New Zealand Inquiry Finds Hundreds of Reports of Abuse by Priests
Between 1950 and 2021, there were 1,680 allegations of abuse reported against diocesan clergy and members of Catholic religious orders or associations, according to data from Te Ropu Tautoko, a group coordinating between the commission — the highest form of investigation in New Zealand — and the Catholic Church.
The “sobering data” uncovered the scale of abuse within the Catholic Church, Katherine Anderson, a lawyer assisting the commission, said in a statement. “The research is startling, and the heartbreaking reality is that helpless and vulnerable children and adults sit behind these facts and figures.”
Accusations were levied against 14 percent of all diocesan clergy in New Zealand, according to the figures, many of them between the 1960s and the 1980s, with a majority of instances involving children at educational or residential facilities under the church’s supervision. Over half of all abuse reported involved sexual harm or other physical, emotional or psychological abuses. Others involved the failure to act on complaints.
Still, a support network for victims called the data the “tip of a huge iceberg.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/world...abuse.html
Between 1950 and 2021, there were 1,680 allegations of abuse reported against diocesan clergy and members of Catholic religious orders or associations, according to data from Te Ropu Tautoko, a group coordinating between the commission — the highest form of investigation in New Zealand — and the Catholic Church.
The “sobering data” uncovered the scale of abuse within the Catholic Church, Katherine Anderson, a lawyer assisting the commission, said in a statement. “The research is startling, and the heartbreaking reality is that helpless and vulnerable children and adults sit behind these facts and figures.”
Accusations were levied against 14 percent of all diocesan clergy in New Zealand, according to the figures, many of them between the 1960s and the 1980s, with a majority of instances involving children at educational or residential facilities under the church’s supervision. Over half of all abuse reported involved sexual harm or other physical, emotional or psychological abuses. Others involved the failure to act on complaints.
Still, a support network for victims called the data the “tip of a huge iceberg.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/world...abuse.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
