Catholic Cardinal Warns Church Victims To Keep Quiet - Or Else!

New Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera, retired archbishop of Xalapa, Mexico, greets cardinals during a consistory at which Pope Francis created 14 new cardinals in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican June 28.

Credit: CNS photo/Paul Haring.

New cardinal: Abuse victims should be ‘ashamed’ to speak due to their own failings | News | LifeSite

You know, sometimes I worry that this blog is turning into a blog devoted to stories about yet another Catholic paedophile sexual abuse scandal and not the blog devoted to science and Atheism that I originally intended.

I sometime wonder if I could should ask the Pope to try to put a hold on these revelations, so we are not getting the several a day in the current torrent.

Then I realise that that's exactly what his cardinals and bishops have been trying to do for years now. In fact, it was Pope Francis' predecessor's job to try to keep the lid on them before he himself became Pope Benedict XIV and was accountable to Pope John Paul II, as his 'enforcer'.

But it's not to be. Here yet again is another scandal from Latin America.

This time, it's a newly-appointed Mexican cardinal, Cardinal Sergio Obeso Rivera, elevated to the status of cardinal by Pope Francis only two months ago, who has taken it upon himself to threaten and bully victims of earlier abuses to try to ensure their silence.

According to this chilling report in Crux he said:

I’m here happy to talk about nice things, not about problematic things, it’s an accusation that is made, and in some cases it’s true. But the evil of many is the consolation of fools, because sometimes those who accuse men of the Church should [be careful] because they have long tails that are easily stepped on.

In other words, the church has information on their victims and won't be afraid to use it against them if they seek redress.

The question is how did the church get this information with which they intend to blackmail and intimidate their victims and how does Cardinal Rivera know about it? Do they maintain files? Are there records of confessions made under the seal of the confessional?

And what does Pope Francis think of one of his brand spanking new cardinals immediately issuing threats and behaving like a gangster's heavy to intimidate his cleric's victims into silence?

Cardinal Rivera's threats came soon after another scandal erupted in Honduras where Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, an influential confidant of Pope Francis and a member of the C9 Group of cardinals advising him on Church and curial reform, is mired in a cover-up scandal.

The accusation is that Cardinal Maradiaga is regarded as the 'patron saint' of what amounts to a gay club operating within Tegucigalpa’s major seminary. According to the National Catholic Register, more than 50 seminarians in Tegucigalpa have signed a letter of complaint claiming there is "a widespread entrenched pattern of homosexual activity at the institution". The allegation is that more than 40 seminarians are member of this 'gay club'. Unlike other seminaries where homosexuals have been 'sent away' (i.e, expelled) the favoured seminarians from Tegucigalpa have merely been sent out into parishes for a ‘pastoral’ year.

To quote the National Catholic Register:

Just as the revelations regarding Cardinal McCarrick have provoked troubling questions about what his brother U.S. bishops and the Vatican knew about his interactions with seminarians and about why nothing was disclosed publicly for so long, the Honduran allegations call into question the actions of Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa.

While Cardinal Maradiaga — a key confidante of Pope Francis who is coordinator of the ‘C9’ group of cardinals advising him on reforming Church governance and the Roman Curia — is not himself the subject of allegations of sexual misconduct, he is now under fire for appearing to have disregarded a wealth of evidence of homosexual misconduct by Bishop Pineda, whose resignation as auxiliary bishop was accepted by Pope Francis July 20.

Those scandals just keep coming, don't they. It's going to be quite some time before I can get back to blogging just about science and evolution and the latest idiocy of creationists and religious apologists. I started the blog as a counter to religion and to expose the harm it does; I now seem to be sitting back letting the Catholic Church and other Christian institutions do that for me - and what a magnificent job they are doing of it!

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