Posted on 03/20/2012 8:18:05 PM PDT by the scotsman
'Up to 11 boys were castrated while in the care of the Dutch Roman Catholic church in the 1950s to rid them of homosexuality, a newspaper investigation has said.
A young man was castrated in 1956 after telling police he was being abused by priests, the newspaper reported.
The justice minister is investigating the role of the government at the time.
Last year, an inquiry found thousands of children had been sexually abused in Dutch Catholic institutions since 1945.
Dutch MPs called for an inquiry after the report was published in the NRC Handelsblad newspaper at the weekend.'
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Good grief. Lock them all up.
Deplorable.
Not to take blame from the Catholics (there’s no reason why two or more can’t be wrong), but one has to wonder how enthusiastically the press is trying to uncover government abuses. I’m pretty darn sure statist abuses are trivial in when compared.
Let's see, that was 56 years ago. Everyone involved is almost certainly dead, but--yeah, let's lock everyone up today anyway. That's the ticket.
The Catholic Church has had millions of members over its 2,000 year history. There will always be bad people and mistakes, when you have that many people. However, these mistakes do not overshadow the other works of the church. This story has clearly been dug up due to recent events....meh.
yes, a long time ago and in a country far far away.
At that time homosexuality was considered a mental illness. How was this treated by other institutions of the time?
I don’t care how long ago it was. This is an organization that has some serious institutional issues. They do nothing but attempt to shift blame or cover up a host of horrors. Sickening.
Why didn’t the cut the nuts off the pedophile priests instead? That’d make a hell of a lot more sense.
The US government was castrating the “mentally retarded” back then, part of a eugenics program or something
Did you even bother to read the article? In a British publication about a Dutch government investigation?
The biggest difference is that a church has a very limited pool of victims while government can do whatever it wants, who is going to arrest the government?
I would be inclined towards scepticism on this one until there is firmer evidence than just the word of one person based on hearsay. There is another reason for scepticism. In the early and mid 20th Century many countries adopted Eugenics and among other thing forcably castrated/sterilized those they considers “unfit” to be parents. And it was not just the obviously unfit but those considered “feebleminded” a condition can could only be discerned by panels of experts. Such laws existed in 20 US States, in all Scandanavian countries, Switserland and of course NAZI germany. It Sweden it lasted up to the mid-70s and it is estimated that some 70,000 young people in their reformatories were forcibly sterilized. The point I wish to make is this. The most important world-wide opponent of the Eugenics movement was the Catholic Church, and no Catholic countries has any Eugenic type laws.
While abuses have racked Catholic insitutions, I find it highly improbable that this type of abuse took place and if it did it certainly was rare and nowhere like on the scale of countries such as Swedenn. But I stand to be corrected by the available evidence.
I shouldn’t think this would bother the Dutch too much. They are down with euthanasia/assisted suicide, “presumed consent” organ harvesting and all that good stuff. The Dutch are forward thinkers, ya know.
Hogwash:
"In 2011 the Deetman Commission, acting on the 2010 request of the Conference of Bishops, and the Dutch Religious Conference, reported on its inquiry into abuse cases from 1945 to 2010 affecting children entrusted to the care of the church in the Netherlands.[42]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sexual_abuse_scandal_in_Europe#Netherlands
European countries have been investigating these scandals for several years, and this investigation was requested by the Church itself, so no dice trying to blame some conspiracy this time.
What is not being checked is how many SECULAR psychiatric centers castrated aggressive homosexuals back then. This was the good old days, when the Kennedys had Rosemary given a lobotomy because she was having temper tantrums and chasing boys. Some doctors did recommend castration to “cure” homosexuality back then too. Don’t blame the church for the psychiatric fads.
I personally doubt these were passive boys who were castrated for the fun of it (excuse my pun). And the “church” didn’t do it: Doctors did it to boys who were hospitalized/institutionalized in Church run institutions.
Im not Catholic or Catholic apologist. But it’s interesting,,, every perversion know to man is celebrated and promoted. We must never speak ill of people who want sex changes, must pay for it,,
Must embrace infanticide and euthanasia. We must embrace the worst sodomy imaginable,, and teach it in the schools.
But let one human member of one of the largest organized groups on earth do something wrong,,,and somehow, we are supposed to blame the whole group. Why is this a story about “Catholic” wrongdoing,, and not just the name of the monster who did this wrongdoing?
All you have to do is declare someone mentally unfit,then you can do whatever you want to them.Thank you government for teaching me this valuable lesson.
Otherwise it is not exactly amazing how the system falls on young people who make trouble for people on power but it is a shame that youth have enormous shortcomings in understanding how much the real world can be set against them.
And once that understanding becomes clear then the real work begins although in the case of that dude,I believed there wasn’t much he could have done after this.
Get the facts straight.
Get the facts straight.
“especially when it was pedophile homosexual priests that violated them in the first place.”
Again,,,im not Catholic. But my official ruling, is that if one is a pedo or homo “priest”,, then in truth, he simply is not a priest _at all_.
Same old two-wrongs-make-a-right game being played here.
The CC CASTRATED the boys????
Where on earth did they even get the chemicals and know-how to do so???
Oh - wait - it was the GOVERNMENT that did so.
But, hey, let’s not lose an opportunity. Say the CHURCH did it. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Can’t be more bigoted and disgusting. Yes, the CC hid the disgusting acts of the gay pedophiles who infested the Priesthood, and they are equally culpable because of that. Of course, the U.S. public schools did the same - except in larger numbers and more often no matter how you look at it. So did many other churches targeted by the gay pedophiles.
But, pile on the CC cause ... well, cause they are not agreeing to gay marriage, the damned bigots!
the GAY pedophile priests.
Does everyone forget the commie infiltration of the church so as to undermine religion? This would certainly do it in spades.
The US government also allowed lobomys on patients with parents concent...IE Old joe kennedy’s daughter and without his wifes OK. Also put some military at high risk during the testing of the Nuclear/or atomic bombs...stationing them closer to the bombs center....this government has done many sick things long before any of us came along....
Dutch Roman Catholic Church (Old Catholic Church) is NOT in communion with Rome. The Catholic Church in Holland IS in communion with Rome. Two different entities. Which entity is the article about?
Words have meaning.
All priests who take a vow of celibacy should back it up with a physical separation from any possible future sex. Not gonna use ‘em, not gonna need ‘em.
luv your tag
seems like this would’ve been a practice back then,
sick by today’s standard, but not anything exclusive to the catholic church
So why doesn't the screaming headline scream something like, "Two generations ago, Dutch psychiatrists castrated boys"?
Why? Because "the Church" did no such thing; and it's no fun putting the blame on psychiatrists.
The fact is that some psychiatrists of the late 19th and through most of the 20th centuries, acting on quite public and elaborate eugenicist and behaviorist beliefs, committed incredible aggressions upon people with persistent sexual and other disorders; homosexuals were among their victims, though not the only ones.
It was the Catholic Church's doctrines which were the main bulward of resistance against eugenicist and behaviorist abuse of persons.
If this indeed happened (and we know it happened because of a single unnamed source 60 years later?) it would be because that institution, even if called "Catholic," was staffed by people promoting and acting upon the secular psychiatric ideologies of the day, and not the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
(BTW, they'll still castrate boys, mind you: but now it's done to cure [adjust, restructure] transsexuals, and not homosexuals. And it's presented as humane, enlightened, and progressive: a right, not a mutilation.)
These Dutch psychiatrists: it's a little late to say "hang 'em" 60 years later, but God knows they may all presently be in hell.
Huh? I don’t think you’ve paid close attention to this story.
The story which has been bouncing around the media like crazy is an attack on Deetman (not part of his report).
I find it interesting that his report last December recieved very little attention in the American media, relative to this one case.
I think I know why - the timing works well with the current political battles concernong the catholic church.
You don’t have to agree with me...but please don’t mis-report that this case is a result of Deetman...that is just patently untrue.
Heterosexual pedophiles lust for children of the opposite sex. Homosexual pedophiles lust for children of the same sex.
What is not being checked is how many SECULAR psychiatric centers castrated aggressive homosexuals back then. This was the good old days, when the Kennedys had Rosemary given a lobotomy because she was having temper tantrums and chasing boys. Some doctors did recommend castration to cure homosexuality back then too. Dont blame the church for the psychiatric fads.
I personally doubt these were passive boys who were castrated for the fun of it (excuse my pun). And the church didnt do it: Doctors did it to boys who were hospitalized/institutionalized in Church run institutions.
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I had a feeling it was something along these lines.
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