=Janine Bush was just on the phone telling me to put in a submission by the 31st
bloody hell
how many have you got to wfrkite
I am sick of their stinking up themsleve shit!

I basically told her to go jump ...I let her have it that no one in the par;liament has the balls for this and they ought to just admit it!

she hates me now i suppose but i don't care

My feeling has always been that Father Francis De Dood was one of Fr Ayers unique contributions.

Was watching a young bloke yesterday ..obviously from the way he was dressed he was a noviciate (is that what it's called?)
he was running with a vac-back pack on in and out of all the rooms and running like an idiot (probably get more done if he slowed down) and vacuuming the carpets apparently ahead of a big group of students coming through for a chat about 'joining the Salesians'

Whole balcony layed out with tressels ...couldn't help watch the lad running and think of deDood when he was a student.
Not a bad kid and always looked out for me.

Listen to me ...remember I was Ayer's lad ...dedood was a noviate and lived with the fathers ...had to be somebodies (he and klep were catch later but this was the 60s I'm talking about ...3 years ahead of me and i still remember him looking out for me. He was one of the three school yard bullies who walked arm in arm/true arm in arm is my memory ...with Bro Ryvasi usually.
wonder what the other kids thought of DeDood giving me special treatment..I was clueless.

better go cut some wood before i think too hard.

made a big mistake yesterday and dropped into my old school desi, before I read/knew the bit about the 'unique contribution'

I was fine ....the place is quite an institution now and I stood in a classroom with the vice principle having a chat (civi staff now) Right about where my cot used to be. Walked through many memories but was doing fine seeing the place with so many happy students all selecting subjects as they are having a big intake as another school closes near by.

then he was taking me through the new admin a young bloke of about 12/13 was sitting visibly quaking in his chair.
I sort of indicated the lad to this vice. And he just said 'oh the kids just in trouble ...going to the principle' knodding his head like this kid was a lost cause.

I just looked at him and the kid and just left. I know i shouldn''t have seen that and I'm sure my fears are unfounded ....most definitely I keep telling myself.

shouldn't have gone there though ...seeing that last bit rocked me through.
how did we get like this? .....kids should never be scared should they?

as my shrink reckons I think too hard

If anyone ever wondered about (or even questioned) the response of some victims (some of the 'deniers' even question their right to be upset or angry!), then I humbly suggest that they read this post.

The communal Eucharist was presided over by the provincial, Fr. Greg Chambers, together with the jubilarians and fellow Salesians. This is Fr. Greg’s first celebration of the Province Day since he took up the office at the beginning of this year. During Mass, Fr. Greg acknowledged all jubilarians, including Fr. Jack Ayers who passed away earlier in the year, for their dedicated and unique contributions to the province.

I cannot imagine how sickening it must be for any victim of Ayers to hear him even spoken about yet alone 'lauded' in this manner.

-----

The Broken Rites website article on Ayers.

http://brokenrites.alphalink.com.au/nletter/page248-john-ayers-salesian.html

yesterday I was arguing with a solicitor who felt that exposing the woman who took my first statement at CentaCare was useful.
I put her amongst the secondary victims ...but the solicitor pointed out that as her job was the head of nursing and should/would be well aware of her obligations, moral or otherwise.

he was raving about how CentaCare is the churches net to catch and gleen out those abuse by clergy etc.
A filter if you like.

I see his point ....but I can see how Centacare would just dump the woman to the wolves.
and yet she cried to me that I'd said too much and she also refused to write it down .....but I made her take my statement and she cried all the way.

I look back now and I understand a little more how these creeps use everybody.

to be really honest I was tempted to drive under a bdouble yesterday and end this pain for my family ...I don't want it ..they don't wannt it
no one will fucking do anything about it

and the poliies are just using it as another game of brinkmanship

just a load of crap .....what's it take to convince peop,le these guys don't care!!

The communal Eucharist was presided over by the provincial, Fr. Greg Chambers, together with the jubilarians and fellow Salesians. This is Fr. Greg’s first celebration of the Province Day since he took up the office at the beginning of this year. During Mass, Fr. Greg acknowledged all jubilarians, including Fr. Jack Ayers who passed away earlier in the year, for their dedicated and unique contributions to the province.

http://snap.donbosco.asn.au/index.php/en/component/k2/item/519-province-honours-jubilar...

That would be a very good idea if the ABC were to screen this again, particularly with updates. How do we request this?

While my eperiences have not been as awful as many who post here something i found very helpful with the hurts of my experience is a book entitled 'Healing Agony' by Stephen Cherry (2012).

This was, ANOTHER, absolutely disgraceful episode in the history of Clerical Sexual Assault.

Yes, I know that it was 1996 and that most of the responses from the Church Officials would not be heard now (they wouldn't dare!) but it gave a very graphic example of the whole mindset of the thinking and ethos of the RCC, especially their attitude towards the victims.

Just disgsuting.

I would hope that ABC would look to screen it again, perhaps with an update about what has happened since.

Words are just inadequate (impossible at the moment, actually).

I've written to the ABC to see if the program can be uploaded to their website so that it can be accessed by anyone conveniently and without any copyright hassles or fears.

They are primarily interested in the myth that they alone can read the mind of God and they are the only people on earth who are custodians of "truth"

Do you re-call that sometime ago I asked the question just who decides what is "orthodox" and what is "heresy"!

These are a group of males whose only aim in life is to retain power in their hands in an exclusive manner and will use any means at their disposal to show that they are RIGHT. Once you become part of this system it is hard to break away and what happens to those who challenge the system ? We have seen many examples time and time again!

As for JP II - remember the joke about the next Polish pope? He wasn't going to be anywhere near a John XXIII or Paul VI.

Why this shocked reaction ?

Remember THEY are NOT the Church - we are and we can change it for the better. Have a look at your "readership" ! Have a look at all the other groups around the world.

The real truth is winning.

Hurray! Finally it's finished downloading.

Brian, I share your anger and I hope we can use the energy of that anger to bring loving and healing kindness to the multitudes of victims and the Institution as such be forced to apologize effectively and resign admitting its fraud. I wish unlimited advance in spirituality to all of us Independent Catholics.

Francis with tears.

Ian and all, I increasingly sense we are at some epoch-changing moment in religion — and not just Catholicism. As I've argued recently the clerical abuse scandal is not the cause of this crisis — it's either a symptom, or it's the trigger that has started to bring the whole house down (or perhaps a combination of the two).

Earlier on Sunday night on SBS television there was a fascinating program that chronicled epoch-changing religious beliefs five thousand years ago in Ancient Britain. Here's the blurb from the SBS website:

A History Of Ancient Britain

Neil Oliver explores a newly-discovered 5,000-year-old temple on the Orkney Islands. Built 500 years before the iconic monument of Stonehenge, the temple is opening new windows onto the beliefs of Neolithic people, turning the map of ancient Britain upside down. Already the site is revealing a series of incredible finds including the first ever discovery of Neolithic painted wall decorations, and even the pigments and paint pots used by Stone Age artists.

Part of the contention in the program, drawn from the archeological evidence, is that a set of religious beliefs that had endured for around a thousand years underwent a dramatic change part way through and the evidence for this is reflected in the new style of temple building that emerged atop of the earlier buildings. These sites in the Orkney Islands predate Stonehenge by about 500 years. The program was a fascinating watch quite apart from any parallels one might draw to what seems to be happening today.

I sense we (society) are in, or at the beginning of, some massive mind-shift about this entire God and religious belief business. The very fact that over the course of around a century the great majority of people in the educated, Western world have simply ceased participating is one sign of it — and a major one. I think our ideas of the role of priesthood are changing and how we worship/engage liturgically. It's all too much for the troglodytes and neanderthals but, in the final analysis, they will not stand against the march of history and time.

What will emerge out of all this who yet knows? I am personally very optimistic though. I continue to believe Jesus Christ was one of the great prophetic figures of human history. More than that though I also continue to believe he was somehow an embodiment of deep, accumulated wisdom about how we navigate the mountains and valleys of this great adventure we call "life". I don't believe he was some kind of magician in our lives though — if we pray to him he'll do favours for us. The importance of Jesus is in understanding his story and seeing how the lessons contained in it translate into the challenges we face today, or that any people have faced at any time in history. Jesus, I continue to believe, is a person/figure who "transcends time". His story — whether it was literally given to him by God, or whether it is something that has been draped on his figure by some of the great seers of history — ultimately doesn't matter. What matters, it seems to me, is the modelling his story provides as to how we can scale any mountain, or travel through any deep valley, and find equilibrium or peace in our spirit.

I feel deeply for all the people who have been abused or ended up with some "short straw" in this ballot we call life. I've been hurt myself by what some of life has thrown up in my path. So has my wife. For many justice is literally impossible to obtain (and I again refer to the case of Ciara and Dennis Glennon who lost their daughter to the Claremont serial killer who has never been found. Their outlook was a massive comfort to me though the worst of my own troubles.) For various reasons it was impossible for me to find justice also – and I recognized that fairly early on, thank God. Amanda too could not find "justice" simply because the person who had raped her died. In some ways I think we are better off when we can't blame anyone for the mishaps we suffer in life. That is not to discount the responsibility we very often carry to ensure the perpetrator of some transgression is caught so that they are not able to do the same to others. The critical thing for all of us though is to simply find both "peace" or "equilibrium" in our lives and a place from which we can "start again" without, as far as possible, continually being dragged back by whatever occurred in our past and having to re-live it like some endless newsreal in our heads. I haven't yet found how to do that fully in my own life but I sense it is "the pathway to eventual peace and fulfillment in our lives".

I thought these were the things Jesus was there to teach us. Today I sense the leaders in our church have moved a long, long way from what Jesus was there to teach us in our lives. Reading Kaiser's book has been the final straw for me watching the petty ecclesial politics played out by "little men" like this Alfredo Ottaviani and the Jesuit John Ford that completely trashed the "movement of the spirit" and "the quest for ultimate truth" that seemed to motivate the actions of the other people who were assembled to find answers to an important question for the future of humanity. That tragedy today is compounded because the present ecclesial leaders are still stuck in this rut of fear about admitting that our popes are not infallible. This is a church not driven by some question to discover the great truths of life but instead is trying to appease and tuck up in bed the insecure by pretending all the great "truths" were discovered centuries ago or are mediated to humankind through the agency exclusively of some poor bugger sitting in Rome who is perceived to be the "official channel" of Divine communication to humankind. The proposition looks increasingly absurd just judged on the behaviours of our two most recent pontiffs — even just over their responses to the single issue of Marcial Maciel Degollado. Benedict sending him off to "prayer and penance" in some monastery was the equivalent of a slap on the wrist given the harm he did both to individuals and to an entire institution.

The SBS documentary can be viewed here for the next 15 days or on SBS at the link below:

Thanks for that.

Francis

Roy thnk you for telling your story mate Iknow how much that must have hurt you but it needed to be told forget about the anger management tips 50k through the bush in a buggy will fix Brian.

Cheers Ian lawther

Dear all,

I want to express my sorrow to you who had hoped for so much better. I felt ill when i read what had happened to the person whose name i can't remember (please forgive me for that).

I am a catholic of a different sort who longs for the time when we will all dance in our charismatic colours in God's wonderful garden seeing each other as G-D sees us - and not as an other to be exploited.

Shalom - Peace be to you, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ - its only source.

Brian, I transferred your post to a word doc and enlarged it,Mate, I feel your pain and I empathise with you. Everyone on this forum would know my thoughts on the Hierarchical cult that has developed under our noses, at the expense of Christianity. It was VG Cudmore that told some Healesville people that my sons abuser had a record before he was ordained (re Broken Rites Australia David Daniel st Brigids Healesville.) so much pain so much sheer betrayal from a mob that was going to Evangelize the world ( as in deliver to Christ,)what Adisgrace to Christianity they have turned out to be. To think so much pain and betrayal could have been stopped with that simple word Truth years and years ago just beggars belief.I am sorry the realizatation Has hit you so hard but true freedom awaits. You are a unique individual Brian that has started a Forum that gives a lot of people a lot of hope and I thank you for your effort.

Cheers Ian Lawther.

Brian

yes we all have the right to be spewing blood over this that is why i mentioned in my letter to the telegraph that every catholic should read Chrissie and Anthonys book I was so shocked, so appauled at the things that happened to their children especially the part when he was raping her little mouth and telling her she was the Devil. that part hit home for me because the Nun said that the Devil was a large snake and it was wrapped around my back bone and would sleep with me everynight OH GOD I THOUGHT SHE LOVED ME!! and she didn't at all. My nights for forty years were if i try and go to sleep without a drink i may wake and see him the DEVIL. Roy you are such a brave man just telling that makes you a brave man never forget that,

I love you all the way from Ballina even if i have not met you that doesn't matter. YOU ARE A GREAT MAN.

Macbee

I think of all the things I have read or viewed about the sexual abuse scandals over the last twenty years, the most scarifying to my own soul have been the revelations I read in Chrissie Foster's book at their treatment by high Church officials, including the present Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney, and last night a line I read on the members' forum in this post by Roy. I have known Roy's story for a number of years and what he had previously revealed was bad enough. Reading this post last night is the end for me. The behaviour of the priest who did this is animal behaviour — no it is lower than animal behaviour. That this institution never brought the perpetrator to justice and to acknowledge the depravity of what he did is simply beyond belief. Cardinal Bertone, as the most senior Salesian in the world, has to take some responsibility for justice in this matter being denied.

Here is the text of Roy's post from the members' forum. I apologise for the graphic nature of what he writes. The truth needs to be told in these matters. How could any ordained person stoop to this? How could any leader of a religious order, bishop, cardinal or pope prevent the victim of this animal in obtaining justice:

don't assume anything Brian....
my outfits on line 24/7 and piratebay has downloaded 70 odd MB of the 606 single meg files I put up ...that was overnight.
about 30 yanks downloading off me at the moment ....3 aussies also.
http://thepiratebay.se/user/arnoldnut/

they ccome and arrest me ..so be it!
I don't hide ....see my handle is arnoldnut ..arnoldnut is well known of many years on the net ...and he never hides.
I do understand your fear of big brother ...you play their game ....I don't ...I own nothing

do what you like Brian ...I'm just sick of playing with a loaded gun.

1st August another victim of the Salesians goes to court and few will hear about that.
I can't go along as they will say I collaborated ...victims can't talk to each other nor support each other
while the church has secret meetings and has direct access to govt.
What would you say we should do????

I think a few here have been educated as to how bent this is .....and I do in what Tom Doyle says about victims needing to get militant
OR THIS ABUSING/RAPING OF OUR CHILDREN WILL CONTINUE!

You guys asked me once to tell m\y story and I have avoided doing it ...it is not normal and therefore has no place in print.
All I can say is that having a penis shoved in your mouth with your own excrement and blood is more than a child should have to go through.
I want to know what sort of creep can know that goes on and still allow the perp to be amongst children

Is what they did to me in 2000 ...and he was under their employ

They don't give a shit and I personally don't care what sort of theologine you are you need to get sorted keeping creeps like that in your employ for 30/40 years

It is immoral and I'll do what I have too to get it exposed and hopefully stopped

This message is two-pronged, Brian . . .

1. Congratulations for reaching a significant point in your life . . whatever it may come to mean for you, and however the path goes from here.

2. One of the things I have always admired about Catholica is what seems to me to be the absolute honesty you have displayed in writing your articles and pursuing the various issues.

In doing so, you have given all of us "permission" to go well "outside the squares" we live in in our own lives, and to pursue, through your own capacity for lateral thinking, what we consider to be absolute truth for ourselves. Thank you for that!

AND one last thing . . . to reiterate what Roy said (sort-of) . . . thanks for Catholica . . . it is a spiritual community that is, in ,any ways, much better than church!

No Brian ....I just got back or I would have said earlier.
I deleted the post ....just cleared the silly one liner is all

I just wanted a clear go for others .....I'll dump this in a minute too

I'm sorry if you had a moment with that Brian ....I'm really a softy when you get to know me.

I don't want to see you have to set up shop up the hall from Julian either ....Catholica will always be yours remember ...where ever you are operating from

Apologies: a "no text" post in reply by Roy got accidentally deleted here. I was trying to edit the above post and somehow pressed something that screwed everything up for a few minutes. In the process Roy's post got deleted. The subject line merely read "you're a gentleman Brian [nt] ...goin' for a ride! ".

I can tell you after reading Kaiser's book I am simply so disgusted with this institution today — and more so those at the very top who have pushed on all of us things that are effectively no more than monstrous lies. For a long time, too long, I believed these men had some moral authority. Today I believe they have squandered their moral authority totally. The longer they put off acknowledging the petty politics that was played in the formulation of Humanae Vitae — which gives the absolute lie that any of what Popes say comes through guidance of any "Holy Spirit", or acknowledging the systemic failings in Catholicism that led to the entire sexual abuse scandal, or, for that matter, redressing this most recent — and small by comparison — injustice perpetrated against +Bill Morris, these men only deserve as their followers the 5% of the insecure in the world who desperately need authority figures in their lives more than they need food each day.

Overnight I have just finished Robert Blair Kaiser's book "The Politics of Sex and Religion" [FREE download available HERE]. Just now I have watched this 1996 Four Corners video that has become available. Further up the forum Angela has brought us a story of Benedict stripping a university in Peru of the right to call itself "Catholic". Kaiser's book has had the most impact on me. I have long been under the illusion, or delusion, that this religion I was born into was primarily interested in this nebulous thing called "the pursuit of ultimate truth". Reading Kaiser's book I can now see that is an absolute lie. That the scandal that is revealed by Kaiser's book has never been refuted by John Paul II or Benedict XVI makes them complicit in the further perpetrating of an enormous lie. These people are simply not interested ultimately in the pursuit of "truth". They are primarily interested in perpetrating the myth that they alone can read the mind of God and they are the only people on earth who are custodians of "truth".

To put it very bluntly: the game they have all been playing is an attempt to deify themselves, and their moral authority, at the expense of God.

They began to squander any authority they might have claimed to superior moral insight when Paul VI caved into the likes of Alfredo Ottaviani and the Jesuit "nutter" John Ford back in the 1960s.

What a sad, sad, discredited institution this has become? It is no wonder that Barry Hickey (my former boss and who appears in the 1996 Four Corners' documentary) has said recently that all he wants to do is "retire into obscurity". It is totally embarrassing, Barry, and I understand how you feel. The "crooks" in this though are the people who are still at the very top of this institution and who fail (a) to undo the damage done by Ottaviani and John Ford; (b) who fail to accept responsibility for the systemic failings in institutional Catholicism that made the entire sexual abuse of children possible; and (c) who refuse to acknowledge, and correct, the bullying behaviour perpetrated against a man like Bishop William Morris (which is symptomatic of the entire crisis in authority Catholicism today faces).

I join Roy in encouraging people to view this 1996 episode of Four Corners "Twice Betrayed". It might be historical but, together with the recent 2012 episode of Four Corners, "Unholy Silence", it demonstrates that little has changed in the attitudes of the Church in the past 16 years. In fact the admissions of Monsignor Cudmore in the 1996 program show if anything there was more honesty in the senior ranks of the clergy back then than there is today. If I was a bishop or cardinal today I too would be embarrassed to show my face in public or to try and defend the pontificates or behaviours of John Paul II (not only in the cover-up of the behaviours of Marcial Maciel Degollado, but actually promoting the man as an "efficacious guide to youth") and his successor Benedict XVI in attempting to "press on" trying to defend the authority of the institution to be a moral authority about anything.

I urge every thinking Catholic to go read Robert Blair Kaiser's evidence for yourself and also to re-visit this 1996 Four Corners' documentary. Remember the sexual abuse scandal did not really break as a world-wide scandal until the revelations in the United States in about 2001. This 1996 Australian documentary was aired long before this scandal and crisis emerged as an international crisis. I'm going to try and facilitate the documentary's uploading to YouTube to make it easier to view and I trust this might encourage the ABC to make a higher quality copy available for viewing online somewhere. This documentary is a matter of continuing public interest today particularly in that it was one of the first public affairs documentaries to "open the lid" on this scandal internationally.

I can only suggest to Benedict that rather than playing these games of trying to withdraw the name Catholic from a university in Peru, you look to trying to re-establish any tiny shred of moral credibility you have left by accepting responsibility for the failings of yourself and your predecessors in this morally reprehensible effort to try and bolster the moral authority of the institution and its popes at the expense of ultimate truth. This constant, constant endeavour to bolster the certitudes and insecurities of "the little people", and "the simple people" (your expressions not mine) at the expense of lifting them in the search for ultimate truth in their lives is reprehensible beyond faith or belief. You ought hang your head in abject shame at what has been perpetrated in the name of Almighty God, Jesus Christ and the entire Communion of Saints. To be proceeding today to try and elevate the late John Paul II to some pedestal of "greatness" or "saintliness" only makes the moral bankruptcy of all of you all the more palpable and transparent.

I see it offered for download if you google it. Lots of bent offers there ...but you don't need to fill out forms if you found a real download ....don't be fooled.
ABC FourCorners Documentary 'Twice Betrayed'
Broadcast: 27/05/96
Twice Betrayed
This story is about the crisis within the Roman Catholic Church over sexual abuse. After decades of inaction, the Church is facing its day of reckoning as a legal and financial showdown looms. Four Corners reveals the cover up that left the victims twice betrayed.

everybody should get a copy and watch it.
The ABC sent me a handful of copies ....anyone wants one can email me and I promise I won't tell anyone

This doco from 1996 is the same shit all over again.

If it had been fixed then in 96 Ian and Angies family would not be smashed
13 little girls at Toowoomba etc etc

and from what I've learnt of late Father Jack Ayers would have been collared back in late 90s and that would have been over too ...all this stuff is hidden hey!

of course anyone can ring the ABC like I did and get copies sent out. there is no restriction on viewing it.

......other than it's ABC and apparently Catholics are being told they are evil ../.so sad!