Kudos: Family of Wrongly Convicted Msgr. Lynn Unloads on Injustice in Philly: ‘This Trial Was Not About Justice for Victims’

Msgr. William Lynn persecution

Msgr. William Lynn faces the 21st century lions' den

In a stunning episode last month, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court overturned a state's lower court ruling that Philadelphia's Msgr. William Lynn was wrongly convicted at a 2012 trial.

Even though Msgr. Lynn was a Church chancery office official who had no direct contact with children whatsoever, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams had charged Lynn in 2011 under a law that even his prejudiced predecessor (Lynne Abraham) did not believe applied to Lynn. Williams claimed that Lynn was somehow a "supervisor of children" who "endangered the welfare of children" whom he did not know even existed. [More background.]

The 21st century lions' den

Following the shocking reversal of the Superior Court's unanimous ruling that Lynn had been wrongly charged, Msgr. Lynn went back on May 1 to the very courtroom to face the bigoted Judge Teresa Sarmina, the very judge who presided at his original one-sided show trial where Sarmina was "often mistaken for a member of the prosecution team."

And while Lynn's family has always faithfully stood by the wrongly convicted priest, it did not bother to attend Sarmina's hearing which would order Lynn back to prison.

As veteran journalist Ralph Cipriano has exclusively reported, Lynn's family already knew what the outcome of the one-sided hearing would be, and it released the following statement to Cipriano:

"We, the family of Msgr. Lynn, chose to forgo the proceedings as we were confident of what the outcome would be, considering that the judge involved has acted as a member of the prosecution team since the inception of the trial. We could also not bear the erroneous ramblings of the prosecutor once more.

"We also know that Msgr. is secure in the love and support from family and so many others so our physical presence was unnecessary. Those who know him know what a good, compassionate and unequivocally faithful man he is.

"We firmly believe that abuse of a child by any individual should not be tolerated. Sadly this trial was not about justice for victims but about establishing political platforms by charging an underling with the crimes of his former superiors who could not or would not be prosecuted."

(By the way, the prosecutor of the "erroneous ramblings" to which the Lynn family referred is the wild-eyed and unhinged Assistant D.A. Patrick Blessington, who, by the way, was recently tied up in a scandal involving pornographic emails on government computers.)

Many who have followed the clergy abuse cases in Philadelphia from the beginning have known for a long time that the high-profile cases there have had absolutely nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with grabbing headlines, advancing careers, and bludgeoning the Church for what it is.

Kudos to the Lynn family for speaking truth to justice, something which Msgr. Lynn never received.

Comments

  1. malcolm harris says:

    Using the visual images of hungry lions, and harking back to the persecution of the first Christians, does at first seem an exaggeration of the problem. But let's look at the current derangements that permit today's persecution of priests.  

    They have been stripped of their civil rights. All citizens have certain civil rights… and that must include priests. Such as the right to a good reputation, also the right to a fair trial, and the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. All these rights have been effectively taken away. That is why Msgr. Lynn is now in prison.

    He, like other priests, have been demonized by the court of public opinion.If Judge Sarmina was at all interested in justice she would have dismissed the case on the grounds that media publicity had prejudiced a fair trial. That would have sent a strong message to the media, and would have taken a lot of steam out of the witch-hunt.

    This is really a civil rights issue, and Catholics should be guided by the African-American civil rights movement. The danger may be that this would be divisive.

    Well, if you don't protect your priests you will not have a religion. Which would be even more divisive.

  2. Jim Robertson says:

    If he placed children in danger by allowing them to be near a, known to him, predator. He's a criminal.

    Mr Harris your nuns through their extraordinary hard work could, if you had no priests, restore your church over night. Both the good and bad of it. With people of either gender or any sexual preference there are the good and the bad; the quick and the dead.

    Women do the real work in the church they always have. Just like in the house/home women did/do  most of the work.

    What's "the right of a good reputation"?( It's innocent until proven guilty. Not innocent after been proven guilty)  That's a new one. So no criminals would ever be punished because it might ruin their reputation? My god you're nuts.

  3. Ann Morris says:

    And where is this persecuted priest's bishop?

    Many of our bishops have escaped just punishment, either judicially or within the Church, and are under the delusion that they are still respected by everyone, safe on a pedestal, powerful in society and can continue from their ivory towers to force their leftist ideas about socialism, global warming, Robin Hood economics and open borders.  They should get their arrogant heads out of the clouds and stand by their devoted priests.  The bishop should be visiting this priest in jail daily, arriving at high noon in daylight.  The family should not have to issue a statement, the chancery should do it for them and in support of them.  Not all bishops are bad, only about 80 percent.

  4. TrueCatholic10112 says:

    Msgr Lynn

    Is a lying son-of-a-bitch.

  5. Mark says:

    So Msgr. Lynn is innocent? You wouldn't know it by visiting Catholics4Change.

    Seriously folks, I am so confused that I don't know what to think.

    • Publion says:

      With vivid clarity we see in this trial and its subsequent (not yet finished) appeals the distinctive and ominous difficulty with so many of these priest-abuse cases: courts at the trial level make the most egregious missteps (almost always prejudicial to the accused) and when appeals are made, then higher-courts bend over backwards to somehow come up with a rationale for sustaining the convictions, even though you could drive a truck through the legal and conceptual holes in their ‘reasoning’.

      Here, the State Supreme Court has overruled that (rare) Superior Court rejection of the trial-court’s process, and it has done so not by addressing the many issues (including the fundamental issue that the Ex Post Facto (hereinafter: ‘EPF’) clause does not permit the application of a law to a situation allegedly happening before that law was enacted – or, in this case, amended). (Readers so inclined can follow the Lynn matter on the BigTrial site’s 2 most recent posts in regard to the Lynn case.)

      Rather than address the many issues – including that fundamental issue of EPF – the Supreme Court went along with the DA’s attempt to spin the appeal as ‘creating an appearance of impropriety’ if Lynn’s attorney was to prevail. This bit represents nothing more than a dog-whistle from the DA to the State Supreme Court that the legal and judicial system is going to look bad if Lynn’s case is tossed out.

      An ‘appearance’ is mighty thin legal gruel upon which to base the Supreme Court’s action here, especially when so fundamental and Constitutional an issue as EPF is on the table. And if there is any judicial “impropriety” at stake here, then I would say that it lies with the courts and the local legal system and not with the proper pursuit of legal courses by Lynn’s defense counsel.

      Nor is the DA’s case made any more credible or honorable by then claiming that if the Lynn defense counsel now seeks to continue proper process by appealing on other issues back to the State Superior Court then such a perfectly legitimate and appropriate course constitutes ‘judge-shopping’. All this represents is an effort to stymie any further efforts to pursue the legitimate course of the judicial system in seeking redress for Lynn.

      So what we see here is now a confluence of a) a Stampede-driven trial creating an unjustifiable legal result (the conviction of Lynn based on a violation of EPF) and b) the legal system’s predictable and long-standing response to revelations of its own failures: hide it or make it go away and don’t admit to any such failures.

      This type of result can hardly be surprising, given the dynamics of the Stampede which pushed mightily toward a stampeding of the law and the legal process to create convictions based more on feeling (‘outrage’ and so on) rather than on careful consideration-of and respect-for established legal principles.

      Indeed, the Victimist strategy has always relied on i) the replacing of careful legal reasoning and evidentiary analysis with ii) a burst of public emotion – helpfully created and amplified by friendly media. (Which also takes us back to a mass example of that ‘amygdalic rush’ I mentioned in a comment on the immediately prior thread.)

      Thus then JR’s pronunciamento (the 19th, 439PM) to the effect that Lynn is “a criminal” displays this approach with crystalline clarity. As the State Superior Court clearly realized (and the State Supreme Court has sought utterly to avoid) the criminal statute applicable at the time of Lynn’s alleged crime did not justify bringing criminal charges against him, as the then-DA (Williams’s predecessor) also realized.

      The Playbook tactic at this point is to ignore the serious legal problems with this case and just go for the ‘outrage’ (which itself is dubiously placed in the first place). And then to surf the wave of that ‘outrage’ such that people are distracted from the profound legal issues (EPF) and jurisprudential issues (the legitimacy of the trial and Supreme courts’ behavior and ‘reasoning’).

      On this basis – and prescinding from the radical-feminist stuff about women in the Church – JR’s effort to deny “the right of a good reputation” to somebody whose conviction is so abyssally flawed and now continues to stand … merely yields another crystal-clear demonstration of Stampede-driven manipulation.

      Thus too JR demonstrates either his ignoring of the applicable legal issues or his outright ignorance of them: Lynn has not been “proven guilty” and the Supreme Court’s behavior now supports the high probability that Lynn was not “proven guilty” but rather that the Supreme Court (for self-protective and even political reasons) is trying to squash or squelch that realization and that formal official recognition.

      Thus then too, his concluding epithet in the comment fails.

      And then on the 20th at 124PM we get – from some commenter who has chosen to declare him/herself a “True Catholic” – a quickie drive-by bit that merely tosses a tad of epithetical plop at Lynn.

      And I can certainly understand the concerns of ‘Ann Morris’ as to the behavior of various bishops (although I think that not only “leftist” but also more traditionally-minded hierarchs share the blame here).

  6. Jim Robertson says:

    Hey Idiot Boy, He was found guilty. I didn't do that a judge and or jury did. Radical feminists didn't find him guilty the system did. He fucked up his own reputation.

    • Publion says:

      Let us, just for a moment, put to one side the term “idiot boy” (the 23rd, 307PM) since I think it does have a very substantive relevance here, if appropriately sited.

      Lynn was found guilty at the trial level (in a case that raised serious issues as to the quality of the trial-process and thus of the conviction).

      The case was appealed by the defense to the PA Superior Court on the basis of those serious issues and the Superior Court reversed the conviction (with some remarkably forthright criticisms of the trial process and judge and with a clear and fully-joined Order by that Court).

      The reversal was then appealed by the DA to the PA Supreme Court where the conviction was re-instated, although with the problems of incompleteness and vagueness in the Supreme Court’s reasoning and consideration that have been discussed.

      The case is currently in appeal by the defense back to the Superior Court and thus the assertion that the defendant “was found guilty” is best characterized as either a) premature or b) notably partial and incomplete, since the ball is still in play, as it were.

      And considering the fact that Ex Post Facto is involved, then a Constitutional issue is involved that might even find its way to the US Supreme Court.

      So what JR has ‘fxxxd up’ here is, I think, rather clear. Which thus brings us back to the appropriate siting of the “idiot boy” term.

  7. Jim Robertson says:

    He was found GUILTY. He is now in an appeal process. He's attempting to be found not guilty. Attempting to have a VERDICT of GUILT overturned. You are an Idiot Boy

  8. Jim Robertson says:

    By the way. I just love the horror and distaste evidenced by the reaction to the letters "u""c" "k". 

    The alphabet won't kill you; and there are no children here. Grow up.

    • Jim Robertson says:

      It seems you prefer the triple, xxx to the German uck.

    • Publion says:

      We are afforded a generous dollop of insight into several things here.

      On the 26th at 1200PM JR demonstrates clearly i) the inability or unwillingness to read what other people write and ii) the limitations of a Cartoon approach. 

      In regard to (i): my point precisely had been the complexity of characterization of a conviction that has a) been overturned once by a higher court and b) was – in some ways and with serious deficiencies in reasoning and logical process – re-instated by an even higher court and is c) being again appealed according to legitimate process to the inferior appeals court while d) containing the seeds of a Constitutional issue that may see the US Supreme Court before it’s all over. 

      In regard to (ii): what the Cartoonist here tries to do is to freeze-frame the film at a scene that is to the Cartoon’s advantage, sort of like stopping a game of musical-chairs when one has gotten oneself a comfy seat and then quickly trying to declare the game over. 

      Nor – it apparently has to be pointed out to the Cartoonist whose Wig of Judgery clearly does not impart actual legal chops – is it quite accurate to reduce the appeals process to the fact that Lynn is presently seeking “to be found not guilty”. But let’s let the Wig go into a huddle with the various muses to figure that one out. 

      Additionally: the validity or legitimacy of Lynn’s original trial-court conviction is already so peppered with problems that at this point any Court that seeks to affirm it without clearly and rationally addressing and resolving all of the problems (which is something the PA Supreme Court specifically did not even try to do) is merely going to reinforce the strong sense that the case and with it the PA judicial system are clearly tainted and/or deranged. 

      This is the trouble that the Stampede/Victimist gambit has led created. And it is hardly improbable that PA is not the only State to be thus afflicted and deranged. 

      Whether the dismal performance of the PA Supreme Court is in some way an attempt to prop up some local political strategies or whether that performance has now simply become a matter of trying to squelch an utterly unsupportable miscarriage of justice (and possibly malfeasance by various prosecutorial and judicial players) … remains an open question. 

      One might try to parse the matter by proposing that there is a distinction between a) the quality of the Supreme Court’s performance and b) the particular Decision that the Court reached; thus that the Court may have done a poor job with (a) but legitimately arrived at its Decision (b). 

      But I don’t see how the Court could have properly executed its responsibility to seriously and completely assess all the matters before it in this case (thus fulfilling (a)) while at the same time not affirming the Superior Court’s overturn of the conviction (b). That’s how utterly profound the problems with the case at the trial-level actually are and have been all along. 

      And the whole bit concludes – have you been waitttting forrrr ittttttt? – with a repeat of the original plop-tossy epithet. 

      Now onto the 26th at 1211PM, where the generous dollops of insight and revelation continue: 

      JR here demonstrates that in his Cartoon universe the use of scatology is a mark of maturity (since I am instructed to “grow up” and not be so childishly picky and prissy about his use of scatology and scatological epithet). 

      Who can be surprised at this? 

      And while chronologically speaking I would venture to agree that “there are no children here”, yet in several larger senses I could not disagree more with that assertion. 

      And – for those clinically inclined – we see here a vivid example of how a particularly-shaped mind, supported (as it were) by a character not overly limited by reason or virtue, can to its own self-serving satisfaction twist reality into a more palatable pretzel for itself: adolescent scatology in a chronologically advanced adult is actually a sign of maturity … thus the burden of childish immaturity falls on those who do not easily and with such relish engage in deploying such ‘mature’ scatology and scatological epithet. 

      And – the ‘logic’ might continue – since JR is confronted with such lumpish immaturity then he really can’t be blamed for the failure of his material, which is now ‘logically’ ascribable not to JR (the author of the material) but rather to those too childishly immature to appreciate its clarity, insight, courage, precision assessments and assertions, and – but of course – overall truthiness. 

      And at this juncture it’s probably best just to leave him to it. 

    • Publion says:

      I have come across a very relevant bit.

      Before getting into it, let me preemptively save us some time. The bit I am going to discuss here comes in an op-ed piece about gay marriage. Since this might result in our being bombarded with distracting 3×5 bits from a certain shoebox in the matter of gay marriage, let me say that the material relevant to our interests on this site have nothing to do with the gay marriage aspects.

      The op-ed is entitled “Gay marriage wins hearts, minds” by S.E. Cupp (who, as it turns out, is friendly to gay marriage). It appeared in the “Boston Herald”, issue of Wednesday, May 27, 2015, p. 19 in the print edition. The link to it is below

      http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/opinion/op_ed/2015/05/cupp_gay_marriage_wins_hearts_minds

      Cupp acknowledges with disappointment the now-discredited recent ‘study’ that claimed last week to ‘reveal’ (with much media hoopla as “groundbreaking”) that a 20-minute conversation with a gay person “made people more supportive of gay marriage”. (This gambit is similar to the recent US Army requirement – photographed – that male recruits wear red high-heels in order to ‘empathize’ with women … go figure.) 

      Cupp also sadly observes that so many ‘advocates’ demanding ‘tolerance’ demonstrate no such ‘tolerance’ when confronted with disagreement, doubt, or objection-to their demands and agendas. 

      In that regard he quotes Princeton jurisprudence professor Robert P. George who refers to “a strategy of intimidation aimed at demonizing and marginalizing anyone who dares oppose their agenda”. 

      Cupp, however, will observe that telling stories can indeed increase empathy: “There is plenty of good science proving the connection between story-telling and empathy”. And he proceeds to give examples of the connection between ‘story-telling’ and ‘empathy’, even demonstrating that when subjects hooked up to brain-scanning equipment are told stories, the ‘insula’ area of the brain (governing empathy) is activated. 

      So far, so good.

      But then he also quotes a 2013 Amsterdam study that found that “fiction readers who felt emotionally transported into a story scored higher on a scale of empathy”. 

      And that’s the kicker here for our interests.

      “Fiction”. The ‘story’ might indeed be ‘fiction’; none of the studies actually dealt with the far more relevant question as to whether the ‘story’ was or was not “fiction”. A fictional story can create as much empathy as a truthful story. And, perhaps, if it is manipulatively crafted precisely to elicit empathy, it can create even more empathy than a truthful story would (one thinks of the many ‘just-so’ or ‘spot-on’ types of ‘story’ that assorted ‘advocates’ so often come up with, as if by amazing coincidence). 

      This brings us immediately and precisely to the matters of concern to this site: are the ‘stories’ told to us “fiction” or not? 

      Clearly, the Victimist Stampede – working in mutually rewarding synergy with long-established tortie stratagems – has worked to get ‘stories’ accepted not merely as ‘a’ form of evidence, but as t-h-e overriding and unassailable form of evidence. Because scientific studies have – accurately, I would say – demonstrated that a ‘story’ will generate the ‘empathy’ that is necessary to override a more rational and objective assessment (of that very ‘story’). Which also brings us back to that “amygdalic rush” discussed in a comment on a recent prior thread.

      You can imagine the opportunity and probability for mischief that is opened up by this approach. 
      With the primary question left un-addressed: is the ‘empathy’ thus generated accurately based upon a true ‘story’ or is it merely ‘empathy’ generated (manipulatively) based upon a ‘story’ that is … other-than-true? 

      Resulting, of course, in actual ‘empathy’ but an actual empathy that is generated by a something other-than-truth. This is not a false empathy, but rather an actual empathy based on a false source. 

      And that, as I have so often said, is a major concern in the Stampede. 

    • Publion says:

      On the 28th at 925AM – given all the material that is on the table – we get nothing but a succession of one-liner epithets.

      Among which we see in the second line the so-easy reversion to the histrionic Wig of Outrage (“how dare you?”). Bolstered by more juvenile (or in JR’s dictionary ‘mature’) reversion to scatology. And the whole of it prompted – revealingly – by my use of the term “clinically” … a word and concept, perhaps, with which JR has had unhappy (and apparently ‘judgmental’) experiences. More grist, then, for the mill for those readers who are clinically-inclined. 

      As to the claimed connection between “juncture” and “Broadway Danny Rose” – reader with insight into the sense of this is welcome to share it. 

      But again, we see what the Stampede strategy enabled: this level of mentation and maturity and character was given a platform to perform with no boundaries and no consequences and – for a while at least – with an appreciative media to amplify the results. 

      Meanwhile, I have come across an article in the magazine “Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture”. The article is entitled “UVA: Facts Versus the Left’s Narrative”, by R. Cort Kirkwood (issue for June, 2015, pp. 21-23). 

      The article further considers that now-discredited story in “Rolling Stone” magazine (written by Sabrina Erdely) about a claimed fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia. 

      The author notes that there is a “narrative” at play here, meaning a particularly structured ‘script’ that is supposed to i) explain all the un-explained parts by inducing readers to fill in the many blanks with nothing but ‘outrage’ while ii) providing a ‘spin’ for this or that claim that will manipulate readers into ignoring all questions, incoherences, and other non-credible elements. 

      The deployment of such “narratives” is crucially significant because when it is amplified in daily news (thus beyond the smallish readership of a magazine such as “Rolling Stone”) then the larger public is affected: “repetition is the mother of learning” and if a media so inclined greatly amplifies the “narrative and with sustained repetition, then the public ‘learns’ to accept that “narrative” as if it were demonstrated and demonstrable truth. 

      In the U/VA case, the “narrative” is “that a ‘rape culture’ permeates the American college campus”. 
      For which asserted “narrative” the proof is the assertion that 20 percent of college women are “raped”.
       
      Readers here may immediately wonder what the presumed definition of ‘rape’ is here, but Kirkwood doesn’t go into that. He does, however, point out that the actual percentage is not 20.0 but rather 0.61, which is a very substantial difference indeed. 

      He then limns the broader significance: This college-rape narrative “followed the same trajectory” as those ‘narratives’ applied to other large national institutions: “The military, the Church, and, in this case, the universities – particularly those evil, Southern institutions such as the University of Virginia – routinely ignore rape and indeed encourage it by refusing to punish or prosecute rapists”. 

      What we are seeing here, then, is precisely the same stratagem deployed against U/VA that was deployed against the Church in the Stampede, including that “official indifference” by which the targeted organizations (rather than errant individual members or agents of those organizations) are attacked and impugned for actually enabling or even fostering such acts by means of a ‘rape culture’ and so on and so forth. 

      Kirkwood examines Erdely’s other articles, in which she deploys the same general “narrative” against the military and the Church: “In each case, Erdely uses a central figure who has a similar tale to tell: she was a victim of a horrific rape, she reported the rape to authorities, and her concerns were ignored and/or used against her”. (Note: in the Church case the allegant was a ‘he’.)

      And “the narrative in each case is used to advance the theory that the institution in question … is indifferent to the problems of systemic sexual assault occurring right under their noses” and that ‘victims’ “can’t get justice from officialdom”. 

      (And in regard to that last bit, we have often seen assorted check-cashers bleat that they would never have gone to a tortie and joined a lawsuit for so much money if they had simply been able to get justice from the Church’s officialdom back in the day.) 

      I would add, here, that “used to advance the theory” doesn’t quite get it right: the public is not proffered these “narratives” as being labeled as ‘theories’, as in ‘we of the media have a theory’. Rather, the public is manipulatively poisoned with these “narratives” as if they were fact and were being factually reported. 

      And in all of these stories and in this general “narrative” we see “a pervasive media stereotype”: “a relatively conservative institution’s privileged male bureaucracy that protects its own”. 

      And in this regard, I recall a recent article about the Baltimore police-race problem and the indictment of the six police officers: in that case the same ‘race narrative’ is deployed as has been for half a century at least: white government and police institutions oppress people of color. But in Baltimore the Mayor and police chief are black, as are three of the accused officers. 

      This rather substantive fact, which provides more complication than the original “narrative” was designed to handle, is quickly and breezily dismissed by various gambits: a) the black officials are merely ‘Uncle Toms’ – or Thomasina’s – and race-traitors; b) oppressed people by very definition cannot oppress others nor can they legitimately be imagined as oppressing others. 

      And (b) reflects a similar spin about ‘victims’: by definition they i) cannot lie and ii) cannot victimize others. Nor can one imagine them to be otherwise (unless, of course, one is ‘sociopathic’). 

      So we see in these instances of “narrative” the very same stratagem that has been deployed against the Church for so many years now. 

  9. Jim Robertson says:

    You aren't mature. You're petrified.

    "Clinically"! How dare you? Who the fuck are you to judge anyone about anything?

    "Juncture"! Who are you Broadway Danny Rose?

    • Jim Robertson says:

      Broadway Danny Rose uses the word "juncture" as a way of feigning intelligence. So very like yourself.

  10. malcolm harris says:

    On May 28th at 6.25 pm Publion refers to the strategy, being used by alleged victims and their torties, for creating empathy. Basically they rely on the proven fact that a fictional story can elicit as much empathy as a true story. This manipulative ploy means that the emotive part of the brain is quickly engaged… and thus prevents rationally assessment of the story. Because emotionally they don't even consider the possibility of fiction or exaggeration.

    A good example of this is currently being employed in Australia, where there is a politically- inspired Royal Commission… providing a convenient platform for the witch-hunt. Old cases are being re-cycled and made to look as though still going on.  And today we are informed by the press that a convicted pedaphile, a former priest, has claimed, from his prison cell, that other priests knew of his crimes 40 years ago. But nobody did anying to stop him.He has claimed that he took a small girl to his room in the priests' residence and raped her. He says they must have known?. This guy is now a 81 year old… who pleaded guilty.

    The overwhelming  emotional public reaction prevents any rational consideration, as intended. But when we pause to assess the probability… we see a few red flags.

    We know that a woman can be sharing a bed with her husband but have no idea that hubby is having an affair with his attractive secretary. It may have been going on for years but he has carefully hidden it from his family. The priest's 'family' is the house he is sharing with other priests. This guy would have even greater reason to hide his secret life from his 'family' because he risks going to prison. He would also have lost face and respect …if they had found out. So common sense should tell us he wouldn't have been open about his secret life.

     Another red flag is trying to imagine a priest moving around with a child in tow. Frankly I have never seen a priest alone with an individual child. Even when an altar boy can recall there was always two boys rostered for each mass. What parents allow a single man, unrelated to them, to care for their kid?

    I could go on… but rational assessment is unwelcome during a  politially inspired witch-hunt. The guy in prison is probably trying to curry favour with his parole board. Hoping to make himself look less horrible… by shifting blame to others.

     

     

  11. Jim Robertson says:

    I'm sorry, so now the kids (whether they were gay or not) tortured by school yard bullies for being "gay"( up unto this very minute) are the real "bullies" because of what 2 researchers wrote a week ago?????

    I don't care what bigots think about gay people or marriage. It's  none of your business. Just like your marriages are none of mine. Gays pay for the government right along with straights. We weren't allowed to marry you were. Yet we paid even more in taxes than heterosexuals did. Where's the justice in that?

    Ireland with a 62% posiive vote, for gay marriage in it's referendum last week, goes to show that decency can triumph. People are basically kind. Even after centuries of biggotry and ignorance.

    Sociopaths like P don't understand kindness. They see kindness as interferring with their power to rule.

    Pope Frank says the church needs more "outreach" to inform Ireland and the rest of the "civilized" world, How wrong gay marriage is. This is the nonsense the church focuses on, while unwanted "street" children starve and or sell themselves sexually to survive in impoverished catholic countries?

    • Jim Robertson says:

      Impoverished catholic countries just like the one we live in the good ole' USA. Catholicism is the single largest christian religion in the U.S. today.

  12. Jim Robertson says:

    Who's lying (fiction creating)? Where's your proof we/they are lying about anything? You have ZERO PROOF of any claims against your church to be fiction i.e. lies. You LIE about victim's "lying" about our abuse. You haven't one case to offer NOT ONE where the church has paid a victim anything on lies. You are one sad mess. How do you expect to launch an anti false claims rally with out even one proven liar? (Well you have one proven liar but P doesn't count.)

  13. Jim Robertson says:

     I just heard that in a poll of Irish priests; 25% voted FOR gay marriage in Ireland.  Things in Glocamorra aren't what they used to be, this fine day.

    • Publion says:

      And for today’s episode of Follow The Bouncing Ball If You Can:

      On the 29th at 1059AM in the first paragraph: somehow JR has – had you been waitttting forrr itttttt? – tried to distract the topic to gay kids “tortured by school-yard bullies” and – on top of that – has tried to somehow connect this derangement ‘logically’ to the report I had mentioned.

      And we see as well that histrionic bit of hyperbole involved in deploying the term “tortured”. Real torture is not something that can be pulled off in a schoolyard; but you can’t get a stampede going without an ‘outrage’, hyperbolic if necessary.

      Ditto in the second paragraph: the topic was not “gay marriage” and that fact had been made specifically and clearly.

      However, to the extent that the institution of marriage plays a vital role in the health and strength of a society and a culture, then the idea that “it’s none of your business” is surely inaccurate.

      And the third paragraph – as predicted – merely continues the contents of some 3×5 cards on “gay marriage”. And while it is tempting to consider the accuracy and validity of the effort to equate approving of gay marriage with the ‘basic kindness’ of “people”, yet the topic here is not gay marriage so that bit, and ditto the further bit about “bigotry and ignorance” (correction supplied), can be left where they were put.

      In the fourth paragraph – had you been waittttting forrr itttttt? – an epithet, the usual one about my being a ‘sociopath’ because I “don’t understand kindness”. “Kindness” – in the Abusenik dictionary – means that we go along with everything pushed our way or else … we get a serious Wig-thumping.

      Although I would have to say that I don’t see myself as having any “power to rule”. But the narrative requires some sort of bad-guy in the script. Very much as the Kirkwood article has described. If there weren’t such villains in the script, people might have nothing better to do than consider the facts themselves – and how can you keep a stampede going if that happens?

      And back again to the gay-marriage bit in the fifth paragraph, as predicted.

      On, then, to the 29th at 1106AM:

      Once again, mere repetition of the failed gambits of yore: the burden of “proof” (shouty scare-caps omitted), the Abuseniks would have us think, lies upon those who doubt their claims, rather than on themselves who proffered the claims and lodged the accusations and allegations.

      And – yet again – the matter rests here on Probability, not on Proof, and what Probability is there that the stories we have seen, or any stories conforming to the narrative script Kirkwood describes, are credible? Readers are welcome to consider.

      And the bit about “lies”: in yet another deployment of his signature and juvenile I’m Not/You Are defense, JR will assert not only that a) questions are “lies” but also that b) I (and anyone else who questions) “lie about victims’ ‘lying’ about our abuse” (correction supplied). But – as ever – not a single accurate quotation as to what ‘lies’ he claims to refer. But when plop must be tossed, plop must be tossed.

      What is the Probability that the Church has paid off “on lies”? Readers may judge as they will.

      And the whole bit then burnished – as so often – by an epithet (my being “one sad mess”) that yet again gives rise to thoughts about the wonders of clinical projection.

      And the whole thing concludes with a repetition of the epithet (unsupported by anything) that I am “one proven liar”. Which gives us some indication of JR’s idea of ‘proof’. And thus ditto the mind may turn to the thoughts about clinical projection.

      On then to the 29th at 1109AM:

      Readers may consider as they will the characterization of the U.S. as being one of the “impoverished catholic countries”.

      Then, apropos of nothing, the further assertion that “Catholicism is the single largest Christian religion in the U.S. today” (correction supplied). And according to the May 12, 2015 Pew Research Center’s latest Study, entitled “America’s Changing Religious Landscape”, Catholicism is only the third largest Christian denomination in the country today, with 20.8 percent (behind Evangelical Christians with 25.4 percent and Unaffiliated with 22.8 percent).

      On then to the 29th at 844PM:

      As almost always happens with Abuseniks, we get an unsupported bit of hearsay with no reference or identifying information. However things may be in Glocamorra, nothing has changed with the Abuseniks.

  14. Jim Robertson says:

    Mr. Harris the Royal commission hearings you are having in Australia are exactly what should be happening in the U.S. but never will.

    This is a religion ridden country.

    You are so very lucky down under. Your government at least  pretends to care about victims but then it's also the major co defendent with the churches (of whatever religion) beause your government paid the religions to "care" for the "wellbeing" of  thousands of "to be" abused children just like Ireland and Canada did.

    What's the average compensation to be there? Any idea?

  15. Jim Robertson says:

    Mr. Harris on a personal level . I had a tenant in Massachusetts who'd studied to become a priest. He was gay and was invited to go to a cabin with a priest who offered as an "enticement" the "lure" of catholic boy scouts being there, also, for the weekend. My tenant was horrified and of course refused to go. He said he was given this sad "opportunity" back in the 1970's; but yuck! Of course he as an adult should have called the police but did not. I tell you this to let you know that many non-perverts could easily have been witnesses to horrific groomings of and behaviors towards children.

    • Publion says:

      On the 30th at 955AM ‘Malcolm Harris’ is suddenly promoted to “Mr. Harris” (after some far less polite terms of address in prior comments on recent threads). My first thought: beware of Abuseniks suddenly bearing gifts, including the gift of polite address. (One might recall Churchill: “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet”.)

      But there is a method to the madness.

      The Abusenik gambit here is to enlist MH (or, rather, his country of Australia) as an example of what the Abuseniks think “should be happening in the U.S.”.

      Really? A commission that would conduct an assessment of the stories that the Abuseniks did so very much (under the vital guidance of their tort attorneys) to avoid and prevent? A commission that would take assessment and analysis far beyond what has been done here?

      Is that really what Abuseniks want? Of course not. The “commission” is code for some sort of kangaroo soap-opera, conducted under government auspices, that would provide yet another stage for the soaps. We may recall the Dutch Abuse brouhaha of almost half a decade ago, that wound up providing very little of a ‘Report’ and simply served as a platform for various slabs of Stampede innuendo and histrionics. Nor, come to think of it, has the Irish government had much to say officially about that orphanage burial ground or anything else connected with it.

      In the second paragraph JR will continue with an epithetical pronunciamento about this being “a religion- ridden country” (correction supplied). Readers may consider it as they will.

      The chummy embrace of the crocodile smile continues in the third paragraph as JR burbles (The Wig of Burbly Bonhomie) about how “very lucky” MH and the Aussies are.

      And why are they lucky? Because – have you been waittttting for ittttt? – at least the Aussie government “pretends to care about victims”. So back to the old ‘victim’ bit about nobody ‘caring’ – although this requires i) ignoring the almost 3 billion dollars shared by the 12,000 or so allegants in the U.S. and ii) assuming that there are scads and shoals more ‘victims’ out there … somewhere.

      But this is too much of a compliment for an inveterate plop-tosser and so, instantly, the valence of the comment changes to an indictment of the Aussie government as being “co-defendant” (correction supplied) with all of “the churches” in the matter of (we head into the realm of phantasmagoria at this point) “thousands” of “abused children”…  “just like Ireland and Canada did”.

      So then: of what use will any “commission” be anywhere, if run by a government that is to be presumed “co-defendant” with the alleged perpetrating organizations it is supposed to be investigating?

      But perhaps this is too much thinking – which is precisely not what the Abuseniks and their Stampede would prefer to engage.

      And the final paragraph of the comment asks chummily what “the average compensation” might be Down Under. Which, nicely, manipulates the reader into presuming that any cash thus forked-over is legitimately owed to the claimant/allegant/accuser.

      On then to the 30th at 1007AM:

       Continuing the polite address, “Mr. Harris” is now – with all of us – made privy to yet another revelation. Somehow – and by amazing coincidence – JR had conducted business in Massachusetts, where – by a further amazing coincidence – he had a tenant who had “studied to become a priest”.

      Don’t fiddle with the dial – there’s more.

      As this amazingly coincidental revelation effloresces, this tenant/seminarian was invited to a cabin / by a priest / there was a promise of “catholic boy scouts” / and it was a weekend. (This site, alas, does not have the technology to add a drum-roll or two, but perhaps readers might use their imagination to provide the missing elements.)

      Don’t fiddle with the dial – there’s more.

      JR’s “tenant” (from the rental business JR ran in Massachusetts) was – as if on cue – “horrified” and – but of course – “refused to go”.

      But we are then informed that this is all hearsay from a ‘story’ (had you been waittttting forrrr ittttt?) told to JR – according to this script – by the aforesaid tenant/seminarian.

      And this hearsay dates back 40 years or so.

      Nor did the aforesaid protagonist, although “an adult”, “call the police”. (And nothing further is given on that inconvenient bit.)

      But, we are informed, JR is sharing this revelation with us (had you not by now remembered that you either believe this or else you are a sociopath?) in order to make – by yet another amazingly convenient coincidence – the favorite Abusenik point that “many non-perverts could easily have been witnesses”.

      Or not. Did none of those “many non-perverts” call the police? Apparently not.

      And why might that be? Nor is this an insignificant point or question.

      So for all practical purposes, there may be people who have seen dragons somewhere out there, although it would be sociopathic or some such to observe that nobody has come forward over the decades to make report of such a sighting or encounter. But they are out there somewhere, along with the dragons.

      This begins to sound like a particularly lame episode of ‘Ancient Aliens’ or some such similar production.

      But isn’t “Mr. Harris” so very lucky to be taken into JR’s professional confidence? And aren’t we all?

  16. Jim Robertson says:

    Miss P (not to  be confused with Miss Piggy), You still are a fool.

    Jeff Anderson was petrified of our suits against the church becoming a class action suit. He told us Cal victims that again and again. My assumption as to why that was , was the church was terrified of such a suit. It would have to pay all the victims at once rather than fighting victims state by state. If the church has paid $3 billion to 12,000 victims that's $10 billion less than what they owe those 12,000 U.S. victims. The real estimate of U.S. victims is closer to 100,000 not 12. Figuring roughly $1.2 million per victim, the L.A. average cost to settle, Why would THE lawyer for catholic victims not want to make more money by having all the U.S. victims settle or go to trial at once in a class action suit?  Anderson was really a tool of the church. Placed to be such by the church through, in part, SNAP.

    The Rico Act, which could and should have been used against the church's criminal acts of transferring known abusors across state lines, was also poo pooed and ignored by Anderson.

    Victims brought up class action and Rico myriad times to him and always they were dismissed by Jeff as the wrong way to go.

    Jeff Anderson and the SNAP crew including SNAP's real "founder" Tom Doyle O.P. have all been working in Australia off and on for TEN YEARS. (And Ireland and Europe and Canada and Mexico) Yet they didn't manage to stop govt. hearings on institutional child rape there because the Australian people DEMANDED to know why and how as children and wards of the state. their fellow citizens were systematically raped in govt funded religious institutions. The Australian people were also libel for damages done. As of yet no settlements have been reached overall in Australia. There evidently $60,000 was too much compensation for victims.

    WHAT SOAPS? You've hardly heard any individual victim's experiences regarding their/our rapes. You and the church you represent dread the truth coming out en mass.

    In the U.S. the church is more powerful than the people. At least the govt. thinks so.

    The hearings in Australia are exactly like what should happen in the U.S. but won't because the U.S. doesn't give a shit about catholic victims. We've had congressional hearings on baseball dopings but child rape victims n the tens of thousands matter not at all.

    "Fiddle with the dial"????? Wow! Dial's haven't been "fiddled" with for quite awhile now. Quel up to date you aren't! 

    I lived in Mass 8 years and owned a 3 family house. I rented out the bottom 2 apts.

    What's the "amazing coincidense? That a former seminarian happened to be a tenant? Or that he'd been invited to a possible and probable kiddie fuck fest by a priest?

    The mass graves in Tuam, Ireland have yet to have a govt. hearing and report. It's in process of having one. FYI

    Do you never tire of mocking people?  You are one very ill person.

    What kind of "professional' are you? other than a professional bitch.

  17. Jim Robertson says:

    I agree with you about one thing: the adult, my then tenant, should have called the cops.

    I know i did as an adult when the issue came up. A child was being harmed I'm sure and i called the police immediately and this was in the early '90's. The man and child disappeared and I don't know why or the outcome. A neighbor had told me the child (of 7 years of age) had come on to him and I'd heard another tale of the "father" having had sex with a prostitute in his truck with the child present. I called the cops, pronto.

  18. Jim Robertson says:

    Are there any unlame episodes of Ancient Alliens? I wouldn't know I don't watch trash.

    • Publion says:

      We get little new thinking in the recent crop, but we do get more stories, as so often happens. 

      On the 31st at 1101AM:

      We get a very uncharacteristically extended comment , although with a couple of signature JR memes to make it all look more familiar.  

      The first paragraph opens, as usual, with a signature epithet, or rather a double one: the “fool” bit is reinforced – always a giveaway – with the gender-bendy bit.

      The second paragraph gives us a JR story as to what Jeff Anderson thought; just how reliable such a story is from this commenter is anybody’s guess. 

      But we are now informed that Jeff Anderson actually addressed the CA ‘victims’ and did so “again and again” because he was “petrifried” of  the 500-plaintiff LA lawsuit “becoming a class action suit”. 

      But somehow the Church was “also terrified of such a suit” (the possible class-action suit, presumably). That makes some sense simply from a legal-process point of view, but why would that “petrify” Anderson? (My thought: in JR’s form of ‘logic’, if both Anderson and the Church were averse to some X, then they both must be in cahoots since they are both averse to the same X.) 

      And JR – who has displayed so very little capacity or inclination for extended explication – suddenly launches into an extended excursus on the legal-strategy ins and outs of the thing. 

      And the math becomes phantasmagoric: whence the “$10 billion” figure? Just pulled out of thin air, and then used as a basis for further phantasmagoria about how much “those 12,000 U.S. victims” are actually ‘owed’. 

      Which is then bolstered by that “100,000” figure that – as I noted quite a while ago here – is merely an extrapolation and nothing more: if one gratuitously presumes that 9 out of 10 rapes are generally not reported, the original ‘logic’ went years ago, then the Abuseniks could apply that ‘math’ to the 10 or 12 thousand cases noted in the first Jay Report and assert that there are at least 100,000 ‘victims’. 

      So the whole bit is based on an original presumption self-servingly tossed up by assorted ‘advocates’ years ago and taken over by the Abuseniks for their own specific Stampede purposes. 

      As to the speculation as to why Anderson would oppose a class action: A class-action approach would, for one thing, deprive numerous torties of cases (and thus of income) by assigning a single figure as the benchmark award, thus neutralizing the settlement-strategy. For another thing, it could open up all allegations to examination at trial (the one big class-action trial) which would then create all the formidable credibility problems associated with putting allegations up on the stand for adversarial examination (and we have seen vividly on this site just how Abuseniks perform under even the slightest pressure of examination of their allegations). 

      In recent comments I have noted various legal-themed articles that discussed the abuses created by various ‘funds’ (such as asbestos-claim cases) whereby a major court class-action decision set up such ‘funds’ (paid for by the target corporations and their Insurers) and then it was merely a case of open-season application for monies based on claims for ‘compensation’. 

      Anderson may quite reasonably (from the point of view of legal and tortie strategy) have wanted to avoid such an entanglement, rationally thinking that there was more money to be made for torties and less risk of exposing the whole scam by simply going with lawsuits brought by individual torties or groups of torties, that would be settled in the usual lawsuit manner. 

      Thus the convenient conclusory assertion that “Anderson was really a tool of the church” and the rest of that bit fails on its own terms: Anderson would have had perfectly rational tortie reasons for not wanting to go the class-action route, and that strategic decision had nothing to do with the interests of the Church. 

      The third paragraph resurrects the old Abusenik RICO claim, although government prosecution – which would have had to have been involved in some way on some level – has never been brought duringl these past 3 decades. Quite probably because government prosecutors realized that the “criminal activity” element, which JR here so breezily tosses in, could not easily be used to characterize Church actions with any prospect of success or even legal legitimacy. 

      Thus too then the fourth paragraph is not credible since Anderson would not have been able to bring a RICO prosecution. 

      But this extended legal excursus, flawed though it may be, is far beyond the usual JR performance and one suspects various ‘muses’ as being involved here – not that it has made for any more substantive a presentation. 

      However, Anderson would have been accurate in his professional assessment of RICO’s dim prospects in the matter. Perhaps because in most cases where priests were sent out of state, they were sent out of state or “across state lines”, it was done for therapy, which is not a criminal activity. And in such cases where a priest might have been sent to minister in another state, then there were not enough of such instances to justify a (necessary) demonstration of a wide-spread and established Church policy (since, among other things, the decision to do so would have been made by an individual hierarch and not as a matter of established and directed Church policy). 

      Thus then to the fifth paragraph, where we get from the 3×5 shoebox a repetition of the SNAP-Australia bit (and “Ireland and Europe and Canada and Mexico”). Where, with supreme illogic and sly manipulation, JR will try to presume that Anderson-SNAP (as tools of the Church, of course) were unable to “stop govt. institutional hearings”, although if they had been working as JR asserts, then they would have wanted those “institutional hearings” to take place in order to get a Stampede going in those countries. 

      But not only have Stampedes in the American form not taken place in those countries, but even those named governments – after taking the first step of claiming to be concerned – have backed away. Nor have torties in those countries managed to create a Stampede bonanza for themselves in the American form. There was something in the American milieu that enabled a Stampede that cannot, apparently, be reproduced elsewhere. 

      And we also see both a) a clear ignorance of definitions and b) a clear illogicality in the claim that “the Australian people were also libel for damages done”. How would they be ‘liable’? And if those “people” had “demanded” (scare-caps omitted) to “know”, then why did the Stampede process suddenly fizzle out? I would say: the ‘demands’ came only from elite-type media, and the “people” actually saw through it as a scam and refused to be stampeded.

      Thus too, if there have been any lawsuits (I am not familiar with the Australian situation) the Aussies have rather sensibly put a 60-thousand dollar cap on any settlements based on Abusenik allegations. 

      “What soaps?” JR histrionically asks (scare-caps omitted) in the sixth paragraph. He then tries to bolster that question by claiming that we have “hardly heard any individual victim’s experiences”. Well, on the basis of the stories we have heard here (from JR among others) and from the Billy-Doe material in Philadelphia and the cases in the Twin Cities area and the document release caches from various cities and media outlets, we have some very extended discussion of the proffering and … it is what it is. 

      And we have also had assorted articles about established tortie strategy in other types of lawsuit cases and we have seen official manuals about how police and prosecutors are to handle sex-allegation cases as well as many reports and discussions of sex-allegation stories and claims and cases in other venues such as the military and universities. 

      So “soap operas” is a legitimately grounded characterization and it stays, as far as I am concerned.
       
      And I would say that it is the torties and Abuseniks who “dread the truth coming out” about these allegations and that’s why the Playbook strategies are constantly being deployed to distract and manipulate and squelch our considerations and assessments and questions.

      And the seventh paragraph apparently seeks now to lay the Abuseniks’ blame for the failure of their high expectations of the Stampede onto the Church because  – have you been waitttttting forrrr ittttttt? –it is “more powerful than the people” in – slyly – the estimation of “the govt.”. Just how “the govt.” is responsible for baffling the glorious onward process of the Stampede is not explained. 

      Except for the fresh assertion – in the eighth paragraph – that the US government “doesn’t give a sxxt about catholic victims”. Phooey. The Catholic ‘victims’ have done rather nicely, compared to the public-schools, whose funds and teachers are amply protected by “govt.” law from such a Stampede. 

      Nor perhaps does the government in its actual assessment imagine that there actually are “child rape victims in the tens of thousands” – but it makes for a nice Abusenik rhetorical and histrionic flourish. 

      Then in the ninth paragraph a silly bit about there not being “dials” on TVs any longer. So true. But the image was meant to convey the idea of people watching soaps on TV and fiddling with the dial when the show became silly, and the image works and it stays. 

      And – while we’re on the subject – how “up to date” is JR, who – if he is to be believed – can’t even figure out how to work his computer’s word-processing spell-check? 

      And in the tenth paragraph we are now informed that JR actually “lived in Mass. 8 years and owned a 3-family house there”. Of course. 

      And (the eleventh paragraph) this is supposed to neutralize the heavy miasma of “amazing coincidence” (correction supplied) that hangs over this fresh story/revelation. The bit then bolstered by a bit more (manipulative) scatology about the “fxxxfest by a priest” (although, weirdly, it is characterized as being merely “probable”). 

      Readers may consider it all as they will.

      Then in the twelfth paragraph we are taken back several years to the Tuam graves story from which, it has to be noted, there has yet to be a “govt. hearing and report” … but that’s just because “it’s in process of having one” – which seems quite a long while for a hot-button issue’s report (interim, if not final) to be issued, and no media reports about the ongoing “process”. Which brings us back to what well may be another ‘Dutch Abuse Report’ scam. So much then for yet another JR “FYI”. 

      Then in the thirteenth paragraph we are back to epithet. I am only “mocking” people. Actually, I am dealing with highly mockable profferings and simply working with what is provided. 

      And that is followed by the Wig of Diagnosis declaring and declaiming epithetically that I am “one very ill person”. And thus the wonders of clinical projection demonstrate their accuracy once again. 

      And then in the fourteenth paragraph – apropos of nothing I have ever claimed – “what kind of ‘professional’ are you?”. Another example of the Playbook creating convenient material when it has nothing else. 

      And this paragraph too concludes – but of course – with more epithetical scatology, possessed of its repellent but sly charm as always. 

      Also giving rise to the thought that in his own estimation, the quality of JR’s material as proffered here provides no grounds whatsoever for doubt or question; and that therefore doubt and question can only be ascribed to the (fill in the blank) of the questioners and doubters. (There was a show on PBS recently about the making of the Brit detective series ‘Foyle’s War’ in which the eponymous detective, with superb British charm and understatement, says to a suspect: ‘You understand, I hope, why I perhaps wouldn’t believe that …?’.)

      On then to the 31st a few minutes later at 1111AM:

      JR agrees that his tenant (from the Massachusetts story) “should have called the cops”. Perhaps he didn’t because the alleged invitation wasn’t really actionable for investigation, presuming the veracity of the story here in the first place.

      And in the second paragraph – after all this time – yet another ‘revelation story’: once in the early 1990s JR called the police for some child. But – can you believe it – the man and the child “disappeared” and thus the story teeters on the edge of (convenient) phantasm. Nor, though this was a matter of JR’s signature life-concern, did he ever try to follow up with the police whom he had called as to the outcome of this “child being harmed” report. So much for the macho and convenient “pronto”. 

      As to the 31st at 1115AM: I have actually found some interesting bits in the early seasons of ‘Ancient Aliens’, with scientific analysis and assessment of ancient structures such as pyramids around the globe and comparisons of various un-related peoples’ mythologies. But in the more recent seasons we increasingly get such stuff as alien-abduction stories which are far less informative and far more questionable … sort of like other kinds of ‘stories’ that various types of dubiously-motivated folks try to put over on us. 

  19. malcolm harris says:

    On May 30th JR informs me that we are very lucky in Australia. Because he thinks the ongoing Royal Commisson actually proves that the government cares for it's people. Nope… he has got that very wrong.

    However… what it does prove is that some politicians put ideology, and ambition, before principle. Although I should use the term 'culture wars' instead of  the word ideology. People in other countries may perhaps hear echos of things already familiar to them. So I hope the moderator allows this comment.

    It starts with a government elected with a very thin majority, and needing the support of a minority party… in order to claim government. This was about 4 years ago and the minority party was the Greens, who only get about 10% of the popular vote. But deals were done because they had the government in the palm of their hands, Ongoing Greens support being vital for the Prime Minister.

     Before long we were surprised when the Prime MInister announced she was calling a Royal Commission into child abuse in Churches and other Institutions. The biggest surprise came from our six States, because administration of justice, law and order, was their responsibility They had not asked for a Royal Commission.  

    It took only a short time to figure who was behing it…the Greens. That's what I meant when I said it was all 'politically inspired'..  The Greens had for years been at odds with the Churches…because the Churches would not conform to the new social engineering being pushed by the 'progressive people'. So this was basically payback against those die-hards who were making a last- ditch stand.

    In the past the Greens were largely known to be more concerned about the whales and the polar bears than about actual human beings.So this sudden concern for children was really new and novel for them. In reality we have many other problems in our society that they could have addressed….but didn't. For example not a day goes by without some teenager committing suicide… somewhere… in this small country of 23 million. Surveys reveal that for every suicide there are another 20 kids who have seriously contemplated killing themselves. But no demand for any Royal Commission about that?. So a worrying social problem, happening today, doesn't appear on the Green's radar.

    But alleged sexual abuse, from decades ago, must be centre stage, for the Greens. Because in their minds they have identified an obstacle to their 'progressive' agenda and the obstacle must be taken care of.

    The obstacle that's bugging them is Christianity …. and this is what the 'culture wars' is all about. 

     

     

     

    • Jim Robertson says:

      Mr. Harris/Malcolm,

      Teenagers usually commit suicide around the issue of their homosexuality.

      A form of self loathing caused by who? The christian religion of love perhaps?

      The "culture wars" have been lost by your side. It seems you weren't loving enough towards the  majority of people as well as to gay people. That's why the majority 62% of the Irish voted for gay marriage. The rest of us got sick of your anger and general meaness. Your old control of defining what's to be considered decent or loving is over. The peope have out loved you and your decadent religion. Christianity is exactly what these hearings are all about. They are behaving as your Jesus would; not as your church did.

      The religion of love wasn't loving of it's own children let alone it's gays and divorced catholics.

    • Jim Robertson says:

      Malcolm, your church's "social engineering" has failed. Otherwise it would still be "working". It isn't. Nobody wants your nonsense. Your machine done broke down.

  20. Jim Robertson says:

    Hey S for Brains, If I had other "muses" helping me write what i write here. I'd have them all go with me to the L.A. Times and do a "sit/teach in" on the reality of SNAP's being the church. I'm flying solo.

  21. Jim Robertson says:

    I did follow up with the police. They couldn't find the guy. I gave them his license plate #.

    The only dubiously-motivated folk here trying to "put" one "over" on you is the Wholly Roman catholic church, you know, the people you work for in your great scam of things?

  22. Jim Robertson says:

    Children in danger of sexual abuse always requires "action" by police, numbnuts.

  23. Jim Robertson says:

    You question everything I say. Even that I lived in Massachusetts? I can spell Massachusetts that should tell you something. Dork!

  24. Jim Robertson says:

    I lived at and owned 38 Woodford street Worcester.

    Why would I lie about anything here? I've received my personal compensation from the church. Why would I lie here about anything?

    I could have walked away from all of this years go; but I haven't. Why? Because I want to bust SNAP; VOTF and Tom Doyle and the plan to manipulate victims  and our families by those church created "projects" "committees".

    • Publion says:

      Marvelously, we are given a demonstration of how hidden-things will out themselves: precisely in tossing up a smatter of comments claiming not-X, JR demonstrates X clearly.

      On the 4th at 1055AM he insists that he is “flying solo”, without, therefore, the help of any others. And yet instead of the (un-)characteristic extended excurses, we get merely a success of short bits, peppered with the (characteristic) juvenilia.

       As I have often said here, so broad and qualitatively variant a range of styles, tones, dictions, and usages raises clear flags as to authenticity of source – from juvenile and scatological and poorly-reasoned one-liners to extended excurses with antique rhetorical usages and terms of polite address. That’s what forensic document analysis would strongly indicate – or, to use his own (inaccurate) term for it, ‘counterintelligence’.

      And this short 1055AM comment also opens in best juvenile form with an epithet. Which, as I have said many times, gives us the ‘genuine’ JR.

      He drags in the LA Times, as well, in a nonsensical toss that apparently tries to distract from his problems here by dragging in a 3×5 Playbook bit designed to elicit the old ‘outrage’. Although we have the document caches from that media source and they have proven to be notably less than sufficient to their purpose. He might also have suggested going on to his radio show with all of this, but that adventure has also gone-away, has it not?

      A few minutes later, at 1101AM, we get another quickie: apparently, although they had even been given the license plate number, the police couldn’t find the ‘perp’.  And this was sometime in the 1990s, when the police had radios and computers that could access DMV records. You might understand, I hope, why I perhaps wouldn’t believe that.

      The second paragraph attempts merely to wave-away the dubious bits with an unsupported, I’m Not/You Are type of assertion from the shoebox that the “Wholly” (a giggly play on words; had you been waitttttttttting for itttttttt?) “Roman catholic church” is/are “the only dubiously-motivated folk here”. You might understand, I hope, why I perhaps wouldn’t believe that.

      Then, a few minutes later at 1106AM, we are portentously informed – apropos of nothing – that “children in danger of sexual abuse always requires ‘action’ by police”. But if JR’s story as given to us above is accurate, then the police didn’t follow up on the plate number. And what did the Wig of Heroic and Righteous Advocacy do about that?

      And rather than the child being sexually-abused  or “harmed”  (about which he was “sure”), we are now told that the child was “in danger of” being sexually-abused … not quite the same thing at all. Which perhaps lets the LAPD off the hook in this story here, since after listening to JR they may have judged the source and drawn their conclusions.

      And this one-liner also ends in a juvenile epithet, as so often when the substance of the material proffered is itself dubious.

      Then a few minutes later at 1113AM we get the plaint that I “question everything” he says. JR, might, I hope, understand after all this time why I perhaps wouldn’t believe too much of his material.

      Especially after the corroborative evidence or ‘proof’ he proffers now for his Massachusetts claim is that – have you been waittttttttting for ittttttttttttttttttt? – he can actually spell ‘Massachusetts’ correctly. This assertion simply works to highlight the question as to why he doesn’t accept the indicators from his word-processor program’s spell-check system more regularly. A question that remains unanswered to this very day.

      And this comment also ends in a juvenile epithet, reinforced by the exclamation point.

      Then at 1130AM – apparently after a few extra minutes of figuring – we are given a street address in some Massachusetts locale (do they not capitalize ‘Street’ in that state?). A reader so inclined may want to try a search of the cognizant Registry of Deeds (he “owned” the property), assuming it is accessible online and accurate.

      But now but now but now. We are once again confronted by the Wig of Bemused Innocence: why, JR asks, would he “lie about anything here?”. He has, after all, cashed his check (which, to his mind – revealingly, is the only relevant element for answering the question).

      He continues: why didn’t he just ‘walk away’ “from all of this years ago”?

      Is he seriously asking us for possible answers to these meaty and gravid questions?

      He is not. He is simply using them rhetorically as platforms for the Wig of Righteous Declamation to – once again – Declaim his preferred ‘self-narrative’: he has, like any hero, stayed in the field to go after all those (SNAP, Anderson, the torties, the judges, the DA’s, the media, those who question or doubt him, those who don’t question or doubt those whom he is against, and – have you been waittttttttting forrrrrrrrr itttttttttttttttttt? – the Church) on behalf of what he is pretty doggone sure are the myriads and scads and shoals of un-reported ‘victims’ still out there and even the 10-12,000 whose tee-shirts read ‘I got raped by a priest and all I got for it was this measly million or so bucks’.

      Be that as it may.

      He has grammatically posed some questions, regardless of his rhetorical intention for doing so, and I will take him up on his invitation with a few general thoughts.

      There are many types of ‘profit’ in that flow from lawsuits: aside from the bluntly obvious fiscal profit, there is psychological, emotional, or social profit. Thus, Vengeance/Revenge is a profit; as is Shifting of Blame (i.e. all my problems are because of this tort that totally wrecked my life, my mind, my character, and so on); as is Compensatory Spinning of Image (i.e. I am not a nasty screw-up; I am a victim and a heroic survivor and – perhaps – a continuing heroic struggler in the struggle on behalf of all such types); as is the social status of Heroic Struggler (with its nicely old-Soviet ring) or perhaps Stakhanovite Struggler for the Revolution (ditto).

      So while money – as so often in this sort of thing – plays a key role in lawsuits, it is not by any stretch the only type of ‘profit’ at stake.

      Those are just a few general thoughts prompted by the questions JR has so acutely posed.

  25. Jim Robertson says:

    You thrill at questioning my masculinity. You are ill. Your childish bug-a-boos are really sad. I'm twice the man you'll ever be (and probably 3 times the woman you've ever had.) :^)

    • Publion says:

      Not all of the JR comments of the 4th were up when I made my most recent comment.

      On the 4th at 1135AM we get a nice revelatory bit: it is I who do ‘question’ JR’s “masculinity”. And not only that, but – he is sure – I “thrill” to it.

      In the first place, by noting the “gender-bendy” quality of one of his signature epithetical gambits, I do not ‘question his masculinity’; I simply – and not to put too fine a point on it – note the “gender-bendy” quality of one of his signature epithetical gambits.

      And if it’s any consolation, I state here and now and unequivocally that as far as I can tell JR is indeed a male. And further, that since he has also made specific reference to his sexual-orientation, then I also accept that assertion of his as credible and factual.

      As to the “thrill” bit, it is anybody’s guess where that bit comes from. I would venture that it is – as so often – an unwitting self-revelation brought to us through the wonders of clinical projection: plop tossers thrill when they toss their plop. It’s what they do and what makes them tick.

      But that bit does serve – as so often – to provide a platform (however inaccurately based) for more pronunciamentos from the Wig of Diagnosis (serving as a mask for nothing but Epithet).

      As for the content of the epithets themselves, readers may consider and judge as they will.

      Then on to the 4th at 1151AM:

      “Mr. Harris/Malcolm” is taken aside by the Wig of Teaching for a quickie instructional: “teenagers usually commit suicide” – which assertion in and of itself approaches the ridiculous.

      Nor is there any support or corroboration for the further bit that when or if teenagers commit suicide they do it “usually around the issue of their homosexuality”. This is another instance of manipulation: ‘advocacy’ has to create a crisis with its necessary Evil cause in order to whomp-up emotions and sidetrack careful thinking and consideration and assessment.

      But the bit also serves to start the train down a certain ‘logical’ track: since i) the “issue of their homosexuality” is “a form of self loathing” and since ii) the “christian religion of love” does not ‘accept’ homosexuality as an ideal form of sexual orientation, then iii) – slyly, “perhaps” – that “christian religion of love” is responsible.

      And thus – as Inspector Clouseau would declare – “the case is sol-ved!” (and the preferred plop is tossed).

      Thus the Cartoon.

      To which I would respond: the Christian religion of love teaches that love is a powerful and complex motivator, and not lightly to be considered, since that “love” can easily be mistaken-for or reduced-to other energies and phenomena that are mere shadowy facsimiles of genuine Christian love.

       As we know, the Greek language does a far better job than English with ‘love’: it distinguishes between various types of attraction, including ‘eros’ (understood as sexual attraction and energy),‘philia’ (understood as the non-sexual love of friendship) and ‘agape’ (understood as the attraction based or mutual caring respect for other human beings as being made in the Image of God).

      The Christian definition of ‘love’ is this third type, ‘agape’. Thus to try to address the issue in English requires a careful distinguishing between different types of ‘love’ which the English term does not adequately convey.

      And if we follow the point further: the Christian view (still retained by the Catholic Church) is that respect for a person’s being made in the Image of God would require a ‘love’ that does not ‘enable’ actions which would (self-destructively) mar that Image. This is hugely different from the contemporary ‘demographic’ and/or ‘consumer’ approach, which holds in effect that if enough ‘voters’ or ‘consumers’ want to do some X, then that X has to be somehow accepted or be made-acceptable as a good thing.

      One might then take issue with the Christian/Catholic position by insisting that the ‘Image of God’ needs to be re-defined or re-worked somehow, but that’s a different point, and a highly complex and fraught point, and one not easily substantiated without weakening the entire vision and concept of the Image of God.

      And in any case, it’s not a matter easily or actually resolved by Cartoons.

      And we see as well here the sly use of insinuation: JR’s comment only insinuates that “the Christian religion of love” is the cause of all these imagined gay, teenage suicides. (Correction supplied since I’m tired of overriding my spell-check function by continuing to use JR’s small-C for “Christian”.) Why such caution? I would say because insinuation saves a lot of work: if JR had to actually back up his assertion it would take a hefty chunk of intellectual and rational work and that’s not how he rolls.

      Then in the third paragraph an excursus on the “culture wars” being lost. To which I would say this: if the ship is sinking, and through various demographic/consumerist-based dynamics the necessary actions to maintain or restore the watertight integrity of the ship are rejected, then who – really – has “won”?

      Nor does the proposed ‘loss’ of those “culture wars” indicate anything about an insufficiency of “loving”, since we have already seen how inadequate the English language is in dealing with the phenomenon of ‘love’. Giving a child (or anybody else) a glass of battery-acid because the s/he is absolutely desirous of it and convinced that the stuff will be a thrill for him/her … is hardly a demonstration of ‘love’.

      And after various other bits, the paragraph ends with the Wig of Christian Pronouncement about what “Jesus” would do (about which, in the absence of any specific Scriptural evidence as to what He thought one way or the other, there is no certainty whatsoever).

      And the one-liner fourth paragraph merely attempts to draw a conclusion based on the seriously flawed bits in the prior paragraphs.

      On, then, to the 4th at 1201PM:

      JR will attempt a variant of the I’m Not/You Are bit: it’s the Church (and not the contemporary political ascendancy) that has tried “social engineering” and on top of that (we are informed by the appropriate Wig) that that “’social engineering’ has failed”. To borrow an acute insight from the late Chou En Lai: surely it is too soon to tell. And if the watertight integrity of the ship is successfully thwarted, then who has ‘won’? And who will have ‘won’?

      As for the bit about the Church’s claimed “social engineering” having “failed” because otherwise “it would still be ‘working’”: this is basically saying that since Y isn’t working then it has failed – which itself fails as a demonstration of logic.

      It might have failed because it works and worked in ways inconvenient to the demographic/consumerist approach to politics now regnant in the West. But that merely indicates the possibility (probability, some might say) that the contemporary demographic/consumerist politics have entered into an even more lethal cultural phase: having over the course of decades weakened the actual culture, then the various “social engineering” initiatives sought by contemporary politics can now seem ‘normal’ to persons who no longer have the resources or knowledge to know any better.

      But the water continues to pour in, I would say, and that actuality will ultimately render a decision that will make losers of everyone.

      Thus, then, the snarky bit about “nobody wants your nonsense” remains up in the air where it was tossed; although at some point, as I said, it’s going to come back to us and it won’t be pretty.

      As to what has “done broke down”, I would say that it’s Western Culture that has broken down, and actually it was broken-down over the course of decades by demographic/consumerist-driven politics (cloaking the engorgement of an impositional State regime claiming only to succor ‘victims’) that have wound up setting fire to the ship to get rid of the (imagined) rats – and that bit of highly inadvisable problem-solving is now well-advanced.

  26. Jim Robertson says:

    I did the radio show in the 1980's. That's 35 years ago.

    The LA Times is owned by the Tribune Company. The Chicago Tribune Co. I don't know how much of the Tribune co. is owned by the catholic church of Chicago but since the largest down town real estate owner in Chicago  is the catholic church; why should I be surprised that the church might have a hand in what the Tribune co. chooses to publish or not in L.A..

    Governments; media and churches have all supported each other (and only each other) always. They each help "control" the populace for the benefit of a minority percentage of the population.

    When the catholic church's policies of sex abuse coverup and enablement finally made the media news; your automatic inclusion in that mutualy supportive group ended in part. That's why you are whinning so. You are used to having the whole enchilada. No more and never again, will you have that absolute power. Ireland's landslide in favor of gay marriage proved your salad days are done.

    Now you lie about how many of me there are posting here. Like I can't be erudite on one post and not so on another?  I told you I am legion :^) With in me: all.

     

  27. Jim Robertson says:

    I am "after" the "committees",SNAP VOTF etc. formed by fr. Tom Doyle O.P., who pose and speak as representing victims' interests when they are in fact created and working only for the best interests of the rapists and their enablers, the entire catholic church.

    They are in fact working against the best interests of victims.

  28. Jim Robertson says:

    My cheque was my only compensation for beng raped as a child by your church. Money is the only compensation you can give your victims that we may in part have some restoration of our lives.

    Can you give us back who we were, before being harmed by your perpetrators and their system? No you can not.

    (Lourdes won't fix that either, right along with every other miracle that didn't happen there.)

  29. Jim Robertson says:

    Thank you for not believing anything I say. Yout blanket dismissal of the truth I write only shows you up as being the real unbeliever.

    As I've said before, I'd gladly stand before your god with the truth of what I've written here.

    Remember I sign my name with every post. I am libel for what I say.(I do not hide who I am klike you must) SNAP can sue me any time it wants. SNAP's problem is: It has to prove I'm lying (not just say I am; like you do). That SNAP can not do; because every word I've written about it is true.

  30. Jim Robertson says:

    I was talking to my straight Jewish roommate about the corner the catholic church has painted itself into.  He agreed that you and your church can't get out of your own self made limitations. You've used male supremacy; misogyny and homophobia for so long ,a thousand plus years, you can't change now with out losing face and things that don't bend, break. Your rigidity is breaking you.

  31. Jim Robertson says:

    "Nasty screw-up"?  Isn't that the pot calling the kettle: beige?

  32. Jim Robertson says:
  33. Jim Robertson says:
    • Publion says:

      We are down to the bottom of the shoebox and thus there is much repetition of material about which questions and relevant points have already been raised, and with no substantive response from JR.

      As to the 5th at 955AM:

      The second paragraph now insinuates that – follow the bouncing ball here, if you can – since the LA Times paper is owned by the Tribune Company (based in Chicago) and since the Tribune Company may be in part owned by the Church which – have you been waitttttttting for ittttttttttt? – is “the largest down town real estate owner in Chicago” then … what?

      Why, if all that is so, then the LA Times – whose document cache releases were trumpeted by the Abuseniks here – might well have chosen not to publish a lot of stuff.

      What stuff? The most clearly relevant and conclusive stuff? Are we to imagine that the LA Times only put up some of the less or even least relevant and conclusive evidentiary material? Because the LA Times too is – have you been waitttttttttting for ittttttttttttttt? – a tool of the Church (add that to the ever-expanding list, if you’ve been keeping a list).

      The LA Times, we recall, put up the material from JR’s case. Was there yet more conclusive and definitive evidentiary material in that case that the LA Times did not include in its cache-release? If so, JR has never said so before this.

      And as I mentioned on a prior thread, the only reference I could find on the Web that had to do with the Church owning property in downtown Chicago was that in 1909 “The Economist” journal (not to be confused with the present UK magazine) reported that the Church had purchased a half-block for a parish and school. Nor did JR respond by proffering anything more effective to back up his assertion. Has he got something to proffer now in this regard?

      Or perhaps all of this is just another Playbook dodge, using insinuation to substitute for any substantial and demonstrable and accurate information? Who could be surprised if this is so?

      Then the third paragraph sails further into the realms of abstraction by opining that “governments; media and churches have all supported each other (and only each other) always” for the purpose of “control” of “the populace”. Readers may consider the accuracy and efficacy of this historical assertion here as they will. But I would say, and have often explained, that it is far more probable that the Playbook seeks to manipulate and stampede “the populace” in order to “control” events toward its own agenda.

      Then the fourth paragraph tries to distract matters by inventing some “whining” about the fact that the media – contrary to JR’s own theorized bit in the immediately prior paragraph – no longer support the Church. But while we have assessed a number of media articles, pro and con, JR is going to have to produce an accurate quote to justify his characterization of “whining”. I wouldn’t advise postponing your next meal until you see such quotation(s) produced here.

      And the fifth paragraph goes back to the accusation – as ever, unsupported – that I do “lie” as to the number of persons’ from whom material is coming to us under JR’s screen-name. The differences and the range of variation along several axes have been made clear. JR will, I hope, understand why I perhaps would not believe his claim to be the sole source of the material he puts up.

      And since he raised the specific point (and to repeat a point I have made before): why, if one had the capacity to be “erudite” (which itself is a rather too generous self-characterization, I would say) then why would one then leave those (asserted) pristine heights to engage in the juvenile, scatological, irrelevant, distracting, and largely content-less swamp so characteristic of so much of his proffering?

      A far more probable explanation is that there are different sources and authors, some of whom are at least capable of extended excurses (which is not to say that those excurses are particularly “erudite” or accurately informed or logical or coherent or even relevant).

      And this bit is then buttressed with the queasy self-application of the demonic: JR – doncha see? – is “legion”. There are other, more clinical, terms, if his claim is true.

      A point that is only rendered more vividly by the stupefying conclusory assertion: “Within me: all” (correction supplied).

      So readers can go either way with things in this regard: JR is either multi-sourcing or else … there is the demonic and rather grandiose self-characterization that leads down another path.

      As to the 5th at 1001AM:

      Merely a repetition of the old bit – the problems with which have been pointed out on numerous occasions and with no relevant response from JR – that SNAP all the rest are all tools of the Church (the entirety of which is comprised, we are to believe, of “rapists and their enablers”).

      And as has often been pointed out: there is no doubt from any material or comments I have seen on this site that SNAP and the rest are not primarily designed to pursue “the best interests of victims”.

      The problem is that JR has proffered no coherent and credible theory that explains how SNAP and the rest are tools of the Church (to which list must be added, as I said above, the LA Times and the Tribune Corporation, in addition to the judges, DA’s, police, and such).

      As to the 5th at 1008AM:

      In the first paragraph, merely a repetition of the bits about “compensation” and (statutory) “rape”, such as they are.

      But then a curiously revelatory bit: “money is the only compensation you can give victims”. This from someone who used to go on about how the Church had not set up therapy-facilities for ‘victims’ (the question of genuine-or-otherwise conveniently ignored) although it had set up such facilities for priests.

      And – since he has raised the point specifically – I repeat that the “money” won’t do any real or lasting good if the problems with various persons’ lives were not caused by the alleged abuse but rather by other, prior causes and issues.

      And thus by the same token, the term “restoration” is inapt here, since there is utterly no credible demonstration that a) the lives prior to the alleged abuse were high-functioning to begin with nor that b) there is any conceivable psychological mechanism or congeries of mechanisms by which the alleged actions operated as a ‘magic bullet’ to create such comprehensive, profound, and semi-permanent or permanent damage as has been claimed in so many of the cases we have seen here.

      But – by the most amazing coincidence, and as we have discussed on prior threads – there is a classic Victimist ‘narrative’ that dovetails nicely with the established tortie narrative for any lawsuit: high-functioning innocent suddenly and profoundly and comprehensively and semi-permanently or permanently damaged if not also even wrecked by the alleged tort. That’s how the lawsuit game is played.

      Thus then the second paragraph tries manipulatively to move us beyond those abyssal problems by going for a rhetorical Victimist plaint about getting back lives … that have not been credibly demonstrated to have been damaged by the alleged tort in the first place.

      And the third paragraph continues the riff by taking an epithetical swipe at Lourdes, including an assertion that no miracles have ever happened there before. This point was raised quite a while ago here and I provided substantial reference to the painstaking scientific examination procedures – utilizing the best technology available – to establish the validity of cures that have no explanation known to medical science.

      As to the 5th at 1019AM:

      JR seems surprised that I don’t credit prima facie much or anything of what he proffers. I have explained the difficulties I have found in his material and assertions and logic and historical or theological or psychological or literary or philosophical or scientific or legal references and claims. Nor have we ever seen any substantive rebuttal or refutation of any of my material; instead we merely get distractions of various kinds or ‘come-backs’ that merely reduce to juvenile epithets.

      And the second sentence of the paragraph slyly tries to manipulate us into accepting precisely what has yet to be demonstrated: that he doth “write” “the truth”. Although we have also discussed at length the profound difference between “personal truth” and “objective truth”, which he – in best Victimist form – seeks to conflate as if there is no difference between them.

      Buttressed as well by the effort to conflate the issues of ‘truth’ in the Monoplanar sense of establishing the accuracy of assertions made about historical facts and ‘truth’ in the Metaplanar sense of faith, where there is indeed a matter of belief. The Abusenik gambit here – as I have said a number of times before – is to try to work an equivalence: we ‘believe’ things about God but we don’t ‘believe’ things Abuseniks claim, so we must merely be selectively (and sociopathically) choosing for no good reason not to ‘believe’ Abusenik claims. Neat. But it doesn’t work.

      In the second paragraph we simply get an assertion about the afterlife (which JR himself professes not to believe-in) and readers can take the assertion for whatever they might think it is worth. But as evidentiary proffer about the alleged historical events they claim happened, it fails utterly.

      Then – have you been waittttttttting forrrrrrrrr ittttttttttttttt? – we are taken back to the bits about my not using my real name while JR uses his real name. Readers – yet again – may consider the value of his using his own name for any usefulness or increased quality it has provided (or not) to his material. And as I have said, the purpose here is to examine material, not create a social-networking site. But of course, the Playbook requires avoidance of actual issues and is perfectly content with any distractions that can be pushed the readers’ way.

      And we see again the misuse of “libel” for – presumably – ‘liable’. Well, then, since JR is liable for what he says, and I have raised issues with what he says, what’s the beef? That’s how the exchange of ideas works.

      And by the most amazing coincidence JR seems unaware of the fact that since SNAP is a ‘public figure’ or organization and thus a legitimate object of media and internet discussion, then it enjoys a reduced protection from libel or slander and its attorneys would very likely not advise bringing a lawsuit over internet commentary. Or perhaps JR knows this and thus his whole bit here amounts to nothing but a deceptive bleat.

      And if my theory of SNAP as being a tool of the torties is correct, then surely any lawsuit SNAP might bring in this regard would risk exposing its entire operation. That’s quite a risk for very little possible gain.

      And JR has yet to demonstrate with an accurate quote any “lying” I have done so that bit remains merely another epithet to add to the collection.

      As to the 5th at 1032AM:

      We are now informed that JR – who had previously discussed a daughter and a family of some sort – now informs us that he has had a conversation with his “straight Jewish roommate”. By the most amazing coincidence.

      But this rickety script construction is then deployed only to go on yet again about various aspects of what JR sees as problematic with the Church. It is what it is and readers can do with it what they will.

      But from the looks of it, I doubt a fly on the wall of that conversation would have flown away any more enlightened then when it landed.

      As to the 5th at 1037AM:

      “Nasty screw-up” was used as a general example. JR has applied it to himself. That was his choice to make and he made it.

      And on the 5th at 503PM and 506PM we merely get two links the significance of which JR doesn’t consider important enough to explain or discuss. So I’ll go with him on this and not spend any time on them either.

  34. Jim Robertson says:

    You are a base idiot and even the most illiterate of readers must see that in what you write.

    I know i do and i can't spell :^)

    What material of yours is to be examined? your ruminations on people who's reportage on their abuse you've never heard/read/know about?

    Are the numerous scientific studies on the consequences for the victims, due to child abuse, unfamiliar to you? Real victims don't invent a catestrophic past for themselves/ourselves WE HAVE CATESTROPHIC LIVES to show the truth of our abuse. ALL OF US. We didn't create our lives from nothing. We, just like you, are the summation of all our live experiences.

    You are neither truthful or profound and that's why you are wrong.; and that's all you will ever be: wrong. That must feel terrible.

  35. Jim Robertson says:

    Denial aint "Material" you offer none. You pose thesuses you can not prove at all. Shall I list them?

    1, a stampede when there is none.

    2,An unfair press around catholic clerical sex abuse of children. When there is none. What's unfair? When it was your popes who had to apologize because of public opinion, catholic public opinion. It forced those apologies not the press.

    3, That an uncountable amount (by you) of victims are lying. With out proof of even one lying. You fail on every level for presenting scientific proof of what you claim.

    You're a 3 time loser.

    What's rickety about having a room mate? What's script "ish" about that?

    L.A. police, D.A.'s and judges. I've not complained about. (Philly is a whole other matter I know little about). But I do know the mob/mafia when I smell em. Philly is quite a connected town.

     

  36. Jim Robertson says:

    And we know the church of Rome and the mafia have been close. Follow the money laundering in the Vatican bank.

    • Publion says:

      Nothing new again.

      On the 7th at 906PM:

      We get in the first paragraph both a) merely an epithet and b) a manipulative attempt to proclaim what “even the most illiterate of readers must see”.

      In the second paragraph, we are then treated to the attempt to bolster the weakness of the first paragraph by the assurance that JR himself sees it.

      And in an effort to bolster that bit, JR even admits that he “can’t spell” (which then, however,  does nothing to explain i) why he can’t/won’t use the spell-checking prompts that are provided by his word-processing program nor ii) how he was – if his story is to be believed – rapidly promoted in his two-year draft hitch in the task of overseeing personnel documents, nor iii) how his ‘abuse’ destroyed his spelling capability in the first place).

      In the third paragraph – yet again – we get a variant of his bit: JR doesn’t need to respond to my “material” because – have you been waitttting forrrrr itttttttttttt? – my “material” c) consists merely of “ruminations on people” and –yet again – d) the recently introduced bit that those “ruminations” concern their “reportage of abuse” about which I/we “have never heard/read/know about”.

      To attempt to characterize my material as “ruminations” merely indicates that JR is not at all clear on the meaning of the word or else is deceptively and purposely trying to spin-away the substance of the points at issue. But it is necessary for him to try this gambit in order to bolster his effort to avoid dealing with the issues I have raised: he doesn’t have to deal with “ruminations” – doncha see? It would be a waste of his valuable time and talents, doncha see?

      And I have pointed out on this thread just how much we have “heard” and “read” about this and that Abusenik claim of ‘abuse’, from Abuseniks commenting on this site and from other cases covered in the media and from various considerations about general tortie strategy and how those strategies are deployed in other types of lawsuit cases.

      Then in the fourth paragraph – yet again – we are proffered merely a general toss-out as to the “numerous scientific studies on the consequences for the victims, due to child abuse”.

      As I have said before when this bit was tossed:

      First, we don’t get any particularly referenced study.

      Second, the “child abuse” studies cover a wide range of various types of “abuse” – including emotional and physical abuse and also neglect – and are not at all necessarily applicable to sexual-abuse.

      Third, the studies do not (and cannot) distinguish between a person whose issues pre-existed the sexual abuse and a person whose issues are the direct result of the sexual-abuse. Many such ‘studies’ solve this problem for themselves by merely presuming the veracity not only of the claimed sexual-abuse but also of the claimed degree of health and functioning before the onset of the alleged sexual-abuse, both of which presumptions utterly undermine their competence and the reliability of their results and conclusions.

      Fourth, the studies do not (and cannot) distinguish between persons genuinely claiming sexual-abuse and those whose claims are otherwise. And while physical abuse leaves undeniable sequelae (broken limbs, scars and bruises), emotional abuse presents a more difficult challenge in determining a causality-chain and sexual-abuse – especially in a claim put forward years or decades later – presents an even more difficult challenge than emotional abuse.

      If JR (and/or his muse(s)) care to proffer a link to a particular study, I would be glad to take a look at it.

      But – again most revealingly – JR lets a familiar cat out of the bag in this paragraph: he points to the “catastrophic lives” (correction supplied) of allegants (who are manipulatively characterized here as “real victims”). But this precisely illustrates the problem here: are the “catastrophic lives” the result of the (alleged) sexual abuse or is it the other way around? And given the general tortie stratagem of trying to paint allegant/plaintiffs’ lives (and personalities) as being generally well-functioning before the claimed sexual-abuse, then the problem in these cases is simply intensified.

      So while I can – at least to some extent – agree that allegants did not “create our lives from nothing”, yet it still remains to be demonstrated that the alleged sexual-abuse was the only or even primary causal aspect that did “create [their] lives”, as opposed to many other possible problems that caused the “catastrophic” nature of their lives. The Abusenik effort here to create the presumption that ‘If ‘catastrophe’ then sexual-abuse’ fails here both as conceptual logic and as scientific demonstration.

      Thus – again – in the Doe case in Philadelphia: are we dealing with a formerly high-functioning individual suddenly and utterly deranged  by sexual-abuse into becoming (among other things) a drug-addict or are we dealing with a drug-addict making up a story (or actually, several stories) in order to score cash and explain-away his many problematic personal characteristics?

      Thus too then, while I can – at least to some modest extent – agree that humans are “the summation of all our life experiences” (presumed correction supplied), yet the key problem is the source or cause of those “life experiences”.

      (My agreement in this is “modest” because this Abusenik schematic i) reduces humans to being merely pawns of their experiences with no capacity to change those experiences and ii) fails to include the dynamic interplay between an individual’s initiative based on his/her personal characteristics and the experiences that those personal characteristics greatly help to create.)

      And the final paragraph of this comment reduces to more epithetical stabs, on the (dubious) basis of which the comment then attempts to draw the (undemonstrated) conclusion that “that is why you are wrong”. And the whole bit then further manipulatively structured to try to deliver a conclusive pronunciamento about why I am wrong and will “ever be” wrong.

      And the whole pile wrapped up, finally, in the equally (and obviously) manipulative bleat about how “terrible” that “must feel”. Alas for JR’s tea-leaves and the quality of his insights, I “feel” confident in my material (nor would I present it to readers if I didn’t feel confident about it).

       On then to the 7th at 921PM:

      In an uncharacteristic gambit (suggesting the input of a muse) JR will – after making a nonsensical introduction in the first paragraph, intensified by that misspelled “theuses” that I “cannot prove at all” – actually try to “list” the problems he sees with my material.

      The comment then lists (oddly) three points.

      In the first point, JR claims that there is no “stampede”. Readers may judge the credibility of this point as they will, in light of all the material I have put up over time here.

      In that regard – come to think of it – I would propose that part of the reason that the Aussies have seen no Stampede of their own is that – unlike in the U.S. – they have placed a cap of sixty-thousand on claims; this utterly undercuts any tortie calculations that lawsuits would be worth bringing and simultaneously undercuts the usefulness of any tortie front organizations such as SNAP and the others.

      And while I am not familiar with the specifics of Aussie tort-law, it may also be that Down Under they have not imported the panoply of Victimist evidentiary and jurisprudential ‘reforms’ that have so deranged the fundamentals of Western law in the U.S. and created so richly-manured a field in which the pandemonium of Victimist Stampede elements can flourish.

      In the second point, we get another mere allegation to the effect that there is not any such thing as “an unfair press” [meaning, apparently, ‘media coverage’] around Catholic clerical abuse. Yet in all of the media stories we have considered on this site, and at length, JR has proffered no rebuttal to the high probability that much of the U.S. media was indeed casting its stories in an unfair light (less now than in prior years and decades), a probability strongly supported by assorted Victimist efforts (current in California and New York State even today )where university sex-abuse allegants are to be presumed to be genuine ‘victims’ or ‘survivors’ from the moment they lodge their allegations and claims and thus the accused presumptively guilty from the moment the allegation is lodged, and seen heretofore in the military justice system (where to some extent the Victimist gambit had to be modified in order to avoid overt Constitutional issues).

      Nor does the fact that the Church had to take “public opinion” into account demonstrate that that “public opinion” was accurately informed to begin-with: it is precisely the purpose of the (or any) Stampede to mis-inform and mis-shape and derange and inflame “public opinion” in the first place, so that public ‘outrage’ would then lubricate and enable the overriding-of or side-stepping-of established legal principles and rational analysis on the strength of an “amygdalic rush”.

      In the third point, we get the familiar bit seeking to deny that “an uncountable amount” of allegants “are lying”. My points have been that a) we have seen abyssal problems in the ‘stories’ that we have managed to examine and b) we have seen how tortie strategy and the prospect of large payouts with small prospect of actual examination and c) the highly flawed deployment of extrapolation in statistics … all of which work to greatly increase the Probability that from the stories we have seen and examined there is a serious veracity problem that cannot be presumed-away or wished-away or asserted-away.

      And we again see the effort to shift the burden of proof from the allegant to the accused – which is precisely the anti-Constitutional presumption vital to so much of Victimist legal strategy, especially in sex-abuse cases. So – once again: when a person makes an accusation then the burden of proof rests on that person (the accuser) and not on the accused. If any Abuseniks commenting here have a problem with that principle, then they have a problem with a basic principle of Western Law and they can address that problem forthrightly if they can.

      And if JR is trying to go for the idea that Abuseniks here or anywhere else have provided “scientific proof” of what they “claim”, then he (and/or his muse(s)) can take responsibility for so inaccurate a bit. In the meantime, his bit here remains a failure since it i) presumes the grossly anti-Constitutional assumption that the burden of proof rests on the accused rather than on the accuser (i.e. the allegants) and since ii) we are discussing Probability and the significant elements contributing to that Probability have never been rebutted here by any Abusenik comments.

      Then we see the reason for the odd 3-point format: by – to his own satisfaction, at least – ticking off the 3 points, JR can then frost his little cake here with the pronunciamento that I am “a 3 time loser”. Tee hee.

      As to why his “roommate” bit is “rickety”: I had been under the clear impression from his prior self-claims that he was married and had at least one child. And the fact that the claimed “roommate” was both “straight” and “Jewish” seems to me far too ‘scenic’ and convenient (JR rooms with a “straight” man though he claims also be gay and the straight man enjoys the mantle of being “Jewish”). Both of which otherwise unnecessary bits work only – to JR’s satisfaction, at least – to somehow burnish his creds as being something like open-minded while simultaneously being conversant in other religions (although he believes in no religion, according to his own self-report, so this “Jewish” bit has no relevance whatsoever).

      And the comment concludes with JR insisting that he has never “complained about” the LA police and legal system. Which doesn’t do much for his recent story that (if true) indicates that the LAPD did not take action against the supposed perp of child “harming” even though JR had provided a license plate number. And also avoids the problems his bit – also on this thread – about the LA “Times” being, like all media, in cahoots with the Church, and the insinuation that as a result of thus being in cahoots that paper may not have published the most conclusive evidentiary documents, and the implied problem (as I discussed) with the material thus released in regard to his own particular case.

      And on the 7th at 921PM:

      We get the pious disclaimer about JR ‘knowing little’ about “Philly”, which is then undercut by his immediately-following assertion that he doth “know the mob/mafia” when he doth “smell” them – which merely repeats the effort to insinuate that either the Church is much like the Mob (thus including his recent RICO bit, the problems with which he has avoided) or else all the major elements of Philadelphia political culture are “connected”.

      Although I think we have seen enough from the Big Trial site to see that there are indeed such ‘connections’ operating in Philadelphia, in both local and national political aspects. But that highly probable list of connections is working against the Church and in the service of the Stampede – thus refuting his own first point above about there not being a Stampede.

      And thus finally to the 7th at 924PM:

      JR will try to further lard his ‘Mob’ insinuation by claiming, in a mere one-liner, that “the Church of Rome and the Mafia have been close” – and that somehow the “money laundering in the Vatican bank”, which … what? Proves the actuality of the Stampede vision of Catholic clerical abuse? Proves the truth of Abusenik claims?

      Nothing of the sort. Just more insinuation and innuendo left hanging there to somehow distract from the abyssal problems with the actual Abusenik Stampede.

  37. Jim Robertson says:

    What the L.A. Times did do that was odd, imho,was to switch out reporters on the catholic priest sex abuse issue over and over again. There was no consistancy of reportage.

    In the 5 years, roughly 5 years, between suit and settlement here, we had 7 or 8  different reporters on this one subject; and next to no overview by the Times.

    Never once was one critical question of SNAP's qualifications for it's leading of victims ever asked, by the Times. SNAP was accepted on it's face value. Never once were victims' criticism of SNAP's un-democratic behaviors ever responded to by the Times. No investigative reportage was ever done by the Times of SNAP because here was no continious reporter available to add up SNAPs incredable inconsistancies between what it says it is and what it, in fact,does.

    The Tribune Corp. of Chicago had a profound effect on the reportage in L.A.. Just as I am sure that the largest downtown land owner in Chicago, the catholic church, has a profound effect on Chicago's biggest newspaper :the Chicago Tribune.AKA The Tribune Corp. (owner too of the L.A. Times).

     

  38. Jim Robertson says:

    And let's remember that SNAP was created and controlled from catholic church owned property: a former convent. A former convent where? Why in Chicago of course. The address for said onvent was on all the early "leader's packets, handed out by SNAP.

    Kay Ebeling received such a packet from SNAP, when they thought she was "usable" by them.