of sin. But I think they set, you know, the tone. They laid the groundwork for sex to become sinful. Israelite men required to come before Yahweh absolutely clean and pure with no trace of sexual activity upon them. What they did at other times was their business. In fact, there's actually a lot of openness about sex in the Old Testament. The opening chapter of 1 Kings is the story of King
Starting point is 00:35:29 David in his old age, unable to get an erection. And then his servants scour the country for a beautiful virgin who could heat him up. Hi-oh, sarsaparilla, away! Also in the Old Testament. A lot of horny dudes, fucking all kinds of women, combined with a lot of pressure on women to be virgins and be faithful Not so much pressure on men. Why is that? Is that god's will? Is that a reflection of the divine or is that because lineage was so important to empire building and land ownership back then? In the days before paternity tests Right got to know who your sons are to know who inherits the kingdom or the farm And you can't know that if your wife is pumping out your neighbor's kits.
Starting point is 00:36:09 Ancient concepts of sexual sin, as I see it, are born out of practicality for the times, not based on anything celestial, which is why I think it is incredibly ignorant to hang on to these old, very outdated ideas today. When are more of us finally going to wake up and burn a lot of this shit down so we can move past it and evolve into a better spiritual life? Refocusing on Old Testament sexuality, there's the Song of Songs. An ode to physical love is something to be enjoyed with lines like, his mouth is delicious and all of him is delightful. Oh, fuck yeah, bro. Get that dick wet. There was, however, a small sect in the late Second Temple days
Starting point is 00:36:40 that were known for discomfort with sexuality. The Qumran community, what most researchers think was a branch of the Essenes, a mystic Jewish sect that flourished from second century BCE to the first century CE. They lived on a dry plateau, less than a mile from the Northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Mystics are by and large, let's be honest,
Starting point is 00:37:01 fucking weirdos, extremists. Want to dedicate your life to pursuit of the knowledge of the divine and abstain from sex to do that? Alright, cool. Go for it. Want all of us to do that? How about you fuck off? There goes the species. We kind of have to keep fucking to keep all this going. Or at least we did before in vitro fertilization. Also, fucking
Starting point is 00:37:18 is so much fun, right? Let us fuck, creepy mystics. Let my people fuck. We'll get the spiritual answers we need once we're dead and our genitals are rotting. Ancient historians, Josephus, Philo, Pliny, the elder, all described the Essenes as preferring celibacy to marriage. Some scholars say it was because they saw themselves as purer than the priests and wholly consecrated to worship. Again, extremists. This wasn't really something that the overall jewish culture loved and the
Starting point is 00:37:45 israelis did never attract a large following again religious extremists but they did attract one very important member follower john the baptist believed to have lived with the qumran community for several years although he declined to become a full initiate john the baptist would bring these ideas about sex it is is thought, over to Christianity. So just fucking great. Thanks a lot. The Jesus of the Bible wouldn't say a whole lot about sexuality, but what he did say mirrored mystical ideas about celibacy that existed during his time and place in history. It is better not to marry, he says in the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 19.12, he implies that the highest status is that of eunuchs. Dude, is that nuts? For there are some eunuchs which were so born from their mother's womb, and there are some
Starting point is 00:38:30 eunuchs which were made eunuchs of men, and there be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Gosh dang. What I just heard was, cut those nuts off, bro. Get those nuts gone. I know these verses are interpreted a thousand different ways by thousands of different denominations, but I just heard, cut off them nuts. How come when Marshall Applewhite from the Heaven's Gate cult says shit like that, we can all laugh at how crazy it is. But when Jesus says it, we consider divine truth. If you're religious, can you at least see how from an outside perspective like mine, all this shit is essentially the same crazy.
Starting point is 00:39:10 Early Christians believed that Jesus's second coming was imminent, meant that they believed that they would have new spiritual bodies there, not their old physical ones. Therefore, they felt that these bodies would be sexless. Sexless, yeah, just like the angels. But did you know that there's zero scriptural basis for angels not having sexual organs? That's not in the Bible. I've looked, I've researched. There's a lot of great Christian sites out there for biblical research. Doesn't come up. Nada. The whole image of a muscular dude with wings being an angel, not script, no scriptural basis for that. There are
Starting point is 00:39:39 winged angels in the Bible, but they're, they're more monsters than men, uh, from Ezekiel chapter, chapter one. and this was their appearance. They had the likeness of a man and everyone had four faces. Everyone had four wings. Their feet were straight feet and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot. And they sparkled the color of burnished brash. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides and they four had their faces and their wings. So much of a modern Christian doctrine has fuck all to do with scripture.
Starting point is 00:40:10 Everything to do with the imaginations of men who live centuries after the events of the Bible. Someone started making up some shit about what God wants today, we call them crazy, heretic, cult leader, fraud. Someone does that centuries ago, yeah, maybe they were a saint. Important early architect of the church.
Starting point is 00:40:25 Basically dudes living in the first few centuries CE thought angels didn't have dicks or pussies because why bother continuing to populate the world when there would shortly be no need for human beings? Some mystics then took this further, thought why bother to get married when there's going to be no sex in heaven? The end's coming soon, right?
Starting point is 00:40:40 What was the point of getting tied up with worldly responsibilities like taking care of spouse, children, and a household, when the when the end times are coming then as centuries progress this idea is pushed further and further off when the world doesn't end they need to reframe right the religion needs to grow which means there need to be babies and therefore sex but still from the earliest days there's still a notion that sex is bad it It all gets fucking woven together, becomes a very interesting and frankly, very damaging paradox. So the origins of celibacy, it comes from a big pile of gobbledygook of nonsense. St. Paul, a celibate Christian leader who wrote most of the New Testament, thought of
Starting point is 00:41:17 practicing celibacy as taking the higher road towards God, since it allows Christians to concentrate wholly on their spirituality. But is that really a good idea? Like if God didn't want us to enjoy our bodies and lead an earthly carnal life, why bother putting this down here in the first place? Marriage was viewed by Paul and many early church leaders, apostles, saints, et cetera, as a second best option if you couldn't commit to staying celibate. After St. Paul, one of the most prominent Christian early church leaders who had an impact on the way Christians view sex was St. Augustine, lived in the 4th and 5th centuries. Influenced by Plato's philosophy, he promoted the idea that untamed sexual desire was a sign of rebellion against God, only became honorable when it was
Starting point is 00:42:00 placed in the context of marriage and the possibility of children. So many sex haters in church history. So many sexually dysfunctional dudes who had issues with puss. While Augustine tied this original sin back to Adam and Eve, the parallel focus on Mary's virginity also became super relevant, right? The Virgin Mary,
Starting point is 00:42:19 ultimate symbol of divine womanhood in the Catholic church. Poor Mary. Lucifene is not a fan, right? Those old puss-hating patriarchs stripped her of all sexuality. How fucked up. They made her defining trait her virginity.
Starting point is 00:42:34 Kind of this paradox where they stripped her of all sexuality, but also the only thing that mattered with her was sexuality, but her lack of it, right? They made her defining trait virginity the best a woman could aspire to be, a possessor of holes that dicks haven't yet touched. Character, intelligence, dreams, morals, desires, all secondary to having untouched holes. How horrific when you really think about it.
Starting point is 00:42:58 Women not viewed as being worth much more than human cattle in much of the church's teachings, nothing more than things to be possessed by men. Since sexual intercourse was viewed by many early church leaders as being sinful, there was a line of thought that sex could then help produce sinful offspring. So it was essential that Mary be and remain a virgin. So Jesus could uniquely be born sinless. And since priests were expected to be conduits for God on earth, conduits of Jesus, they were also expected to be free of sin. Right? So no sex. Sex being associated more and more with sin.
Starting point is 00:43:31 Because who is sin associated with? Satan. So sex, almost satanic. Cue billions of future Catholics and Christians feeling enormous amounts of unnecessary shame and guilt over natural sexual urges thanks to these early dickheads. What a tragic and unnecessary bummer. Augustine was one of a long line of theologians to promote the idea of sexual desire as sin. He thought that though marriage is good and ordained of God
Starting point is 00:43:54 for the propagation of human families, if couples could refrain from sex while married, even better. Just fuck to get kids and then don't fuck anymore. Ah, it's so gross. Stay away from that dirty puss So, fuck St. Augustine Despite what St. Augustine, the dick and puss hater taught People, of course, did keep fucking
Starting point is 00:44:12 Right? We are literally programmed to fuck We are hardwired to seek sex out Carnal desire, a product of millions of years of evolution A biological imperative That keeps our species going Priests and monks, being meat sacks, just like the rest of us also kept fucking, even though their positions called publicly for celibacy.
Starting point is 00:44:31 This time went on, the church developed a sort of sweep it under the rug policy with the sexuality of priests. This happened over centuries and centuries. We'll explore it more thoroughly in the timeline, bringing up all this to the modern era. The church would begin to advocate for Catholics struggling with homosexual tendencies or any sexual desires outside the realm of what the church considered appropriate, which of course implicitly does include pedophilia, to join the
Starting point is 00:44:54 priesthood, right? This is this call to action. Holy fuck has it had terrible consequences that anyone with eyes on this world and not on some sexless notion of the divine could have seen coming a million miles away, right? Do you fantasize about fucking kids? Do you really want to be a good Catholic and go to heaven? Well, we have just a fix. Just pray those desires away. And to help you fixate less on sex, join the priesthood.
Starting point is 00:45:17 Just join the priesthood. Pray and pray to no longer think that kids look pretty goddamn sexy. And then we will give you tons of unsupervised access to the kids that you're praying so hard to no longer want to fuck. What could go wrong? Everything went wrong, right? This all makes as much sense as put an alcoholic in charge of running a bar. Sure, some alcoholics are going to be able to abstain permanently, but many are going to have weak moments here and there, fall off the wagon. And many pedo priests have fallen off the wagon and landed inside yet another altar boy's
Starting point is 00:45:45 asshole. Who could have seen that coming? Fucking anyone looking at any of this nonsense rationally. Sorry Catholics, but the whole notion of celibate priests is fucking idiotic. Not saying that you're an idiot, but the doctrine of celibacy is painfully stupid. It just flies in the face of all of nature. So while the church doesn't talk much about what pedophile catholics are supposed to do too taboo It has been clear about what it thinks homosexual catholics are supposed to do It is advocated for gay men to join the priesthood to suppress their desires This is from the catechism of the catholic church homosexual persons are called to chastity By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the
Starting point is 00:46:25 support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. Most recently, sociologist Paul Sullins estimated that about 17% of Catholic priests in the U.S. are homosexual in orientation, a rate around four to five times that in the wider population. This rate, according to a lot of other researchers, way low. It may surprise you that having homosexual tendencies or any sexual tendencies at all
Starting point is 00:46:55 is not a barrier to the priesthood. The guidance regarding seminarians recognizes this. Previous experience with homosexual tendencies is permissible, it says, so long as they were only the expression of a transitory problem and have been clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the dioconate. Fewer than about 10 priests in the U.S. have dared to come out publicly. Interestingly, gay men make up at least 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy,
Starting point is 00:47:25 according to dozens of estimates from gay priests themselves and researchers. Some priests say the number closer to 75%. One priest in Wisconsin said he assumed every priest was gay unless he knows for a fact that he's not. A priest in Florida put it this way, a third are gay, a third are straight, and a third don't know what the hell they are. And like we said, all priests are expected to observe perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and therefore are bound to celibacy.
Starting point is 00:47:51 Meaning that the more gay priests there are, the less gay sex is happening out there in the world in this theory. Or so the church would like, but we know that's not the case. Celibacy research studies amongst Catholic clergy suggest that gay, straight, and bisexual priests are actually significantly sexually active. Many priests outright reject mandatory celibate chastity. The rest just on the down low, engage in sexual practice. The largest empirical research to date by Richard Seip studied 1,500 Catholic priests over the period of 25 years concluded that fewer than 50% of Roman Catholic priests in the U S even attempt celibacy,
Starting point is 00:48:25 only 2% achieve it. Uh, a survey of priests by Richard Wagner noted that his sample of 50 gay priests, uh, respondents were sexually active and, uh, 96% acknowledge having some, uh, same sex contact twice a week. So it's all a farce. How does this all relate to pedophilia and priests? Before answering that, very important to emphasize, studies repeatedly find there is no connection, zero connection between being gay and being a pedophile, abusing children, zero. Also important to point out, this is true for priests. According to a famous study by John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the wake of revelations in 2002. You know, the research which church leaders commissioned found that same-sex experience did not make priests any more likely to abuse minors than a lack of same-sex experience
Starting point is 00:49:13 or same-sex desire. It's different. Homosexuality, pedophilia, different. Researchers found no single cause for this abuse, but identified that abusive priests' extensive access to boys had been critical to their choice of victims. Putting this aside, the church's recruitment of other sexualities may stand for pedophilia as well. May not be explicitly stated, like I mentioned earlier, I think it's definitely implied. Why does the church consider homosexuality a calling to the priesthood? Because the church views homosexuality as inherently sinful, a sinful form of sexuality. Wouldn't the church feel the same for pedophilia? Of course, certainly it's a sin to act on pedophilic urges.
Starting point is 00:49:50 So how do you keep yourself from acting on these urges? Well, you take a vow of celibacy, right? If you're using religious thinking and falsely believing that you can pray away these urges. I think it's very possible that the church has actively, albeit tacitly recruited pedophiles, people to them with the same disordered sexuality as gay people, to make them take a vow of celibacy. Also makes sense to me that just like there are very few gay priests, it seems, that are able to not break this vow,
Starting point is 00:50:16 that people with other actually deviant sexual urges, like pedophiles, break these vows as well, of course. And yet the church continues to put priests in close, unsupervised contact with children because their whole brand is to stick to tradition. Tradition is good for business, even when it's very bad for children. Also being given a role of close, unsupervised contact with children, an authority role where you literally represent God to these kids and their families. Holy shit, that must be such an enviable position for pedophiles. is, holy shit, that must be such an enviable position for pedophiles. It must draw so many pedos to the priesthood. It has to. If I was a pedophile, I would fucking love to be a priest, especially in the days before social media and the internet, when it was easier to hide abuse. I'd love to work for an organization that if I were to get caught, I knew would not report me
Starting point is 00:51:00 to law enforcement. I would instead just have me repent, beg God for forgiveness, and then move me to another parish where I could fuck more kids? Also, is it possible that the vows of celibacy priests take, coupled with the conservative environment about sex, an unnatural view of sex could produce more sexual deviance than in the average population? Yeah, maybe. Important to remember that no empirical data suggests that Catholic clerics sexually abuse minors at a level higher than clerics from other religious traditions or from other groups of men who have ready access and power over children. But at the same time, you know, Catholic priests are in such a uniquely oppressive sexual environment.
Starting point is 00:51:38 Today, training for the priesthood in the U.S. usually starts in or after college. But until about 1980, so very recent, the church often recruited boys to start in ninth grade. Teenagers still in the throes of puberty. Think about that. For many of today's priests and bishops over 50, this environment limited their healthy sexual development significantly. They were put in a very abnormal environment for young men dealing with blossoming sexualities. Their bodies, more than at any other times in their lives, screaming for sexual release, flooded with hormones, while at the same time, adamantly instructed to deny, deny, deny natural impulses. As a result of this, many priests suffer from, not surprisingly, and studies have shown this, arrested development, a very immature,
Starting point is 00:52:22 you know, psychosexual development. Many of them are so desperately want to follow the model of Jesus, a person who supposedly controlled his sexual impulses, but they can't. And of course they can't because they're not a God. They're men. Also, and I know this is very blasphemous, but again, from the outside looking in, what if Jesus never existed? Or at least never existed in the way he's been written about? While Christianity in its various forms is the biggest religion in the world, with about 2.4 billion adherents,
Starting point is 00:52:49 the majority of the world's population does not believe in it. Over 500 people do not believe this story. So from most people's perspective, priests are trying to hold themselves to a standard that is not fucking real. How crazy is that? They're going against natural sexual urges, modeling their behavior after what many see as the most successful piece of fiction ever sold as fact. And if that is true, how preposterously insane is all of this? Even if the stories are true, these poor priests, these fallible, regular old meat sacks, never allowed to express their sexuality in a healthy way because anything us heathens deem as healthy is off limits for them. Any form of sexuality, exploring their sexuality at all, sinful according to the church, because they're not supposed to
Starting point is 00:53:34 have any sexuality at all. And that is simply incredibly unnatural and unhealthy. Back to some stats now, another 2000 study of 484 priests found that this was consistent with what the priests themselves reported. Almost half of the priests, 48% described homosexual experiences during childhood and or adolescence. 32% reported heterosexual experiences during childhood and or adolescence. 6% reported both homosexual and heterosexual experiences. 30% of the priest respondents said that masturbation was their only sexual experience. And then there were other experiences, 6%,
Starting point is 00:54:10 that included engaging in random and anonymous sexual behavior with multiple partners, having persistent sexual fantasies about young teens, or having sex with animals. Right? And this is, you got to go to the priesthood then. You can't stop fucking Dobermans. Worried about damning your soul to hell?
Starting point is 00:54:24 Well, turn that frown upside down, take your dirty weenus out of Fido, and sign up for the priesthood. Oh, boy. To hell with the devil. None of the priests reported any support in dealing with these things outside of talking to church officials. When it comes to priest sexuality, the church seems to have maintained a policy of, well, it doesn't exist. So there's no reason to talk about it. Pre-sexuality, what sexuality?
Starting point is 00:54:52 One priest responded, shared his personal feelings of distrust about seeking psychological help when he wrote, I do not consider myself paranoid, but I would not want anyone in the offices of my diocese aware that I am seeking psychological help of any kind. I think that I could benefit from it, but cannot afford the cost and will not risk any form of disclosure. Several of the priests volunteered recommendations for the church to
Starting point is 00:55:14 better address priests' sexual and emotional lives. The overall comments spoke to the church needing to respond with care and compassion and promote a greater sense of trust around sexual issues. For example, one priest wrote, I would hope that an atmosphere of candor and compassion and promote a greater sense of trust around sexual issues. For example, one priest wrote, I would hope that an atmosphere of candor and compassion within church circles could give priests confidence to get help. It sometimes is perceived that our Gothic fortress mentality about sexual experiences forbids our being trusted with disclosures that are painful and apt to bring down official scorn. We need to promote an atmosphere of trust. Also, many of the priests felt that a greater acknowledgement by the Roman Catholic Church of issues of sexuality would
Starting point is 00:55:50 assist in the healing process of all the recent scandals. A priest noted, the church has to educate itself first and facing the truth makes people free. Another priest wrote, the church, the bishops, they need to be more open in dealing with sexuality and their priests. They must also admit we have our problems. Yes, of course. You cannot fix a problem if you just continually but perpetually deny that you have one. Still another respondent stated, I think that the first thing the church, pope, bishops, and clergy has to do is admit a problem.
Starting point is 00:56:24 You don't get anywhere by constantly pushing it under the carpet or paying off people. I wonder if the church is reluctant to admit that the real fucking problem is expecting priests to be celibate in the first place. Also, there is all the recent science proving that sin doesn't make you homosexual. Science does, right? You're born that way. How does the modern church reconcile that?
Starting point is 00:56:40 How does the church admit it royally fucked up with a lot of its core teachings and still somehow survive as an institution responsible for spreading god's infallible word admitting that you've been wrong about a tradition as tied to catholicism as celibacy is celibate priests right again it's bad for the brand it's bad for business in 2022 the vatican reported that the church's global operating budget for the year was 885 million dollars They lose enough of their congregation due to either scandal or worse through changing their doctrine so much. They're no longer viewed as a trustworthy
Starting point is 00:57:09 theological institution. The empire could collapse and quickly and the way they behave, they seem to be all about protecting the empire, not their people with these scandals, a lot of financial incentive for them not to change their policies and to keep pushing allegations under the rug and pushing under the rug has been exactly what the church has been doing for many years so let's examine how the church has traditionally responded uh historically the church has typically addressed sexual abuse as an internal matter which is super fucked up and wildly irresponsible i cannot crack down hard on say the jehovah's witnesses for not turning over sexual predators to law enforcement and then give catholics a pass for doing the same shit and more of it abusive priests have historically only been sanctioned under canon law the laws of the church and how it governs itself
Starting point is 00:57:55 and they've sometimes received treatment from uh specialized catholic service agencies with relatively few of the offending priests reported to civil authorities or even receiving secular counseling. According to a 2004 report, less than 40% of priests alleged to have committed sexual abuse have even participated in any form of a treatment program. The more allegations a priest has had,
Starting point is 00:58:16 the more likely they've been to participate in treatment, but still most haven't. And again, most of these treatment programs are ran by the church. How can a church with such unnatural views of sexuality be expected to properly help anyone with sexual fucking problems? It can't.
Starting point is 00:58:29 Makes about as much sense as seeing a priest who's never been married for some marriage counseling. I mean, what are we doing? Whether the accused priest receives treatment or not, the most typical historical response from the church regarding alleged pedos is to have them moved to different parishes to start over. A practice informally called priest shuffling and whoever thought this was a good idea long since dead i'm sure should
Starting point is 00:58:51 be brought back to life just to be killed again by uh maybe having scorecard killer randy craft cut their dick off and shove a tree branch up their ass uh no butt sock though let them bleed out all over the place they don't even deserve a kindness as small as one of Randy's butt socks 6,000 pages of documents Released in a Milwaukee court case in 2013 Showed a pattern of ongoing abuse By a large number of priests Who were being systematically switched to different assignments
Starting point is 00:59:16 While church administrators Failed to inform secular law enforcement agencies Actively hid it Also worried about lawsuits The church intentionally moved money around To hide that from victims, right? God's will be done. God hates justice. God hates it when molestation victims have their crimes acknowledged and perpetrators of those crimes, you don't get punished. In the U.S., according to a 2004 report, only 3% of all priests against whom allegations have been made have ever been convicted. Only about 2% have ever received prison
Starting point is 00:59:44 sentences. And most of those prison sentences have been very small. been convicted. Only about 2% have ever received prison sentences. And most of those prison sentences have been very small. In those cases, victims went outside the church, worked with law enforcement instead of trusting the church to handle it. As for the rest, you know, the church simply just moved the pedos. Should we protect our faithful sheep from this wolf? Nah, let's just help the wolf find a new flock to feast on. In one case in the Diocese of Orange in California, Bishop Michael Patrick Driscoll accepted and transferred priests despite reports of sexual misconduct. May 17th, 2005, the Diocese of Orange released over 10,000 pages of documents from the personnel files of 15 priests and teachers as part of a court-approved $100 million settlement
Starting point is 01:00:23 reached in December of 2004 between the diocese and 90 alleged victims of sexual abuse. The documents show that the church had been shuffling priests who molested children from parish to parish, from diocese to diocese for more than two decades. They transferred one serial molester to the archdiocese of Tijuana. That's fun.
Starting point is 01:00:42 Just unleash that monster down south. Also welcomed a convicted child abuser from another state, knowing that they were already accused of a new transgression. When the latter was accused yet again, the diocese sent him to a rehabilitation center in New Mexico with the notation, no one else will take you. That'll teach him. Good thing they didn't report him to law enforcement, right? Not being able to be in a parish. That's punishment enough. Having to go to some nice New Mexico retreat. A joint investigation
Starting point is 01:01:09 conducted by ProPublica and the Houston Chronicle revealed that the Catholic Church transferred more than 50 credibly accused U.S. Catholic clergy to other countries after sex abuse accusations
Starting point is 01:01:18 surfed against them here. But since the church has been very private about their records and they only accessed limited documents from limited dioceses, it's likely we'll never know just how many priests the church has really moved. I'm guessing thousands and thousands and thousands.
Starting point is 01:01:32 Unless the victim comes forward with a specific accusation, very hard to compel the church legally to hand over any documents, even when they do receive victim allegations. As we'll see in the story of the Boston Globe reporters, still incredibly hard to get the church to act. As we'll see in the story of the Boston Globe reporters, still incredibly hard to get the church to act. Instead, to guarantee that these allegations stay secret, the church often offers settlement money that includes a clause that bars the victims or their families from ever talking about it again. Classic hush money. And then the record of these settlements are, you know, sealed and kept secret. All of this allows the priest to simply just keep committing terrible acts of sexual abuse. Even when these priests are sometimes laicized or demoted from the priesthood, the Catholic church then doesn't keep tabs on these sex offenders they've now
Starting point is 01:02:10 released out into the world or, or often even report their previous allegations to authorities. They're just fucking cut loose and left to run amok. The church also proud of this century insisted that the problem hasn't been widespread. Just a few bad apples, uh, like there are
Starting point is 01:02:25 in any organization or profession, even when they knew better, right? The Boston Globe 2002 articles would show the problem was much bigger than that. There was a pattern of coverups in a number of large dioceses across the U.S. The issue became a nationwide scandal, creating a crisis for the Catholic Church in the U.S., and then the scandal went global global and a lot more people and a lot more countries started coming forward. And the church continued to downplay all the allegations. 2008, the church asserted that the scandals were a serious problem, but at the same time estimated is probably caused by no more than 1%,
Starting point is 01:02:56 about 5,000 of the 410,000 Roman Catholic priests worldwide at that time. By contrast, the J John college of Criminal Justice reported a comprehensive study in 2002 that indicated that approximately 11,000 allegations had been made against just 4,392 priests in the U.S. That number
Starting point is 01:03:15 constituted approximately 4% of the priests who'd served in the period of the survey in the U.S. from 1950 to 2002. Four times the number reported by the church. And again, how many people have stayed quiet? If everyone came forward, would the number be 10%? 20? Of the abused, 81% were male, 19% female,
Starting point is 01:03:34 22% younger than the age of 11, 51% between the ages of 11 and 14, 27% between the ages of 15 and 17 when the abuse began. Within the youngest age group, 64% of abused children were male within the older age groups 85% male further analysis by the John Jay College found that among clerics
Starting point is 01:03:54 with a single accusation of abuse victims were more evenly divided between male and female more likely to be older abusers with greater numbers of victims abused a higher proportion of boys. In Pennsylvania alone, a grand jury in 2018 issued a report of 884 pages
Starting point is 01:04:10 stating that there were over a thousand identifiable child victims of sexual abuse by over 300 priests and six of the eight Roman Catholic dioceses of Pennsylvania while advising that there were likely to be thousands more. And they found that the church did not take these incidents seriously. Grand jury found the church officials followed a quote playbook for concealing the truth,
Starting point is 01:04:29 minimizing the abuse by using words like get this inappropriate contact for rape. Holy shit. Writing off rape as inappropriate contact. Holy fucking understatement. Wow. Especially the rape of a child. That's pretty evil. Hey, Father Al, get your penis out of that kid's bottom right now. Whoa. That type of contact, in case you forgot, has been deemed inappropriate.
Starting point is 01:04:58 Oh, shit. Seriously? Even if I don't finish? My bad. I thought it was only inappropriate contact if I finished in their bottoms. Otherwise, I thought this kind of contact would be filed in church records as hanky-panky or maybe horseplay.
Starting point is 01:05:11 State Attorney General Josh Shapiro, whose office initiated the investigation, said at a news conference, they protected their institution at all costs. As the grand jury found, the church showed a complete disdain for victims. Ah, glory be to God. The Vatican never responded to the grand jury found, the church showed a complete disdain for victims. Ah, glory be to God. The Vatican never responded to the grand jury report,
Starting point is 01:05:29 refusing even to say whether church officials in Rome had read the damaging documents. Probably haven't. They've been busy. They've been busy counting all their fucking money. One source I found said that the Vatican was worth, as of a few years ago, about $5 billion. I'm sure worldwide, when you add up all the real estate, oh, it's so much more than that. Way more important to make sure the empire keeps marching forward
Starting point is 01:05:49 than it is to worry about how many priests have had their fingers or ding-dongs inside kids. I'm sure they prayed about it, though. And I bet God told them something wise, like, ah, fuck those fucked kids. What's done is done. Turn the other cheek and shit. Let bygones be bygones and camels and needles and whatnot. The Vatican has also been very hush-hush overall in the practice of moving priests around. Instead, when these allegations have come up, the church has typically either offered to settle with the victims out of court or ignored their claims entirely. On April 30th, 2001, Pope John Paul II did at least publicly state that he's not a fan of diddling. He wrote a letter, so that's pretty cool. He issued a letter stating that sexually abuse in a minor is, quote,
Starting point is 01:06:25 is to be considered a grave sin. Noice. Can't believe sexual abuse has continued to be a problem after he so thoroughly addressed that issue. What a wise, brave man. After the series of articles about sexual abuse I ran in the Boston Globe, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in June of 2002 and unanimously approved a charter for the protection of children and young Globe, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, met in June of 2002, and unanimously approved a charter
Starting point is 01:06:46 for the protection of children and young people, as I mentioned earlier. It pledged that the Catholic Church in the U.S. would provide a safe environment for all children and church-sponsored activities. Man, cannot believe abuse has continued after they pledged things would be safe. They fucking pledged, you guys.
Starting point is 01:07:01 They didn't go through all their files, you know, and turn over thousands of predator priests to the police, but they did pledge. They did actually do, you guys. They didn't go through all their files, you know, and turn over thousands of predator priests to the police, but they did pledge. They did actually do, in all fairness, a bit more than pledge. That 2002 charter, only created in response to massive public outcry. Don't forget this was mainly a PR move, since they had known for a long time what priests were doing. Outlined a plan to develop standardized procedures in handling sex abuse allegations against teachers in Catholic schools, parish staff members, coaches, and other adults involved in the church. These will be called the essential norms for diocesan, my God, diocesan
Starting point is 01:07:36 eparchial policies. I feel like most of these words are meant only to be read. Dealing with allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests or deacons. Adults would now be required to undergo background checks. And if anyone involved in the church found out about sex abuse or allegations, they'd be required to alert the authorities. I sincerely hope they have taken this pledge seriously. The charter also stated that there would be a zero tolerance policy
Starting point is 01:07:57 for sexual abuse. Meanwhile, after this announcement, the fallout from the Boston Globe articles continued to grow. Within two years of the first of the Globe's 800 articles on the scandal appearing in January of 2002, 150 priests in Boston stood accused of sexual abuse. More than 500 victims had filed claims, and churchgoers' donations to the archdiocese had fallen by 50%. Good.
Starting point is 01:08:19 So the church responded again. 2003, John Paul II, Pope, stated that there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young. Oh, nice, strong statement, even though there had certainly been a place for pedos. Their own files proved that over and over again. In the years since, it does seem like they've made a lot of reforms. By 2008, according to a report from Catholic News, the U.S. church had trained 5.8 million children to recognize and report abuse, had run criminal checks on 1.53 million volunteers and employees, 162,700 educators, 51,000 clerics, and 4,955 candidates for ordination. So, okay, better than nothing. It also trained 1.8 million clergy, employees, and volunteers in creating a safe environment for kids.
Starting point is 01:09:04 Pope Francis would continue these reforms. He instituted the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, March 22nd, 2014. And then in February of 2019, a four-day Catholic Church summit would be held in the Vatican City called the Meeting for the Protection of Minors in the Church, excuse me.
Starting point is 01:09:21 On March 26th, 2019, one month after the summit was held, Pope Francis adopted several new laws. Their names are long and in Italian, but translate essentially to on the protection of minors and vulnerable persons and the guidelines of the vicarious Vatican City on the protection of vulnerable persons. First, a law would require Vatican City officials to report sex abuse. First new law would require Vatican city officials to report, excuse me, sex abuse. Failure to do so could result in a fine of 5,000 euros or in the case of a Vatican gendarme or security officer up to six months in prison. In addition, all crimes related to child abuse, including mistreatment, are prosecutable even when the purported victim does not file an official report.
Starting point is 01:10:04 Law also extended the statute of limitations to 20 years after the alleged crime. And if it was committed against a minor, that 20-year period began after their 18th birthday. In addition, the governorate of the Vatican City-State was required to set up, within the Vatican Department of Health and Welfare, a special service to support and assist the victims of abuse, providing them with medical and psychological assistance, and informing them of their rights and of how to enforce them. And on May 9, 2019, Pope Francis would issue an official act that required both clerics, monks, nuns, and bishops, all of them, to report sex abuse cases as well as sex abuse cover-ups by their superiors. So does that mean it's not still a problem today?
Starting point is 01:10:37 Hard to tell. Seems that reports of abuse have risen in recent years, but these reports tend to address crimes that happened many years ago. Only time will tell if these new policies are effective going forward, or if they're going to be enforced. Most Catholics seem to think Francis has done a better job of addressing sexual abuse than predecessors, which sadly isn't saying very much because his predecessors have done a fucking shit job in this regard. Slightly more than half of Catholics say Pope Francis has done an excellent or good job responding to reports of abuse
Starting point is 01:11:06 55% of them But as we know it's not just the Pope who bears the responsibility for this stuff About half of Catholics 49% say their bishop has done at least a good job Responding to the reports While fewer, 36% Say the same about US bishops as a whole Okay now that we've given a
Starting point is 01:11:22 Pretty solid overview of the situation Let's get further into the weeds of it all Learn more about the Church of Rome's Historical views on sexuality and more In this week's Time Suck timeline After this week's mid-show But really more towards the front half Sponsor break
Starting point is 01:11:36 Thanks for listening to this week's Sponsors Meet Now let's dig into a timeline Of the Church of Rome's stance on sexuality And also on how they've dealt with the modern onslaught of sex crimes and cover-ups. Strap on those boots, soldier. We're marching
Starting point is 01:11:54 down a time-sucked timeline. Gonna go way back to kick this bad boy off. 300 CE. The Catholic Church is just starting to become its own thing. And with that comes the need to define some rules. The Council of Elvira was the first known council of the Christian church in Spain, held sometime in the early 4th century near the modern city of Granada.
Starting point is 01:12:21 It's the first council of which the canons, the rules they made up, have survived, and they provide the earliest reliable information on the Spanish church. The exact date is disputed, but some scholars believe it was held either between 300 and 303 CE or in 309 CE, so between 300 and 310. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with Elvira, Mistress
Starting point is 01:12:39 of the Dark. Man, she blew me away as a little kid. Maybe seeing her is when I knew i was straight gosh dang she was hot uh god bless goth bombshell cassandra peterson her playboy spread from 1970 1976 gift from heaven helio safina uh anyway 19 bishops 20 24 priests primarily from southern spain assembled with the intention of restoring order and discipline in the church of the 81 canons that were adopted, more than half, more than half, had to do with sexual sins.
Starting point is 01:13:09 God hates puss. God hates dick. Fuck your dirty weens and lady weens, Mead Sachs. They disgust God, and they disgust me too. I threw my dick and nuts in the trash this morning. No thank you. Now go get rid of your shit. Maybe Randy Kraft and the Ripper Crew had it right. Off with those dicks and titties. Get them out of here. Go on. Now go get rid of your shit. Maybe Randy Kraft and the Ripper Crew had it right. Off with those dicks and titties.
Starting point is 01:13:27 Get them out of here. Go on. To hell with the devil. Many of these canons emphasize that members of the clergy were expected to lead pure and holy lives. Canon 33 read, bishops, presbyters, deacons, and all other clerics
Starting point is 01:13:44 having a position in the ministry are ordered to abstain completely from their wives and not have children fun whoever in fact does this uh shall be expelled from the dignity of the clerical state you touch that puss you're fucking out of here right billy bob uh an additional canon number 71 condemns sex between adult men and young boys men who sexually abuse boys shall not be given communion, even at the end. The end meaning the end of their lives, meaning they'll go straight to hell.
Starting point is 01:14:11 Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Why did they have to address pedos like this back then? Well, clearly to me, this says that there was a problem. There was a problem with the sexual abuse of minors from the very beginning within the priesthood. Skipping ahead a few centuries, the Penitential of Bede, a treatise written in England in the eighth century advised that clerics who committed sodomy with kids
Starting point is 01:14:32 be given increasingly severe penances that increase with their rank. Laymen who committed these crimes would have to fast for three years. Priests would have to fast for seven to 10 years. Clearly this was a, you don't get to eat certain things kind of fast as opposed to you don. Clearly, this was a you-don't-get-to-eat-certain-things kind of fast, as opposed to you-don't-get-to-eat-nothing kind of fast. Hopefully, there was a lot of
Starting point is 01:14:51 things you couldn't eat, and not just, say, peach melba. Sorry, darling, I simply love peach melba. I find it absolutely delightful, but I must abstain. I simply must. Lost my dongle in a teen's dingle's dangle, And now daddy's in a bit Of a culinary predicament I simply must repent I must love Yes that was Thurston Howell-esque If you're confused Stop skipping episodes
Starting point is 01:15:12 Gosh dang Bishops who sexually abused children Twelve years of penance Skip ahead a few more centuries In the 11th century Around 1051 Peter Damien A monk
Starting point is 01:15:23 Who had become a cardinal Wrote the treatise Liber Gamorianus against sexual abuse. He was concerned with sexual sin primarily because Pope Benedict IX, who was only 20 when he was elected, had set a bad example before he was removed from the papacy in 1046.
Starting point is 01:15:38 Benedict was the nephew of his immediate predecessor, John XIX. In October of 1032, Benedict's father got him the papacy through some tricky bribery, creating a scandal. And then more scandals followed. Benedict was the first Pope
Starting point is 01:15:51 rumored to have been primarily homosexual and sexually active. He was accused by Bishop Benno of Pianzena. Pianzena. Pianzena. Fuck this word. Pianzenza.
Starting point is 01:16:04 Pianzenza. Pianzenzaza of many vile adulteries. Additional accusations. We keep coming in his library. Oh boy. This word that no one ever fucking says out loud, but me, uh, Gamorreanus, Libel Gamorreanus. Oh, please open your pages of Libel Gamorreanus. Uh, Damien accused Benedict the ninth of routine sodomy and bestiality and spawn treat orgies.
Starting point is 01:16:28 Damien railed against practices like solitary masturbation, mutual masturbation, copulation between the thighs. Jeez. Anal sex. All of these, according to him. Not even supposed to dry hump. Subversive disruptions against the moral order. He was especially indignant about priests having sex relationships with adolescent boys. Again, clearly this was a problem.
Starting point is 01:16:48 He recommended that the priests be dismissed from their holy orders, especially if they had defiled boys who came to them for confession. His final chapter was an appeal to the current Pope, Leo, to take action. Leo IX would praise Damien for his hard work and recommendations,
Starting point is 01:17:01 but would decide to punish only priests who had offended repeatedly over a long period of time. Look, if you fucked a lot of kids, oh, Pope Leo's going to have words with you. But if you fell off the wagon a few times and landed in a few kids' butts, well, gosh dang, shit happens. Everyone makes mistakes. Damien went on to write another book, Rule of Monastery in Compluto, in which he described vividly how the abuse was handled in one Italian monastery. A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing or in any other impure situations is to be publicly flogged and lose his tonsure. Tonsure, by the way, is that weird monk haircut where the top of your head is shaved and just the sides are left. Can all of us Catholics included, please agree that that is one of the dumbest looking haircuts of all time.
Starting point is 01:17:48 Damien continues, When his hair has been shorn, his face is to be foully besmeared with spit, and he is to be bound in iron chains. For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement, and on three days of each week shall fast on barley bread in the evening. After this, he will spend another six months under the custodial care of a spiritual elder,
Starting point is 01:18:07 remaining in a segregated cell, giving himself to manual work and prayer, subject to vigils and prayers. He may go for walks, but always under the custodial care of two spiritual brethren, and he shall never again associate with youths in private, nor in counseling them.
Starting point is 01:18:22 Sad that the church handled pedophiles more effectively in the 11th century than they do now. Despite the definitive regulation of pre-sex lives, meaning sex was super, super forbidden by the third Lateran council in 1879, another big bishop meeting
Starting point is 01:18:36 where a bunch of new laws are passed, clerical marriage, concubinage, and casual fornication continue to be a widespread problem. The second Lateran council had declared clerical marriages invalid, regulated clerical dress and punished attacks on clerics by excommunication. Uh, the first to resolve issues that have nothing to do with sexuality and don't pertain to today's narrative. Uh, there'll be five total big, let's get all the bishops together. Councils that met in the Lateran palace for about a thousand
Starting point is 01:19:04 years. It was the Pope's main papal residence in Rome. Pope now resides in the Vatican. Became obvious to some by the third council that celibacy was not working. And some bishops and even some popes took a more pragmatic approach to sexuality. Although church law continued to give stern punishments for sexually active priests, in theory, some orders and monasteries now permitted it as long as it was discreet. Just fucking be quiet about it. Don't ask, don't tell kind of thing. Only repeat offenders who get
Starting point is 01:19:30 caught a lot are going to be punished. The fourth Lateran council would go ahead and condemn sexual sin in priests again, especially those that were homosexual in 1215. Also condemned bishops, archbishops, and abbots who sheltered or supported clerics guilty of sexual violations.
Starting point is 01:19:45 Prelates who dare support such in their iniquities, especially in view of money or other temporal advantages, shall be subject to a like punishment. Prelates are bishops and other high-ranking church members. In some monasteries, higher-ups had to institute protocols like banning monks from sleeping in the same bed, using kind of nightlights, which I guess would have been night candles back then, making the monks sleep in their clothes. In reality, monks and priests, you know, they just, they keep having sex. Because, you know, if you haven't had it, it feels pretty gosh dang good.
Starting point is 01:20:15 If you're gonna write anyway. After 1250, the penalties for priests committing sins against nature, any kind of sexual activity, become much harsher because of sodomy's new association with heresy. Get into the dark ages now. Oh, fuck yeah, bro.
Starting point is 01:20:29 Bring out the rack. God demands pain. God demands blood. God demands some scorecard killer, Randy craft kind of shit. That's what Jesus was all about. Brutal torture. Uh, now both priests and lay people are subject to severe punishment,
Starting point is 01:20:42 fines, castration, exile, torture, and death. Accused clergy members, uh, first dealt with by church courts and then often handed over to secular authorities for additional, sometimes much more severe punishment, like being flayed, you know, skinned alive, broken on the rack, torn apart by horses, all kinds of fun stuff. You are lucky if
Starting point is 01:20:59 you're hanged. Church officials began a period of stamping down on all sorts of sexual sins that would last until the 16th century But again, not even these measures would stop priests from fucking Because you can't stop people from fucking In Florence, for instance A special magistrate, the official of the curfew And the covenants, was mandated to deal with The problem of male homosexuality
Starting point is 01:21:18 Meaning it must have been rampant Of course it was Being gay is not new, pretending it's unnatural Not going to make it go away now any more than it did in the Dark Ages, no matter what any misguided moralist may think. Refocusing now on the sexual abuse of children, let's move to the late 15th century when Katharina von Zimmern
Starting point is 01:21:35 and her sister were removed from their abbey to live in their family's house for a while because they were being molested by priests. Not many examples like this are written about from this time, but I'm sure it was not an isolated incident. We'll never know how rampant abuse was during the Dark Ages and during the Middle Ages because the overwhelming majority of writing was done by members of the church. Almost no members of the church or anyone else who could write would have been brave or foolish
Starting point is 01:21:58 enough to write anything condemning the actions of the priesthood unless they wanted to get, you know, fucking skinned alive or burned or something. Now, 1531, former German priest, Martin Luther, that Martin Luther of the Protestant Reformation claimed that Pope Leo X had vetoed a measure that cardinals should restrict the number of boys kept for pleasure. Otherwise, he wrote, it would have been spread throughout the world how openly and shamelessly the Pope and the cardinals in Rome practiced sodomy. This declaration was made in the middle of the Protestant Reformation. Performers like Martin Luther, John Calvin took issue with a lot of things in the Catholic Church, one of them being celibacy for clergy. Councils by the Catholic Church would fight back,
Starting point is 01:22:36 saying that celibacy was superior to marriage and always would be. Good comeback! Nice! These councils would also establish another facet of the Church in the 16th century, the seminary, where prospective priests would be educated. Prior to this, priests were educated, you know, whenever and wherever they happened to be, with the end result being that, you know, oftentimes priests didn't know much more about their religion than the congregants to whom they were preaching. But now, faced with this new threat of Protestantism, the church decides to educate all their priests the same way, much more thorough way. The hope was that at the seminary, priests would be consistently
Starting point is 01:23:09 supervised by their superiors, who would hopefully be able to prevent them from engaging in any kind of sins, especially sexual sins. And I'm sure that did happen in many cases. But also these seminaries, you know, I'm sure became places where, you know, a lot of sexual experiences went down. Rumors abounded of younger priests being sexually groomed by older priests, bishops, et cetera. Let's jump now to the 17th century. Look at more than rumors. In 1646, an order of priests called the Pious Schools, founded by a Spanish priest named
Starting point is 01:23:41 Joseph Catasanz, was suppressed by the Vatican just over 20 years after it was first established. The reason why it wouldn't come out for over 400 years. 1998, the Vatican's archives of the Inquisition were open to lay researchers for the first time. Excuse me, a doctoral student, Karen Labrique, would travel there to study the pious schools. She didn't accept the church's position on why the monastery closed,
Starting point is 01:24:03 which was that the pious schools had been shut down as punishment for the order's close association with the astronomer Galileo, who had been convicted of heresy by the Inquisition in 1633. What she found was fascinating and horrifying. Check this nasty shit out. Calisans opens his first school dedicated to providing a free education to boys from poor families in Rome in 1597. More schools in the area followed, you know, soon followed. In 1629, the first accusations of child abuse were made by fellow priests. According to contemporary letters and documents, there were impure friendships with schoolboys and many accusations of impurity and ill-renown. One Pyrrhist priest, Father Stefano Cherubini, was of particular focus of
Starting point is 01:24:47 the accusations. Calizans wrote to the administrator of a nearby school, whom he had sent to investigate Cherubini, I want you to know that your reverence's sole aim is to cover up this great shame, in order that it does not come to the notice of our superiors. Cherubini was swiftly promoted by Calizans, first to rector, equivalent of headmaster, then to visitor general, a kind of inspector. Soon more priestly abusers were discovered, promoted, and moved to new schools in a policy known as promotion for avoidance. Holy shit. The rule still held that any kind of sex, especially sex with minors, was a sin, but in every case, Calizans' first priority was not protecting victims, instead protecting the
Starting point is 01:25:26 order's reputation. In 1643, Cherubini, by now a known sexual abuser of children, replaced Calizans, appointed on behalf of and with the knowledge of the papacy as head of this respective religious order, whose sole mission, supposedly, was to teach young, disadvantaged boys. Now headed by a priest with a sordid reputation, the Pius schools also began to suffer from bureaucratic incompetence, overexpansion, loss of patronage, i.e. dollars, and within a few years of Cherubini's appointment,
Starting point is 01:25:54 the order was suppressed. Not suppressed because kids just kept getting fucked, suppressed because it wasn't making enough money to continue. Calizans was canonized in 1767, and in 1948, Pope Pius XII named him universal patron of all the Christian popular schools in the world. Wow, that looks a little fucking gross, considering what we know about him now, what the church knew about him then, when he was named that patron. A man very complicit in the sexual abuse of children,
Starting point is 01:26:23 a man who actively hid sexual abusers, named the patron saint of Catholic education. What a disturbing level of corruption regarding the chronic sexual abuse of minors. It just seems to fester inside the core of the Church of Rome. Will it ever finally address all of this and try to heal, clean out the wound,
Starting point is 01:26:41 or just continue to limp along, hide behind the false notion that despite this rottenness, they are still the righteous conduits of salvation for their faithful. Now let's move up to the modern era, where we have a lot more records, starting in 1917. 1917, the first code of canon law contained specific canons condemning what was known as solicitation. Solicitation referred to the problem in the Catholic church at that time of priests asking for sexual favors as part of in the catholic church that time of priests asking for sexual favors as part of the confessional at the time when priests meet with
Starting point is 01:27:09 parishioners and the parishioners confess their skins and their skins they confess their skins they talk about what kind of skins they got another sense and the priest then tells them how to do penance some priests evidently use this power to make their victims have sex with them or perform, you know, quasi-sexual acts. In 1947, the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete, a Catholic religious organization dedicated to helping troubled priests, opens their doors in Yemez Springs, New Mexico. It's a treatment center for priests, soon becomes known mostly as a treatment center for sexually abusive priests. Founded by Reverend Gerald Fitzgerald. I didn't notice his name earlier with the notes. Gerald Fitzgerald.
Starting point is 01:27:50 Good job, parents. Fitzgerald originally intended it to be a place where priests who were lapsing their faith could come and reevaluate their spirituality. Officials would soon have a different purpose in mind. Fitzgerald would write in 1952 that he had already treated a handful of priests who abused minors. He found them, quote, lacking in appreciation of the seriousness of their offense
Starting point is 01:28:10 and situation. In 1957, he would write to Archbishop Edwin Byrne of Santa Fe that he thought it was unwise to offer hospitality to men who have seduced or attempted to seduce little boys and girls. He'd continue, if I were a bishop, I would tremble when I failed to report them to Rome for involuntary laicization, you know, getting kicked out. Experience has taught us these men are too dangerous to the children of the parish and to the neighborhood for us to be justified in receiving them here.
Starting point is 01:28:41 They should ipso facto be reduced to laymen when they act thus. I like this guy, right? Hand him over to the fucking authorities. The head of the rehab centers telling the archbishop that these disgusting fucks are not redeemable. Reverend Fitzgerald would even dream of buying an island to segregate them.
Starting point is 01:28:58 It is for this class of rattlesnake. I have always wished an island retreat, but even an island is too good for these vipers, he wrote to an acquaintance in 1957. Amen, Father Fitzgerald. This guy sounds like a religious leader I'd like to have a drink with, right? I'd hear his sermons too.
Starting point is 01:29:12 Even if I wouldn't bind all the theology, I bet I would like a lot of his philosophy. 1960, Fitzgerald sent two priests from the New Mexico-based Servants of the Holy Paraclete to the island of Tortola, or Tortola, excuse me, one of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean to investigate a possible location to send these pedos to. But his dream of an island
Starting point is 01:29:29 monastery dedicated to sending priests who should not ever be around kids again to ends when the new Archbishop of Santa Fe overrules him. By the mid-1960s, Fitzgerald's facility was treating so many sexually abusive priests that they had developed a shorthand to refer to them as Code 3. The facility began specializing
Starting point is 01:29:45 just in the treatment of pedophile priests in 1966. Backing up to 1962, the much revered Pope John XIII issued a special procedural law for the processing of solicitation cases. The document was sent to every bishop and major religious superior in the world, but these officials were directed to keep it in secret archives.
Starting point is 01:30:05 This document specifically dealt with priests who had abused children. There was a detailed process for the higher-ups to follow in case their priests were accused, including conducting the affair with the highest secrecy, the much-revered Pope,
Starting point is 01:30:17 actively helping predators, continuing to prey on kids by doing this. His document introduced a couple of new elements. Local ordinaries, bishops, and heads of religious orders were given the right to process cases covered in the document. They could also send them to the Vatican's congregation of the Holy Office for prosecution.
Starting point is 01:30:34 Tribunal and other church personnel who were involved in processing cases were bound to the highest degree of confidentiality, total and perpetual silence. The penalty for the breach of the secrecy was automatic excommunication. Even witnesses and complainants could be excommunicated if they broke this oath of secrecy. Even the accuser and witnesses obliged to take this oath of secrecy and be excommunicated if they failed. Holy shit. Think about how completely morally
Starting point is 01:31:04 bankrupt this is. And this comes from the fucking Pope and not from a thousand years ago, holy shit. Think about how completely morally bankrupt this is. And this comes from the fucking Pope and not from a thousand years ago from 1962. Dude sold his fucking soul with his shit. If he hadn't already, if you witness a priest fucking some kid and go to the police, you can be excommunicated. If you are molested by a priest and go straight to the police, you can be excommunicated, kicked out of the church. You're very salvation threatened.
Starting point is 01:31:23 But if you literally fuck a kid, you just maybe get sent to beautiful rural retreat in New Mexico to get a little bit of counseling and then back out there you go. You know, you'd be moved to a different parish after being told you're a naughty boy. Please don't do that again.
Starting point is 01:31:39 And then you can just fuck some more kids. Remove any notions of God. Look at this for what it is and it's fucking evil. Anonymous accusations were not automatically ruled out in Paul's decree, but the higher-ups could decide whether or not to act on them. Title five, or excuse me, title, Roman numerals, title five of the document specifically included, I am shaking, by the way, I'm so angry. This is like the fourth time I've gone through this. It makes me want to punch a hole in the wall.
Starting point is 01:32:03 Title five of the document specifically included homosexual acts between clerics and members of their own sex, bestiality, and sexual acts of any kind with children. Nowhere in the document are children listed as victims. The church continues to be more concerned with protecting their reputation,
Starting point is 01:32:17 which means protecting money and power, than they are with protecting their fucking flock. This document would not be publicly revealed until March of 2003. Backing up to the 1960s, there were many cases of abuse made during this decade. Most people speaking up, you know, more than in previous generations, thanks to the counter culture revolution, I would imagine. But many of these instances of abuse won't be publicly uncovered for decades.
Starting point is 01:32:41 For just one example, lawsuits filed in the early 90s would allege that James R. Porter, a priest repeatedly molested children in Massachusetts Minnesota and New Mexico in the 1960s and early 1970s
Starting point is 01:32:50 and church officials over and over covered it up more than 80 people would come forward and say they were sexually abused by him more than 80 Porter was treated
Starting point is 01:33:00 by the servants of the paraclete from 1967 to 69 possibly again in 1972 or 1973, lawyers said. The Senate released him from psychotherapy, never told police about his offenses. They were ordered not to. They would have been excommunicated if they had done so. Church didn't even try to keep him out of parish work after all that. Did not warn future parishes of who he was, lawsuits allege.
Starting point is 01:33:22 He would finally leave the priesthood in 1974, voluntarily, after molesting kids at that point in five different states. Then he would get married, have four kids, abuse all of them. Finally, thanks to his case getting picked up by national media outlets in 1992, after accusers started
Starting point is 01:33:40 to come forward, after he raped his kid's babysitter and her younger sister, and their crimes occurred during the statute of limitations so he was finally arrested and sent to prison for six fucking months which serve only four
Starting point is 01:33:52 luckily more accusers would come forward 1993 was charged with over 200 counts now of molestation within the statute of limitations in just Minnesota this guy was fucking everyone
Starting point is 01:34:03 he was sent to prison eligible for parole in just six years now, but wouldn't get out until 2004. And then would die of cancer in 2005 at the age of 70. Why is our criminal justice system so consistently fucking weak when it comes to pedophiles? It's so disturbing. Ease up on the drugs that are more harmless than alcohol. In most cases, get harder on sex offenders. You stupid pandering fucking dirtbag legislators, most cases, get harder on sex offenders, you stupid pandering fucking dirtbag legislators. Both major parties, Republicans and Democrats, can suck my fucking dick when it comes to the way they punish drug use compared to how they punish sex offenders. Man, this gets me so fired
Starting point is 01:34:37 up. It's just, man, so egregious. Let's go back to the 60s now. There were a few efforts to address sexual abuse in the church. In 1967, there were few, excuse me, the National Association for Pastoral Renewal sponsored a conference at Notre Dame University to address the topic. In 1968, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops commissioned a series of investigations in the priesthood, which were published in 1972. These committees knew that victims were not able to come forward because they had church-instilled fear of divine retribution. They knew that most candidates for the priesthood were not adequately prepared for a life of total celibacy because it's a fucking terrible idea. And many of them had spent years in all-male environments where they were conditioned to believe that loving women's bodies was sinful. 1971 report cited that between 20 and 25% of North American priests had serious psychiatric difficulties between 60 and 70 percent suffered from emotional immaturity the study published
Starting point is 01:35:30 in 1972 would say that 74 percent of priests had unresolved psychosexual problems that were usually worked through in adolescence but because of their religious environments they had experienced their adolescence in those you know were stunted the study published 1972 read in part sexuality is in other words non-integrated into the lives of underdeveloped priests and many of them function at a pre-adolescent or adolescent level of psychosexual growth and we're gonna fucking kid ourselves and and and think that that doesn't have something to do with all these fucking cases of sexual abuse? Of course they're psychosexually fucked. Right?
Starting point is 01:36:08 And they're in charge of the world's largest religion. It's like all of this is one big sick cosmic joke. Grow up in a religious environment where you're told that sex is bad. And instead of having your experimental teenage years, now double down on the idea that sex is bad without ever really having any real experience with it and yeah you're likely to come out of that pretty fucked up and then you're placed in a position of power over a lot of people power over children great idea love that we keep doubling down on this stupid shit let's just keep employing cognitive dissonance and magical thinking and just pretend this will fix itself someday it It's fucked. Let's move up to 1981 now.
Starting point is 01:36:46 That year would be the year that Father Donald Romer pled guilty to child molestation in Los Angeles. Father Romer, also called Father Pat, was ordained a priest in 1970 when he served in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He was born in Oxnard in 1944, spent a lot of time at Santa Clara Catholic Church while he attended seminary at St. John's Seminary in Camarillo. Side note, study by the John Jay
Starting point is 01:37:10 College of Criminal Justice found that 15% of St. John's graduates between 1960 and 84 went on to be accused of sexual abuse. 15% accused. How many were not accused who did it? Romer took several assignments, including at churches at Galetta and santa barbara as well as at the santa barbara juvenile hall suite and the los pritos a boy camp awesome for being moved to saint paschal's at the age of 34 court documents would show that by the time romer moved to thousand oaks he was already receiving counseling from a fellow priest regarding being you know sexually attracted boys. None of his new parishioners, several thousand families knew that though, of course not. And the church sanctioned monastery would tear many of these families' lives apart. Between 1962 and 1981, at least 16 people made child sexual abuse allegations against him.
Starting point is 01:37:59 Court documents would later show that he confessed to sexually abusing 30 children over an 11-year period. He'd be convicted on three counts of child molestation after a seven-year-old boy came forward, told his parents Romer had called him into his office and massaged his penis. Romer's arrest came a year after he won a Parent Faculty Association award for his work with kids. And he would be sentenced after all this to two years in a state-run mental hospital, fucking two, and then 10 years probation, and then had to register as a sex offender should have taken him out in the woods nailed his fucking dick to a tree uh what if we let the scorecard killer randy craft out of prison put him in charge
Starting point is 01:38:34 of a remote island where he's allowed to sexually torture anyone who's sent there and that's where we send demon priests uh just five years later in 1996 a similar case goes down in louisiana in the diocese of lafayette the diocese of lafayette stretches from the city uh south to vermilion bay whose waters lead to the gulf of mexico a place where catholicism has run deep for many years many of the uh 300 000 catholics who live there quite a few of them cajun trace their history back to the late 1700s when their french ancestors fled Canada to escape British rule. In this humid, undeveloped land, they discovered waters filled with shrimp, oysters, and crawfish, and they built churches on patches of dry ground. For generations, they believed the priest served as the living face of Jesus Christ, right?
Starting point is 01:39:16 He forgave their sins, baptized the young, anointed the sick. In his purity, he gave the faithful a glimpse of what heaven would be like. At least that's what they thought. purity, he gave the faithful a glimpse of what heaven would be like. At least that's what they thought. So when Gilbert Goss arrived in the 1970s and showed an interest in young boys, no one paid attention at first. All right, ordained on January 16th, 1971, Father Goss' abuse of male minors began during his very first assignment at Broussard in 1972. Parents confronted him about his inappropriate behavior with their kids and ultimately paid for his treatment with their tithings. The parents did not, however, report Goth to his superiors.
Starting point is 01:39:51 1973, Goth moved to New Iberia where he continued sexual abuse of minors. 1974, a man stopped the bishop, informed him that a boy claimed he had sexual homosexual contact with Goth. The bishop confronted Goth. Goth confirmed that the boy was telling the truth. Despite the admission, Goth was allowed to stay in active ministry moreover the bishop appointed him as chaplain of the diocese this word kills me diocesan boy scouts what the fuck do you have to be an idiot to be a bishop or does it just help uh additionally goth also worked with the bitty basketball team you know boys team 1976 goth is transferred to abbyville uh shortly thereafter parents confront goth superiors inform them that goth has uh done shit you know like lick their
Starting point is 01:40:34 kids faces but also so much worse according to record the bishop sent him to a treatment facility while still allowing him to uh remain in ministry and you know unsupervised contact with youth so that's sweet after returning from treatment the bishop bishop forbade Goth from having boys in the rectory and moved his room to another level to limit exposure to kids. Oh, that'll teach him. What a strong move, bishop. You fucking twat. However, Goth still had outings with male minors, even traveled to Puerto Rico with the bitty basketball team. Still did shit like taking boys on camping trips, invited them for sleepovers in the rectory, claim to hold practices for altar boys every day at 6am,
Starting point is 01:41:11 encourage parents to let their boys spend the night behind the scenes. His sexual appetite was more out of control than ever. He put bars in the windows of the rectory, kept a gun by the side of his bed when kids refused to submit to his sexual advances, he threatened to use it, right? They're like trapped in this weird fucking sex dungeon of his. At night he raped countless boys, forced him to perform acts on each other, took photographs of it all on his Polaroid camera. This would go on for more than a decade, more than a decade. And Goth remained in the ministry,
Starting point is 01:41:33 even when his bishop learned that he had sexually abused one of these boys and licked the faces of a couple others. After the second complaint, the bishop transferred Goth to a small church in the isolated town of Henry, Louisiana. This shit is outrageous. Let's put him in an isolated, more isolated place where he can torture them. On Sundays, the new priest stood at the altar and surveyed potential victims. Finally, in 1983, a boy told his father, Wayne Segreira. Segreira reported it to the diocese. In June 1984, Bishop sent Goth away for psychological treatment,
Starting point is 01:42:04 offered nine families confidential settlements of more than $4 million. One family would refuse to settle. The Gestahl family sued the diocese for failing to protect their 10-year-old son, Scott, who'd been abused by Goth for more than a year. When Scott was hospitalized for rectal bleeding caused from violent anal raping, Goth stopped by to give him a fucking toy car. This motherfucker, I'd like to cut his head off myself.
Starting point is 01:42:24 The boy later worried that Goth would break into his parents' home and attack him. He would stay up all night checking the locks. Poor kid had PTSD. In October of 1984, a district attorney interviewed 11 of Goth's victims. The interviews were videotaped and played in front of a grand jury. On October
Starting point is 01:42:39 18th, 1984, the grand jury returned a 34-count indictment, which included a count of aggravated rape and 11 counts of child porn throughout the process. Goth admitted to raping approximately 37 kids and taking hundreds of photos of them. One boy testified graphically in court, struggling times to even find the words to describe what had happened to him. Said Goth put his pee pee inside of him. Jury awarded them $1 million casement headlines around the country, especially after reporter jason berry dug up details uh to find evidence of a cover-up god's pled guilty
Starting point is 01:43:10 to 34 criminal counts sentenced to 20 years in prison would serve only fucking 10 released in 1995 how back in the 90s people were still being sent to prison for life. For like crack use. Right? Being a small-time neighborhood drug dealer. Getting life. This motherfucker. Rapes dozens of kids. He's out in 10.
Starting point is 01:43:35 What is wrong? Our culture is sick. Not even a year after his release, Gilbert Goss arrested for fondling a three-year-old boy in Texas. Of course. Plead no contest, accepting the punishment of a guilty plea without admitting guilt, now sentenced to seven years probation. Not more prison time. Let's give him some probation.
Starting point is 01:43:51 If I was able to pass laws in this country like a dictator, I swear on my life, I would start executing these motherfuckers. Like, ideally, I'd like to kill some myself so I could watch the light fade out of these monsters' eyes. I hate them so much. I hate how fucking soft we are when it comes to punishing them man i'll try to keep i'll try to keep from repeating this angry sentiment going forward constantly but as a father just as a decent human being holy fuck does this make my blood boil uh 1997 goth arrested and charged for raping a young girl at gunpoint in the late 70s
Starting point is 01:44:22 goth in prison for two years before the case is dismissed uh due to a deal goth had taken in previous litigation fun late 90s early 2000s he then drives uh the elderly in a commuter van in conroe texas for a while and then somehow after moving to lamarck texas in 2001 he gets a job i'm not kidding he's a goddamn school bus driver yep didn't register as a sex offender and got away with it. Finally arrested in Galveston for not, uh, in 2008 for not registering as a sex offender. Will serve two years in jail. How is he not put in forever? As of 2019, Father Gilbert Goss, uh, would live in San Leon, Texas. Further details about his whereabouts unknown. Currently 77 years old. Uh, Mr. Goss, if you, if you hear this somehow and you're finally ready to die, please come find me in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
Starting point is 01:45:06 I'd like to go for a hike with you out in the woods and then come home alone. Not kidding. Just or maybe, you know, your skeevy old ass and I can fight to death in a cage match. And the proceeds could go to charity for victims. Offer's good anytime. Meanwhile, in the wake of numerous scandals in the mid-1980s, more parents would come forward. Other priests are accused. Reporters begin to wonder how deep this all goes. The news from Louisiana soon reaches the Vatican embassy in Washington, D.C., where Reverend
Starting point is 01:45:31 Thomas Doyle, also a young canon lawyer, fast-rising star in the church hierarchy, becomes alarmed. Not for victims, but about money. He wondered how many other priests had abused children, how many bishops have covered it up. He quickly concludes that the scandal of priests sexually abusing children and the failure of the church hierarchy to stop it could destroy, bankrupt the church in the U.S. Right? All that money gone. As the crisis unfolded in 1985, Doyle teamed up with Ray Mountain, a Goss criminal defense attorney, and the Reverend Michael Peterson, who ran a treatment center in Maryland for priests with sexual disorders. And they wrote a confidential, of course, report called The Problem of Sexual Molestation by Roman Catholic Clergy. It warned that hundreds of priests might be abusing children and that lawsuits and
Starting point is 01:46:12 settlements could cost the U.S. Catholic Church over a billion dollars. No one in the Vatican paid any attention to the report. Doyle would later remember they literally laughed it off. You know, they were the Catholic Church, much too big and powerful to ever fall prey to these lawyers and these people. Holy shit. 1990, a study is published on the hidden lives of celibate priests based on interviews with 1500 priests and their sexual partners between 1960 and 1985. Right? Study concludes that 6% of the priests are sexually involved with minors, between 20 and 25% with adult women, 15% with adult men, celibacy continuing to not work. Also beginning in the 1990s, Ireland, one of the world's most heavily Catholic countries,
Starting point is 01:46:54 starts to reckon with its sexual abuse problem. 1991, 92% of the country is Catholic. And the country would soon be witness to a series of government inquiries on allegations of sexual abuse by hundreds of minors over multiple decades. State-ordered investigations documented tens of thousands of children from the 1940s to the 1990s who suffered abuse, including sexual abuse at the hands of priests, nuns, and church staff. One of the most widely known cases of sexual abuse in Ireland involved the priest Brendan Smith, who between 1945 and 1989, yeah, he was active a long time,
Starting point is 01:47:20 sexually abused and assaulted at least 20 kids in parishes in Belfast, Dublin, and the U.S. Church authorities learned of his crimes over and over. Smith was moved from parish to parish, between dioceses and countries, whenever new allegations were made. Some cases, the order did not inform the new local diocesan bishop that Smith had a history of sexual abuse and should be kept away from kids. In the U.S., he's left to abuse children in parishes in Rhode Island, North Dakota, Boston.
Starting point is 01:47:46 Helen McGonigal was one of these kids, just six years old, when it was her bad luck to run into Brendan Smith. McGonigal, whose maternal grandparents were from County Kerry, Ireland, was living with her and her family in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, when her childhood was ripped apart at the seams.
Starting point is 01:48:01 Like any good Catholic family of their time, her parents and relatives taught her that the church and clergy were to be highly respected and trusted. Helen was taught to obey church teachings, respect church leaders, including new parish priest, Brendan Smith. The McGonagills were members
Starting point is 01:48:15 of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church, and she went to school where Smith worked. Smith was first introduced to the McGonagills in 1967 by Helen's grandmother, who was residing with the family in Rhode Island and had struck up a friendship with the new parish priest. They shared a common love for the Irish language. Smith was invited into the McGonagall home to give it his blessing. He gifted them with a crucifix. Didn't take Smith long to expose his dark side to the kids. 1968,
Starting point is 01:48:38 he was caught molesting children in her parish, sent to Purdy's Burn Mental Hospital in Northern Ireland for treatment. But after his time served in Ireland, Smith was allowed to return to Rhode Island. During that time, Helen McGonagall's uncle Jerry died from blood poisoning by stepping on a bobby pin. Smith found out about the freak accident. He tried to use it to his advantage. Exploiting the family's tragedy, witnessing how distressed
Starting point is 01:49:00 her grandma and mother were over the loss of Jerry, Smith reintroduced to McGonagall after he returned from Northern Ireland. In her first grade year said, you can call me Jerry, like your uncle and your brother. And then the abuse began. It would last for four years.
Starting point is 01:49:12 During the abuse, McGonagall knew nothing but fear. Smith told her she would end up, end up like the body in the woods. So a reference to some local murder. If she ever told a soul about what he was doing to her. Smith also molested her sister. There was little the kids could do when they went to school.
Starting point is 01:49:27 They saw Smith. Smith came by their house all the time. Their mom struggled with mental health issues, spent months in hospitals, which left them more vulnerable to him. Abuse finally stopped only when the family moved away from Rhode Island in 1973. Both Helen's brother and her sister would later die of drug overdoses. Oh yeah, did I mention he was molesting the brother too? Yeah, he was. Helen suspected that trying to cope with the abuse and
Starting point is 01:49:48 their helplessness drove them to their addictions. So she tried to put it behind her. But you know, meanwhile, 1994, back in Ireland, Smith pled guilty to 17 charges of indecent assault involving sexual abuse of five girls and three boys. September of 1995, he sentenced to a further three years in jail after he pled guilty to 26 charges of sex abuse in Northern Ireland over a 20 year period so Ireland also fucking sucks when it comes to punishing pedos then Smith would not
Starting point is 01:50:14 be extradited to the states to face more punishment in 1997 he would apologize saying that his sexual crimes were his sexual offenses as or you know categorizing them as sins against God offenses against individual persons and offenses against the laws of the state offenses as, uh, or, you know, category categorizing them as sins against God offenses against individual persons and offenses against the laws of the state. He would die August 22nd, 1997, the age of 70 of severe coronary artery disease. You die a free man be buried at a hidden
Starting point is 01:50:36 location in the Catholic cemetery. Helen McGonigal would never see justice for the abuse. She and her siblings suffered the Providence, uh, diocesan did offer her $25,000 compensation for all that. But if she took the money, it would be hush money. She'd have to keep everything a secret. So she didn't want the hush money. What she wanted was for Smith to be known as the piece of shit he is, was, I guess. And I guess he did get that notoriety. Father Brendan Smith, one of the many predator priests whose trials in Ireland would make headlines in the 90s. Pretty soon, some similar cases would emerge in the U.S. On July 24th, 1997, a jury in the 134th Civil District Court in Dallas County
Starting point is 01:51:12 awarded $119.6 million to 10 young men who had been repeatedly molested as kids by Rudy Koss, Roman Catholic priest. An 11th plaintiff was the family of a victim of Koss's who had killed himself before trial at the age of 21. 10 of the 11 young men were former altar boys. Casas, by then stripped of his priestly duties, would live in San Diego and work in occasionally as a paralegal. He'd never gotten into any legal trouble, even though the church knew what he'd done. He never bothered to answer the lawsuit, never appeared in the courtroom of Judge Ann Ashby, who entered a default judgment against him. This left the Diocese of Dallas as the sole target of the jury's judgment. The jury would unanimously find the Dallas Diocese grossly negligent, not only for failing to heed years of clear warnings about costs,
Starting point is 01:51:55 but also for engaging in fraud and conspiracy to hide his crimes from the public, from law enforcement, and even from his parishioners. The Diocese, claiming the jury's judgment would plunge it into bankruptcy, eventually settled with the plaintiffs for $30.9 million. But more than money what the lawyers and victims wanted was to send a message to the church leadership that this problem wasn't going away, and they needed to do something about it. After the trial, attorney Sylvia Damaris said, I hope this wakes up the Pope. Well, it didn't. Also didn't really affect Father Rudy Koss. He was never punished, never even apologized. That didn't really affect Father Rudy Koss. He was never punished.
Starting point is 01:52:26 Never even apologized. That motherfucker now 77 still living free somewhere. Like to take him on a hike too. Swing by the Suck Dungeon, Rudy. I won't feel sorry for you just because you're old now. Let's find a nice cliff together and find out if you can fly. It'll be fun. For one of us at least.
Starting point is 01:52:43 Now I want Ed Kemper to run that pedo island area of mine along with Randy Kraft. Right? He's old, but he still looks strong. Probably still capable of cutting some of these fuckers' heads off and fucking the windpipes. You fired up my zapples, Father Rudy!
Starting point is 01:52:52 Time to pretend you're mother. Fuck your dirty neck. Ah, we can dream. 2001, the Vatican releases another document on child sexual abuse, updating the 1962 guidelines. These new guidelines are
Starting point is 01:53:04 the bishop or other superior of an alleged perpetrator of sexual abuse is updating the 1962 guidelines. These new guidelines are, the bishop or other superior of an alleged perpetrator of sexual abuse is obliged to send in the results of his preliminary investigation to the Vatican, and the officials there will decide if the case will be processed in the Vatican or returned to the local diocese for prosecution.
Starting point is 01:53:20 The canonical age of a minor was raised from 16 to 18. The statute of limitations was extended to 10 years, and in the case of sexual abuse of a minor, this time would begin to run from the victim's 18th birthday. All officials involved in processing cases were required to be priests. Files of cases completed on the local level were to be sent to the Vatican for retention. All officials connected to any cases had to keep the proceeding secret,
Starting point is 01:53:46 but it didn't mention secrecy for the accusers or witnesses. No mention of handing the cases over to local authorities for investigation. These fuckers still seem to feel like they're above the law. Now some dioceses start coming out with their own lists of priests accused of sexual assault. In June of 2001, the Diocese of Tucson would be the first to release a list of priests accused of abuse. One was Father Carlos B. Cosio, who was suspended from the ministry in 1993 after allegations of sexual misconduct with an adult. Also in 1993, a parent made an allegation to the diocese concerning child sexual abuse
Starting point is 01:54:21 that had been reported to the sheriff in 1989. The sheriff decided not to prosecute, but a report was given to the diocese at that time. Cossio would be accused in a federal lawsuit filed in December, 2020 against the diocese of Tucson, the archdiocese of Los Angeles and St. John's Seminary in Camarillo, California of raping a teen boy repeatedly over several days in 1980.
Starting point is 01:54:40 This boy allegedly told his parish priests and the Gales and one of them, Monsignor Walter Rosenweig, laughed at him and then also later sexually abused him. Also in June of 2001, Cardinal Bernard Law, Archbishop of Boston, filed a routine court submission in response to a number of allegations contained in lawsuits brought against one of his former priests, Father John Gagin. This is going to really explode pre-sexual abuse onto the national scene. Boston, an incredibly Catholic city, right? Of the 3.8 million people living in Boston's metropolitan area in 2001, about 2 million were Catholic. At the head of it all was Boston's archbishop, who presided over an extensive network of parishes,
Starting point is 01:55:20 schools, seminaries, convents, and hospitals. Basically the highest position that an archbishop could have in the U.S. The Boston Archdiocese is a uniquely American Catholic institution, wrote a Minneapolis newspaper, when the head of the archdiocese there was under consideration for the Boston job. It is to the church what the New York Yankees are to baseball, Carnegie Hall to music, Broadway to theater. And in 2001, the Archbishop of Boston was Cardinal Bernard Law, who filed that routine court order submission to defend Father John Gagin
Starting point is 01:55:48 from some allegations. This would be a huge flashpoint, right? The moment that caused the Boston Globe reporters to pay attention would eventually lead to the most explosive coverage of priest sex abuse yet. The coverage was so explosive because it would show how rather than possibly isolated incidents like Donald Romer, Gilbert Goth,
Starting point is 01:56:05 sex abuse by numerous priests was well-known and covered up systematically by the Catholic Church. It's important to remember that by 2001, there was still no convincing evidence of any consistent pattern of clerical abuse, even less evidence of a sustained attempt by the church to cover up such behavior. This was shocking news. The church maintained it was just a case of a few bad apples at this time in an otherwise good system, but that was about to change buried in that document. Belonging to Cardinal law was to claim that in 1984, he designed John Gagan to St.
Starting point is 01:56:34 Julia's church in the Boston suburb of Weston further stated that he had done. So knowing that the priest had in his previous parish been accused of molesting, not one, not two, not three, seven,
Starting point is 01:56:44 seven boys from the same family. Oh, should let their parents kill that dirty fuck. The Boston Globe would notice this. Law's initial argument was that when he was transferred, Gagan, when he transferred Gagan, excuse me, to his new parish, neither he nor the Catholic church nor society as a whole understood how difficult it was to change the behavior of child sex abusers. understood how difficult it was to change the behavior of child sex abusers. Fuck off. This is 1984, not 1684. Within days, reporters at the Boston Globe would find out that Gagin was only one of a large number of priests who had sexually molested children,
Starting point is 01:57:17 and once accusations began to pop up, was reassigned by higher-ups to parishes where they would continue committing their heinous crimes. As they kept investigating, Globe reporters were also quietly told of many dozens of cases over the previous decade or so in which the church had settled claims against molesting priests privately, often including a clause that barred the victims and their families from ever talking about it, right? That hush money. But concrete evidence of these settlements was going to be hard to find. The Catholic church in Boston would make sure that every proceeding that led to a civil suit would be sealed, right? Made secret. Rather than do the good Christian
Starting point is 01:57:48 thing of allowing victims to heal, they punished victims further and protected their bottom line. I'm sure that they're there again. They were worried this was going to bankrupt them. Maybe it should have. It emerged that some 10,000 pages of church documents concerning 84 different lawsuits against Father Gagan alone were protected by a superior court confidentiality order. Many more were mysteriously missing. The Globe protected by a superior court confidentiality order many more were mysteriously missing the globe decided to contest the court confidentiality order and now a battle before a catholic judge began the archdiocese argued forcefully that it was constitutionally entitled to keep its records confidential and that a newspaper had no business knowing anything about them anyway yeah but this is uh, but this is a special circumstance. That's a morally bankrupt
Starting point is 01:58:26 move. The Globe, backed by lawyers for the victims, argued that the public interest in the Gagin case surely outweighed the church's desire for privacy. While waiting for the result of the judge's deliberations, reporters dug deeper into Gagin's 30-year career, finding traces of earlier abuse. Separately, they found out all they could about these shadowy private settlements, talking to lawyers, likely to have represented victims in such cases, cross-referencing their cases with those of lawyers known to act for the archdiocese,
Starting point is 01:58:54 and trawling painstakingly through public court records, they gradually compiled a list of what looked like possible clerical abuse cases. Often they found that the actual documents related to these cases had been sealed at the church's request. Finally, they spent long hours pouring over the church's own publications,
Starting point is 01:59:09 looking for the names of priests who had been recorded as being on sick leave in between assignments or reassigned. Ended up with a list of about a hundred names. Many of them match the names given confidentially by victims. So many coverups found in just one city. Great journalism, by the way. November of 2001, the judge ruled that the confidentiality order imposed on the documents in the Gagin case should be lifted and that any records missing from the public file should be resubmitted. It was a huge win for the Boston Globe and for the victims.
Starting point is 01:59:41 But the archdiocese lawyers appealed, threatened legal action if any material based on confidential files was published. Boston Globe basically told them to go fuck themselves, publish their stories anyway. 2002 would be a big year for the Catholic Church, not in a good way. January 20, or 2002, the Boston Globe published the results of their investigation, eventually totaling,
Starting point is 01:59:59 actually over, I said 800 earlier, over 800 articles about widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Initially, they would center on five Roman Catholic priests who'd been charged with crimes in 2002. John Gagin, John Hanlon, Paul Shanley, Robert Gale, and James Talbot. They'd all be convicted and sentenced to prison for varying lengths of time.
Starting point is 02:00:19 What the Boston Globe would expose was not just sex abuse in the Catholic church, but the coverup, the active cover up. For example, they found that Cardinal Law moved Paul Shanley and John Gagin from parish to parish within the diocese, despite repeated allegations of molestation of kids under the priest's care. Later, it was discovered that Father Shanley had addressed a 1978 conference that led to the formation of fucking Man Block, the North American Man Boy Love Association, for fuck's sake. You know, one of their priests openly promoting pedophilia.
Starting point is 02:00:49 Gagan revealed to have molested over 130 kids during his ministry. But he wouldn't get in trouble for that due to statutes and limitations. In January of 2002, Gagan was found guilty of indecent assault and battery for grabbing the butt of a 10-year-old boy in a swimming pool,
Starting point is 02:01:05 as all they could get at the Walton Boys and Girls Club and sentenced to nine to 10 years in prison. So at least they went hard for what they could find. Skipping ahead for a second to August 23rd, 2003. Luckily, while in protective custody in Shirley, Massachusetts, Father Gagan, at the age of 68, was fucking stomped to death. Strangled and stomped to death in his cell by Joseph Druce, a man serving a sentence of life
Starting point is 02:01:30 without the possibility of parole for murder. So hail Nimrod. Subsequent investigation would wonder why the system had placed these two men in the same unit, as prison officials have been warned by another inmate that Druce was going to fucking kill him.
Starting point is 02:01:42 And I hope that fuck up was intentional. First bit of real justice we've come across in this outrageous episode. Thank you, Mr. Drews. Back to the man who covered for Father Gagan and others time and time again, Cardinal Law. In 1987, after at least 23 years of child molesting by Father Joseph Birmingham,
Starting point is 02:02:00 during which time he was shuffled to various parishes, the mother of an altar boy at St. Anne's wrote to Law asking if Birmingham had a history of molesting children. Cardinal Law wrote back, I contacted Father Birmingham. He assured me there was absolutely no factual basis to your concern regarding your son. From my knowledge of Father Birmingham
Starting point is 02:02:17 and my relationship with him, I feel like he would tell me the truth and I believe he is speaking the truth in this matter. But Cardinal Law did know about him. He'd known for years. Another priest, Robert Gale, had been treated in 1987 following years of abusing children. He began a restricted ministry around 1992, living at St. Monica's in South Boston while studying at the University of Massachusetts. Cardinal Law, who had the ultimate authority, signed off on letting Gale remain at St. Monica's. An adolescent then reported that Gale abused him in his room slash office in the rectory just a few months after Law's decision
Starting point is 02:02:49 was made. Boston Globe would illustrate the impact this abuse really had on victims, their families, and many of their articles. Her first story on sex abuse featured a heartbreaking interview with Marietta DeSord, whose three sons and the four sons of her niece, Diane, had all been fucking abused by Gagan years earlier, in the 70s, with whom the church had settled privately. Then on the last day of January, 2002, the paper published the most shocking revelation so far as a result of their five exhaustive months
Starting point is 02:03:16 of database mining, interviewing, and cross-referencing, the eight Globe reporters on the case had established that the Boston Archdiocese had, over the previous decade, privately settled sexual abuse claims made by Catholic families against a staggering 70 of its priests, 70, not just a case of a few bad apples. This was a system that protected a multitude of plethora of abusers, allowed them to pray over and over again on the church's most vulnerable congregants. And the Boston Globe articles exploded all that, encouraging more victims to come forward.
Starting point is 02:03:49 The Globe reporters' hard work finally rewarded when an exasperated judge ordered the archdiocese to make public every single private church file kept on every Boston priest ever fucking accused of sexual abuse. Floodgates were truly opened, right? And despite last minute moves by Cardinal Law to suspend a number of accused priests,
Starting point is 02:04:07 in December of 2002, he had to resign. Would he get in trouble though? Bucker should have been executed. Nope. Instead, he got to live out his retirement luxury in the Vatican. He died there 15 years later in 2017, the age of 86, never punished
Starting point is 02:04:22 for allowing pedo priests to continue to rape and molest over and over again. Just got to hang on the Vatican for over a decade. Well over a decade. Pope could have punished him, but didn't. Interesting. Maybe he had some dirt on the Pope. According to Catholic belief, the Pope is thought to represent a direct line back to Jesus
Starting point is 02:04:37 and Jesus is therefore present in the papacy. So does that mean that Jesus likes to take it easy on kid fuckers? Just trying to follow the logic. Or maybe does the Pope just not have fuck all to do with God's will and is just another asshole like the rest of us who sometimes makes the worst decisions? If you're Catholic and that pisses you off,
Starting point is 02:04:55 I assure you it doesn't piss you off any more than your church's historical relationship with sexual predators pisses me off. You should be way more pissed off with your church than me. It's your kids. I'm the messenger, not the kid fucker uh in the 2002 boston scandal 150 priests who fell under the diocese authority would be accused of sexual abuse more than 500 victims would file abuse claims donations to the archdiocese would be reduced by half all within two years of the story first coming out and alarm bells will be raised to many others across the country over the same period across america as
Starting point is 02:05:24 a whole more than 450 priests four b bishops resigned, and several states, including Massachusetts, introduced new laws obliging clergy to report any knowledge of child sexual abuse to the civil authorities. But the problem, far from solved. The secrecy continues. After meeting in Dallas, Texas, June of 2002, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops establishes that, I talked about a few times before, Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, commonly known as the Dallas Charter, which called for zero tolerance for priests who sexually abuse children. Does not address Catholic bishops, however, who cover up cases or allow abusive priests to continue in ministry. So, you know, fuck that conference. Over the next several years, people
Starting point is 02:06:02 all over the U.S. and the world are trying to figure out just how many people have been abused by priests. What is the true scope of the problem? This digging leads to many more court cases. A 2005 grand jury report after a three-year investigation cited evidence that both Cardinal John Kroll, who was the Archbishop of Philadelphia from 1961 to 1988, and his successor, Cardinal Anthony Belviqua, had both allowed dozens of sexually abusive priests to stay in holy orders by transferring them from parish to parish to avoid a scandal. In a 418-page report issued on September 21st,
Starting point is 02:06:35 the grand jury said that the two archbishops excused and enabled the abuse by burying the reports they did receive and covering up the conduct to outlast statutes of limitation. One of the men moved around was Gerard Chambers, who was active in ministry for 21 years, assigned to 17 different parishes with full access to kids at all those parishes. During nearly half those years, Chambers was on quote unquote health leaves and in treatment facilities, apparently
Starting point is 02:07:02 each time after accusations of sexual abuse. He was put on permanent health leave in 1963, died in 1974. After four of Chambers' victims from his 14th and 15th assignments came forward to the archdiocese in early 1994, church officials said they had already destroyed all of Chambers' personnel records from his ministry career.
Starting point is 02:07:20 How many accusations did they cover up? Dozens? That dude, like so many of these monsters, you know, was never punished before he died. Moving up to 2009 now, moving past so many other cases I could mention, in March of that year, New Hampshire named 27 priests accused of abuse
Starting point is 02:07:34 after the attorney general's office completed a five-year audit on the diocese of Manchester and their abuse also had been covered up. Let's now return to Ireland. Look at another particularly bad apple. December of 2010, the Archdiocese of Dublin's singing priest, Tony Walsh, was sentenced to 123 years in prison for 14 child abuse convictions involving sex-related offenses dating from the mid-70s to the mid-80s.
Starting point is 02:07:58 So fuck yeah, 123 years. Finally, better than the bullshit sentences we've heard about. So hail Nimrod for that. Who was this fake holy man in the late 70s walsh became part of father michael cleary's all pre-show as an elvis impersonator hence the title of singing priest sounds like a pretty dumb show even if a fake elvis priest wasn't molesting anyone which he was one victim said he was around eight years old when walsh would come to school, uh saying about the priest. We all loved him He wasn't a teacher. He was nice to us kids
Starting point is 02:08:28 The victim said he uh had been uh pulled out of class when he met walsh in a school corridor Walsh followed the boy into a toilet cubicle right a stall orally penetrated him before sending him back to class dazed and afraid On another occasion. He anally penetrated this boy out on some isolated road, telling him afterwards that if he told anyone what had happened, he'd get in big trouble. Another victim, who was between seven and ten when Walsh assaulted him, said Walsh would come to the school, perform Elvis impersonations, sing songs. Said Walsh would visit the school, call boys out of class for confession in a spare classroom. He'd say, one by one, we'd go and give confessions. That's where the sexual abuse and rape started.
Starting point is 02:09:06 I don't remember what I did to invite this man to think it was okay to strip me of innocence in childhood. What I do remember is the shock, pain, and confusion. What has never left me is the shame, the shame of being violated, degraded, humiliated, dehumanized, of not having the understanding or strength to make it stop. The shame of feeling and believing
Starting point is 02:09:21 what happened was my fault. To this day, I still carry that shame. This sexual abuse and rape continue for the next four years. Four years of darkness and pain. The victim told the court that the abuse meant he only achieved a fraction of his academic potential and it affected his progress throughout his entire life. He continues to suffer nightmares and flashbacks. He said his wife and kids have also suffered because of his repressed trauma.
Starting point is 02:09:44 By the time Walsh would plead guilty in December of 2018 to indecently assaulting a teenage boy with a fucking crucifix, Walsh had already been in prison for 13 years. Man, he'd be sentenced to another four years in July of 2022. A report about Walsh's sexual abuse would estimate that he had abused, quote, hundreds, plural, of kids.
Starting point is 02:10:06 Despite this massive amount of coverage. Sorry, sorry, just, I don't know why this random thought. I just, it's so dark. Maybe I need something light. But I just thought of like, how much would it suck extra if you fucking hated Elvis and this guy got you? Right, like on top of just what the normal trauma would be,
Starting point is 02:10:24 if also you're like, I fucking hate Elvis' music. Sorry. I just wanted to share that thought. It's something like, man. But despite this massive amount of coverage now,
Starting point is 02:10:33 so many cases being prosecuted around the world, the church still hiding predator priests. At what point does this shit become unforgivable? When does this throw the spiritual credibility
Starting point is 02:10:42 of this entire massive organization into question? 2011, Curtis Wehmeyer forgivable when does this throw the spiritual credibility of this entire massive organization into question uh 2011 curtis uh waymire allowed to work as a priest in minnesota despite many people having reported concerns about his sexual compulsion and suspicious behavior with boys father curtis appointed to saint joseph's catholic church in west st paul minnesota from 2001 to 2006 transferred to the parish of the blessed sacrament in St. Paul, 2006-2012. From the summer of 2010 until June of 2012, a report came in that Father, uh, fucking, I can't say his last name, Curtis, instead of whatever that is, Wemeyer, Wemeyer, offered two minor brothers alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, along with showing them pornography
Starting point is 02:11:21 before molesting them in a camper. Father Curtis touched the boys' genitals, exposed himself, masturbated in front of them for about two years, and his superiors knew about it all. Despite this, he would continue being a priest until June 22, 2012, when he was arrested in Ramsey County, charged with three counts of criminal sexual conduct, later 17 counts of possession of child porn,
Starting point is 02:11:39 pled guilty to all 20 counts, and then removed from Blessed Sacrament. Sweet. March of 2011, the Associated Press reports that the Catholic Church still does not monitor former priests who have been accused of sexually abusing kids when they leave the priesthood. The article reported that various plaintiff's attorneys in Los Angeles worked with private investigators to compile a list of priest addresses, the most comprehensive accounting of the whereabouts of more than 200 clergy accused of abuse in civil lawsuits in the LA Archdiocese. The list of addresses contained nearly 50 former
Starting point is 02:12:09 priests and religious brothers from the LA Archdiocese who now lived and worked in 37 towns and cities across California, totally unsupervised by law enforcement or the church. Another 15 scattered in cities and towns from Montana to New York, while 80 more could not be located, despite an exhaustive search by attorneys. The vast majority of the men had not been convicted, in some cases because the charges came too late, and were therefore not required
Starting point is 02:12:32 to register as sex offenders. The church wasn't doing fuck all to monitor them. Aren't they supposed to protect people? Isn't that one of their most important responsibilities? June of 2012, Monsignor William Lynn of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia becomes the first senior official convicted in the U.S. for covering up sexual abuse. About damn time.
Starting point is 02:12:52 His trial lasted three months, largely because prosecutors spent weeks detailing nearly two dozen examples of him hiding abusive priests. Lynn was convicted of child endangerment for, as the official in charge of handling abusive complaints, reassigning known abusers to new parishes instead of keeping them away from kids. Only sentenced, though, to three to six years in prison.
Starting point is 02:13:12 A lot of people in jail for longer than that for weed. Dozens and dozens of rapes committed under his watch by priests he allegedly, or already, excuse me, not allegedly, already knew were pedos, and he gets three to six years. Then he gets released on bail in August of 2016 2016 uh after the pennsylvania supreme court vacated his conviction state's high court rejected a petition to uh appeal an earlier ruling that found jurors during lynn's first trial were prejudiced by hearing hours of testimony about clergy sex abuse allegations that were unrelated to lynn's actions as supervisor he would be set to be retried but then we'd be that retrial would be pushed off by the pandemic. So, you know, he's just living his fucking life. These trials, of course,
Starting point is 02:13:49 have not been limited to the U.S. They've been going on in Asia, Africa, Europe, across North and South America. The problem is global, especially because dirty priests get moved from one country to another all the time. In July 2014, Pope Francis met with clergy sex abuse survivors, promised zero tolerance for priests who abuse children. His strongest acknowledgement yet of what abuse victims had been saying for decades, that the cover-ups had often been as bad as the crimes. In a homily given during a private mass with six victims of church sexual abuse, he apologized for the abuse, asked for forgiveness. He said, I beg your forgiveness, too, for the sins of omission on the part of the church leaders who did not respond. Excuse me.
Starting point is 02:14:26 Do not respond adequately to reports of abuse made by family members as well as by abuse victims themselves. Despite the strong words, victims advocacy group, the survivors network of those abused by priests or snap said the words failed to advance the cause of preventing molestation by priests. Arguing that no child on earth is safe for today because this meeting. Yeah. Did his words actually mean fucking anything? the movie spotlights released the award-winning film would win an oscar for best original screenplay and best picture it was fantastic i saw it follows uh how the boston globe's investigative spotlight team uncovered the catholic church hiding priest sex abuse as we covered uh in general the film was positively uh positively received by the Catholic community.
Starting point is 02:15:06 For its release, Cardinal Sean O'Malley of the Archdiocese of Boston issued a statement in the Archdiocese official newspaper saying that the media's investigator reported on the abuse crisis instigated a call for the church to take responsibility for its failings and to reform itself to deal with what was shameful and hidden. But has it done that? February of 2016, the Vatican City Commission on Clerical Sex Abuse even attended a private screening of the film. I wonder if they took notes on how to get better at hiding molestation cases in the future. Pretty skeptical of all this. The Vatican's response to the continued media coverage and allegations in recent years, not been entirely positive. Early in 2018, Pope Francis met with Bishop Juan Barros
Starting point is 02:15:42 from Chile concerning charges of sexual abuse by Friar Fernando Caradima and accusations of cover-ups by Barros. Caradima had been accused of molesting boys since 1984. Church officials had listened to credible accusations for over three decades by the time Pope Francis intervened. Many laypersons
Starting point is 02:16:00 and victims had come forward to condemn Barros for covering up these sex crimes. And then when Pope Francis was asked by local reporters about the sexual abuse scandal surrounding Burroughs, Francis quickly condemned the charges as slander, stating, the day they bring me proof against Bishop Burroughs, I will speak. There was not a piece of evidence against him. Is that clear? Following the Pope's defense of Burroughs, Boston Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley said that, you know, Francis's comments about Baros were a source of great pain for victims. Francis then appointed Archbishop Charles Scaluna of Malta to investigate
Starting point is 02:16:30 the allegations of abuse. Upon receiving Scaluna's report, Francis wrote in 2018 that he had made serious mistakes in the assessment and perception of the situation. Whoops. Maybe he should have fucking erred on the victim side because of all the shit that's been going on also declared that the Chilean church hierarchy was collectively responsible for grave defects in handling sexual abuse cases and the resulting loss of credibility suffered by the church following Francis' remarks, 33 Chilean bishops
Starting point is 02:16:56 did offer their resignations and Pope Francis later apologized to the victims of the sex abuse scandal and then in April of 2018 three victims invited to the Vatican so better than nothing and one of the sex abuse scandal. And then in April of 2018, three victims invited to the Vatican. So better than nothing. And one of the broadest inquiries into clergy sexual abuse in the U.S. history,
Starting point is 02:17:13 a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report in 2018, in August of that year, concluding that 300 Catholic priests sexually abused roughly 1,000 child victims over seven decades. The estimated number of victims actually much, much higher. September of 2018, a report by the German Catholic Church found that, you know, 3,677 children in Germany, mostly 13 or younger, sexually abused by clergy between 1946, 2014. I know we touched on that.
Starting point is 02:17:39 December of 2018, Pope Francis calls for all priests who have raped and molested children to turn themselves in. I don't think a single priest did. Pope also promises the church will never again, right, this is after the zero tolerance, now it's never again, cover up clergy sex abuse, but that's already been proven to be bullshit. That same month, the Illinois Attorney General released preliminary findings in an investigation that revealed the state's six diocese had failed to disclose sexual abuse allegations against 500 additional priests and clergy members. Many of the allegations very recent. February of 2019, the world's Catholic bishops gather in the Vatican with the Pope to discuss preventing priest sex abuse. They gather from February 21st to 24th, each day devoted to its own aspect of
Starting point is 02:18:19 the crisis, responsibility, accountability, transparency. Unfortunately, one day wasn't devoted to how fucking stupid celibacy is uh cardinal felipe barberin the archbishop of leon convicted on march 7th 2019 of failing to report sex abuse what i thought it was all done committed by priest bernard prenot given a six month suspension slap on the wrist uh july 5th 2019, Pope Francis does defrock this guy. Okay, a little bit of improvement. He defrocks the priest that this guy was covering up,
Starting point is 02:18:50 this guy Bernard Preynat. Preynat had molested roughly 80 Boy Scouts. Ah, boy. His punishment, sentenced to five years in prison. Defrocked, five years in prison
Starting point is 02:19:01 for molesting 80 fucking boys. What a joke. August 17th, 2019, Argentina Bishop Sergio Buenanueva of San Francisco, Cordoba, acknowledges a lengthy history of sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Argentina. Also states the church of sex abuse crisis in Argentina
Starting point is 02:19:17 is just the beginning. And that is Pope Francis' native country. I wonder if the Pope himself will eventually be implicated. I would not be surprised if they're covering that shit up. Hey, remember how in July of 2014, Pope Francis said zero tolerance and then he said it was over
Starting point is 02:19:33 a couple years after that? Well, again, it hasn't panned out well. October of 2019, Associated Press investigation learned that nearly 1,700 priests, other clergy members that the Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused
Starting point is 02:19:43 of child sexual abuse still living under the radar with little or no oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement. Fun, fun, fun. Almost done with this timeline, December 29, 2019 revealed that numerous bishops across the U.S. withheld hundreds of names from their accused clergy list. An AP analysis found the names of more than 900 clergy members accused of child sexual abuse missing from lists released by the diocese and religious orders when they served or where they served. AP reached the number by matching the public lists against the database of accused priests tracked by a group, bishopaccountability.org, and scouring bankruptcy documents, lawsuits, settlement information, grand jury reports, media accounts. At least these journalists are doing something. bankruptcy documents, lawsuits, settlement information, grand jury reports, media accounts.
Starting point is 02:20:24 At least these journalists are doing something. Found that more than 100 of the former clergy members not listed by the diocese or religious orders had been charged with sexual crimes, including rape, solicitation, and receiving or viewing child pornography. On top of that, the AP found another nearly 400 priests and clergy members that had been accused of abuse while serving in dioceses that had not yet released any names. Some dioceses had excluded entire classes of clergy members from their lists, priests and religious orders, deceased priests, priests ordained to foreign countries. Richard J. Poster served time for possessing child
Starting point is 02:20:58 pornography, violated his probation by having contact with kids, admitted to masturbating in the bushes near a church school, and in 2005 was put on a sex offender registry, he was still not included on any of these lists. The diocese said his crime of possessing more than 270 videos and images of child porn on his work laptop, not originally a qualifying offense in the church's landmark charter on child abuse because it wasn't a direct victim. How can they fucking continue to be this stupid? This was even though child pornography was added to the church's child abuse because it wasn't a direct victim. How can they fucking continue to be this stupid? This was even though child pornography was added to the church's child abuse charter back in 2011.
Starting point is 02:21:31 Man, it just fucking just keeps going and going and going. November 10th, 2020, the Vatican publishes a report which finds that John Paul II, the Pope, learned of allegations of sexual impropriety against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who at the time was serving as Archbishop of Newark, through a 1999 letter from Cardinal John O'Connor warning him that appointing McCarrick to the Archbishop of Washington, D.C., a position which had recently been opened, would be a mistake. So as recent as 1999, the Pope directly knew about some of this bullshit.
Starting point is 02:22:01 John Paul II ordered an investigation, which stalled when three of the four bishops tasked with investigating claims allegedly brought back inaccurate or incomplete information. Pope John Paul II gave McCarrick the appointment. McCarrick became a cardinal in 2001. Then in 2017, a former altar boy came forward to report that McCarrick had groped him when he was a teen in New York. Next year, the Archdiocese of New York announced that McCarrick had been removed from the ministry after finding the allegation to be very credible and substantiated. And two New Jersey dioceses revealed they had settled claims of sexual misconduct against this guy in the past. Pope Francis would defrock him in 2019 after a Vatican
Starting point is 02:22:38 investigation determined he'd sexually abused numerous minors and also adults. Two-year internal investigation into McCarr investigation found that three decades of bishops, cardinals, and popes downplayed or dismissed continual reports of sexual misconduct. This last July, this motherfucker, 91 years old at that point, finally charged with sexually assaulting a
Starting point is 02:22:58 16-year-old male in 1974 during a wedding reception for the boy's brother and then September 3rd last year pled not guilty to three counts of indecent assault and battery stemming from this alleged 1974 incident. McCarrick, the only U.S. Catholic cardinal, current or former,
Starting point is 02:23:13 to ever be criminally charged with child sex crimes. Okay, almost done with this timeline. October 23rd, or October 3rd, excuse me, 2021. This was mentioned earlier, but fits here as well. An independent commission set up by the Bishop's Conference of France released a report estimating that the ranks of the 115 000 catholic priests and other religious officials in france since since the 1950s had included about 3 000 abusers right that report estimated 216 000 kids have been abused uh in france between 1950 and 2020. And when you add, you know, church employees, that number increases to around 330,000.
Starting point is 02:23:48 In 2022, this year, the AFP news agency reported one of the most serious cases revealed to date in Columbia of clerical abuse involving a network of abusers that included 38 priests in the city of Villa Vicencio, of which 19 of them had been suspended two years before by the Vatican in the midst of their investigation. But they were still working with, still had their collars, still working with kids, still molesting.
Starting point is 02:24:13 In another Colombian city, Medellin, the possible existence of another network of pedophiles of at least 43 priests was found out. Only three have been charged and sentenced. And as recently as just a few weeks ago, August 19th, Ubaldo Roque Huerta, ordained as a priest in 2008, was charged in Winona County District Court of Minnesota
Starting point is 02:24:31 with fifth degree criminal sexual misconduct for allegedly performing sexual acts on a victim without their consent. This seems to be the most recent case, but by the time this episode comes out, I'm sure there will be more. Now let's get out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. episode comes out, I'm sure there will be more. Now let's get out of this timeline.
Starting point is 02:24:49 Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. I know that was a lot. Sexual abuse in the Catholic church. Holy shit. What a massive problem. A problem that although the current church along with pro-Francis seems to be trying to solve, at least they seems to be trying to solve, as they say they're trying to solve it, it just keeps rearing his ugly head. I know there are many good priests. I know the majority of priests do not molest kids. My wife, Lindsay, raised Catholic,
Starting point is 02:25:17 loved a lot of her priests growing up. No hints of them fucking anyone. But when other priests have fucked the children they're supposed to protect, the children they're supposed to instill a love of God in, the coverups, the shield, and have protected them. Man, those bother me. How many lives have been destroyed thanks to those cover-ups throughout the entirety of the church's history? What, millions?
Starting point is 02:25:33 How many don't we know about? How many records have been destroyed, burned, shredded? How many people have died by suicide rather than live with the memories of what these priests did to them? How many people were never able to trust an authority figure again? Such a monstrous violation. How can this be fixed? I don't know. What if the Catholic faithful were to boycott their own church until the church renounced their fucking view of celibacy for starts? Time to reimagine the priesthood maybe, right? Way past time to reimagine it. What if the church
Starting point is 02:26:00 was boycotted until it stopped preaching that anything other than heterosexual desires was a calling to the priesthood? What if the boycott continued until the patriarchy was fucking destroyed within the church? Let women lead in addition to men. What if the Vatican opened all their files, right? Gave law enforcement full, unbridled, unsupervised access to all records that agents can find. Time to clean all the fucking skeletons out of the closets. Time to immediately remove any priest from access to kids anytime an allegation is made. Never restore access until the allegation has been thoroughly investigated
Starting point is 02:26:29 and proven to be fraudulent. So much of this could actually be fixed. I know tradition can be a beautiful thing, but this tradition, it has a real ugly cancer inside of it. A cancer that keeps attacking kid after kid after kid. And it needs to be cut out. If it isn't, this tradition is just going to continue
Starting point is 02:26:44 to represent something rotten and foul for many. Fuck the call to be cut out. If it isn't, this tradition is just going to continue to represent something rotten and foul for many. Fuck the call to celibacy. Fuck thinking that prayer can cure a pedophile. No, celibacy is unnatural. Prayer does not rewire sexual predators' brains. Religion doesn't have to oppose human nature so intensely like it does with the Catholic priesthood. It can work with it denying natural sexual impulses don't all these examples prove how destructive and dangerous and unfixable that is and we only covered a tiny part of the many many accusations i i licked so many of them out of the notes skip so many is how scrolling down through the notes there's so many you know
Starting point is 02:27:21 made against priests worldwide every year thousands Thousands have been made, you know, in any given part of the U.S. Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands across the world. It's been happening for so long, you know, well over a thousand years now, based on the few records we have, close to 2,000 years. The church, you know, went out of its way to forbid sexual encounters between older men and younger boys at least as early as the 4th century when the Council of Elvira emphasized that men and the clergy were expected to live holy, pure, completely celibate lives, the early emphasis on priesthood celibacy going back to
Starting point is 02:27:52 early Christians like St. Paul and Augustine, man, has it created a lot of problems. The call to celibacy has also never been working. Like, they don't actually follow it. It's not followed most of the time. It hasn't been for centuries centuries why continue to put on this facade to carry on the charade the other church has been sweeping the sexual lives of priests under the rugs for centuries because the expectation is not attainable you know and they've been sweeping under the rug especially when it comes to kids is it better now we don't know kind of hard to trust an organization that has broken trust over and over again for centuries. The Church of Rome under Pope Francis has declared that its official position is that it won't be a safe haven for sex offenders and will punish both offenders and those who cover it up.
Starting point is 02:28:34 But is it actually fucking doing that? There's been so many promises that have been hollow, that have been made in the past. We know that they continue, or as recently as 2019, continue to hide the true nature of the problem and not protect the faithful from known predators, many documents are undoubtedly still buried in secret archives. They have to be, come on, full of terrible details about many more crimes perpetrated on kids. Will we ever know the true extent of the abuse? I highly doubt it. Is it continuing to this day? I sure think it is. You know, the Catholic church's long history of denying and hiding the truth does not make me optimistic So careful with your kids Careful what with uh who you choose to tithe to careful what what institution you put your fucking trust in
Starting point is 02:29:13 Don't just worry about the boogeyman in the bushes You might want to keep your eye on the on the man in the cloth, too Unfortunately, a lot of these men have been some of the worst predators of all the most egregious violations of trust I don't know. I don't know what else to say at this moment. Time now for today's top five takeaways. Number one, the Catholic church's sex abuse problem is massive and in its modern incarnation dates back for decades. Thousands of priests in dozens of countries have been accused of abusing thousands of kids and adults. Modern allegations going back to the 1940s. Many of the cases being reported more recently date back decades as well, which makes a problem in prosecuting them
Starting point is 02:29:54 because of statute of limitations or the priests who did this, committed these abuses are dead. As we now know, this isn't only a problem faced in our time. The Catholic Church has been concerned about its holy men and women having sex for nearly two millennia And since they never were able to figure out how to live while denying one's basic human sexual urges They pretty much decided on a policy of sweeping their sexual lives under the rug Sweeping under the rug doesn't work well in our age of mass media And thankfully, there's now more justice for victims than ever before Perhaps each new lawsuit will bring the day the church will have to fucking reconcile truly with all this
Starting point is 02:30:27 and repeal many of its longstanding traditions a little bit closer. Number two, the major turning point in the way the US public would perceive sexual abuse within the Catholic church came with the publishing of the Boston Globe articles beginning in January of 2002. Though there have been cases of pre-sex abuse
Starting point is 02:30:42 that have made the news before that, the public view had continued to be that the priests, the bad ones, just a few bad apples, and to see a good ones. A few had slipped through the cracks. But what the spotlight reporters uncovered was decades of cover-ups, settlement hush money offered to victims and their families in exchange for silence, moving priests routinely from parish to parish, with numerous allegations surfacing, doing their best to hide the truth from the public while putting these accused priests in close contact with children continually. Number three, the church, especially Pope Francis, has made some effort to address the sexual abuse,
Starting point is 02:31:14 but many say, uh, not doing enough. I'm one of those many. While many dioceses started releasing lists of accused priests, and that's good, news outlets have discovered that these lists leave the names of many predator priests off of them. Not good. There've been many summits or meetings by the Vatican in recent years, but it's unclear if these summits and meetings have done fucking anything worthwhile or if it's just lip service being, you know, paid to victims and PR moves made for the public. Number four, many priests have recently called for more counseling and a more sexually open environment to deal with the fact that many of them have immature or malformed attitudes towards sex in general trying to follow the so-called model of jesus's chastity while struggling with completely
Starting point is 02:31:52 normal human urges then all that getting wrapped up in the fear of divine retribution also in the power trip of being jesus's representative on earth has led to community leaders who have uniquely repressed and maladaptive relationships with sex. What should the church do about all this? Pretty unclear. Likely that they'll never go back on priesthood celibacy unless they feel it's the only way to keep their empire from crumbling. But it sure seems like they should do that.
Starting point is 02:32:17 Again, maybe a boycott. Number five, new info. If you live in the US and want to look up any priest accused of sexual assault in your area or any area you used to live in or someplace your friends or family live in, you can go to bishopaccountability.org. You can search by last name, first name, their religious order, and it's actually bishop-accountability.org, bishop-accountability.org. Search by last name, first name, religious order, state, or parish. They have a database of those accused in the U.S. that
Starting point is 02:32:43 compiles information that the dioceses have released, as well as records from courts and settlements to arrive at a near-comprehensive list of accused priests. We say near-comprehensive because the true number of victims will likely never be known, just like the true number of perpetrators will likely never be known. Time Shock, top five takeaways. The Catholic Church's long history of sex scandals has been sucked. This one's probably going to piss some people off. But again, I didn't decide to institute unnatural sexual policies and cover up the destructive actions of pedophiles over and over again. Many members of the church have done that. And the church should be the recipient of a lot of righteous anger because of that. Well-deserved. More still needs to be done,
Starting point is 02:33:29 much more. Policies need to be changed to protect much more kids. Enough's enough. It was too much in all likelihood centuries ago. Last thing, my anger in this episode doesn't come from a place of trying to protect my kids. My kids, I'm not Catholic. It comes from a place of trying to protect Catholic children. So hopefully you see that if you're upset. I hate anyone who sexually abuses children, but those who hide behind God to do so, I think I hate them the most. Now for some thank yous.
Starting point is 02:33:55 Thank you once again to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. She kicked ass in leading the charge to put on the wet, hot Bad Magic summer camp. I'm a lucky guy. Truly married to a boss bitch. It was really cool to see the fruition of her effort. Thanks to Logan Keith also for directing and producing today and doing so much to make sure our 2022
Starting point is 02:34:12 Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp was a huge success. He also did so much. And thanks again to our no longer mystery producer, Tyler C., the Suck Ranger. Help with the production today. Met a lot of meat sacks at summer camp who loved him. He was beloved as he should have been. So excited to get to know him better going forward.
Starting point is 02:34:30 Thanks also to Bit Elixir for upkeep on the Time Suck app, the art warlock, Logan Keith again, creating the merch at badmagicmerch.com, and for helping socials along with the Suck Ranger. Sophie, the fact sorceress Evans, again with the initial research this week. Thanks to the all-seeing eyes, moderating the Cult of Curious private Facebook page, the Mod Squad, making sure Discord keeps running smooth.
Starting point is 02:34:49 Everyone on both the TimeSucks subreddit and the BadMagicProductions subreddit as well. Next week, can we take it easy and return to some serial killing? Why is that taking it easy when it feels like it is? We're going to look at the Bayou Strangler, Ronald Joseph Dominique. Oh, Ronnie Joe. And I promised to add a lot more dark comedy than I did this week. This is so much. It was exhausting. Ronald Dominique was arrested on December 1st, 2006, confessed to 23 murders. FBI labeled him one of the most active serial killers in the country at the time. Dominique primarily targeted shorter and thinner black men, but a few of his victims were white.
Starting point is 02:35:27 Ages ranged from 16 to 46. He strangled or suffocated these boys and men when after people living in poverty or men who were sex workers. His most common tactic was to approach a victim, strike up a conversation, offer this person money for sex usually, either with himself or with an attractive woman who was definitely waiting in his camper in Bayou Blue,
Starting point is 02:35:49 a rural community in Houma, Louisiana. Most of his victims probably had a gut feeling something wasn't right, but they needed money and agreed to go with him and, you know, be tied up for sex. Only two people would ever escape his camper alive. Dominique was a fast and brutal killer, murdered his victims, dumped their bodies as quick as possible, didn't linger or return to crime scenes like many of the other serial killers we've covered. Although he took credit for his kills, he attempted to shift blame to the victims, saying that they were the ones who tried to rape and rob him. Gosh dang it. Thankfully, in almost all the cases, forensic evidence proved him to be a liar. Somehow, this average man, not that bright, didn't have any accomplices or special resources and knowledge, managed to avoid capture for almost a decade, even killed victims after he was under
Starting point is 02:36:24 surveillance by a dedicated task force. We will learn so much more about this pile of shit next week. Right now, let's have some, some not darkness in this week's Time Sucker Updates. Updates? Get your Time Sucker Updates. Love this first update. Kick-ass gamer, kick-ass sack, Canadian sack, Carl Barn, has whippled the fuck up.
Starting point is 02:36:52 He wrote, greetings, Dan, the three out of five star man. Ages ago, possibly even a year ago, my girlfriend who got me into Time Suck asked if you'd be so gracious to allow the grassroots esports team we're on to be sponsored by Whipple. You said yes. So on we went, creating jerseys and bla be sponsored by Whipple. You said yes. So on we went creating jerseys and blazing with the Whipple logo on the
Starting point is 02:37:08 shoulders. And of course we shout out our sponsor when we go in for post-game winter interviews with the sports casters from the volunteer run e-sports organization. We participate in I've attached photos below just a few of the seven of us nerds and our two very nerdy coaches, as well as a clip. Yes.
Starting point is 02:37:24 Thank you. The team name is Heavy Slaps and we play a five-on-five strategy game called Heroes of the Storm. Thanks again for all you do. Your podcast continues to enrich my mind and funny bone, maybe not today, while being something else,
Starting point is 02:37:37 maybe the mind, maybe not the funny bone, while being something else to my wonderful girlfriend of seven years and I continue to enjoy. Kyle Barron from Hamilton, Ontario. Well, Kyle, thank you for these kind words. I love that you did this. So ridiculous. Thanks for the pictures. a girlfriend of seven years and i continue to enjoy kyle baron from hamilton ontario well kyle think of these kind words uh love that you did this so ridiculous uh thanks for the pictures uh long live heavy slaps long may your team reign or at least you know long may your team play and
Starting point is 02:37:55 have fun and rip whip oh hope you jackie fabian jaeger and the gang continue to have so much fun looks like you got a great crew there uh Fuck you, fuck your family, and fear heavy slaps. Now for another sweet message from Sweet Sucker, Lenora Otto. Lenora writes, hello to Dan and Lindsay and everyone at the Bad Magic crew. Hail Nimrod and all that. I've written this email in my head many times at many different points in my life. I genuinely don't care if you read this on the podcast, although that would be so fucking cool.
Starting point is 02:38:24 I just really hope Dan and Lindsay lay eyes on it I want to say thank you so much Thanks so much to you both I'm a gigantic creep and Robert And scared of this is my favorite podcast of all time But I don't have a spooky story to tell So I thought this would fit better here Lindsay you're the perfect crystal queen
Starting point is 02:38:39 I'm a huge bad magician Love time suck and loved is we dumb rest in peace I've been a fan of Dan since I was a teenager. We listened to his standup albums over and over during two long periods of my life. While I was extremely depressed and suicidal, I found scared to death and time suck years down the line at another time in my life. That was super dark. I was working in Greenlee, Colorado, Greeley, excuse me, Colorado as a baby therapist running
Starting point is 02:39:00 a medication assisted treatment program. It's a hard job. Scared to death basically saved me. I listened to it all day long. I've been doing the same thing recently. My mom had a stroke. I had to drive across the country to be with her, then all the way to North Carolina
Starting point is 02:39:12 to bring her big-ass dogs to a foster home, then back home to Colorado to leave the place and people I love to be with my mom in Minnesota. You have been there with me all the way across the country for 40-plus hours. So thank you. I could say so many things, but the email's already long.
Starting point is 02:39:26 I love you guys. I feel like a part of the community, even though I've yet to get into any of the social media groups. Hope to catch you all at the next Bad Magic Summer Camp. Fuck you. Fuck your family. Well, we love you too, Lenora. Yeah, I told Lindsay about your message.
Starting point is 02:39:39 Thanks for doing such a hard job, like working with babies that need helping hands. You're a living angel, a bright spot in a dark episode. Uh, the world is so much better off with, uh, with, uh,
Starting point is 02:39:49 you than without you. You know, I hope to catch you next year as well. Uh, until then, please keep on sucking. Please keep getting scared over unscared to death. And I hope you continue to enjoy the shows.
Starting point is 02:39:59 I love working on both shows so much right now. And I hope your mom's improving your fantastic daughter to drive across the country for her and those dogs, but Jangles loves you. Now, this feels fitting, quick pro-Catholic message from good-hearted sucker named Mitch. I love the name Mitch. Mitch writes, hey, Dan, I'm replying to a message you got from someone saying that religion overall is bad,
Starting point is 02:40:20 and you said that simply wasn't true due to how many things religious institutions have helped with. You forgot to mention schools and hospitals, and these often serve the poor. Also, in my state, there's a place called Sharing and Carrying Hands, founded by Mary Jo Copland. It's a shelter, daycare, soup kitchen, job search center, etc., etc. This is a Catholic place, but it serves all comers, whether they're atheist, Muslim, Christian, or whatever. So yeah, religion has done a lot of good and a lot of bad, but I would say not as much bad as secular societies have done like the USSR and communist China. That is a great point. And thank you, Mitch. Yeah, a lot of good has been done. And I love that that soup kitchen and, you know, something is much more than a soup kitchen
Starting point is 02:40:59 serves everyone, not just Christians. And, you know, examples like that, all the more reason for the Catholic church to cleanse the sexual abuse wound so much more thoroughly than what they've done, right? Free the priests, save the kids and keep doing all the good shit they're already doing like that. Hail Nimrod, dude. Last one's a big one.
Starting point is 02:41:18 From wet hot bad magic summer camper and wonderful sucker, Kerry Davis. It's allergy inducing, but I may be spent right now, Kerry, if you're hearing me, uh, Carrie writes, okay,
Starting point is 02:41:27 this is going to be a doozy. I will do my absolute best to condense it as much as possible. Sorry, not sorry. I don't know if you remember us. I'm the mother and the mother daughter duo from camp carrying Brandy. And you included that photo. And I absolutely remember you carry looked right at you both during the Q and
Starting point is 02:41:40 a met you both over the weekend, uh, December 26, 2018, just a few weeks after graduating from Wazoo, Washington State University, and less than a week away from moving across the country with her then-girlfriend Shannon,
Starting point is 02:41:52 Brandy was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She was lying in a darkened ER room all by herself when she got the news. 22 years old at the time. If she'd gone on the cross-country road trip, she would have died. After flying out that night to meet her at the Spokane hospital, Shannon and I drove Brandy back to Seattle during what seemed like a blizzard. It was terrifying, but we made it. Brandy was quickly put on chemo and put
Starting point is 02:42:13 into a remission and remission right away, or that put her into remission right away. Less than a year later, we learned that she had relapsed and we need to have a bone marrow transplant now. Before they could do that procedure, they had to get her back into remission. During that time, she got very sick, went into respiratory failure and was moved to the ICU. Because of COVID, I was not allowed to stay with her longer than two hours in a 24-hour period. The next morning, my birthday, Brandy FaceTimed me.
Starting point is 02:42:37 I could hardly understand anything she was saying, but I could tell she was terrified. A nurse dressed in a full hazmat suit finally got on the call, told me they'd be putting her into a medically induced coma, but wanted me to have a chance to see her before they did.
Starting point is 02:42:49 Also, until her COVID results came back, I was not allowed to visit. Shannon came home from work immediately. The two of us waited. Finally, I got the okay, immediately got in my car, headed to the hospital. On the drive down,
Starting point is 02:42:59 her oncologist called to update me. For the first time, when asked if she was going to be okay, he could uh he could not reassure me of anything his only answer was i don't know but we're doing everything we can for the next several days i visited for as long as they would let me i would sing facetime with shannon so brandy could hear her voice read to her hold her hand basically just chatted away about everything and nothing i didn't know if she could hear me or not but in case she could
Starting point is 02:43:21 i wanted to make sure she knew i was there after several days of this i was getting ready to leave to leave, telling her how much I loved her, letting her know I'd be back tomorrow, and I saw a single tear roll down her cheek. It was then I knew that she could hear me, which made me so happy, but that was immediately followed by the realization that she was most likely doing everything she could to beg me not to leave her. Walking out that day was one of the hardest things I've done in my life. It was the next day that the nurse called to let me know they were going to start waking her up to see if she could handle breathing on her own. When I arrived back at the hospital, I was elated to see her awake. She was going to be okay. Now onto the bone marrow transplant. Seemed like forever before we got the call, they found a donor. Shannon and I worked out a schedule that allowed us to each spend three and a half days with her at the hospital and then swap out. The actual transplant itself was pretty
Starting point is 02:44:04 anticlimactic, but the nurses gathered in a room to sing her happy birthday. Transplant day is referred to often as re-birthday. The weeks following were brutal. Several of the nurses on the floor told us they'd never seen anyone have it as bad as Brandy did. Oh, how my baby girl suffered. There were some horrifyingly scary moments and many sleepless nights, but finally, after a month and a half in the hospital, she was going to be released. September 28th, 2022 will be her second rebirth day. One of the major side effects of the transplant is what they call graft versus host disease, which is basically the donor cells attacking the recipient's body. This can manifest in so many different ways on any part of the body. GVHD can be very serious,
Starting point is 02:44:42 even deadly, if left untreated. The best treatment for this is steroids, specifically prednisone. Brandy has been suffering from GVHD in one form or another since her transplant, which means she has been on high doses of prednisone for almost two years, which is now causing her entire body to be extremely swollen, especially her face. Needless to say, prednisone is very bad, but incredibly still the better choice for her health right now. Since the day Brandy was diagnosed, she has had to slowly get let go of so many things She had to quit her job as a nanny for a little girl She adored she will no longer be able to have biological children of her own a dream
Starting point is 02:45:12 She's had since she was little and we recently learned due to the prolonged use of prednisone She has developed a vascular necrosis and will need both hips replaced Because of this she suffers from immense pain constantly. She's unable to do anything she enjoys anymore. I've watched her incredible spirit dull more and more each day. Now to the point of this letter, we'd already purchased the tickets before she was having hip issues for Bad Magic Summer Camp, so I wasn't sure how she'd feel about still attending. She insisted she would not miss it for the world. As camp approached, I finally saw her get excited about something. She had something to look forward to. Okay, I just got a little left in the tank.
Starting point is 02:45:52 I saw a genuine happiness in her eyes, something I hadn't seen in way too long. Meeting you, Dan and Lindsay made her practically giddy. Can't thank you enough for giving her something that brought her genuine happiness again. During the Q&A, when Lindsay brought attention to Leslie, who's a cancer survivor, and actually still has leukemia, and she used the moment to ask everyone there to please be a bone marrow donor because you never know whose life it could save, hearing this brought her to tears. She's one of the lives saved thanks to a donor. Talking with Leslie afterwards was so good for Brandy.
Starting point is 02:46:19 Leslie's an incredible woman, a greed, and an inspiration. So not only did Brandy benefit from meeting two people that she adores, she also got to connect with someone who can relate to what Brandy's going through. Yeah, their situations are different, but close enough to connect. Phew, fucking allergies are kicking my ass right now. I know this was a lot.
Starting point is 02:46:36 I just wanted you to know how much you made my sweet girl so happy. We had an amazing time at camp. Your team was very kind and accommodating to help make it as easy as possible for her while she was there. Since this is so long, I don't expect you to read on the show.
Starting point is 02:46:48 Well, I did. But if you do, please extend our thanks to everyone that was at camp that helped us. We genuinely appreciate every single one of them. Special shout out to Daryl and the security team. He was great. Thank you, Dan, Lindsay, and the entire Bad Magic team
Starting point is 02:46:58 for bringing together so many wonderful meat sacks and especially for bringing something to my best friend slash daughter's face that I haven't seen in way too long. Joy. We love you from the bottom of our hearts. Hail, Lucifina, and a big fat fuck cancer. All of our love and gratitude,
Starting point is 02:47:13 your loyal space lizards, Carrie and Brandy. Man, Carrie, you hit me full force in the field with that one. Didn't really realize this episode was gonna be so, man, intense. I had no idea what brandy been through uh i just knew uh you know she was someone who seemed to be having a great time at camp uh your message for me personally a good reminder that we never know what those around of us around us excuse me might be going through so we should try and show them uh some kindness
Starting point is 02:47:42 as much as possible not always easy but so. So fucking glad you both had a great time. So proud of our community for being so kind and awesome, not just with you, but with everyone. Literally didn't see any one from our community being a dick, not the whole weekend. It's pretty amazing, not once. Keep kicking ass and smiling through it all, Brandy. You're an inspiration. keep being a fierce and loving mama bear Carrie, keep being the beautiful bastards I met at camp, love you gals hey Lucifina, thank you for the pics and that is it for this week
Starting point is 02:48:13 next time suckers, I needed that we all did another Bad Magic Productions podcast has been completed. Please don't become a priest this week and then fuck a bunch of kids and then have a bishop covered up for you. That would be terrible and also very unoriginal. It's been done, sadly. Just talk to God directly.
Starting point is 02:48:36 I mainly use psilocybin now to commune with the celestial. Doesn't require any kids getting fucked at all. Use a clear mind, clear sky to see some stars and some good shrooms. If you don't believe in God, don't want to communicate with the divine in any form. Okay, fine. Uh, at least just keep on sucking. Productions. Whew. Man, uh, celibacy.
Starting point is 02:49:09 Not even jerking off? I really don't think it'd be good for society in general for me to try that. I am, uh, I'm a fairly angry guy a lot of time. And as you just experienced, uh, somewhat emotionally unstable. And I come pretty much every day. unstable. And I come pretty much every day. If I stopped coming, I would think two months tops, someone's getting killed. Someone is triggering me, possibly a priest, if this were happening right now. And, you know, I fucking beat him to death. And then I have to explain to the officer, it's like, I know, I know I should have done that, but do you have any idea how blue my balls are? God, my dick is hard.
Starting point is 02:49:50 Which probably wouldn't help you quite. Take care, everybody out there. Be good to people and don't fuck kids. Can we just not fuck kids?

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