So what are reader's thoughts on Kevin Rudd and the following: "Rudd, a devout Christian, said Monday that churches had worked hard to address the sins of predatory clergy and urged that the issue be kept in perspective considering the Catholic church's important role in Australia."
Kevin said he stood outside the church when the pope came apologising, deal making and concordat updating so we should feel reassured about his veracity and his ability to distinguish which are church and which are state matters, still it seems a little intriguing when our Foreign Minister measures the civil crime cleanup rate using the church's canon through his use of the word sin. Surely if he is able to clearly and confidently separate in his mind as he is required to do we would not have these errors else he would look like the quisling traitor to the people portrayed here.
Does not give you a great deal of comfort when a Foreign Minister acts like that - is he really the right man for the job - might be a little too church to deal in a secular manner with church crimes.
Australia FM defends Catholic abuse response Mon, 10/18/2010 - 00:46 EDT story from
blade RDF10 in"Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd defended the Catholic church's record on tackling child abuse within its ranks, as a nun who once exposed a paedophile priest became the nation's first saint.Rudd, a devout Christian, said Monday that churches had worked hard to address the sins of predatory clergy and urged that the issue be kept in perspective considering the Catholic church's important role in Australia."
Responding to the FM.
Your words say thanks for educating all the children, for that we will allow the church to self manage criminal activities which arise within the church.
Survivors would say look at the way you educated all those to children so that they would say such horribly discriminative words as they do not speak equally of the human and legal rights of this particular demographic as they have a right to expect, nor do they observe the rule of law and the separation of church and state.
Rudd's focus is on all the good work of the churches at the expense of the horrors and the failures of our civil systems to protect survivors in the past. He describes the very situation that investigations in Canada and Ireland have come to describe through saying that the church in its dealings with the sexual crimes committed against children as being focused on its needs before the needs of the survivors.
What Kevin Rudd is espousing is the continuation here in Australia of the actions which in other countries have been declared to be genocidal and crimes against humanity.
Not only do his words state this he is also stating that the Catholic church should be permitted to continue to self manage its own criminal activities. This was also found to be at the heart of the problems in both Ireland and Canada and also forms a powerful part of legal proceedings against the church in the US.
The survivors who are those most affected by the words of Kevin Rudd experience this as a rejection of their right to be treated the same as any other demographic in that criminal acts carried out against them should always remain subject to the law of the country and they believe that it is a clear breach of the principle of division of church and state when a federal minister publicly states that the Catholic church does self manage its crimes and that it should be permitted to continue to do so.
Survivors believe that they as a specific demographic are discriminated against and have been denied their natural right to justice and to the rights extended to others via our civil law as the 'cover up' has been shown to do for at least the past 140 years.
Survivors claim that Rudds recent statements and those he made on the occasion of the pope's visit to be a denial of their circumstances and their rights as Australians, they ask what exactly was it that he apologised for on becoming Prime Minister as the 2 positions are not compatible. His claims of 'never again' ring hollow as he continues to support what has been globally recognised as the machinery that permitted the abuses to occur.
This situation is further exacerbated when the federal government proactively provided $1.5 million to assist Catholics attend the canonisation of Mary MacKillop yet it refuses to discuss the provision of similar funding to survivor of clergy abuse support services and systems. The federal government also moved to protect the commercial interests of the name of Mary MacKillop, many question these actions as they see them as yet another breach of the separation of church and state.
The question of how much longer must the human and civil rights of survivors of criminal activity be put aside so that we may continue to focus on all the 'good work' the church has done.
Just as the world has recognised that the church has been repeatedly shown to act in its own best interests we have a federal minister attempt to explain to the world that that should continue here in Australia.
Does Australia genuinely need and want the Catholic church to continue in the ways of discrimination, inequality, genocide and crimes against humanity? Should we now have an area in the Foreign Affairs where we can have Kevin determine which are crimes and therefore a matter for the state and which are sins, a matter for the church.
(AFP)
SYDNEY Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd defended the Catholic church's record on tackling child abuse within its ranks, as a nun who once exposed a paedophile priest became the nation's first saint.
Rudd, a devout Christian, said Monday that churches had worked hard to address the sins of predatory clergy and urged that the issue be kept in perspective considering the Catholic church's important role in Australia.
"I would like to acknowledge the enormous work which the church has done, and other Christian churches, in dealing with this blight on all of humankind," Rudd said from Rome, where he is attending canonisation celebrations for Australia's first saint, Mary MacKillop.
Rudd said many people were critical of the church, but he urged Australians to be fair and mindful of history and "acknowledge the central place of the church and of churches in our national life."
Without Christian churches during its era as a British colony, Australia would have lacked schools and hospitals, Rudd said, adding that the positive contributions of the religious needed to be remembered.
(Just a point here. If we did not have the church it is not difficult to understand that we would have had education with or without them, however if we had not had the church there would have been no pedophilia problem from that area - love you logic Kevin - very Catholic when it comes to church )
