The Holy Violence - "Let the children come to me"

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones." (Lk 17:2)

The Vatican today faces an allegation that the pope failed to take action against a dying US priest who admitted molesting deaf children.
The claim, made by the New York Times, is the latest in a wave of child abuse scandals to hit the Catholic church and its leaders, and brings the storm closer to the pontiff himself.

At the weekend he issued an unprecedented apology and an admission of institutional errors.

The most important part of the news is the "unprecedented apology". It is intersting to see how Catholic Church "sells" its acts and its feelings . Apology should be and must be something "free of charge" and there is no need to point out that it is unprecedented...

This emphasis induce a psychologycal feeling of gratitude to the doer that vanifies the inner meaning of apology itself.

The Church tells us: "Yes , I ask for your forgiveness : no matter what I did and when and how many times. I am normally not supposed to issue any apology , I belong to another order of things, but this time the deeds are so serious that EVEN I ask for forgiveness....The same fact that I m forced to this this by the seriousness of my bad actions implies that I MUST BE FORGIVEN and treated in a different way . You must turn a blind eye to my deeeds."

The latest charge relates to a case when Benedict – in his previous incarnation as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – was in charge of the church's doctrinal enforcement institution, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the late 1990s. The New York Times obtained papers relating to the case which it says church officials had tried to keep private.
The newspaper alleges that Vatican officials including the future pope declined to discipline or defrock the priest, Father Lawrence Murphy, who was a teacher at a school for deaf children in Wisconsin for 24 years and was suspected of sexually abusing up to 200 boys.

I cannot simply thought about a violence on a deaf young person. It conveys a weird feeling of screams that implode inside a soul.

The officials overruled pleas from US diocesan bishops and apparently dropped an

instruction by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then Ratzinger's deputy at the Congregation and now the Vatican's secretary of state, that the local bishops should initiate a secret canonical trial.
The Vatican appears to have accepted Murphy's plea, in a letter to Ratzinger in 1998, that he was dying, had repented and that the offences had occurred many years before and so were out of time. "I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood," Murphy wrote. Was he ever thinking ,while writing , of the dignity of his victims?

"I ask your kind assistance in this matter." The files contain no indication of a response; Murphy died a few months later. For sure IN PEACE!!!!

The latest case is one of thousands forwarded over decades by bishops to the Congregation, which Ratzinger headed from 1981 to 2005. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked.

The fact that a religious entity which respond to something else than to State can decide in total authonomy to accuse or not to accuse, to cover or not to cover a crime perpetrated on a soul and on a citizen of a State , moreover an underage , makes me shiver....A religious ,insubstantial entity sets up a paralel reality , a paralel State and state of things and allow itself to judge , to decide , to postpone and to skip on totally earthly matters.

It takes upon itself the right to decide and to sort out .

This kind of paralel world and reality is present almost everywhere in the world , especially where monotheistic religions are strong .

They give it for granted that ONLY their representatives,normally a hierarchy, speak to God and know the God interpretation of reality . What matters then is to preserve this system of listeners and interpreters of God's will and word.

Every State is subject to people in the end. People can make a revolution, can even kill their representatives in any kind of regime. Thinking to kill, to revolutionize a religious establishment is a taboo. It has ben stolen from the possibilities of the humankind.

The documents that the church allegedly wanted to keep secret include letters between bishops and the Vatican, victims' affidavits, the handwritten notes of an expert on sexual disorders who interviewed Murphy, and minutes of a final meeting on the case at the Vatican.

Not even science or medicine are allowed to have a word in this and if they try they are overruled.

Local police and prosecutors also ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents. During Murphy's time at the school, between 1950 and 1974, three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that he was sexually abusing children, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities. Of course because Chirch is beyond the human law.

So they use the natural shame of any human being on this matter and the fear and the taboos again that they cast over sexuality to better use it against Nature.

Sexuality is the voice of Nature and it must be silenced or , if this is not possible, its sound must be distorted or perverted or blamed.

Instead of being disciplined, Murphy was quietly moved by the archbishop of Milwaukee, William Cousins, to the diocese of Superior, in northern Wisconsin, in 1974, where he worked freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention centre, until his death.
The Vatican told the newspaper that Murphy had certainly violated "particularly vulnerable" children and the law, and that it was a "tragic case", but added that it was not informed about the case until 1996, years after civil authorities had investigated the case and dropped it.

It was not until 1996 that Cousins's successor as Milwaukee archbishop, Rembert Weakland, tried to have Murphy defrocked. After getting no response from Ratzinger, Weakland wrote to a different Vatican office in March 1997 saying the matter was urgent because a lawyer was preparing to sue, the case could become public and "true scandal in the future seems very possible".
Weakland, who resigned in 2002 after a scandal involving his relationship with a man and the disclosure that church money had been used to pay him a settlement, said that in 1998 he had failed to persuade Cardinal Bertone and other doctrinal officials to grant a canonical trial to defrock Murphy. He told the newspaper: "The evidence was so complete and so extensive that I thought he should be reduced to the lay state, and also that that would bring a certain amount of peace in the deaf community."

After Murphy died aged 72Weakland wrote a last letter to Bertone explaining his regret that Murphy's family had disobeyed his instructions that the funeral be small and private, and the coffin kept closed. Weakland wrote: "In spite of these difficulties, we are still hoping we can avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the church."

How ruthless, earthless,merciless: no remorse, no understanding . Just one order and one drive: to avoid undue publicity "negative toward the church" Because Church is a pure commercial and earthly entity and it can be damages by undue publicity.

In a statement rushed out by the Vatican's press office, Benedict's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, stressed that the allegations had previously been investigated by the civil authorities and that the future pope's decision only concerned a possible trial under canon law.

The Vatican said: "It is important to note that the canonical question presented to the Congregation was unrelated to any potential civil or criminal proceedings against Father Murphy." Since he was "elderly and in very poor health, and … was living in seclusion and no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith suggested that the archbishop of Milwaukee give consideration to addressing the situation by, for example, restricting Father Murphy's public ministry and requiring that Father Murphy accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts. Father Murphy died approximately four months later, without further incident."

This means that you can kill a body and a soul and later ,if after over 20 years you die in poor health "without further incident" you are not a killer ...Does it apply to all the killers or just to priests? Could you still hear the screams of the deaf and weak children abused? Were they not poor or crying for the same pity and forgiveness?

It added that neither that directive "nor the code of canon law ever prohibited the reporting of child abuse to law enforcement authorities". Was there any need to specify it?

The Catholic sex abuse cases are a series of lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and scandals related to sexual abuse committed by Catholic priests and members of religious orders that first rose to widespread public attention in the last two decades of the 20th century.

Beyond the actual abuses, much of the scandal focused around the actions of some members of the Catholic hierarchy who did not report the crimes to legal authorities and reassigned the offenders to other locations where they continued to have contact with minors, giving them the opportunity to continue their sexual abuse.

Some bishops and psychiatrists contended that the prevailing psychology of the times suggested that people could be cured of such behavior through counseling. In response to the widening scandal, Pope John Paul II declared in 2003 that "there is no place in the priesthood and religious life for those who would harm the young".With the approval of the Vatican, the hierarchy of the church in the United States instituted reforms to prevent future abuse including requiring background checks for Church employees and volunteers and, noting the preponderance of adolescent males (teenage boys) amongst victims of abuse, warned that a more searching inquiry is necessary for a homosexually oriented man; and the worldwide Church also prohibited the ordination of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

Some members of the church hierarchy and outside commentators have argued, quoting studies relating to the USA, that media coverage of the issue has been excessive given that abuse occurs much more frequently in other institutions.Can this be an extenuating circumstance? everything has been tried rather than focusing on the real issue. The Church and the other Institutions ,included sometimes the State ,try to divert the attention from this crime inducing a false feeling of guilt and even describing the Pope and the Hierarchy as harassed by the Media or the general public. They even compared the Pope the Jews persecuted by the Nazis!!!!

The Rev Raniero Cantalamessa was speaking at Good Friday prayers in St Peter's Basilica, attended by the Pope.
In his sermon, he quoted a Jewish friend as saying the accusations reminded him of the "more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism".
His comments angered Jewish groups and those representing abuse victims.
Father Cantalamessa said Jews throughout history had been the victims of "collective violence" and drew a comparison with recent attacks on the Roman Catholic Church.
He read the congregation part of a letter from a Jewish friend who said he was "following with disgust the violent and concentric attacks against the Church, the Pope...
"The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted from the letter.
Father Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household, is the only person allowed to preach to the Pope. And later the Vatican said that is words were not representing the official position of the Catholic Church!!!
The comments show the Church is continuing to defend itself rigorously and outspokenly against accusations of having systematically covered up cases of sexual abuse by priests in recent decades.
This remarks are offensive and repulsive.
I haven't seen St Peter's burning, nor were there outbursts of violence against Catholic priests.s.

The Vatican is now trying to turn the perpetrators into victims.

They're sitting in the papal palace, they're experiencing a little discomfort, and they're going to compare themselves to being rounded up or lined up and sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz?

The collective violence against the Jews resulted in the death of six million, while the collective violence spoken of here has not led to murder and destruction, but perhaps character assault and maybe in the end JUSTICE for silent victimes .

Some commentators have said that the scandal highlights deep-seated problems with mandatory celibacy in the priesthood of the Catholic Church and how that institution deals with allegations of child abuse by its clergy.



In 2002, the John Jay report tabulated a total of 4392 priests and deacons in the U.S. against whom allegations of sexual abuse were considered by their diocese to have been "substantiated". In 2001, major lawsuits emerged in the United States and Ireland, alleging that some priests had sexually abused minors and that their superiors had conspired to conceal and otherwise abet their criminal misconduct .Although the scandals in the U.S. and Ireland unfolded over approximately the same time period, there are some significant differences between them. In the United States, most of the abusers were parish priests under diocesan control. While there were also a significant number of abuse cases involving parish priests in Ireland, another major scandal involved abuse that was crime to have been committed by members of religious orders working in Catholic-run institutions such as orphanages and reform schools. In the United States, the abuse was primarily sexual in nature and involved mostly boys between the ages of 11 and 17. In Ireland, the allegations involved both physical abuse and sexual abuse; children of both genders were involved, although a large majority were male.

The 2004 John Jay Report comissioned by the american Church itself was based on surveys completed by the Roman Catholic dioceses in the United States. The surveys filtered provided information from diocesan files on each priest accused of sexual abuse and on each of the priest's victims to the research team, in a format which did not disclose the names of the accused priests or the dioceses where they worked. The dioceses were encouraged to issue reports of their own based on the surveys that they had completed.
The report determined that, between 1950 and 2002, 10,667 people had made allegations of child sexual abuse. Of these, 3300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died.

The number of abuses increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the 1980s and by the 1990s had returned to the levels of the 1950s.[

Of the 4,392 priests against whom the accusations were deemed to be credible, 3,300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died. Police were contacted regarding 1,021 of the remaining 1092 priests. 384 of these priests were prosecuted, resulting in 252 convictions and 100 prison sentences. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made were convicted and about 2% received prison sentences to date.According to the John Jay report, one-third of the accusations were made in the years 2002 and 2003, and another third between 1993 and 2001.
An overwhelming majority of the victims, 81 percent, were males. A majority of the victims were post-pubescent adolescents, with a small percentage of pre-pubescent children.Some sources have asserted that most of the victims were between the ages of 16 and 17, making the sexual abuse instances of hebephilia rather than pedophilia. These sources argue that, by failing to make this distinction, the media has fostered a misconception of the problem. In fact, 15% of the victims were 16 or 17 years of age, while 51% were between the ages of 11 and 14. The John Jay Report determined that just under 6% of victims were 7 years of age or younger. 16% were between 8 and 10. The vast majority of the victims (78%) were aged between 11 and 17.
In the United States, half of the 4392 priests who were found to have been credibly accused of abusing minors were 35 years of age or younger at the time of the first instance of abuse. Fewer than 7% of the priests were reported to have themselves been victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children. Although 19% of the accused priests had alcohol or substance abuse problems, only 9% were reported to have been using drugs or alcohol during the instances of abuse. Almost 70% of the abusive priests were ordained before 1970.

The John Jay report identified the following factors contributing to the sexual abuse problem

1. Failure by the hierarchy to grasp the seriousness of the problem,

2. Overemphasis on the need to avoid a scandal,

3. Use of unqualified treatment centers,

4. Misguided willingness to forgive,

5. Insufficient accountability.

A major cause of the scandal surrounding clerical sexual abuse was criticism of the actions of Catholic bishops in responding to allegations of clerical abuse. For the most part, responding to allegations of sexual abuse in a diocese was left to the jurisdiction of the bishop or archbishop.

A major focus of the lawsuits and media attention since 2002 has been criticism of the approach taken by bishops when dealing with allegations of sexual abuse by priests. As a general rule, the allegations were not reported to legal authority for investigation and prosecution. Instead, many dioceses directed the offending priests to seek psychological treatment and assessment. According to the US John Jay report, nearly 40% of priests accused to have committed sexual abuse participated in treatment programs. The more allegations were made against a priest, the more likely he was to participate in treatment. Some bishops repeatedly moved offending priests from parish to parish, where they still had personal contact with children.

In response to these allegations, defenders of the Church's actions have suggested that in re-assigning priests after treatment, bishops were acting on the best medical advice then available.
According to the USCCB, Catholic bishops in the fifties and sixties viewed sexual abuse by priests as "a spiritual problem, one requiring a spiritual solution, i.e. prayer".Can a prayer fix up a psychological damage ?

However, starting in the sixties, the bishops came to adopt an emerging view based on the advice of medical personnel who recommended psychiatric and psychological treatment for those who sexually abused minors. This view asserted that, with proper treatment, priests who had molested children could safely be placed back into ministry, although perhaps with certain restrictions such as not being in contact with children. This approach viewed pedophilia as an addiction, such as alcoholism which many feel cannot be cured but which can be treated and restrained.
This approach continued to be practiced by the bishops well into the mid-1980s, a period which the USCCB characterizes as the "tipping point in the understanding of the problem within the church and in society". According to Paul Isley research on priest offenders is virtually nonexistent, and the claims of unprecedented treatment success with clergy offenders have not been supported by published data.

The Catholic hierarchy has been criticized for not acting more quickly and decisively to remove, defrock and report priests accused of sexual misconduct. In response to such criticism, contemporary bishops have asserted that the hierarchy was unaware until recent years of the danger in shuffling priests from one parish to another and in concealing the priests' problems from those they served. For example, Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said: "We have said repeatedly that ... our understanding of this problem and the way it's dealt with today evolved, and that in those years ago, decades ago, people didn't realize how serious this was, and so, rather than pulling people out of ministry directly and fully, they were moved."

.
It was revealed that some bishops had facilitated compensation payments to victims on condition that the allegations remained secret.

The Dublin Archdiocese's pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid 1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities. The Archdiocese did not implement its own canon law rules and did its best to avoid any application of the law of the State.

In 1962, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, laid down procedures to be followed in dealing with cases of clerics (priests or bishops) of the Roman Catholic Church accused of having used the sacrament of Penance to make sexual advances to penitents; its rules were more specific than the generic ones in the Code of Canon Law.In addition, it instructed that the same procedures be used when dealing with denunciations of homosexual, paedophile or zoophile behaviour by clerics. It repeated the rule that any Catholic who failed for over a month to denounce a priest who had made such advances in connection with confession was automatically excommunicated and could be absolved only after actually denouncing the priest or at least promising seriously to do so.

In 1983, the Vatican promulgated a revised Code of Canon Law which included a canon (1395, 2) which explicitly named sex with a minor by clerics as a canonical crime.
In April 2001, pope John Paul II issued Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela (Safeguarding the Sanctity of the Sacraments). This replaced the Crimen sollicitationis. All priestly sex crimes cases were to be placed under the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which, in most cases, would authorize the bishops to conduct trials themselves. To place the cases under the competence of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been criticized by some as making the process more secretive and lengthening the time required to address the allegations. For example, in his biography of John Paul II, David Yallop asserts that the backlog of referrals to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for action against sexually abusive priests is so large that it takes 18 months to get a reply.
Vatican officials have expressed concern that the church's insistence on confidentiality in its treatment of priestly sexual abuse cases was seen as a ban on reporting serious accusations to the civil authorities. The conspiracy involved in hiding the offence is a kind of omerta, the Mafia code of silence.We can hypothesise that a greater female presence, not at a subordinate level, would have been able to rip the veil of masculine secrecy that in the past often covered the denunciation of these misdeeds with silence.

Some parties have interpreted the Crimen sollicitationis as a directive from the Vatican to keep all allegations of sexual abuse secret, leading to widespread media coverage of its contents. Lawyers for some of those making abuse allegations claimed that the document demonstrated a systematic conspiracy to conceal such crimes.

Although nation-wide enquiries have only been conducted in the United States and Ireland, this lead to a major public awareness all over the world .

In response to perceived deficiencies in canonical and secular law, both ecclesiastical and civil authorities have implemented procedures and laws to prevent sexual abuse of minors by clergy and to report and punish it if and when it occurs. In April 2003, the Pontifical Academy for Life organized a three-day conference, entitled "Abuse of Children and Young People by Catholic Priests and Religious", where eight non-Catholic psychiatric experts were invited to speak to near all Vatican dicasteries' representatives. The panel of experts overwhelmingly opposed implementation of policies of "zero-tolerance" such as was proposed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. One expert called such policies a "case of overkill" since they do not permit flexibility to allow for differences among individual cases.Archbishop Csaba Ternyak, secretary of the Congregation for Clergy, put the following question to the experts: "[T]o what degree one can talk about the rehabilitation of the offender, what are the most effective methods of treatment, and on what grounds we can say that a person who has never offended is at risk to sexually molest someone?"
Ternyak spoke about the way that the crisis had damaged the priest-bishop relationship. He noted that there was a "sense of gloom" felt by the overwhelming majority of priests who had not been accused of any abuse but nonethless who perceived that their bishops had turned against them and therefore had "become disillusioned about the effectiveness of the laws of the Church to defend their dignity and their inalienable rights". Ternyak also noted that "there have been more than a few suicides among accused priests." In addition, during a visit to the United States Pope Benedict XVI said that he is "deeply ashamed" of the clergy sex abuse scandal that has devastated the American church and apologized for the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy and pledged that pedophiles would not be allowed to become priests in the Catholic Church.[ Pope Benedict also said he is ashamed for child abuse scandal in Australia.
The Vatican instituted reforms to prevent future United States abuse by requiring background checks for Church employees and issued new rules disallowing ordination of men with "deep–seated homosexual tendencies".
William McMurry, a Louisville, Kentucky lawyer, filed suit against the Vatican in June 2004 on behalf of three men alleging abuse as far back as 1928, accusing Church leaders of organizing a cover up of cases of sexual abuse of children. In November, 2008, the United States Court of Appeals in Cincinnati denied the Vatican's claim of sovereign immunity and allowed the case to proceed. The Vatican did not appeal the ruling.
However, when Pope Benedict was personally accused in a lawsuit of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys in Texas in Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, he sought and obtained diplomatic immunity from prosecution. Some have claimed that this immunity was granted after intervention by then US President George Bush!!!!
]
In a statement, read out by Archbishop Tomasi at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 22 September 2009, the Holy See stated that the majority of Catholic clergy who had committed acts of sexual abuse against under 18 year olds should not be viewed as paedophiles, but as homosexuals who are attracted to sex with adolescent males. The statement said that rather than paedophilia, "it would be more correct to speak of ephebophilia; being a homosexual attraction to adolescent males" ....... "Of all priests involved in the abuses, 80 to 90% belong to this sexual orientation minority which is sexually engaged with adolescent boys between the ages of 11 and 17."The move angered many gay rights organisations, who claimed it was an attempt by the Vatican to redefine the Church's past problems with paedophilia as problems with homosexuality.
Catholic critics of media coverage claim there has been an excessive focus on incidences of abuse and that equal or greater levels of child sexual abuse in secular contexts or other religious groups have been ignored or given minimal coverage.Being this a good reason not to put the old priests and bishops in disconfort !!!

In The Courage To Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church, George Weigel claims that it was the infidelity to orthodox Roman Catholic teaching, the "culture of dissent" of priests, women religious, bishops, theologians, catechists, Church bureaucrats, and activists who "believed that what the Church proposed as true was actually false" was mainly responsible for this problem. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, retired Archbishop of Washington, blamed the declining morals of the late 20th century as a cause of the high number of sexually abusive priests.Was not their "job" to preserve and defend the Moral?

Ultra-conservative Roman Catholics claimed that the Second Vatican Council itself (1962–1965) fostered a climate that encouraged priests to abuse children. The council directed an opening of the doors to meet the world. However traditional Roman Catholics believe that this led to a conversion of Roman Catholics to secularism rather than vice versa.

Others have asserted that the increased reporting of abuse in child-care institutions during this time was concomitant with rising police interest, investigation and prosecution of such crimes. As such it is not certain that a sudden "crisis of abuse" ever existed; instead the dramatic increase in reported abuse cases may simply have heralded the end of a long-term endemic problem found throughout a number of institutions, both secular and religious, prior to the introduction of quality control measures specifically aimed at preventing such abuses from occurring.Probably clerical celibacy contributed to the abuse problem by suggesting that the institution of celibacy has created a "morally superior" status that is easily misapplied by abusive priests: "The Irish Church’s prospect of a recovery is zero for as long as bishops continue blindly to toe the Vatican line of Pope Benedict XVI that a male celibate priesthood is morally superior to other sections of society.
Sexual scandals among priests, the defenders say, are a breach of the Church's discipline, not a result of it, especially since only a small percentage of priests have been implicated. Furthermore there is no data supporting a higher rate of child-oriented sexual activity among the unmarried Roman Catholic clergy than that of the married clergy of other denominations and of schoolteachers. However, for those cases for which data is available, molestation of pre-pubescent children was found to be rare. Consequently opinion remains divided on whether there is any definite link or connection between the Roman Catholic institution of celibacy and incidences of child abuse by Catholic clergy.

One specific meaning of the term "religious abuse" refers to psychological harm or manipulation inflicted on a person by using teachings or doctrines of that person’s religion. This is perpetrated by members of the same or similar faith, and includes the use of a position of authority within the religion over another person to inflict such harm.It is most prevalently directed at children and emotionally vulnerable adults, and motivations behind such abuse vary, but can be either well-intentioned or malicious.

So they use the privileged relationship they boast with God ....

Well meaning instances of such abuse are often motivated by genuine concern that the targeted person will come to physical or spiritual harm should they engage in a certain behavior or question their beliefs. The perpetrator then uses exaggerated, distorted or even false versions their teachings or their position of authority to instill intense fear and/or shame . Maliciously motivated abuse uses the same tactic, but seeks to manipulate the victim into being compliant with the perpetrator’s selfish wishes.
Even well intentioned religious abuse can have long-term psychological consequences. Causing the victim to be intensely fearful can induce that person to develop a specific phobia about the topic they were warned against, or develop a long-lasting depression. They may have an unshakable sense of shame that persists even when they have either grown up or left the church. The person can also be manipulated into avoiding a beneficial action (such as a medical treatment) or to engage in a harmful behavior.

Religiously-based psychological abuse of children is a growing area of interest in the psychological and sociological community. It can take the form of using teachings to subjugate children through fear, or imposing heavy indoctrination such that the child is taught only the beliefs and/or points of view of their particular sect (or even just that of their caregivers) and all other perspectives are stifled or kept from them. The beliefs are taught as absolute truth, with no way of ever questioning them. Psychologist Jill Mytton describes this as crushing the child's chance to form a personal morality and belief system, making them utterly reliant on their religious system and/or parents. They never learn to critically reflect on information they receive. Similarly, the use of fear and a judgmental environment (such as the concept of Hell) to control the child can be traumatic.

A voice between two worlds and two souls - The "Castrati singers"

This is an aria from "Artaserse" an opera written in 1734 by Riccardo Broschi in London.Let yourself go to this frenzy dance of notes.

The author is the brother of the most famous "castrato" singer Carlo Farinelli for whom he wrote several of his arias and operas .

Arguably the most famous castrato, Farinelli (born Carlo Broschi) lived from 1705-1782. “Sopranist, composer, poet, harpsichordist, viola d'amore player, very ugly, extremely clever...” Farinelli made his opera debut at the age of fifteen and went on to become the Baroque equivalent of a Hollywood star. Fans in England reportedly screamed “One god, one Farinelli!” from the balconies of the opera halls where he performed, and in 1994 his life was turned into a motion picture – the only castrato to have received this particular honour.

After a very successful career in opera, Farinelli was hired by the Spanish King Philip V, who suffered from depression and, if reports of the day are to be believed, the King was cheered by Farinelli's performance of the same four arias every night for the remainder of his life.

The story of "castrati singers" ,along with their essential role in the Opera history ,is a very interesting example of how Beauty and Harmony won over the attempts made by Culture and Religion together to suffocate Nature and its perfect laws.
The castrati play a fascinating role in the history of singing. To discover the origin of this practice we need to look at the Church of Rome's interpretation of two biblical passages: "Let your women keep silence in the churches," (I Corinthians 14:34), and "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over men, but to be in silence." (I Timothy 2:11-12). The current thinking is that St. Paul appreciated the contributions of women to the early church, but that he believed women should not take part in theological discussions or teach men.

Religion is paved of nonsense!

The Church's interpretation of these passages, however, was strict. Women were not allowed to speak or sing in church. The Church also forbade women to participate in the theater. In the Middle Ages, the lack of female voices in the relatively simple church music was not a problem.

So what this "sick" people conceived to please themselves and God in name of an absurd and rootless concept was to distort not just a "nature" but a sound and to do it they ended up in transfering this distortion to a body and to a soul .

Again the resul was a big pain . But again Nature won ,giving us one of the best music (written for these distorted voices) and one of most misterious mix of voice and music and soul where we cannot distinguish anymore human voice from human music.

Is this the "voice" of God itself who reaffirm his power and his mistery upon the insanity of our Culture?

These poor souls of boys literally forced into a voice not belonging to them according to nature ,surrended themselves to a surprise made by the same Nature so forced and constrained by stupid rules and prejudices.

Young boys' voices had difficulty with the complex polyphony that was being written in the late 1500s by the contrapuntalists in the Netherlands. Either their voices were not strong enough to maintain the part, or by the time they had gained the musicianship required to execute the music, their voices were changing. Initially this problem was solved by importing falsettists from Spain and for a time Spanish falsettists held a monopoly in the Sistine Chapel. Somehow they seemed to have discovered a secret for giving the falsetto voice more agility, range and a richer sound. Some have suggested that these falsettists were, in fact, castrati and some may have been. In 1599 two Italian castrati were admitted to the Sistine Chapel. This, along with the invention of opera at about that time, ushered in the age of the castrati. Castration had existed for centuries as a form of punishment. In other situations, slaves were castrated and then used as harem guards or as servants or tutors for upper class women. Essentially there are two types of castration: removal of all the genitalia (usually inflicted as punishment and often fatal) and removal of the testes only. The latter of these was what was performed on prepubescent boys usually between the ages of seven and twelve. Unfortunately many boys were castrated with the belief that castration alone would make them good singers. It is estimated that at the height of the castrati's popularity during the eighteenth century as many as four thousand boys a year were castrated in Italy. Sadly very few of them became rich or famous.

So a foolish punishment was turned into a "way to beauty and harmony" !

Some men ,self -proclaimed more manly than others with God's endorsement ,self -attributed to themselves the right of stealing the manliness from other men both to entrust their women to them (so precious they were!!!) and to enjoy the harmony they were not able to echo from Nature (because maybe of their exhagerate manhood?).

The vendetta of this "cutted souls" is nowadays evident but at that time the damage was immeasurable .

The vocal consequences of castration went well beyond the mere perpetuation of a boyish treble. The child continued to grow, and so did his voice; or at least his physical powers to exploit the voice he already had. Under the rigid discipline to which he would now be exposed, his lung capacity and diaphragmatic support would be augmented to an extraordinary degree, enabling him to sustain the emission of breath in the projection of tone up to a minute or more, which is beyond the ability of most normal adult male and female singers.They had, as a consequence, great vocal power. Finally, a small and flexible larynx, and relatively short vocal chords allowed them to vocalize over a rather wide range (over 3 and 1/2 octaves) and to sing with great agility (they could control wide intervals, long cascades and trills).

The mature castrato was a boy soprano or alto with all the physical resources of a grown man .

In the Italian language, nouns of feminine gender end with "a", while those of
masculine gender end with "o"-yet we label Joan Sutherland a soprano, not
soprano and Marian Anderson a contralto, not contralta. Why?

What is in some way "superior" is masculine while the "inferior " is feminine perhaps.

The rise of opera coincided with but in no obvious way caused that of the castrati. If anything, the taste for the castrato voice antedated opera. Nor did it at once dominate the new form. A castrato sang the prologue and two female parts in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at Mantua in 1607, but the lead part was sung by a tenor. Of Monteverdi's two other surviving operas, II ritorno d'Ullisse in patria (1640) uses normal male voices, but L'incoronazione di Poppea (1642) allots the two male leads to castrati. Vocal casting then and for another 200 years was determined by which singers were available castrati: it seems, were not yet always at hand or perhaps always wanted.

People were besotted with the high, in particular the soprano, voice its special value called for the exotic powers of castrati. This value may have lain in an association with youth: in opera, castrati were to sing the parts of young heroes. It may also have had to do with superiority. 'Soprano' means 'higher', a notion not taken lightly by a society that was at once hierarchical minded and used to displaying hierarchical order in forms perceived by the senses. A composer in charge of a church choir, writing when the system had been going for a long time, assumed that higher voices took precedence of lower--and that a 'natural' alto (a castrato) must as a rule take precedence of a falsettist.

Falsettist is definitely a "man" who enters temporalily and under a certain extent the region of the feminine (voice) and comes back ,being is feminine tone not perfect and complete and most of all not more perfect feminine than the feminine!!!

We still need to explain why a preference, even a craze, for high voices should have led ordinary people to undertake (and people in authority to condone) so drastic a step as castration. One possible answer is that the cultivation of the solo voice in the new genres of the early seventeenth century--opera, cantata, and oratorio--required a new professionalism uncalled for in the age of polyphonic music that had gone before, and that the castrati--thanks to unbroken study from childhood, less hampered by social custom than the education of girls--were best able to meet this new demand. This is of some help. Yet we still need to ask was the step taken as drastic as we think?

Or it is again a violation against a feminine skill. A man overcome a woman in her "voice" kingdom : then he is made lik a woman phisically in some way but remains a man for other physical features that are enhanced as a result of an "ormonal revenge ".

Severe economic crisis struck Italy about 1620. The city of Venice apparently managed to keep much of its industry going in spite of increasing rigidity and lack of competitiveness. In many other places, however, deindustrialization--followed by war and by the two great plagues of 1630 and 1656--confirmed the upper classes in their retreat into landholding as their main source of income; sometimes the retreat was accompanied by a new imposition of feudal tenures or by a strengthening of entails to safeguard the line of descent. With it went an increase in the numbers of monks and nuns, probably most marked in the period 1580--1650: by the 1670s they seem to have accounted for some 5 per cent of the population in Florence and Catania, for about 9, 10 or 11 per cent in decayed Central Italian towns such as Siena, Pistoia, and Prato; in more populous Cities--Venice, Rome, Naples--the proportion was lower but absolute numbers higher, with monks alone numbering well over 3,000 in Rome, 4,000 in Naples.

For rich families, getting a son or a daughter into a monastic order cost less than setting up the son in an official career or than marrying off the daughter; in a lean time it could bring privileges such as tax concessions. For many middling or poor people a child who became a monk or a nun held out the hope of security in troubled times, not just for the individual but for the family. Such decisions about a child's future were a matter of family strategy. Material explanations of this kind need imply no denial of the intense religious feeling common in baroque Italy--itself stirred by the sense of longer and decline. These conditions broadly held through the whole of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century

Monks, according to a late eighteenth century German writer, were 'so to speak, castrati who had not been operated upon' (quoted in F. Haböck, Die Kastraten in ihre Gesangskunst, 1927, p. 148). They were celibates, not always of their own choice. A castrate could be thought of as an enforced celibate with an unusual chance of securing for his family an income, perhaps a fortune. There were castrate monks who sang in or directed church choirs: one took part--though only after Mazarin had spent six years using diplomatic pressure on the Pope--in the Paris performance of Cavalli's opera Ercole amante (1660), singing the part of a woman disguised as a man. Some other castrati became monks late in life; many more became priests. But no vows were needed for the castrate's 'vocation' to have something in common with that of the monk.

We need to stand as far as we can away from modern assumptions. Central to these is the right of human beings to sexual fulfillment. The tradition of Christian asceticism began to decline even in Southern Europe from the mid eighteenth century; it is nearly lost. But around 1600 it was still strong. Renunciation of sexual life could seem not just possible but ideal. Sexuality could anyhow be a burden when (as happened in at least parts of Italy) celibacy was on the increase between 1600 and 1750 owing to economic hardship and the efforts of families to safeguard property, while the vigilance of those same families probably did much to prevent sexual relations outside marriage. Celibacy was a means to birth control.

Nor was it a step condemned by the Church. Theologians held that we are caretakers, not owners, of our bodies. Most thought castration licit only to save life, on medical advice and with the boy's consent. A minority, however, held that on a balance of advantage castration for artistic purposes could be licit if the benefit to the community (to the effectiveness of church services or the supposed needs of rulers) outweighed the damage to the individual. Among Italian theologians it was discussed until about 1750 a matter finely balanced between 'probable' and 'more probable' opinions, and even when opposition began to build up Pope Benedict XIV advised (1748) against a proposal that castration should be forbidden by all bishops--essentially on prudential grounds: it was better to avoid disturbance and work for a compromise that would bring about gradual change.

In 1600, with the performance of Euridice composed by Jacopo
Peri, marks the birth of modem opera. Prior to that date, Greekstyle
dramas were performed in which polyphonic choruses dominated.
Vincenzo Galilei, the father of Galileo, and Jacopo Peri rebelled against
this and introduced a significant innovation by employing single vocal
parts consisting of arias and recitatives. This in time led to bel canto,
often for sheer vocal display. At first there were no public opera houses,
and performances were given in private theaters or chapels But opera soon caught on and in 1637 the first public opera houses opened in Venice. Composers had problem because for centuries women were not allowed to sing in church or theater. There were no
women singers; all roles, male and female, were played by men. Only a man with normal testis
could be a witness-the very word testis means witness. He could swear
in court by placing his right hand on the scrotal area and declaiming: "I
hereby 'testify'."Should the term "testify" raise the ire of Women's Lib, I would suggest that the ladies substitute "ovarify" for "testify" !!!

The Church forbade castration, but in the case of the castrati
singers it was faced with an accomplished, irreversible deed and, hence,
welcomed the victims at least to serve it in its choirs and thereby to expiate
their (?) sin. Although castration was done clandestinely, news of the success of the
castrati singers spread rapidly. Often, poverty-stricken parents themselves
performed the mutilation, trading the boy's future sexual potency and
fertility for a hoped-for "pot of gold." In the very young constant
compression and rubbing of the tiny gonads were done until they were no
longer palpable. When the child grew up, excuses, some fantastic, were
offered by parents or guardian: that the boy was injured in a fracas with
other boys; or that he was bitten by a dog, a pig or wild goose; or that he
fell from a horse and injured his testes, and so on.

Note how always the burden of an empty excuse and blame is cast on animals or other "weak" subjects. And this again shows off the big power of the Church and how brave they are .

As we saw the castrati were usually tall, with a disproportionately large thorax,
infantile larynx, long, spindly legs, and flat feet. Most were handsome
with feminine facial features. They were beardless, although scalp hair
was luxuriant. Gynecomastia was at times prominent; they were widehipped,
somewhat obese and a few had steatopygia.Though deprived of their gonads, many of the castrati singers, had heterosexual affairs, in some instances with scandalous and tragic consequences.

Loss of both testes during adulthood does not necessarily result in impotence, but their
complete removal or destruction in childhood should result not only in
sterility but also prevent potency. Were these heterosexual relationships
physiologically normal, or were the liaisons with morbidly curious
women? We have no way of knowing.

Everything is covered by the mist of a false "decency" that Religion and its related false Culture has always used along the centuries to cover the human natural feelings and pulses . This has led to those unnatural behaviours .And to conceive these hiding superstructures that generates "monsters" .

But Nature in her kindness and wisdom has turned monsters into fairies and their cries of pain into celestial voices.

Unfortunately, we have no records or statistics regarding the type of operation and technique performed on the children and on the age when the mutilation was carried out. We do
not know how many were mutilated without complete removal of the
gonads. Other procedures may have caused some destruction, retarding
androgencity but not necessarily negating eventual potency or even fertility.
Boys castrated at a later stage, i.e., from nine to 12 years of age,
should have been rendered sterile, but potency need not necessarily have
been compromised because the interstitial cells that manufacture testosterone
had probably functioned and induced erections and, once begun,
erectability may have continued because of testosterone-producing cells
along the cords and in the retroperitoneum.

Numerous cells elaborating testosterone line the interior of the capsule of
the testis and, if they survived and functioned, then it was possible for
some castrati singers to have had heterosexual relationships. The Nature and its embodiment ,our physical body , follows its course without considering our structures and concepts of beauty , our concepts of sin and our ways of covering the sinners.

This leads to an implosion . A lot of pain , physical and psychological , is "bestowed" upon the souls and the bodies just for a caprice or for an absurd defence of a moral position .

Culture becomes the gurdian of a sick Ethic.But yet Nature wins the day by turning a distortion into miracle .But pain and darkness cannot be avoided as the loneliness and despair of a lot of "angels" .

Perhaps a match for the onstage flamboyance of many castrati was their flamboyance offstage. Far from being rendered celibate by their childhood surgeries, many of the castrati led very active sex lives. Although some castrato singers were considered unattractive (one of the side-effects of the orchidectomy was a tendency towards gigantism and/or obesity), many others were not – and from the point of view of many women, an affair with a castrated man was a “safe” affair: there was absolutely no risk of pregnancy. Although countless affairs were conducted in secret, some were a bit more public – for instance an affair carried out by Giovanni Francesco Grossi with a Modenese widow; in 1697, Grossi was assassinated by his lover's angry relatives.

Perhaps other factors of an emotional or sociological interaction between
the sexes may have played a role in modifying the lack of proper
responses by the supposedly sexually frozen castrati. On the part of the
women, the lady friends' hero-worship of a great singer, prurience,
curiosity, and the challenge to their self-confidence in the capacity to
induce eroticism and awaken libido may have led to pseudosexual play,
with even some turgescence in the penis and reciprocal excitation in the
female, climaxed by orgasm devoid of ejaculation.

The view of castration as barbaric mostly carries through to this day.

How can we adopt an attitude towards emasculation when no great castrato has confided his deepest feelings to us?” The castrati Carestini and Salimbeni reportedly burst out laughing when people tried to express pity for them. Modern Italian counter-tenor Ernesto Tomasini claims regret for not having been castrated as a boy. His one-man show “True or Falsetto? A Secret History of the Castrati” played to sell-out crowds throughout Europe in 2002, and in an interview on his website, Tomasini discusses the hysteria which surrounded the castrati's performances during the height of their fame. “'I regret not having been castrated,' he says. 'I would have perfectly happily given up my masculinity for my art.'”
You just can't make that choice as an adult.

Eight was the standard age for castration; the goal was to cut puberty off well before it had even started. Except in very rare cases the choice was not made by the boys at all, but rather by their parents in the hopes that their talented young son might begome a talented and very rich castrato star.
In many ways, the main tragedy in the story of the castrati is just what I have mentioned above – the choice was never the boy's, and it could never be put off long enough so that it could be the boy's. I spoke with a man who, as a child, was a very highly trained treble in a cathedral choir (“By the time my voice changed, I had a range of nearly four octaves” ... “It was the only sense of identity I had, just this big voice”) and he told me about the sense of loss he felt when his voice changed at the age of fourteen. He talked about how, for a time after his voice broke, he could still hear his treble voice, his boy's voice, inside his head, although it didn't match the voice that was coming out of his mouth – and he talked about how he still remembers the moment when the treble voice stopped and left him for good. “I still miss it,” he said. “If I had been given the choice back then – to lose the voice forever or to keep it forever – if I had had that choice... I don't know that I would have done it. But I would have considered it very seriously.”

In the end, as with most ethical issues, there are no easy answers – there is just the end of the story. Despite its steady acceptance of castrati into the Sistine Choir and other chapel choirs, the Catholic Church had never really condoned the practice of castration. It was in fact never entirely legal, it was just that the Popes wanted to have castrati in their choirs and so tended to turn a blind eye to the procedure that created them. Pope Leo XIII finally decreed in 1902 that no more castrato singers would be admitted to the Sistine Choir, and Leo's successor, Pope Pius X, decreed the following year that no more castrati were to be created, ever. Alessandro Moreschi retired from the Sistine Choir in 1913 and died in 1922 – and with him died, seemingly, the entire legacy of the castrati and their profound effect on the music of Europe during their dominance. The castrati were, for many years, bizarrely overlooked in literature dealing with music of the period: in the whole of the sixth edition of Donald Jay Grout's A History of Western Music, for example, castrato singers are mentioned exactly twice. It is incredible that a group of musicians who had such a profound impact on the musical development of nearly two centuries could be so forgotten. It is only in recent years that the castrati have begun to receive their due in literature dealing with music of the period.

The castrati singers became superstars, performing before huge audiences,
commanding large salaries and receiving adulation which, according
to some authorities, has not been surpassed. The voce bianco, or white voice, was not really human; there was a certain detachment and depersonalization, almost godlike.

A number of composers wrote operas expressly for the castrati. Among
them were Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725), composer of more than 115
operas. A popular one was Pompeo, first performed in Naples. George
Frederic Handel (1685-1759) was a famous organist, harpsichordist and
opera composer. Among the literati were Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison,
Richard Steele, Lady Montague, and Samuel Pepys. London was
full of eccentrics, dandies, perverts, poets, the select rich and nobility,
and the numerous deprived poor.
From the purely vocal point of view, the castrati singers are considered by musical authorities to have been the greatest singers of any age. For two centuries, the 17th and 18th, they
dominated opera. All the female parts were sung by these evirati. Their
dominance came to an end early in 1800.

Composers began to write operas for tenors, and soprano roles sung by castrati were now entrusted to women.
However, the hermaphroditic aspect of opera lingered and found expression
in some of the parts created by ensuing composers. For instance:
in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Cherubino (soprano) poses as a male
page. In his Cosi Fan Tutte, Despina (soprano) poses as a male by
wearing successively the robes of a physician and a notary. Composer Gioacchino Rossini late in life stopped writing opera because "there are no more opera singers; i.e., no more castrati."

The combination of circumstances that heralded the advent of the
castrati will probably never recur. Their voices are stilled forever.They has been thrown out of Nature in a fixed perfection of a cultural model which is beauty and it is not because it implied pain and deprivation. But the phenomenal trills and embellishments can
be culled forth from the rave accounts of contemporaries. These induced
pseudohermaphrodites with their supernatural nightingale voices trained to
perfection awed, thrilled, and intrigued audiences for 200 years. Although
virility was supposedly denied them, the records of their love-life are
profuse. We cannot accurately evaluate their potency, but the majority, as
stated, apparently did not suffer from lack of heterosexual love affairs it
seems that many women brought "orchids" to the castrati! So again what it is denied and crushed by Religion and Culture is affirmed through other ways.

The training the received to force their voice to the magnificence was another torture .Training and education should be a positive way to focusing and to growing up (to educate) .In their case also these means were upturned and used to suffocate and to distort.

Nature showed us its power. It turned into light our darkness. In this case the results were the best voices and music ever and the very peak reached by harmony and creativity at the price of suffering and loneliness and sometimes even madness .

Would not have been better that thouse "angels" had had a happy and forgettable life rather than an unforgettable and magnificent one where music veiled pain and anguish ?

I would have preferred silent angels leading an happy life rather than voices of God on an Earth forced into Heaven .

War between religions : where is the human being ?

From a newspaper ,this morning:


RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN- A Christian man was fighting for his life in Pakistan's Punjab province Saturday, March 20, after Muslim leaders backed by police burned him alive for refusing to convert to Islam, while his wife was raped by police officers.
Arshed Masih was burned Friday, March 19, in front of a police station in the city of Rawalpindi near Pakistan's capital Islamabad, following apparent death threats from his Muslim employer Sheikh Mohammad Sultan, an influential businessman, and religious leaders, said the Rawalpindi Holy Family Hospital. His wife, Martha Arshed, was allegedly raped by police officers. Their three children -- ranging in age from 7 to 12-- were reportedly forced to witness the attacks against their parents.
Sheikh Mohammad Sultan could not immediately be reached for comment and it was not clear whether he had been in contact with police Saturday, March 20.
Before tensions emerged about their Christian faith, Masih worked as a driver and his wife as a maid for the Muslim businessman since 2005, Christians said.
The couple apparently lived with their children in the servant quarters of Sultan's estate in Rawalpindi, a key trade and tourist destination. In January, religious leaders and Sultan allegedly asked Arshed to convert to Islam with his whole family. After he refused, the group reportedly threatened him with "dire consequences"
Arshed offered to quit his job, but the businessman allegedly said he would "kill" him if he were to leave.
He apparently also told Christian mediators that he would never allow the Christian family to live somewhere else.
This week tensions raised after Sultan reported a theft of 500,000 Pakistani Rupees the businessman had offered the couple to drop the case if they convert to Islam or "else that both would not see their children again."
However, "Arshed refused to convert and stood firm in his faith. Arshed`s wife was raped by the police and he was burned alive," Friday, March 19, local Christians said, speaking on condition of anonimity.
The case comes at a time when church groups have complained about growing attacks against minority Christians by Muslim militants, often with the alleged support by local law enforcement officials and other authorities.


This is a typical example .One should have found a lot of other similar news from the "opposite side" ,blaming Christians about burned Muslims.

To me the most important aspect of the news is the picture and the use of the human sensibility to assault or to defend a religion .

Here human beings are used as numbers or empty containers to be filled with a meaning .This meaning may kill them . No matter.

No matter.

Police means State.Policemen are paid by the State ,almost everywhere. How can they "back " Muslims? In other news Police establish the truth and declares that one of the two contenders is guilty and the other one is right. It implies that State can establish what is truth . But a secular State.

I am against the violence of the images. I am against the images that can convey any meaning .The truth is in the eyes of the observer not in the image itself that can be brutal ,like the one on the top. I am against to use of images to convey a feeling and after a feeling an opinion .

Was the man ,who now is reportedly dead , aware of the opposite "use" of his image and of one of his life episode made by two contenders,i.e. two RELIGIONS through their supporters ?

Where is the human dignity and the care for humanity ? How can humanity , a single man ,the poor man of the story and his soul (now) be united again to God if thething we judge as being the most important is to establish who is the victim and who is the executioner?

Both the allegedly victim and the executioner(s) are humans.

After having written this I think that establish who is the victim and who is the executioner is uncalled - for .

The name of the Hospital where the man received the first aid is a pretty catholic name .
I know nothing about the geography of Rawalpindi, or where Holy Family Hospital might be located in reference to the police station where Masih and his wife were savaged.
However, I doubt it is a coincidence that they were finally given decent care at what—from the name—is likely a Christian administered hospital.
(I'm not entirely sure what the status of the Holy Family Hospital is now. It was established in 1927 by the Christian mission of Philadelphia, was taken over by the Pakistani government in 1977, but was "granted autonomy" in June 1998. I'm not sure if it is once again Christian-run—but it seems unlikely, if it were not, that it would retain such a name in the heart of Dar-al-Islam)

Maybe the name ,and the care , hasnt changed because the pubblic officer or the person in charge doesn't know the meaning of "Holy Family".

Again one Ignorance in disguise.

The Qur'an says there is "no compulsion in religion " but Islamic law and the Qur'an itself are actually full of subtle and not-at-all-subtle means of coercion of non-believers (e.g., dhimmi status, the jizya tax, and of course, warfare). Add to that a situation where authorities, steeped in hatred of unbelievers are not accountable, and this is what happens.

The Bible and the Gospel say the same thing. How can a religion be "compulsory" ? How can being religious or accepting one religion instead of another can be related with job or with with any other material cause ?

The "victim" who is described us as "to stand firm in his faith" isn't using his religion to show something , to confirm his faith through martyrdom and thus isn't he trying to becme a God itself ,using religion and the common values attributed to religion by the human culture?

Why life , being alive is considered less important than to die for an idea, for a religion, for an opinion ? Would there not be any opinion , any religion ,any notion of martyrdom without life ?

Witnessing our faith , witnessing God is not related with our life itself? Why to sacrifice a life ,which the religions themselves claim to be the biggest sacred God's gift ,get the highest meaning of witness and of faith in God ?

Again ,Ignorance in disguise. The worldliest aim defeating God and ...winning appearently.

Again Humanity used by Culture against Nature.

The genocide of all the minorities in every part of the world is allowed to continue by the non action and the lack of reaction of every free thinker.The Christians accuse the Muslim of nazist genocide of the minorities while the Nazist ideology is rooted in a Christian soil.

The absolutely amoral Muslim and Christian sense of total entitlement, and the sheer rage that spews forth if a non-Muslim or a non-Christian refuses to submit, and the revelling, if they have power, in the use of that power to the max to hurt anyone who is powerless to resist or escape, is here displayed in all its revolting ugliness. Muslims and Christians and Jewish love to accuse others of blasphemy and desecration, but it is they who blaspheme against and desecrate all that is holy, good, true and beautiful, every single day.
I hope that the children, though traumatised by the sight of their parents being attacked and violated, will forget all this and that the FORCE OF LIFE will conquer them and will draw them into the marvellous and self renovating dance of Nature and Life which is so far away from the cathegorizations of the stupid Mohammedans and Christians who probably thought they could destroy the man's marriage and his 'honor' by publicly raping his wife...or making this a martyrdom image on the other side .

In the middle stand a woman soul, a man soul ,three children souls who don't belong to any religion really. Their life and their death will proceed over our disputing about them.

The must be a reason according to whom they and their community "deserved"what they lived.

We can just guess but not blame!

Note that the event happened on friday which is considered as the most sacred day by Muslims.Also Christians they never hesitate to kill and to savage people on Sundays ...it means that human being can decide and name what is sacred and then can forget it when a bigger task comes...or just remember it to use it against another faith ....

Can be God be against himself ? Does God depend on the believers ?

The meaning of Giordano Bruno - A blog is born

Some days ago I had a lesson with one of my students ,Kaan and while talking to him I realized what "blog" could represent for me.

I thought suddenly: "This is a subtle thread , a yarn, a wire that can help a silent hero to talk without coming out of the silence and of the cloud of past that surrounds him ".

So I am starting my blog as a message to the world and to myself in the world and out of the world.

First of all I should clarify the meaning of the names.

A name is the most powerful way to bring everything from the void space to existence.

Just by saying or writing or thinking something we give life to the infinity .

We create a border and we pass it pronouncing, writing ,thinking , focusing , settling a core around which an entity shows itself to disappear immediately soon after.

The same can be done with any soul lived before us. Thinking , writing , following his life can set up a spell and at the same time a prayer that can help us to illuminate our existence through a past life and a past example of beauty and greatness.

So the guiding soul of my blog is Giordano Bruno .

To better cast the spell "Filippo" Bruno. This was the name originally imposed to this soul by his relatives when he came to life from the emptiness and from the fullness of the Universe.

His execution or "negation" happened on 17th of february 1600 . Again . as many times along History , an organized religion suffocated the natural religion. Culture burned Nature.

My writing will be in an humble attempt to keep Nature alive against Culture.

We should burn at stake all the religions by studying them and by makeing them a flame that transfigures all the dark sides .

Organized religions have cast a shadow over the natural religion , the natural desire to converge to the original unity with the Founder .

All the self proclaimed men of religion have prayed , praised and acted to created an earthly God , a "second pole " : Bruno has taught us a reverse pray .

We want to find God in the Nature and not to deny Nature to find the man .

This is the hushed flame I will keep burning ,before the silence .

Prometeus .