More chemo but not worried

The early bird, I was

It was exciting as well as the fastest time I have been in and out of hospital; it was all over in just an hour and much really was done.

My appointment was for 9:30 in the morning, which was early, I had to set my alarm for 8:00 AM and after 3 “snooze” knocks, I was up and out of bed in 15 minutes.

I had to get my wounds paraphernalia that is the Mepitel silicone film dressing, the absorbent material and the bandage. I have never said that the bandages are self-adhesive, the nurses love those bandages, it means they do not have to fiddle with sealing tape and there is no danger the bandage would suddenly come off.

Quick to the point

With the bus and the tram, I was in hospital by 9:23 AM and within 5 minutes I was called in by the doctor, the consultant oncologist is away in New Orleans on some peer junket as these very senior people and wont to and I have met this youngish affable doctor before.

I hobbled on my crutches to his office and chatted about my condition, the condition of the wounds, the sudden occurrence and disappearance of dysentery over the last week, the couple of time I was so nauseous I was sick in the toilet and my sometimes itchy hay-fever eyes which he thought might be related to the chemotherapy.

The doctors usually require a nurse to do the bandages, but I am already a dab hand at doing them myself, I wanted him to see the condition of my two feet in the hope that I could persuade them not to put me on another course of chemotherapy.

I got out my scissors and snipped of the bandages and he was quite impressed at the technique first and then the condition of my two feet.

Six courses were prescribed

The minor detail I did not have about my treatment was that normally for Kaposi’s Sarcoma six courses of chemotherapy are recommended – my heart sank, but for good behaviour, if that count he has written in my notes that maybe I be let off after the fifth – it would all be well, I am quite hopeful.

The fact was I thought an assessment was done each time to ascertain the efficacy of the chemotherapy before offering another course – you learn.

Immediately after that, appointments were made for Christmas Eve for another date with the oncologist and the Monday after Christmas for the fifth course of chemotherapy, the fourth course is on Monday.

The trick of a prick

They also needed to do a blood check which was quite an express service, I got my number, I was called and I did not have to wait be get to see the nurse, as I pulled up my sleeve the veins are glowing ready for the needle prick, before I knew it, the cotton wool was on my skin and we were ready to say good bye.

She hoped I had a wonderful day, I wished her a rewarding day which gets quite slow in the afternoons and she was going to be there until 5:00 PM.

When she mentioned the weekend, I hoped she would make the best of it and before I knew it I was talking about my guest from Stockholm who had contacted me through my hospital season blogs, who became friends and is now visiting.

The nurse also blogs about embroidery and I found myself giving her the address of my blog page, I hope I get to see hers if she leaves a comment on my blogs.

The compassionate priest

Then, one final thing, I had promised myself that on days without chemotherapy I would visit the catholic priest who came to my bedside when I was in hospital, so after he attended to patient, customer, parishioner – really what do you call someone who sees the hospital chaplain?

He invited me into his office, offered me a drink and we chatted at length about so many things, I kept in mind he had an appointment in 30 minutes and really, I do not want to take up his time on a seemingly social visit.

I however learnt that it is rewarding for the priests too to know that patients they have seen before are recovering well and though there are dangers of getting emotionally involved the situation is a priest cannot really be apathetic in their ministry which is one that should thrive on compassion.

The hospital parish

A hospital might well be a parish, but the parishioners do not have the essential quality of permanence as you would have in a local community, they come and go, they are old and new, they are ill or well and mostly every time, they are different.

One interesting insight in our conversation was about the professionalism of doctor that do not necessarily have to be empathetic and the caring nature of nurses who are involved in the everyday treatment and recuperation process – the latter do always get the chocolates or flowers but the former, go home sometimes with bottles of wine as gratitude from their patients.

My visit to hospital was no doubt very pleasant and fulfilling, it is however another wonderful course of chemotherapy on Monday again – Thank God always.

Archbishop thought child sexual abuse was not criminal

A moral evil of no criminal import

Just a week ago I wrote about how the trust parents and society reposed in institutions that care for or educate children was betrayed and how children became victims of abuse with no means of being heard out and helped.

The strength of feeling presented in that blog had not begun to ebb when I came across a comment made by a one-time American Catholic Archbishop thus [1], “We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature.”

My blood boiled like I had just unfortunately fallen out of the pincer-grip of a giant man-eating crab into the gaping fire and brimstone of hell and my skin crawled like a million scorpions had awakened under my epidermis.

The clergy beyond the law

Somehow, Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland [2] had weakly found a way of splitting hairs between the moral evil and criminal act of abusing children.

It is strange that if a child were abused by the non-clergy, the abuser would be a paedophile but by this definition as espoused by a person of the Catholic Church hierarchy, it is just a moral evil – if I may add of self-gratification where innocent children are conscripted into pederasty and made catamites for inordinate desire of evil people pretending to be holy and consecrated to the service of God.

Most revered and respected

The Most Reverend Rembert George Weakland who apparently belongs to the Order of Saint Benedict [3] and thereby is a Benedictine monk under the Rule of Saint Benedict [4] “resigned” his Archbishopric in 2002 when it was revealed that he paid $450,000 of diocesan fund to a man who accused him of date rape in 1998, however, that was also the year he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75, the coincidence making his retirement rather ignominious at the time.

Weakland is in the process of writing his memoirs and in it he gives insight into his complicity in reassigning known priest abusers to other parishes without informing parishioners.

In civil society, a known sex offender in the US or the UK would be on a sex offender’s register having probably served time for their offences and key members of the community would know of that offender’s presence in order to prevent a situation where children can be groomed and preyed on.

Growing out of it

Obviously, these are recent developments, in the Catholic Church the archbishop avers without much conviction or empathy but with breathataking naivety that “My general reasoning was that there were probably some kids who 'grew out of it,' and then some who were deeply disturbed for life.”

We thank God for those who presumable “grew out of it”, but for those who were deeply disturbed for life, I do wonder for the kind of eternal retribution that awaits the priests who stole their childhoods and sentenced the children to an unimaginably dark life whilst they walked away scot free, free of blame, free of sanction and free to take tribute as holy men.

It beggars belief that this kind of thinking prevailed in the mind of very religious and erudite senior members of the clergy who had the power to change things and ensure the abuse stopped forthwith.

As the Archbishop of Milwaukee for 25 years from 1977 to 2002, he presided over a diocese where a chronicle of 800 pages titled The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee [5] highlights the systematic management, toleration and rotation of child sexual abusers in the diocese.

Rotating the abusers

It would appear that the Catholic Church did know about these abuses and the re-assignment of suspect priests from as far back as 1985 but very little was done as Father Thomas Brundage stated as the beginning of that chronicle – “After 1985, all churches in the United States were on notice that they cannot put priests who have had incidents of having sexual abuse in parishes or any setting where they would have access to children. For the church authorities to have allowed this to happen was sinful, more than negligent, and I believe they should be held accountable.”

The Most Reverend Weakland’s humiliation would have been complete with the deposition [6] he gave on the 5^th and 6^th of June that ran into 312 pages, fully transcribed and highlighting the activities of 13 named priests.

From America to Ireland

But this is just one diocese in America, in 2007, the Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles paid child abuse claims of $660 million [7] and in the Republic of Ireland where Colm O’Gorman [8] became of the first of many to report abuse to the civil authorities and hold the church and its hierarchy accountable [9] for abuse, he was awarded EUR 300,000 in damages in 2003.

Colm O’Gorman has just published a book, Beyond Belief [10], where he highlights the reality for many an abused child “I was living in a world where a priest who spoke the words of God used me for sex, and there was no-one to tell.”, for “priest who spoke the words of God”, consider father, brother, uncle, sister, mother, aunt, teacher, pastor, person of authority, respected community figure, the list is endless.

Colm O’Gorman was on BBC HardTalk [11] last week where the questions were hard to ask, harder to respond to and almost too hard to comprehend in hearing that any of this could really have happened on God’s own earth and Ireland in particular, but the publication of The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse [12] was a revelation that turned the stomach with unprecedented revulsion.

Is the abuse in Africa too?

The next big question then is, is all this institutionalised child sexual abuse only in America and Ireland or is the current revelation the tip of the iceberg of atrocious moral evils that might be taking place in South America, Africa and Asia?

Places where people in religious authority are held in high esteem, where child sexual abuse could be seen as the collateral taking of spoils for the greater good that these institutions bring to society. Thereby, the end satisfactory justifies the means.

Where the child abused sees it as part of the sacrifice for a better life in the future, where even if parents or the authorities knew of all this abuse the child would be berated, scolded and threatened into absolute silent and pliancy.

Until people start to speak up about familial and institutional abuse in these places rather than allowing the fear of shame to perpetuate an unspeakable evil, the abuse would continue and abusers would congregate to take their sexual favours off our children – IT MUST STOP!, but it can only stop when people start to speak up.

Sources

[1] ‘We did not know that child abuse was a crime,’ says retired Catholic archbishop

[2] Rembert Weakland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Order of Saint Benedict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Rule of Saint Benedict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee

[6] Deposition of Archbishop Rembert Weakland

[7] Catholic Church pays off paedophile accusers [akin.blog-city.com]

[8] Colm O'Gorman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[9] BBC NEWS | Programmes | Correspondent | Suing the Pope - Colm's story

[10] Beyond Belief by Colm O’Gorman

[11] BBC iPlayer - HARDtalk: Colm O'Gorman – Only playable for UK residents, this iPlayerList might eventually work sometime in the future, it is under development.

[12] The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse

Child sexual abuse requires greater parental indignation

Where is the outrage?

Words have begun to fail me before I have finished the first paragraph but I will not relent until what is to be written is written.

I cannot muster enough righteous indignation to the lack of boiling outrage to the report about the abuse of children in Ireland and the implications to abuse all around the world vested in the bosom of the Catholic Church.

I know some abuse

My interest is simple; I was first sexually abused at 7 and then even though we lead a seemingly privileged life by Nigerian standards of having servants, cooks, gardeners, security men and drivers, that in itself bought other issues.

These were people employed by my parents or the companies my father worked for who were trusted by my parents to ensure that we were well cared for, safe and out of harm’s way.

Some of these people were sponsored even up to tertiary education level by my parents, but behind the scenes at least 3 of the male servants took sexual favours by inducement, enticement and veiled threats – between the ages of 7 and 11, I do wonder if I was a sexual deviant, a willing participant in games or an abused child in sexual activity with people at least in their 20s.

Tough but bearable

I cannot say any of the abuse was systematic, persistent or violent, but it was sustained, I welcomed my parents home, they none the wiser, the servants expressed their loyalties and things just happened.

I went to a co-educational boarding school, it was tough in terms of discipline and the regimented lifestyle, I was at one time bullied but the whole experience was hardly indelible to the extent of leaving psychological scars, I was fortunate, I was lucky.

I talk about it for the hopeful benefit of helping others walk away from those nasty events of their past but nothing I went through can compare in any manner to the things other children went through as revealed in the reports of The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse [1].

A charity camp in a church

It is sorrowfully and painfully heartrending to read of the sustained, systematic and endemic abuse [2] in Catholic-run children’s institutions in Ireland, it has taken over 8 years to fully compile this report but it has done little to assuage the pain of the victims.

I am compelled to put Concentration Camp, Christian Charity and Catholic Church side by side as synonyms of each other and until much is done to bring the perpetrators to justice, I hope that this alignment gains more momentum.

It is societal compassion that compels us to seek ways of caring for children who are orphans or seriously underprivileged and somehow in our naivety we believed that Christian Charities had volumes of the milk of human kindness to care and cater for the wellbeing of these children.

Our faith and trust in them

Even parents thought these Catholic institutions would instil both discipline and Christian conduct in their children such that many sent their children to these places.

For those children with parents, they probably suffered less but those for whom society had bequeathed the trust of parenthood and guardianship to the agents of the Catholic Church seemed to have been sentenced to hell on earth and here we were thinking they were been brought up as goodly Christian ladies and gentlemen.

The nuns and the priests terrorised the children, raped and molested many, these places were residential homes to society but the reality for the children who lived in these places was akin to concentration camps.

The children were not gassed but what they suffered is heinously unspeakable, and unfortunately, I do not see enough indignation and outrage to bring the perpetrators to justice.

This was a Christian Charity running Concentration Camps supported by the Catholic Church; reprehensible does not begin to help appreciate the situation, when shall we really lose faith and exact judgement?

Secrecy and succour to the perpetrators

These were children who had no voice, who when they spoke suffered more privation and violence than we can ever imagine and now that the atrocious acts have been exposed it is unfortunate that we see the faces of the damaged children now adults but those holy priests and nuns are given succour within the church.

Like concentration camp commandants and guards, when they have done their evil in one place and they were at the risk of exposure, the church moved them to another concentration camp where they had new children to abuse and gratify their sadistic perversion in the light of their vows of celibacy.

The Catholic Church is complicit in the abuse of the children and paying up for the abuse does not half address the way our trust, hope and faith in Christian Charity has been dashed, shattered and damaged.

Suffer the children not make the children suffer

If we as a society will do nothing about this, I would go back to where the idea of real Christian Charity to children began.

The parents brought their children to Jesus, he touched them and blessed them and the disciples saw this and began to rebuke the parents, it is there that Jesus then said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” [Luke 18:16 KJV]

The idea here is than a child enters a Christian situation to be blessed and their character, implicit trust and faith in the people who care for them is characteristic of those of seek the kingdom of God. Where a child has had this trust breached by adults gratifying their inordinate and despicable desires through persistent and systematic abuse, what we have is children made to suffer rather than children suffered to see Christian goodness.

Millstones and necks in the sea

To those people who have damaged the children, Jesus had one message to whoever has the authority to carry out the right and just action. “These little ones believe in me. It would be best for the person who causes one of them to lose faith to be drowned in the sea with a large stone hung around his neck.” [Matthew 18:6 GWT]

I find no ambiguity or equivocation in that statement, these children arrived in these residential homes with the hope that they would find succour and preparation for worthwhile lives, they found hell meted out by trusted religious figures given the responsibility for their care.

They caused these children to lose faith, in other translations, they offended the children, they caused them to stumble, they caused them to sin – for all the heinous acts committed against the children, if the least is to cause them to lose faith – lose faith in society, in Christian Charity, in mentoring, in hope and the will to live, the statement is the same.

Put a weighty millstone around their necks as one translation says and drown them in the sea. These abusers by the basic invocation of Jesus Christ do not deserve another day of oxygen, they were not to be hanged or crucified which is the punishment of the day but thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around their necks.

Only the severest punishments should suffice

It calls on any form of justice that we might have in our seemingly civilised world to address this abuse in the most exacting way, the severest punishment we can find in our law books without any recourse parole, rehabilitation or reconsideration.

I am no death penalty advocate, but if that be on the books of the countries in which the act was perpetrated then that should be the just punishment. However, I see no necks to put weighty millstones around and there is no sea in sight.

Where is the honour in the Catholic Church?

It is incumbent on the church not only to apologise and show contrition through condemnation of the acts, they should follow the Christ-like idea to its conclusion – expose these vermin and have the law take its full course.

We still hunt after Nazi criminals, more so should be hunt down child abusers, I would dare to equate their acts with those of the Nazi regime, in fact, their acts for the way it has affected the victims is probably worse.

The church must be compelled to cooperate in exposing all those involved in serious criminal activity; society must not be complacent with being blindsided by the religious entities when they harbour criminals.

Parents must speak up

Most of all, if you are a parent and are not already filled with outrage about this, I do wonder.

The children once had parents, I do not think it was the wish of their parents to leave their children orphans and in the least if they had any choice in the matter, they would have liked for society to care for their children in some loving and caring way.

If I were a parent I would want to know that if I expressly left my child in the care of anyone they were really being cared for in the way I would where I also have a choice in choosing the carer and where I can make none of the choices, I will still have those expectations.

Where children have no parents, I would be hopeful that other parents in society would offer the blanket of parent care or at least parental oversight to ensure the children are not used and abused. What has been exposed is bad enough, their sure is much abuse going on still somewhere in our neighbourhoods and it all should stop.

The children lost their childhood, it was taken from them by people we trusted would do a good job on behalf of society under the auspices of the church – if this matter ends here, we have done our humanity a great injustice and the victims a second injustice – we should be bold enough to take the scare out care.

Sources

[1] BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Abuse report - at a glance

[2] Sex abuse 'endemic' in Catholic institutions - Telegraph

When we were gay

Victimless probably; crime probably not

For a while, I have wondered about the issue of dealing with ‘victimless crimes’. Let me be clear about this, these are activities that occur consensually between people, probably in inappropriate places and are criminalised by a public morality because they do not represent what is the ‘norm’.

This is for all intents and purposes a very difficult subject that a blog cannot even begin to address.

One recalls that many years ago a world-renowned musician was caught importuning in a public convenience having been egged on by an agent provocateur member of law enforcement.

Using a public convenience in other members of the public might happen upon a situation that can cause disgust, distress and disdain is unfortunate, but it begs the question why adults of means and ways would do such things.

Then when the law serves to entrap people into criminality, I can find no words to express how appalling that is.

Good men lost for being themselves

This issue dare not speak its name, but one can only wonder how much more advanced our world would be if Alan Turing had not committed suicide in relation to his lifestyle whilst his professional life literally ended the Second World War by the work that broke German ciphers.

Probably Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton and Kit Marlowe a contemporary of Shakespeare might have gone on to do greater works than they have been acclaimed for. We have lost great men to the scourge of what society cannot seem to bear, moral conduct matters a lot, but to what extent the concern of other people about your private business?

There is a history to this talk, and not too far back in the 60s the worst thing anyone could be called was a bugger – it was a term of completely despicable import which supposedly equated practitioners with every unimaginable abomination of sexual activity, it could not be spoken in hushed tones less talked about.

Good men doing good things regardless

By and large, more can now speak up about a life, a love and a care that is hardly in the majority but is significant to those involved.

So watching Oprah earlier this evening, she was talking about all the charity work that makes changes to people’s lives, one of which was the rebuilding of a community in Sri Lanka where a member of her staff had lost a loved one and that person had returned home to America to get things moving to make a difference in that Sri Lankan community.

Women with jobs, houses and restaurants being rebuild, lives being put together again just because of a love that once before could dare not speak its name.

Wont see them in church

It still dare not speak in its name in many more places, as the church which is supposed to provide succour to all; privileged, deprived, depraved, destitute and all.

It selects those it would accommodate and rails like a screaming banshee against those who probably need it most, because they are probably more problematic to handle than easy social issues.

The greatest animosity now exists between them and the church and they distance themselves even further to be able to handle the conflicts of mind and purpose that has lead others like Justin Fashanu to commit suicide.

Sometimes the message from the church about reinforcing the virtues of good morality is founded on speaking more about ‘immorality’ than about the benefits of greater aspirations to holiness.

A business would not survive it is concentrated on managing debt than promoting its core business attributes.

Nigeria Un-Gay-ria

So, it was interesting amidst the crises that encompass Nigeria, most especially the oil conflicts, then the problems of the Presidency, the economy and corruption, they found ample time to rail against this abomination which is a Western sin.

Give me a big break here, the only difference between the West and Africa on this issue is they in the West can speak about it.

This ‘sin’ has been within mankind for so long, even some medicine men in the deepest darkest Africa to the townships of modern Africa have names that are as expressive as the activity itself with nothing left to the imagination.

We had names for these activities long before the West civilised us with the concept of acceptance, that level of hypocrisy is daunting if not amazing.

The internet reveals that many are who they are in Nigeria seeking the space to be themselves in a modern democracy and this is going to shut down by the moral police of the church and the Presidency.

Liberally gifting the illiberal

Between America and Nigeria we have had the most liberal church that has an ordained priest of that persuasion support, sponsor and equip the most illiberal church that wants to secede from the Anglican Communion because of this.

Methinks we have completely misplaced priorities on the vocation of the church which is to call people and not divide on the basis of not wanting to call in certain people.

Anyway, it is still a topic that whips up such deep emotions most especially amongst non-practitioners that it is laughable and amusing to see the vituperation that could almost accompany the stroke that precedes sudden death as disgust overwhelms their ability to really say how it does affect them – personally.

Love a homosexual, it might just change you or maybe just change your thinking.