| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/7/2009 10:27:16 PM | This 9yr old girl was raped for 3 years and impregnated by her 23yr old stepfather. With her slight frame, doctors feared for her life and aborted her twin fetuses last wednesday.
The Archbishop response:
They do NOT excommunicate the rapist.
They DO excommunicate the girl's mom as well as the doctors who (probably) saved her life.
Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho said in an interview on Globo television. "When a human law is against the law of God, that law has no value."
http://news.aol.ca/article/brazilian-abortion-mds-excommunicated/554106/
Any thoughts? Anyone in support of the church's decision?
All input is welcome. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/7/2009 11:56:00 PM | Well I don't know how it would be possible to take a quote like that (the Archbishop's) out of context...
Vile, inhuman, disgusting, backward, hypocritical nonsense. The fact that the Vatican is supporting this is a step backwards. The child's life was endangered by the pregnancy --> WHICH WAS CAUSED BY BEING RAPED BY HER STEP-FATHER!
To paraphrase from Peter Griffin's adopted and very Catholic father on Family Guy, "Even a tambourine shaking Baptist" would know this decision is wrong, wrong, wrong. This and other similar decisions will go a long way towards making the Vatican obsolete and out of touch with Catholic followers.
This is, however, their last bastion of real terrestrial power...the kind of power they used to wield in Europe until the 20th Century. Now in Africa, parts of South-East Asia, and all of Latin America, their word is still absolute.
Good for the Brazilian President for rebuking the Archbishop and the Vatican for this scandalous decision.
I shudder to think about how many other kinds of backroom crimes of the Church are being swept under the carpet in Latin America.
I have no beef with Catholicism as a faith and Catholics as people, nor should anyone else...but this kind of thing is not a matter of faith, it's a matter of basic morality. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/8/2009 12:38:24 AM | Rockon...
I Read this article as well as other related articles in the print and online media.
Maybe the good Archbishop was taking the biblical quote...."suffer the little children..." rather literally.
There are several issues that impinge upon this case
1. The attempted frustration of the secular laws in Brazil in relation to abortion by the representatives of the Catholic Church.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, except where the victim has been raped, or when the mother's life is in danger should the pregnancy go to full term. It would seem that both these conditions were satisfied, in the child's case. The medical opinion was that the immaturity of her reproductive organs were such that even allowing a single fetus to go to full term would have been hazrdous to the life of both mother and fetus, let alone allowing both of the twin fetuses.
It boggles the imagination that the Church's solution to this matter is for the child to be compelled to carry the fetuses until a caesarian could be performed on the 9 year old child. This rather assinine solution seems to confirm that the proponents of that option have little understanding of human biology, and the probable consequences for the mother and the fetuses.
The case serves as a good example of why the law of the land should be secular rather than sectarian.
2. Excommunication from the church.
When all is said and done, and all the mystique and religious aura is removed form the Catholic Church....it really is not much more than a club in the way it operates. Fall foul of a club's rules and bylaws...and one can expect to be censured...or in serious cases, kicked out on one's clacker. So it is with religious clubs too I guess. Perhaps Groucho Marx said it best when he stated, "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."
The Catholic (and other churches) make much of speaking for God. Perhaps God should speak for himself/herself/itself/themselves....then silly men in frocks might have less reason to give themselves the moral authority to speak on behalf of those who don't share their convictions.
My thoughts go to the 9 year old child, the child's mother and the medical team that made a tough but necessary call to do what was necessary to save the child's life.
The church's justification for excommunication was that "the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated."
I find the Church's position a little inconstant, given that Catholic members of the Nazi party and the Italian fascist party have not been excommunicated for "eliminating" innocent persons prior to and during World War II. The only Nazi Official to be excommunicated by the Catholic Church that I am aware of was Joseph Goebbels....but that was not for any heinous crimes against humanity....merely for marrying a protestant divorcee. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/8/2009 10:35:05 AM |
Upon learning of the abortion, the regional archbishop excommunicated the doctors, as well as the girl's mother. He did not excommunicate the step-father, saying the crime he is alleged to have committed, although deplorable, was not as bad as ending a fetus's life. It seems that you can be excommunicated for murder, but not for sexual abuse. That is against the values of Westerners. But this is Brazil, where I've seen it written that sex is like water down there, and where many porn stars are also prostitutes. It is a different world there.
Right now, the man is alleged of child abuse. But those allegations have not yet been proved in open court.
As far as the kid goes, there have been Brazilian girls who gave birth as young as 9 before, and I seem to recall even one girl as young as 6. So without more substantial proof than someone's say-so, I doubt that any doctor in the UK would agree with it, unless he just took a doctor's word for it. If those doctors had discussed the matter more thoroughly with the church, they probably would have understood the exact medical condition of the girl and agreed that it put her life at risk. But if the church was left out of the loop, then given the amount of disregard for the opinions of those who don't go with society's flow, they might have felt this was just an attempt to "toe the party line", much like a German woman might have had her children aborted in Nazi Germany if the father was a Jew, and doctors might have claimed that the expectant mother was in serious danger to cover it up.
I'm not saying all this definitely happened. But it could be the case. If so, then it might make more sense to me, as to why the church said what they said.
Of course, if I was anti-religious, then anything anyone would say to explain the actions of the church, would be like a red rag to a bull, to me, much like saying that "not all Jews are the greatest evil in the world", would have been like a red rag to a bull, to anyone brought up in Germany during the Nazi regime.
Abortion is illegal in Brazil, except where the victim has been raped, or when the mother's life is in danger should the pregnancy go to full term. If the case was sped up, so that the whole court case is conducted properly, but quickly, in a matter of days, that proved beyond doubt that he was the father, and it was rape, then it would not be illegal.
Likewise, if the doctors would be transparent about their process of diagnosis, which is only reasonable, as we live in an age when practically everyone is given the opportunity to understand the most complex of medical conditions, then it would be proved beyond doubt that the mother's life was in danger, which would again satisfy the church.
I simply believe that right now, there are only allegations and claims, that are not transparent to everyone, and that are not proved beyond doubt in the eyes of the people, and that leaves the church with the one question, that if it is definitely rape, and if it is definitely life-threatening, then why wasn't the evidence displayed for all to see, before the abortion happened?
I don't mean to disparage these doctors. But I do have a friend that told several doctors of leg pains that made her unable to walk. They diagnosed depression, and kept that diagnosis for 3 years. None of them ever looked at her legs at all. After 3 years, one doctor looked at her legs, and declared it thrombosis immediately, and put her straight on warfarin, which if you know, is dangerous for anyone not with a serious condition. So you have to be 100% sure before you prescribe it. Nor is this case alone. A LOT of people in the UK have experienced similar examples of negligence. Western medicine is at serious danger of being no longer trusted by anyone, unless doctors start taking serious action to seriously discourage such negligence. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/9/2009 9:47:06 AM |  Something deep in my gut tells me we aint gettin the whole truth and nothin but the truth so help me cheeseburgers.. Ive only been able to locate suspiciously inadequate reports of the story with mere one liners from all party's involved..
Things that make ya go "riiiiight".
chelloveck Where can I find these other articles youre referring to? Thanks ;) (Or anyone for that matter)
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/10/2009 9:49:28 AM | Well, well, well. What have we here? 
"I simply recalled what is in church canon law. Excommunication is automatic for those who participate in an abortion. I did not excommunicate anyone, just remembered the church’s law which says they are automatically excommunicated,”
-Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho
(Emphasis mine)
Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho, contrary to media reports (shocking, I know) *sneers* has denied media reports that he personally ordered the excommunications and the archbishop made it clear that the excommunication did not extend to the young girl at the centre of the case.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0306/1224242373838.html
Hence, if we are all outraged and itching to start a bar fight because we disagree with this ecclesiastical law, let us challenge not this man ordained by God, simply carrying out his religious duty, but the rightful opponent. The Roman Catholic Church.
 Good luck with that, bubba. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/10/2009 10:47:36 AM | reminds me of Quebec court Judge Raymonde Verreault , when a man was convicted of ANALLY raping his 13 -year old step-daughter
the judge gave him what most considered a very light sentence, and said in her summation:
"he (the convicted rapist) is to be commended for preserving the girl's virginity -{ not penetrating her vagina, but only her anus-} because that is important to their religion and culture.."
twisted thinking if I ever heard it.. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/10/2009 12:26:35 PM |
Hence, if we are all outraged and itching to start a bar fight because we disagree with this ecclesiastical law, let us challenge not this man ordained by God, simply carrying out his religious duty, but the rightful opponent. The Roman Catholic Church.
No, he doesn't get off that easily.
Don't you remember your history?
When was the last time "I was just following orders" was allowed as a defense? Mi Lai? Nuremburg Trials? Didn't work there either.
It's a stupid rule and a stupider man who enforces a blanket penalty. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/11/2009 9:57:09 AM | No, he doesn't get off that easily.
Don't you remember your history?
When was the last time "I was just following orders" was allowed as a defense? Mi Lai? Nuremburg Trials? Didn't work there either.
It's a stupid rule and a stupider man who enforces a blanket penalty.
I did not intend to "defend" the Archbishop. I merely wrote that he was in no need of a defense. He followed a (his) religious law, using his religious authority, expending a religious penalty on a religious people and the opinion of those who are not components of the sodality itself are of no effect. (IMO, of course)
BTW: god_of_rock I am totally unfamiliar with the case mentioned and I was unable to find anything at all on the Quebec court Judge Raymonde Verreault & child abuse cases. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance. ;) | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 3/11/2009 11:52:46 AM |
He followed a (his) religious law, using his religious authority, expending a religious penalty on a religious people and the opinion of those who are not components of the sodality itself are of no effect. (IMO, of course)
You're not defending him, however he is trying to excuse himself with the "I vas chust vollowink orders" defense to soften the blow...
Just because religion is in the mix does not, IMHO, render something protected, taboo, or safe from examination or critique - quite the opposite in fact. If it is supposedly worthy of being sacred, it should be held to a much higher standard of morality than anything mere humans could devise.
This fails the test in more ways than I can imagine. | |
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| Church keeps rapist but excommunicates his 9yr old victim's mom and doctors
Posted: 9/28/2009 8:25:00 PM |
I simply believe that right now, there are only allegations and claims, that are not transparent to everyone, and that are not proved beyond doubt in the eyes of the people, and that leaves the church with the one question, that if it is definitely rape, and if it is definitely life-threatening, then why wasn't the evidence displayed for all to see, before the abortion happened?
She's 9 years old so I don't see how it could be considered anything but rape (the age of consent in Brazil is 14). Of course, there's still the question of who raped her. Theoretically she could be lying about who did it.
Presumably the records weren't made publically available because they are private records. Hospitals don't print your medical records in the New York Times for the same reason. | |
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