Amplify’d from www.cbc.ca

Vatican denies Irish claim of abuse coverup

The Associated Press

The Vatican on Saturday vigorously rejected claims it sabotaged efforts by Irish bishops to report priests who sexually abused children to police and accused the Irish prime minister of making an "unfounded" attack against the Holy See.

Irish officials defended their claims that the Vatican exacerbated the abuse crisis and criticized the Holy See for offering an overly "legalistic" response to the scandal.

The Vatican issued a 24-page response to the Irish government following Prime Minister Enda Kenny's unprecedented July 20 denunciation of the Vatican's handling of abuse — a speech that was cheered by abuse-weary Irish Catholics but stunned the Vatican and prompted it to recall its ambassador.

Kenny's speech was inspired by the publication of a government-mandated independent report into the County Cork diocese of Cloyne, which found that the Vatican had undermined attempts by Irish bishops to protect children from predator priests.

The Cloyne document was the fourth such report to come out in recent years on the colossal scale of priestly sex abuse and coverup in Ireland. But it was the first to squarely find the Vatican culpable in promoting the culture of secrecy and coverup that kept abusers in ministry and able to prey on more children.

The Cloyne report based much of its accusations against the Holy See on a 1997 letter from the Vatican's ambassador to Ireland to the country's bishops expressing "serious reservations" about their policy requiring bishops to report abusers to police.

A committee of Irish bishops had adopted the policy in 1996 under mounting public pressure as the first coverups came to light, a year after a former altar boy became the first abuse victim in Ireland to go public with a lawsuit against the church.

The Cloyne report charged that the Vatican's 1997 letter "effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those who ... dissented from the stated official church policy."

The Vatican concurred that, taken out of context, the 1997 letter could give rise to "understandable criticism." But it said the letter had been misinterpreted, that the Cloyne report's conclusions were "inaccurate" and that Kenny's denunciation was "unfounded."

In his speech, Kenny accused the Holy See of frustrating the Cloyne inquiry. "In doing so, the Cloyne Report excavates the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day," he said.

In its response, the Vatican charged back that "it in no way hampered or interfered with the inquiry" and never sought to undermine or interfere with Irish civil law.

After reading the report, Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore shot back Saturday: "I remain of the view that the 1997 letter from the then-nuncio provided a pretext for some to avoid full co-operation with Irish civil authorities."

The Vatican noted that at the time, in the mid-1990s, there was no law in Ireland requiring professionals to report suspected abuse to police and that the issue was a matter of intense debate politically.

No law against failure to report suspected abuse

In fact, Ireland has never had a law explicitly making the failure to report suspected child abuse a crime, but is planning to draft one now in the wake of the Cloyne report.

"Given that the Irish government of the day decided not to legislate on the matter, it is difficult to see how (the Vatican's) letter to the Irish bishops, which was issued subsequently, could possibly be construed as having somehow subverted Irish law or undermined the Irish state in its efforts to deal with the problem in question," the Vatican said.

The response said the Vatican's concerns about mandatory reporting weren't designed to thwart police investigations, but were designed to simply ensure that church law was followed to prevent abusive priests from being able to overturn any church sanctions on appeal.

The Vatican has detailed internal policies for investigating priestly sex abuse, with sanctions that include being dismissed from the clerical state. Such norms, however, were rarely if ever followed and abusive priests were shuffled from diocese to diocese just as they were in the United States and elsewhere. And critically, it wasn't until last year that the Vatican ever told bishops to co-operate with civil authorities in reporting abusive priests.

The Cloyne report also admonished the Vatican for diminishing the bishops' abuse policy as a mere "study document" in the 1997 letter, implying that it wasn't an official policy that needed to be followed.

The policy had been presented at the time as mandatory for all of Ireland's bishops: they staged a news conference to announce it, the country's highest ranking prelate wrote a forward to the policy, and individual bishops pledged to implement it.

Policy never legally binding, Vatican says

The Vatican, however, said Saturday the policy was never legally binding because the Irish bishops themselves had never sought to make it so by submitting it for official approval by the Vatican.

In fact, the Vatican response cites a letter from the then-head of the Irish bishops' conference saying the policy wasn't even an official conference publication but rather a report from an advisory committee containing a code of "recommended practice."

Another letter to the Vatican from the conference No. 2 said the policy wasn't approved by the conference and was merely offered to individual bishops as guidelines "that could — and indeed should — be followed."

"Since the Irish bishops did not choose to seek recognition for the Framework Document, the Holy See cannot be criticized for failing to grant what was never requested in the first place," the Vatican said.

Gilmore blasted such a technical, "legalistic" argument.

"The sexual abuse of children is such a heinous and reprehensible crime that issues about the precise status of documents should not be allowed to obscure the obligation of people in positions of responsibility to deal promptly with such abuse and report it," he said.

"The sense of betrayal which was felt by Irish people about this matter, and which was clearly expressed by (Kenny), came about not only because of the nature of child abuse itself but also because of the unique position which the Catholic Church enjoyed in this country, manifested in many ways, over many decades."

The Vatican stood by its terminology calling it a "study document" — but for the first time publicly acknowledged its very existence and seemed to support it. Even in Pope Benedict XVI's comprehensive letter to the Irish people last year, in which he apologized for the abuse, he made no reference to the 1996 policy or the other two that succeeded it, in 2003 and 2008.

Critics have argued that that lack of Vatican acknowledgment that a policy to combat abuse even existed had emboldened those bishops who never intended to follow the policy in the first place.

The 1997 letter from the Vatican's ambassador based its findings on a review of the Irish policy by the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy. At the time, the congregation was headed by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who has routinely defended the church's practice of not reporting abuse to police in favour of guarding the rights of accused priests.

Vatican cites speech supporting `path of civil justice`

Surprisingly, the Vatican response Saturday cites a 1998 speech Castrillon Hoyos delivered to Irish bishops in which he acknowledged that the church and its priests "should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice."

The response doesn't, however, cite the rest of his speech, in which he resoundingly criticized the Irish mandatory reporting policy, said it should be revised and that such reporting requirements risked that "the image of the bishop can be turned into more of a policeman than a true father."

He claimed that such policies seemed inspired more by insurance company lawyers concerned about diocesan legal liability than canon lawyers, and urged the bishops to fight "all the way up to the highest courts" to defend bishops against any claims of liability for abusive priests.

He acknowledged that such crimes need to be dealt with quickly, but warned against "obsessive" pursuit of accused priests by bishops because of the damage it can do to the priests, whose souls, he said, were "at the centre of the affair."

"If he is guilty, we must, before anything else, be involved with his conversion," Castrillon Hoyos said. "If as often happens, he is a victim of calumny, we must help him to prove his innocence and carry this cross."

The speech was provided to The Associated Press by the Vatican press office after inquiries were made about it. It is a remarkable document demonstrating what many victims' advocates consider the Vatican's misplaced concern for the rights of priests over the welfare of children.

Cardinal Sean Brady, leader of Ireland's 4 million Catholics, said the time that it took the Vatican to respond to the Cloyne report, and the thoroughness of its reply, showed the seriousness of the issue for the Holy See.

"I believe it will contribute to the healing of those who have been hurt and also to a closer working together of all concerned with the safeguarding of children," he said in a statement.

One prominent Irish victim, Marie Collins, said the Vatican's defence highlighted the need for Ireland to pass a law making the non-reporting of suspected child abuse a specific crime.

"As long as it's not there, the church can defend its own actions as the document does," she said. The AP generally doesn't name victims of sexual abuse but Collins is a prominent victims' advocate in Ireland. Read more at www.cbc.ca

 

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Poll: OK to trade some freedoms to fight terrorism

Amplify’d from hosted.ap.org

Poll: OK to trade some freedoms to fight terrorism

NANCY BENAC and JENNIFER AGIESTA

AP Photo/J. Bell

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Surveillance cameras in public places? Sure. Body scans at airports? Maybe. Snooping in personal email? Not so fast.

The same Americans who are increasingly splashing their personal lives across Facebook and Twitter trace a meandering path when asked where the government should draw the line between protecting civil liberties and pursuing terrorism.

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks led to amped-up government surveillance efforts, two-thirds of Americans say it's fitting to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in the fight against terrorism, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A slim majority - 54 percent - say that if they had to choose between preserving their rights and freedoms and protecting people from terrorists, they'd come down on the side of civil liberties. The public is particularly protective of the privacy of U.S. citizens, voicing sharp opposition to government surveillance of Americans' emails and phone calls.

For some Americans, their reluctance to give up any freedoms is a reflection of their belief that the terrorists eventually will succeed no matter what.

"If somebody wants to do something, they'll find a way," says David Barker, a retired high school teacher from Wynne, Ark., who says he's not ready to sacrifice any freedoms in return for more security.

Others worry that giving up one freedom will lead to the loss of others.

"It's like opening a crack in the door, and then the door is opened wide," says Keri Jean, a homemaker from Elk Ridge, Utah.

The poll asked people to grapple with some of same quandaries that the government and the courts have been wrestling with over the past decade, and even before the 2001 terrorist attacks. And it turns out that policymakers, too, have drawn a zigzag line as they make tradeoffs between aggressively pursuing potential terrorists and preserving privacy and civil liberties.

Two-thirds of those surveyed believe the resulting policies are a mish-mash created in reaction to events as they occur rather than clearly planned.

Consider the rules on government interception of email: Sometimes that's legal and sometimes it's not. It depends on how old the email is, whether it's already been opened by the recipient, whether the sender and recipient are within the U.S., and which federal appellate court considers the question. Sometimes investigators need a warrant and sometimes no court approval is necessary.

The AP-NORC poll found that about half of those surveyed felt that they have indeed lost some of their own personal freedoms to fight terrorism. Was it worth it? Close to half of those who thought they'd lost freedoms doubted it was necessary.

Overall, six in 10 say the government is doing enough to protect Americans' rights and freedoms as it fights terrorism. But people may not even be aware of what they've given up. The extent of government eavesdropping and surveillance is something of a mystery.

There have been recent efforts in Congress - unsuccessful so far - to require the Justice Department to estimate how many people in the U.S. have had their calls and email monitored under a 2008 law that gave the government more surveillance authority. And a recent AP investigation revealed the existence of a secret police unit in New York that monitored daily life inside Muslim communities.

Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole, in a speech Tuesday at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, took note of the challenge of providing security without trampling on civil liberties, saying: "We have to make sure we're doing everything we can, while respecting privacy and civil liberties - there's a lot of debate about that - as to ensuring that another 9/11 doesn't happen."

For all of their concern about protecting personal rights, Americans - just like policymakers and the courts - show far more willingness to allow intrusions into the lives of foreigners than into their own.

While 47 percent of Americans support allowing the government to read emails sent between people outside the United States without a warrant, just 30 percent supported similar monitoring of emails sent between people inside the country, for example. And while nearly half supported government eavesdropping on phone calls between people outside the country without a warrant, only a quarter favored such surveillance of calls inside the U.S.

"Countries have become bound with political correctness and I think need to be a little more strict," says Jean, despite her warnings about surrendering more freedoms. "Stop being afraid to offend others."

The government can listen in on telephone calls made by foreigners outside the United States without a warrant, but government investigators are generally required to obtain orders signed by judges to eavesdrop on domestic phone calls and other electronic communications within the U.S. The rules are more complex for cross-border communication between foreigners and Americans.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which focuses on privacy and civil liberties, says Americans were surprisingly willing to accept new surveillance techniques in the years after the 9/11 attacks, but the pendulum now appears to be swinging somewhat in the other direction.

"People are just not quite willing to accept these tradeoffs, particularly when they are ineffective," he says.

The U.S. effort to combat terrorism receives mixed reviews: Just 36 percent say it's been extremely or very effective, 49 percent say moderately so.

About a third of Americans are concerned that they or their family will be victims of a terrorist attack, and 37 percent believe the area where they live is at least at moderate risk of being attacked.

Susan Davis, a medical transcriptionist from Springfield, Mo., answers for many Americans when asked whether sacrificing some freedom is warranted in order for the government to provide more security.

"Yeah," she says, "as long as they don't go too far with it."

But everyone has their own definition of what's too far.

The poll found that Americans have different comfort levels with various scenarios in pursuing potential terrorist activity. For example:

-71 percent favor surveillance cameras in public places to watch for suspicious activity.

-58 percent favor random searches involving full-body scans or pat-downs of airplane passengers.

-55 percent favor government analysis of financial transactions processed by U.S. banks without a warrant.

-47 percent favor requiring all people in the U.S. to carry a national ID card and provide it to authorities upon demand.

-35 percent favor racial or ethnic profiling to decide who should get tougher screening at airports.

The first three scenarios already are legal; the latter two are not.

The poll turned up sharp divisions among Americans on whether torture - banned by the government - should have any place in combating terrorism.

Fifty-two percent said torture can be justified at least sometimes to obtain information about terrorist activity. Forty-six percent said it can never or only rarely be justified.

The AP-NORC poll was conducted July 28 to Aug. 15. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,087 adults nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Associated Press writer Stacy Anderson, Polling Director Trevor Tompson and News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

Online:

www.apnorc.org

Benac can be reached at http://twitter.com/nbenac . Agiesta can be reached at http://twitter.com/JennAgiesta . Read more at hosted.ap.org

 

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AntiChrist Identity Revealed?

Amplify’d from www.huffingtonpost.com

Supersonic Stellar Jets In Motion: NASA's Hubble Telescope Brings Jets To Life (VIDEOS)

Dean Praetorius

We've seen some amazing imagery from space, but video like this is hard to come by.

Compiling time-lapse videos using images taken by NASA's Hubble Telescope, scientists have been able to bring to life these stellar matter jets that lie millions of lightyears from Earth for the first time. Typically only static images of this type of galactic activity are available, as formations often appear almost exactly the same after centuries of observation.

Because these jets are really early stars spewing gas at supersonic speeds, the changes are actually visible over the course of a few years. In the short clips below, researchers at Rice University pieced together images taken over a 14-year-period.

But the videos are more than just cool. According to NASA, they're eye-opening, providing insight into star formation that could help scientists learn more about our own solar system.

NASA has numbered each jet, two of which you can see for yourself in the short clips below.

Want more NASA footage? Check out this imagined video of a black hole eating a star.

Stills of HH34 over time:

WATCH (A fuller report from Space.com):

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Unity Churches Teach Universalism, A New Age Religion: Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate; Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins

Joe wrote: Here is the unity church in my home town greenfield, next town over from where I live.

http://www.unityinthepioneervalley.org/

Joe,



Thanks for this link. After reading the website, it is obvious that Unity teaches Universalism, a New Age religion, not of salvation through the shed blood of Christ, but of "transcendence," the evolutionary process whereby men become gods by their own efforts. This characterizes Catholicism, Mormonism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Shintoism, Freemasonry, Unity, and all the pagan religions of the world. Every single one of these cults have their common root in ancient Babylon, the worship of the sun, Baal/Lucifer. And the global unity of all these under the headship of the Papacy is "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and abominations of the Earth," just as you well know.



Only one mention of "Jesus" is found on the whole website, in the bylaws, and then only having to do with His teachings "as interpreted by Unity". No mention of His Blood or His Divinity or His redemption or His Kingdom to come. Its all about the "God within us". The clear implication is "transcendence", the New Age bulloney taught by Satan in the Garden of Eden ("ye shall be as gods, knowing both good and evil"), which is the same Lucifer worship taught by Antichrist JPII, Mormonism, Freemasonry, Jesuitism, Opus Dei (the Work of God). Its all Luciferianism cloaked in the thinnest veil of "Christianity". This is "The Broad Road", not the narrow one Christ proclaimed. This is salvation by works, not by Grace. This is a counterfeit earthly kingdom, not a heavenly one.



The book I'm reading on ham radio, "The Dark Side of Freemasonry" by Ed Decker, mentions Unity but doesn't focus on it particularly. But I can sure see that it is the Masonic cult that is the influence behind the Unity cult. And the Mother of this cult is Rome. Here is the link to Pope JPII's teachings that I mentioned where he said Christ did not come to be the Messiah, but He came only to show the "Christ" in every man. JPII taught Freemasonic and Unity doctrine. It is the Universal doctrine of the New Age. It is the worship of Lucifer. http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/john_paul_ii_heresies_file.php



When reading www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com, be reminded that this is the Latin Rite, "Counter-Reformation Council of Trent" sect of the Roman cult. They are known as "Traditionalists" by Catholics, or "Tridentine Catholics" as I call them (in direct reference to the Jesuit-led, Counter-Reformation Council of Trent). This is the most lethal sect of Catholicism that I know of today. They believe that salvation is not possible but through membership in and obedience to the Pope and the Tridentine (pre-Vatican II) Roman Catholic church as it existed in the Medieval period when the Pope ruled supreme over the kings of the earth. They still believe Protestants are heretics to be burned at the stake. They are in mortal opposition to all other faiths, especially Protestants (Bible believers) and the post Vatican Council II sects of Catholics whom they refer to as "Liberals and Schismatics". www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com believes in and supports a return to Medieval Catholicism, Church/State unity, and Inquisition. They also say that in order for the Catholic church to be restored to global supremacy, it must appease "Mary" through "reparations". Reparations means they must repent of the "heretical Vatican Council II and ecumenism", declare all Popes since Antichrist Pope John 23 to be Antipopes, and then demonstrate their repentance to "Mary" by making "reparations", which means to kill all the "heretics". They believe that all the upheaval in the world today is "Mary's wrath" against the Vatican II cult for making peace with heretics. And Mary's wrath calls for "the Great Chastisement" of Mary if they don't kill all heretics (reparations). And one of the many global "apparitions of Mary" is calling Catholics to destroy Muslims (the war on terror). She also says that once the Muslims are gone, then she demands that "the bad Christians" are next!!!!  That's you and me, Joe!



FYI, www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com is a paid sponsor of the Alex Jones show



For people to understand me and what I talk about on ham radio and on Inquisition Update, they must know something about the Catholic church. We must know who Antichrist, Christ's enemy, is. We must learn how Rome has deceived us and intends to kill us. That's why I always recommend that people watch EWTN and compare official Catholic teaching with the Bible. I also recommend that people study this website for reasons that are probably already pretty obvious to you. The war on terror is just Rome using "Protestant" U.S.A. to wage a Holy Roman Crusade against Islam. Rome using "heretics" to kill "heretics". When that's over, Rome plans to kill us (True Bible-believing "heretics") just like we are killing Muslims "heretics" for Rome today. And that's why I call my program, Inquisition Update. We're headed for a bloodbath, our blood, an unHoly Roman Inquisition against "heretics", God's True People, you and me, and THEY call it "The Great Chastisement of Mary". They call it, "making reparations to Mary". Now you know why there are so many Jesuit-controlled Freemasons in the military, the government, NASA, the courts, and worst of all, the churches. And Jesuit-controlled Freemasonry is just preparing the world for the reign of their "Grand Worshipful Master" the Pope, the Biblical Antichrist. The New Age Unity Cult is just one of the means to that end.



Tom

Revelation 18:3-5

King James Version (KJV)

³For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

⁴And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.



⁵For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

2 Corinthians 6:14-17

King James Version (KJV)

¹⁴Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

¹⁵And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?



¹⁶And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.



¹⁷Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.

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Child Molesters Working For TSA

I must warn you my friend, the contents of this story are extremely disturbing.



I have been reporting for months that the invasive and abusive practices of the TSA are only serving to attract the worst sort of people to the job.



Perverts, Molesters, and other Deviants.



It is with my deepest regrets that my predictions have proven undeniably true.



A current employee of the Transportation Security Administration in Idaho has just been arrested for sexual crimes.



The charges?  Child Molestation.



The victim?  A girl that the news could only identify as being younger than 14 years of age.



Over the course of two years this pervert, David Anderson, violated the young girl on as many as ten separate occasions.



Anderson went out of his way to touch this young girl, placing his hands all over her body; exactly the same behavior he is paid to do every day to passengers like you and me.



This predator sought out employment that allowed him to indulge in his sickest fantasies.



We will never know just how many little children he was able to “pat down” under the guise of security.



This crime, the crime of employing Anderson at the TSA, is absolute proof that the invasive screenings are encouraging perverts to practice their craft out in the open.



Airport security is becoming a haven for the sexually twisted, a haven which so many moral Americans and innocent children must pass through.



Last month I reported about a male cross-dresser who insisted on wearing his costume to work and patting down females.



The radical Homosexual Lobby has created a system wherein the sexually destructive are protected and even praised.



They don’t want us to investigate these crimes because they absolutely refuse to accept that Americans want a moral society where they are protected against this abuse, not subjected to it.



Radical Homosexuals want to insert their perversion into every aspect of our lives.  They want to poison our society so badly that the Family withers and dies.



Well, Public Advocate is here to say No!



Anderson may have been taken into justice but I know there are more perverts out there hiding their crimes from the eyes of their supervisors.



Public Advocate and its supporters will never relent until the immoral practices of the TSA are stopped once and for all.



Thank you for your support.



For the Family,





Eugene Delgaudio

President, Public Advocate of the United States





P.S. You can find Public Advocate’s initial report on this horrendous story here, as well as the link to the original news article.

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Riot Police Actions At G20 Pittsburgh PA

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Personal Information for Pittsburgh Chief of Police, who deemed this to be an unlawful assembly, even though no where in his job description or anyone elses that allows such un American actions. Give em hell boys!!! Nathan Earnest Harper Phone - 412-323-7800 Cell Phone - ??? Email - ??? Address - 1203 Western Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15233 _____________________________________________________________ Mayor - Office of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl City of Pittsburgh City-County BuildingMap Fifth Floor 414 Grant Street Pittsburgh, PA 15219 Heather Howard, Receptionist Phone number: 412-255-2626 Fax Number: 412-255-2687 Assistant Chief William Bochter Operations Branch 1203 Western Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15233 412-323-7821 Time for Change has come - 9-11-2011 - we say NO MORE - Stand Up Get Involved Spread the Word - We the People Are Rising Up!!!

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Vatican rejects Irish criticism over sex abuse

Amplify’d from hosted.ap.org

Vatican rejects Irish criticism over sex abuse

NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican on Saturday vigorously rejected accusations it had sabotaged efforts by Irish bishops to report priests who sexually abused children to police and charged that the Irish prime minister had made an "unfounded" attack against the Holy See.

The Vatican issued a 24-page response to the Irish government after Prime Minister Enda Kenny and the Irish parliament publicly denounced the Vatican following the publication in July of a government-mandated investigation into priestly sex abuse in the diocese of Cloyne in southern Ireland. The report found that the Vatican had undermined attempts by Irish bishops to protect children by warning that their policy requiring abuse to be reported to police might violate church law.

The Cloyne report, and Kenny's unprecedented dressing down of the Holy See that followed, prompted cheers from Irish Catholics who have grown increasingly disgusted by the colossal scale of priestly sexual abuse and cover-up in Ireland and the Vatican's consistent claim that it bore no blame.

The diplomatic standoff was particularly acute given that Ireland has long been staunchly Roman Catholic, Kenny himself is a practicing Catholic, and the church has long enjoyed a privileged place in society. The abuse scandal has taken its toll, however, and Kenny's speech was a remarkable indication of just how deep the wounds are.

It also came as the Vatican is fighting on multiple legal fronts in the U.S. to defend itself against lawsuits alleging it is liable for abusive priests. Just last month, the Holy See was forced to turn over internal personnel files of an abusive priest to lawyers representing a victim in Oregon.

The Vatican was patently stunned by Kenny's July 20 speech and recalled its ambassador. In the seven weeks since, it drafted a detailed response, hoping to set the record straight and assure Ireland's abuse-weary faithful that it is serious about cracking down on predator priests.

Irish leaders, however, were not convinced. Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore said he remained certain that the Vatican had exacerbated the abuse crisis and criticized the Holy See for offering an overly "legalistic" justification of its actions in dealing with priests who rape and molest children.

The Cloyne document was the fourth report since 2005 to document abuse in the Irish church. But it was the first to squarely find the Vatican culpable in promoting the culture of secrecy and cover-up that kept abusers in ministry and able to prey on more children.

The Cloyne report based much of its accusations against the Holy See on a 1997 letter from the Vatican's ambassador to Ireland to the country's bishops expressing "serious reservations" about their policy requiring bishops to report abusers to police.

A committee of Irish bishops had adopted the policy in 1996 under mounting public pressure as the first cover-ups came to light, a year after a former altar boy became the first abuse victim in Ireland to go public with a lawsuit against the church.

The Cloyne report charged that the Vatican's 1997 letter "effectively gave individual Irish bishops the freedom to ignore the procedures which they had agreed and gave comfort and support to those who ... dissented from the stated official church policy."

The Vatican concurred that, taken out of context, the 1997 letter could give rise to "understandable criticism." But it said the letter had been misinterpreted, that the Cloyne report's conclusions were "inaccurate" and that Kenny's denunciation was "unfounded."

The Vatican noted that at the time, in the mid-1990s, there was no law in Ireland requiring professionals to report suspected abuse to police and that the issue was a matter of intense political debate. In fact, Ireland has never had a law explicitly making the failure to report suspected child abuse a crime, but is planning to draft one now in the wake of the Cloyne report.

"Given that the Irish government of the day decided not to legislate on the matter, it is difficult to see how (the Vatican's) letter to the Irish bishops, which was issued subsequently, could possibly be construed as having somehow subverted Irish law or undermined the Irish state in its efforts to deal with the problem in question," the Vatican said.

The response said the Vatican's concerns about mandatory reporting weren't designed to thwart police investigations, but were aimed at ensuring that church law was meticulously followed to prevent abusive priests from being able to overturn any church sanctions on appeal.

The Vatican has detailed internal policies for investigating priestly sex abuse, with sanctions that include being dismissed from the clerical state. Such norms, however, were rarely if ever followed. And critically, it wasn't until last year that the Vatican ever explicitly told bishops to cooperate with civil authorities in reporting abusive priests.

After reading the report, Gilmore said squarely: "I remain of the view that the 1997 letter from the then-nuncio provided a pretext for some to avoid full cooperation with Irish civil authorities."

The Cloyne report also admonished the Vatican for diminishing the bishops' abuse policy as a mere "study document" in the 1997 letter, implying that it wasn't an official policy that needed to be followed and giving cover to those bishops who chose not to implement it.

The policy had been presented at the time as mandatory for all of Ireland's bishops: they staged a news conference to announce it, the country's highest ranking prelate wrote a forward to the policy, and individual bishops pledged to implement it.

The Vatican, however, said the Cloyne investigation was incorrect in saying it had rejected the policy. The Vatican said the policy was never presented to the Vatican for approval. As such, it said, it wasn't legally binding since the only way bishops' conferences can make binding country-wide policy is to submit it for official approval by the Holy See.

In fact, the Vatican response cites two letters from the Irish bishops' conference saying the policy wasn't an official conference publication but rather a report from an advisory committee containing recommended guidelines that were offered to individual bishops "that could - and indeed should - be followed."

"Since the Irish bishops did not choose to seek recognition for the Framework Document, the Holy See cannot be criticized for failing to grant what was never requested in the first place," the Vatican said.

Gilmore blasted such a technical, "legalistic" argument.

"The sexual abuse of children is such a heinous and reprehensible crime that issues about the precise status of documents should not be allowed to obscure the obligation of people in positions of responsibility to deal promptly with such abuse and report it," he said.

"The sense of betrayal which was felt by Irish people about this matter, and which was clearly expressed by (Kenny), came about not only because of the nature of child abuse itself but also because of the unique position which the Catholic Church enjoyed in this country, manifested in many ways, over many decades."

The Vatican stood by its terminology calling it a "study document" - but for the first time publicly acknowledged its very existence, urged bishops to cooperate with civil authorities and told them to "ensure the full and impartial application" of all the Irish church's child protection norms.

Kenny had also accused the Vatican of frustrating the inquiry into the Cloyne diocese, and that in doing so said the Cloyne report "excavates the dysfunction, the disconnection, the elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day."

The Vatican noted that the Cloyne report makes no such accusation and said there was no evidence to support Kenny's claim. When asked, Kenny's office said he wasn't referring to any specific incident, the Vatican response said.

Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, the church's leading voice calling for honesty about abuse, said Kenny's unsubstantiated claim "merits explanation."

Martin, who has clashed both with the Vatican and his fellow bishops in demanding greater accountability, also charged that those same bishops who used the 1997 letter as an excuse to ignore the Irish policy continue to ignore Vatican-mandated laws on dealing with abusers.

"These people may be few, but the damage they caused was huge," Martin said Saturday in urging Ireland and the Vatican to move beyond the polemics of the last few weeks and work together to protect children.

"There may well have been a cabal in Cloyne," he told The Associated Press. "They may have friends elsewhere in the Irish church. And they may have friends in the Vatican, yes."

The 1997 letter from the Vatican's ambassador based its findings on a review of the Irish policy by the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy. At the time, the congregation was headed by Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who as a matter of policy routinely defended the church's practice of not reporting abuse to police in favor of guarding the rights of accused priests.

Surprisingly, the Vatican response Saturday cites a 1998 speech Castrillon Hoyos delivered to Irish bishops on dealing with sexual abuse in which he stressed that the church and its priests "should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice." The Vatican said his speech showed that civil law and church law can operate in parallel.

The response doesn't, however, cite the rest of Castrillon Hoyos' speech, in which he resoundingly criticized the Irish mandatory reporting policy, said it should be revised and that such reporting requirements risked that "the image of the bishop can be turned into more of a policeman than a true father."

He acknowledged that such crimes need to be dealt with quickly, but warned against "obsessive" pursuit of accused priests by bishops because of the damage it can do to the priests, whose souls, he said, were "at the center of the affair."

"If he is guilty, we must, before anything else, be involved with his conversion," Castrillon Hoyos said. "If as often happens, he is a victim of calumny, we must help him to prove his innocence and carry this cross."

The speech is a remarkable demonstration of what many victims' advocates consider the Vatican's misplaced concern for the rights of priests over the welfare of children.

Maeve Lewis, director of the Irish victims support group One in Four, said the Vatican's response to Kenny was merely "an exercise in self-justification, an attempt to justify the unjustifiable."

She and Andrew Madden, the Irish altar boy whose 1995 lawsuit helped open the floodgates for hundreds of abuse lawsuits, both cheered Kenny for putting into words what many Irish felt about the Vatican's culpability.

"The fact that Ireland doesn't yet have mandatory reporting on its statute books doesn't in any way excuse the church's policy of cover-up, of reassigning pedophiles repeatedly to other parishes, and of lying about it when caught," Madden said.

Online:

Vatican's response is at http://bit.ly/ocmYve

Cloyne Report is at http://bit.ly/pyi8oF

Irish bishops' 1996 "Framework Document" is at http://bit.ly/rqdcnD

Shawn Pogatchnik contributed to this report from Dublin. Read more at hosted.ap.org

 

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FBI and Homeland Security warn of small airplane terror threats

Amplify’d from hosted.ap.org

Feds warn of small airplane terror threats

EILEEN SULLIVAN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI and Homeland Security have issued a nationwide warning about al-Qaida threats to small airplanes, just days before the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Authorities say there is no specific or credible terrorist threat for the 10-year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But they have stepped up security nationwide as a precaution.

According to a five-page law enforcement bulletin issued Friday, as recently as early this year, al-Qaida was considering ways to attack airplanes.

The alert, issued ahead of the summer's last busy travel weekend, said terrorists have considered renting private planes and loading them with explosives.

"Al-Qaida and its affiliates have maintained an interest in obtaining aviation training, particularly on small aircraft, and in recruiting Western individuals for training in Europe or the United States, although we do not have current, credible information or intelligence of an imminent attack being planned," according to the bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.

The bulletin also says al-Qaida would like to use sympathetic Westerners to get flight training, then get them to become flight instructors.

Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, described the bulletin as routine.

"We shared this information with our partners to highlight the need for continued awareness and vigilance," he said.

Aviation security is much tighter than it was a decade ago, but al-Qaida remains keenly interested in launching attacks on airplanes, believing large attacks with high body counts are more likely to grab headlines.

Threats to small airplanes are nothing new. After the 2001 attacks, the government grounded thousands of crop dusters amid fears the planes could be used in an attack.

In 2002, U.S. officials said they uncovered an al-Qaida plot to fly a small plane into a U.S. warship in the Persian Gulf. And in 2003, U.S. officials uncovered an al-Qaida plot to crash an explosives-laden small aircraft into the American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.

Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report. Read more at hosted.ap.org

 

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