I am a Catholic - or, better to say - I was a Catholic.
My parents, in their wisdom which was the wisdom of the day decided to educate me in Catholic schools and sent me to Holy Cross primary and Marist Brothers Miramar intermediate. This was back in the 1960s when parents either through naivety or deliberate blindness ignored activities of nuns, brothers and priests and subjugated themselves to the preaching of what I see now as a very dodgy religion.
My parents wanted me to go to St Patrick's College in Wellington but I resisted and, along with a couple of friends who had experienced some 'indignities' at the hands (literally) of one of the teaching brothers, got our parents to enrol us at Wellington High School. Wellington High School was an OK school that suffered from the reputation of being a technical college. Even in the 1960s there were class barriers and snobbery even though the economic divide hadn't fully taken effect. The result was that, although I enjoyed my time at WHS I didn't get challenged academically and left after passing School Certificate. I took on an apprenticeship in the printing industry and was doing well until the industry radically changed through digitisation, the rise of the internet and collapse of the printed media industry.
Anyway, that's water under the bridge except for a renewed interest in the aforementioned activities of those Catholic nuns, brothers and priests. Recently there have been exposes of the church and the activities of church members in the Wellington region. Some very good investigation has been undertaken that has resulted in long-overdue prosecutions. Here's on study that is worth a read:
Steve Kilgallon has written elsewhere on other exposes and I will bring these and reports from other writers as I find them.
Good to read you have no criticism of the Catholic Catechism. You'll always find a few bad eggs in any basket … old Italian saying.
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ReplyDeleteThanks for that. I'd be interested to read any further articles you find.
ReplyDeleteI'll add your blog to the links on my blog.
I've written posts on similar things. I went to Marist Newtown where we had sadistic priests who liked to cane people but am not sure about any pedophilia.
Marist Thorndon where Richard and Robert (the denier) went apparently had Brothers who interfered with boys. I believe that Marist Miramar did too.
I'm pleased that you discovered Richard's blog. Another blogger - Steve who produces 'The Reckoning' podcasts on New Zealand Catholic Church's crimes has also commented on my and Richard's blogs.
Stephen Oliver, a writer who attended Marist Newtown in the 1960s also covers similar topics - maybe you know him. I went to Marist Newtown from 1962 to 1965 and then St Pat's from 1966 to 1970. Father Minto was rector then although we were unaware of his proclivities (naive eh).
If you read any of Robert's posts beware! He's still at a comprehension age of about 7 or 8 when it comes to Catholicism and the Catechism. He, as you cab see by his comment above places no blame on the Church's leaders and believes that any problems stem from a tiny minority of misguided "bad eggs'. No doubt he would have advocated sending the bad ones on to other schools to fix the problem - probably to girls schools seeing that they don't fancy girls (unless they are very, very young ones).
OK.
ReplyDeleteI will continue my research and post what I find with particular reference to the Wellington region.
I'm a bit concerned, like you I guess that this chap Robert is a denier.
Did he attend Marist schools?
I gather, from reading Richard's posts that he did - Marist Thorndon and had a bad experience with a Brother Benedict. I'll see what I can find out about that creep.