(October 23, 2020 at 7:22 pm)arewethereyet Wrote:All of this abuse is disgusting. I can appreciate guys leaving and not coming back, based on the shame aspect of getting raped/groped by a priest, who is never going to be disbelieved. When I grew up ('50s and '60s, graduated high school in '70), corporal punishment was allowed in public schools. If a teacher laid a hand on us, my dad was at the school with his hand on the throat of the perpetrator. My dad was quite violent, and I'm surprised that he didn't get jail time for what he did to those teachers. He certainly set them right on who gets to punish his children. It only happened a couple of times, and the word got out. One of those Fireball kids did something wrong? Send home a note! There was nothing the school system was going to do that was worse than what we got if a note came home. Which is a different story, though. If I had come home with evidence of abuse by a priest, said priest would have been dead, I'm convinced.(October 23, 2020 at 2:46 pm)Gwaithmir Wrote: I recently learned that the late Christopher J. Weldon, the Catholic bishop who officiated at my Confirmation in 1964, was a child molester.
https://www.gazettenet.com/Velis-issues-...d-34909176
https://www.pontificalsecret.com/abuse-c...op-weldon/
When I hear of these stories it makes me wonder about the boys I grew up with. Most of them were altar boys at some point. Of the boys my age from the town where I lived there were probably half who went a couple towns over to the public high school and half continued on from the parochial elementary and middle schools to the Catholic high school.
About the only thing I recall hearing regarding the priests in town was my dad saying they would find empty liquor bottles on the yard at the rectory on Sunday mornings.
Our high school principal (a brother) left the clergy to marry an ex-nun. Those are the only scandals I heard about.
Of course, the sexual abuse of boys and young men was probably held much closer to the vest.
Makes me wonder about the guys that left and went far, far away and never return even though they still have family in the area.
If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.