#priests

I was amazed, shocked, and sickened by what I heard throughout the day, over and over, by many victims' stories. I can think of no one with whom I didn't recognize a common thread. These monsters, these evil priests, used the same words and methods on all of us. With each session, I would find something that sent a cold chill down my spine. It amazed and frightened me that the actual words used on me, to rape me, to rape me, were the same as the words used on so many others from all over the United States. You would think that all these priests either were educated in how to concur and rape us, or they met privately with each other to compare notes and develop their plan of attack on us. The pattern was so much the same, with the same words, that you would swear it was scripted and disbursed to these priests. Do they secretly have closed-door meetings on how to abuse us? A chilling thought. Neary's routine of saying the “Our Father” during the rape and making me say it with him, repeating the “thy will be done” over and over, the absolution given me after he “finished,” the threats of having God take my parents away, the lectures about offering my suffering up to God, etc., etc., etc. My experience was identical, word-for-word, to that of many others. The exact words during the abuse were not just close, but exactly the same, as if it were some kind of abuse ritual. Ritual abuse is not limited to the religious definition and can include compulsive, abusive behavior performed in an exact series of steps with little variation. How could these similarities occur without the priests taking the same “abuse seminar” together some place, somehow? Was it taught in the seminary? In some dark corner? It goes beyond coincidence—the similarities in deeds and verbiage that these predators use on us. It truly chilled me to the very marrow of my bones. ↗

— Charles L. Bailey Jr.

#catholic #church #clergy-abuse #cover-up #coverup

That was my aspiration, so I was there in a seminary with just boys who were studying to be priests. Pretty rigorous schooling; we never got home, we stayed there all year. ↗

— Peter Jurasik

#got #home #i #just #never

I left because I decided it just really wasn't for me, and I got a better understanding of what the Catholic Church needed from its priests and ministers. ↗

— Peter Jurasik

#better #catholic #catholic church #church #decided

Don't you know, priests, why our sermons do not touch the people's heart? Because we do not preach to the eyes, only to the ears. ↗

— Antonio Vieira

#ears #eyes #heart #know #only

What I think we can do is help individuals understand the church teaching, but also maybe help the church understand the viewpoint of lay men and women about what they want in regard to priests, or how do they want the hierarchy to deal with them? ↗

— William P. Leahy

#also #church #deal #help #hierarchy

I don't flatter myself with much dependence upon the present disposition of the Eastern Indians, who are many ways liable to be drawn into a rupture with us by the artifices of the French, their own weakness and the influence which the French Missionary Priests have over them. ↗

— William Shirley

#dependence #disposition #drawn #eastern #flatter

The only other person attending who was close to her age was Father St. Laurent, a devastatingly good-looking Roman Catholic priest who made the RC's vows of celibacy seem like a crime against the human gene pool. ↗

— Julia Spencer-Fleming

#age

First the priests arrive. Then the conquistadores. ↗

— James Clavell

#priests #religion #religion

(Priests) cheapjack merchants selling paradise ↗

— Jean Lorrain

#religion #religion

How the early priests came into possession of these secrets does not appear, and if there were ever any records of this kind the Church would hardly allow them to become public. ↗

— Harry Houdini

#any #appear #become #came #church