Pederasty and Scandals.

Experts emphasize that the problem is hardly unique to or more prevalent among priests.

 "People are saying there must be something basically wrong with the church, but if you look at it from a broader perspective, this is not simply a church problem or a priest problem," 

said Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist. 

"This is a societal problem, and priests are no more likely to be involved."

 Fred Berlin, director of the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma, said he's not aware of any evidence that the problem occurs more often in the church than in other segments of society.

 Despite headlines focusing on the priest pedophile problem in the Roman Catholic Church, most American churches being hit with child sexual-abuse allegations are Protestant, and most of the alleged abusers are not clergy or staff, but church volunteers. 

 James Cobble, executive director of CMR, who oversees the survey, says the data show that child sex-abuse happens broadly across all denominations– and that clergy aren't the major offenders.

 Volunteers are more likely than clergy or paid staff to be abusers. Perhaps more startling, children at churches are accused of sexual abuse as often as are clergy and staff. In 1999, for example, 42 percent of alleged child abusers were volunteers – about 25 percent were paid staff members (including clergy) and 25 percent were other children.

Celibacy induced?

Priestly celibacy, as experts have confirmed, is not the cause of these acts of sexual abuse, however studies prove that there is a connection between pedophilia and homosexuality. There is much documentation from psychologists in this area. A life of celibacy can only be assumed by someone who possesses the essential emotional maturity. The problem of sexual abuse may have had its origin in “the quality of seminarians,” who then went on to become priests.

In addition, while others remain silent, the Church speaks out on other issues related to the dignity of children, young people and women. The Pope has severely denounced sex tourism and defends the dignity of those exploited in this way.

If we go on pretending that it is only a "Catholic problem" -- and falsely concluding that it flows from celibacy rather than from liberalism, homosexuality, and loss of faith (SIN!) and the after-effects of the Sexual Revolution, then there will be more victims, and that will not solve anything and only produce more suffering.

Luther (Part 1)

Reformer of a corrupt Church?

Certainly not. No, because Luther was not a reformer of customs but doctrines. The theory that the moral decandence of Church, under the Reinassance Popes, had reached an intolerable point and that Luther led Protestants against that situation, calling for a Reformation IS FALSE and NO present historian can support it. Amongst other reasons, because the very Luther rejects that interpretation of his work in numerous explicit declarations:

I don't impugn bad customs but "godless" doctrines

Luther combatted the doctrine of Catholic Church with all his might. To start with, he destroyed the Bible, since leaving it at the mercy of the "free study", he changed the infallible and only God's word for an innumerable and contradictory variety of fallible human words. He rode roughshod over apostolic succession, ministerial priesthood, bishops priests and the doctrine of fathers and councils. He removed Eucharist as a sacrifice of redemption. He destroyed the devotion and worship to the Holy Virgin, saints, vows and religious life and the beneficial function of ecclesiastical law.

He reduced the seven sacraments to one and a half. He stated, from the total corruption of man by the original sin, that

reason is the Holy big bitch of the devil, a bitch consumed with scabies and leprosy.

And for the same reason, as much as passionately, he denied  man's freedom, deeming that it would be"the safest and most religious" thing if the very term "free will" disappeared of language. As a logical consequence, he also denied the necessity of good deeds for salvation. Ah well, with his "correct answers" he practically shattered all Christianity, ruining Christendom too.

He was the greatest insulting person of the Kingdom:

All Pope's Church is church of bitches and hermaphrodites.

and the very Pope is a

furious madman, a forger of history, a liar, a blaspheme, a bastard, an idiot and every papal act is sealed with the shit of the devil and written by the farts of the dummy-Pope.

Innumerable pages could be filled with  similar or worse sentences. The Catholic theologians of Luther's time rejected their theories, earning the foreseeable descriptions on his part.

The Faculty of Paris is the doomed synagogue of the devil, the most abominable intellectual prostitute that has lived under the Sun.

And the theologians of Leuven are

vulgar arses, damn pigs, bellies of blasphemies, epicurean slobs, heretics and idolaters, damn hell stock.

And he added

It is me that declares it, Doctor Martin Luther, speaking in behalf of the Holy Spirit (...) I don't accept that my doctrine can be judged by anybody, not even the angels. Whoever that doesn't listen to my doctrine can't be saved.

On the occasion of the peasants' uprising, who demanded, first persuading nicely, then by force, what they thought that their rights were, Luther writes an extremely hard invective:

Rebels have to be stamped out, throttled and killed in a private or public way, since there is not anything more venomous, damaging and evil than an instigator of seditions.

Very mild he was though to the porwerful German princes with the aim of sighting their favours. The results of Luther's preaching were devastating in people's morality and he himself admits it:

Since the Pope's tyranny is over for us, they have spurned pure and salubrious doctrine. We don't look like men anymore but like real brutes.

Of his followers he asserted:

They are seven time worse than before.

He is horrified whe he writes to Zwinglio:

It' frightening to see where there was only peace before, now there are only sects and factions (...) I am obliged to confess it: my doctrine has caused many scandals. Yes, I can't deny it, such things frequently terrify me.

And he still forsaw bigger disasters. One day he confided his friend Melanchton:

How many different masters will emerge in the next century? Confusion will get far.

So did it. And has it gone all that way -with not stop- as far as the great apostasy of the former Catholic nations.

Fanjul (II)

We have had enough theoreticians (plentiful) of purity –and superiority, of course- of the Arabian “race”: 

“the contagion is highlighted in you: you have been corrupted by some miscegenation” (al-Yahiz, Libro de los ávaros, 211, Madrid, 1984).

Hadithes of the Prophet were even forged to justify the superiority of people, nations, ethnicities or even cities (Persians, Fars, Merv). 

Data for a revision

Proximity and relationship throughout many centuries in various ways (confrontation or coexistence) have not caused benign results, but rather what Sánchez Albornoz designated as antibiosis, by opposition to Américo Castro vindictive symbiosis; in other words, the opponents of rejection, negation, ignorance towards North Africans. And from them towards our direction.

The appropriate division of the world up into the goodies and the baddies makes things easier and an old and long defeated imperialism is a good scapegoat as receptacle of present rubbish, or as a screen whose lights and shadows are good for distracting the attention of current and alive misfortunes.

Ignorance holds any of the present or past prejudices around the Moors (laziness, dirtiness) just like the opposite side, in vogue these days, which consists of presenting them (or presenting themselves) like perennial victims – therefore creditors- whatever the circumstances are. A good illustrative example of the first attitude is provided by M. García- Arenal when he reminded that the judges of the Inquisition of Cuenca, during their anti-morisco repression, did outlandish considerations beyond reality of the ilk: “having and believing that it is not a sin that a single man have carnal access with a single woman like the Moors have and believe”; along the lines of the mythology of the sensuality awarded to Muslims at the time, even in such an isolated places like the Indies. But not less meaningful of the prevailing confusion is the fallacious utilization of fixed accusation of anti-Muslim intolerance to approach what is strictly due to, for example, an administrative delay- justified in all other respects- to commence the construction of a mosque in Granada.

With the expulsion of the Moriscos, first from Granada and then from the whole country: they were supposed to respond in the most possibly radical manner to a un-assimilable minority, which was unwilling to integrate and whose links and collusion with the enemy of the time, not passive at all, were common knowledge, offering them conversion (sincere) along with consequent cultural absorption, or exile. If somebody, with commendable naivety or manifest bad faith, is shocked insisting on judging the past with blinders of our present time, it will suffice it to say that back then- the XVI century- in the North of Africa there were not more Christian population left than the captives caught by pirates, since it was already a long time – over 4 centuries- that natives had been led to Islamize – when not forced, while local cultures (Berber and Neo-latin) were crushed and supplanted by the Arabian urban civilization, leaving the Berber world isolated at the mountains; fair to say outside history.

The treatment inflicted to the Moriscos could be harsh and even cruel, but not unwarranted, particularly including the elements of trial and action that political authorities, religious ideologist had as well as the ordinary people after them: from contemporary technology which aggravated suffering, to basics of humanism and respect to the dignity of people which happened long after and that – certainly- have not yet spread beyond the borders of numerous Muslim countries.