The head of a Dutch commission asked by the Catholic Church to look into allegations of sexual abuse said on Friday a year-long investigation was needed and appealed for offenders to come forward.

Wim Deetman, tasked to probe reports of sexual abuse by priests, said an independent inquiry should assess the scale and nature of the alleged abuse over the last 65 years, examine who was accountable and establish measures to prevent it recurring.

Read more >> | Dutch Catholic abuse commission call to offenders | Reuters.

A Roman Catholic bishop has called on EU leaders who are Christians to speak out against the Vatican if it makes “stupid” remarks, such as a recent declaration that homosexuality causes paedophilia.

In an interview with EUobserver on Friday (16 April), Peter Moran, the Bishop of Aberdeen in Scotland, said the church’s cover up of child abuse in Ireland 40 years ago was facilitated by “an exaggerated deference toward the clergy.”

“I would not like to think that there is any exaggerated deference by Christian leaders in Europe toward the church authorities today. To put it very simply, if the church says something that is wrong or stupid, even Christian leaders should have the courage to say: “No. I disagree with that. You are wrong. That was a stupid thing to say”.

Bishop Moran was referring to a statement by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's secretary of state, who earlier this month said that homosexuality, not clerical celibacy, is a cause of paedophilia.

Read more >> | EUobserver / Bishop urges EU leaders to criticise Vatican ‘stupidity’.

Three (former) priests accused of child abuse were suspended Friday morning. Two of them still carried out duties involving minors.

The Salesian priests accused of sexual abuse at Don Bosco boarding school have been suspended from all their duties effective immediately, pending an investigation into the abuse in the Catholic Church.

Herman Spronck, prior of the Salesian order in the Netherlands, announced his decision Friday in response to questions from NRC Handelsblad and Radio Netherlands Worldwide. The Salesian is the first order to take disciplinary action against its clerics since the abuse scandal broke in the Netherlands last month.

Read more >> | nrc.nl – International – Salesian order suspends 3 accused of abuse.

The reaction to the paedophile priest scandal is as guilty of scaremongering, illiberalism and elitism as the Catholic Church has ever been.

With all the newspaper headlines about predatory paedophiles in smocks, terrified altar boys and cover-ups by officials at the Vatican, it is hard to think of anything worse right now than a sexually abusive priest. Yet today’s reaction to those allegations of sexual abuse is also deeply problematic. For it is a reaction informed more by prejudice and illiberalism than by anything resembling a principled secularism, and one which also threatens to harm individuals, families, society and liberty.

When considering the problem of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, it is important to distinguish between the incidents themselves, some of which were of course horrific, and the way in which those incidents are understood in today’s political and cultural climate. The acts of sexual abuse themselves were no doubt a product of various problematic factors: the Catholic Church’s culture of celibacy, its strange views on sex, the fact that in some institutions priests were given ultimate authority over young boys and girls. But the way in which those acts are understood today – as supremely damaging to individuals and the inevitable consequence of people ‘deciding it is a good thing to abandon any commitment to fact and instead act on faith’ – is powerfully informed by two problematic contemporary trends: the backward cult of victimhood and the dominant ‘new atheist’ prejudice against any institution with strong beliefs.

By Brendan O’Neill | Spiked.co.uk

Read more >> | Why humanists shouldn’t join in this Catholic-bashing | spiked.

When I was a child, Ireland was a Catholic theocracy. If a bishop came walking down the street, people would move to make a path for him. If a bishop attended a national sporting event, the team would kneel to kiss his ring. If someone made a mistake, instead of saying, “Nobody's perfect,” we said, “Ah sure, it could happen to a bishop.”

The expression was more accurate than we knew. This month, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a pastoral letter of apology — of sorts — to Ireland to atone for decades of sexual abuse of minors by priests whom those children were supposed to trust. To many people in my homeland, the pope's letter is an insult not only to our intelligence, but to our faith and to our country. To understand why, one must realize that we Irish endured a brutal brand of Catholicism that revolved around the humiliation of children.

By Sinead O’Connor

Read more >> | To Sinead O’Connor, the pope’s apology for sex abuse in Ireland seems hollow – washingtonpost.com.

See also >> | ‘Endemic’ rape and abuse of Irish children in Catholic care, inquiry finds

The minister of justice has proposed upending the statute of limitations for sexual abuse of children following abuse scandals by Catholic clerics.

The statute of limitations for sexual abuse of children in the Netherlands should be suspended, justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin said on Saturday. He did so in response to the latest revelations of sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of Catholic clerics. Since NRC Handelsblad and RNW started investigating cases of sexual abuse at the hands of priests, thousands of victims have come forwards in the Netherlands.

Last week, the minister had already argued in parliament that criminal law should still apply even decades after the sexual abuse had taken place. The statute of limitations for sexual abuse in the Netherlands is currently 20 years after the victim turns 18.

Read more >> | nrc.nl – International – Dutch justice minister: prosecute sexual abuse indefinitely.

What’s fascinating in the steady onslaught of new incidences of previous cover-ups of child rape and molestation in the Catholic hierarchy is the notion that the hierarchs tended to see child rape as a sin rather than a crime. Hence the emphasis on forgiveness, therapy, repentance – rather than removal, prosecution and investigation. Obviously, there's one reason for this: they were defending the reputation of the church by hiding its darkest secrets, and they were using the authority of religion to do so. But I suspect it's also true that this is how they genuinely thought of child rape or abuse.

Read more >> | Sin Or Crime? – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

A nice piece by Andrew Sullivan.

In this whole affaire I must think constantly to what an ex- priest once told me. He didn’t agree with celibacy and started a “proper” (gay) life. But asked why the church and priest were so obsessed by sexuality, he asked me how I would feel if your sexuality is a sin and, as priest, you had to endure endless confessions of young men and women having sex, or having sexual fantasies, or having sexual relationships that are sinfull? How would you leave the confessional box?

Pretty horny, I guess, and the main reason why my friend left the priesthood.

It doesn’t answer why it is young boys a lot of priests were after. Sullivan has a good theory. But this story has wider implications.

It does put forward the question why Catholics (and protestants alike) have such a huge problem with sexuality in general?

Daan Diederiks (The Amsterdam Post)

Rotterdam bishop Ad van Luyn knew about several cases of sexual abuse of children at Catholic boarding schools run by the Salesian order, a spokesman for the bishop told the NRC and Dutch world service radio RNW.

Van Luyn was head of the Salesian order from 1975 to 1981. The bishop was aware of 'several concrete cases' and 'had to take action', the spokesman said.

It is the first time the bishop has admitted knowing about the abuse. He declined to make any further comment pending the outcome of an independent inquiry into abuse at Catholic schools and seminaries nationwide.

Read more >> | DutchNews.nl – Rotterdam bishop knew about abuse.

Those investigating child sex abuse within the Dutch Roman Catholic Church are facing an enormous job which is increasing by the day. Complaints are flooding in from around the country following initial revelations made by Radio Netherlands Worldwide and the NRC Handelsblad newspaper.

The first reports of abuse came from a boarding school in the eastern town of ‘s-Heerenberg – now allegations have been made involving Roman Catholic institutions across the Netherlands.

One of these was an expensive boarding school for the children of diplomats and the wealthy at Eikenburg near the southern city of Eindhoven.

Read more >> | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

See also >> | NRC- Handelsblad – Lives left in ruin by the ‘Brothers of Love’