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?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.