There is no longer any defense for being a member of the Catholic church

This film will open your eyes to this fact: the Catholic church is, at its heart and at its highest levels, an evil organization as despicable and destructive as Scientology or any cult, if not more so.

I've never been a fan of the papacy or its laughably misguided world policies, and I'm sure we're all familiar with the many atrocities committed or supported by the church throughout history. But this movie was the final nail in the coffin for me and how I feel about Catholicism.

Deliver Us From Evil explores the development of the priesthood from the days of Christ and how it wasn't until the 4th century, and after 12 married popes, that the celibacy doctrine was put into place. I never knew that. And why was the rule changed? So that unmarried priests would leave their land and belongings to the church when they died rather than leave them to any offspring they might have had. The film then illustrates the direct ties these early ideologies have to the modern day crisis of rampant, widespread child sexual abuse by priests.

Once you learn the history of the despicable central figure in the film, former priest Oliver O'Grady, or of Roger Mahony, the Archbishop of Los Angeles at that time who protected O'Grady for years, and even possible ties to Pope Benedict XVI, I cannot imagine how any Catholic would ever want to be associated with that religion again.

When the new warm and fuzzy Pope Francis came along, I felt the same way a lot of people did: that maybe things might actually change. But after seeing this movie, I know better. It's all smoke. I will never fall for anything the Catholic church is selling ever again. Furthermore, I now feel that Benedict's "retirement" is all the more suspicious.

I know that not all Catholics are bad or all priests are bad. But the church itself definitely is. The Roman Catholic church has done FAR more evil than good in this world, in my opinion.





Here are some quotes from the film (since they're not included in the Quotes section):

Jeff Anderson, attorney for victims of clergy sexual abuse: Twenty-five years ago Tom Doyle called the bishops to action and put a plan before the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, a comprehensive plan to address the crisis of pedophilia in the priesthood.

John Manly, attorney for the Jyonos (one of the victim familes from the film): Basically they wrote a report that said “This is going to be a massive crisis that’s going to cost the church a billion dollars unless you do something.”

Jeff Anderson: They found that there was a national crisis of children being sexually abused by priests on a massive scale.

John Manly: Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, was head of what’s called the Office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The head of my church, the successor to Peter, the Holy Father, was the person in charge of making sure that priests didn’t hurt children. He was in charge of that office from 1978 until 2005 and he did a very poor job. He basically was the one person besides the Pope who could have stopped it and he didn’t.

Patrick Wall, Theologean: What the bishops did is they squelched the report, they went back to their diocese and they carried on as normal. They knew children were being victimized and they did absolutely nothing except ensure that law enforcement and the public and the faithful did not find out.

Patrick Wall: The bishops had known that bishops, priests and deacons had been sexually abusing children since the 4th century and it’s been a severe, major major problem and they’ve never really been able to curb it.

John Manly: Basically you had a sexualized priesthood, and it’s been sexualized for years, that looks at child sexual abuse no different than it does if you’re having sex with a woman because it’s all a violation of clerical celibacy.

Frawley-O’dea, Psychologist: And if all sex by definition was bad sex ‘cause you weren’t supposed to be having it, well then pedophilia is just another kind of sex.

Frawley-O’dea: What we have to remember is that a lot of the priests who’ve been reported as offenders went into the seminary at a minor seminary at ages 14, 15, 16. They may have been thinking about a vocation even earlier. And so they got stopped, they got literally arrested in their psychosexual development.

Father Thomas Doyle: They’re nurtured in an attitude of negativity towards relationships, towards women, towards marriage, and towards sexuality, and they never really fully understand what any of these are all about.

Frawley-O’dea: And so when these men became unable to be celibate or when their urges overpowered them they sought out victims who they experienced at some level as psychosexual peers.

John Manly: The L.A. Times recently reported that 10% of the seminary graduates from St. John’s Seminary, where the vast majority of priests in the western United States went to the seminary, a full 10% since 1960 of their graduates are pedophiles, perpetrators of children. Ten percent.

Bill Hodgman, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney: As of June 2002 we had over 100 criminal investigations ongoing and that encompassed over 100 individual priests.

Jeff Anderson: Every day, every week I learn of another child/young adult offended by a cleric who hasn’t been disclosed before this day and my fear is, my belief is that they’re not hundreds but there are thousands of offenders yet to be exposed and disclosed still roaming the churches and the landscapes in the United States and tens of thousands worldwide.

Thomas Doyle: What is a good Catholic? A good Catholic, traditionally, is someone who kept their mouth shut, their pocketbook open, you know, paid, prayed and obeyed, was docile, went to mass, obeyed all the commandments, went to confession on a regular basis; for the most part was ritualized, obedient and quiet. But a good Catholic is not that at all. A good Catholic is a Catholic in the model of Jesus Christ, a revolutionary, someone who’s not afraid to get up and speak the truth. Remember, the only time Christ ever got angry is when he went to church.




Here are some other facts/tidbits from the film:

Two of the victims went all the way to the Vatican to deliver a letter about what happened to them, and the pain they continue to deal with, and to try to regain their faith. They were turned away. Instead, the church pointed them out and made them out to be an enemy of the church. Doyle apologized to them on behalf of the priesthood, to which he is still legally a part of. The victims stated that “no one has ever said this to us before.” The Vatican never responded to the letter.

Cardinal Roger Mahoney is still in office fighting sexual abuse allegations against 556 priests in his diocese.

Pope Benedict XVI was accused of conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse in the United States. At the Vatican’s request, President Bush granted the Pope immunity from prosecution.

Since 1950, sexual abuse has cost the church over one billion dollars in legal settlements and expenses.

Over 100,000 victims of clergy sexual abuse have come forward in the United States alone.

Experts say more than 80% of sexual abuse victims never report their abuse.

Most countries are only just beginning to report clergy abuse.

Cardinal Law of the Boston diocese presided over some of the worst sexual abusers in the history of the church. The Vatican thought he was unfairly accused in the media, made him Cardinal Archbishop of a church in Rome, and he presided over Pope John Paul, II’s funeral mass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbLB3z_kFDw&feature=plcp