Below is a short description of an incident that took place in Bredasdorp recently:
"I was shocked. I was not prepared for what I saw. Her face was all beaten up. Her intestines were lying in front of me on the bed where she was lying. I held her hand. She said she was tired and sore. She had cuts to her neck and private parts. A broken glass bottle lodged inside of her. When she saw me, she cried out loudly. She was very strong. She said who did this to her. She said she was cold and I covered her in a blanket. She died shortly after, of her wounds."
In Exhibit 1 I wrote of a grotesque incident in Saudi Arabia and later suggested that the Booysen incident was also probably perpetrated by the same repressed individual/s. In other words, church going folk who put on a public face of decency, but privately harber sick and diabolical obsessions. Like violent rape, cruelty, and the desire to inflict pain and death which somehow gratifies them.
Because religion provides not only a fake standard for people to follow, and an unrealistic one, ordinary, healthy desires are driven underground, so to speak, where they fester. This - Anene Booysen - is the result.
Interesting is the manner in which the uncle of the killer/rapist describes him. He was brought up in a religious household. How does one escape the all-consuming oppression if the religion starts in one’s home, one’s own parents are contaminated by it, and it informs their every decision on how to raise their children, and introduce them to the world. How suffocating an experience that is! Do parents or guardians raise their children on strict religious values hoping they will go out into the world, killing, raping and committing the most unthinkable acts of cruelty? How does one place a broken bottle into someone's body while they are still alive, without having a particularly evil and malicious intent?
Exhibit 3 is the Pope. I am sure that he would love to retire to the countryside before the allegations of cruelty and misoginy fully surface, crimes he will have to spend months if not years in court, testifying to. I am certain he would rather avoid that if possible. The Pope, a fella by the name of Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI somehow sounds pretentious),has a brother who is also in the church, a Monsignor no less. They have apologized to child victims of sexual abuse but maintain they knew nothing about them, that they were unaware of the alleged incidents.
Of course it's entirely possible that the Pope and his brother knew nothing about it. It's also easy to believe that if one does not bother to find out what was going on that they knew nothing about it? Franz Wittenbrink tells Germany's Der Spiegel magazine about "an elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust” in place in the school.
According to Wittenbrink the headmaster chose "two or three of us boys in the dormitories in the evenings" and took them to his flat. "Everyone knew about it.” Wittenbrink says he finds it difficult to believe that the Pope's brother who was the bandmaster at the cathedral knew nothing about it. Of course, apparently neither did the pope. Not isolated incidents, but ongoing for a period of years, and not random incidents, an 'elaborate system'.
Being high up in the church would have afforded both Ratzinger brothers a clear view, and even control, over such an elabortae and ongoing system. But they say they don't know about it. I wonder, ought they to be believed?
Christians love to defend these incidents and say the exception does not make the rule. Of course it is the first thing that comes to mind to defend their beliefs, they do not like to ponder that these exceptional incidents (rape and murder and abuse of women and children in SA) and paedophilia abroad, in the church, are in fact the norm. A woman is raped in South Africa every how many minutes or seconds? And we claim to be a Christian society – which is exactly why this is happening.
Exhibit 4 I won't go into much detail. It's a recent story of a pastor who lured his congregation member and raped her. I can't find the exact reference, but no harm done, here's another example. I'm sure this is also an exception rather than the rule: http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Pastor-rape-case-postponed-20121123
Here's an example of the same thing going on in systematic fashion in Brazil: http://m24digital.com/en/2013/01/29/pastor-claimed-his-penis-had-been-anointed-with-the-holy-spirit-divine-semen-and-raped-his-faithful/
We shouldn't be surprised by this. Appalled yes, but not surprised. Reason being, people who put their faith, unchecked, in others, are open to abuse. It's about trusting another person without that person necessarily earning or having a right to that trust. religion affords that right, in fact religion demands that the faithful be faithful, and demonstrate unrealisticv levels of trust. Prostitution is described as the oldest profession; and with it are churches, who absolve the faithful from their sins, but it also provides one of the oldest resources for pathetic individuals to prey on the weak in the name of a borrowed, mythical authority. It's a cynical, deceitful attempt at living, which of course denies far more than the prepetrators an opportunity at life. In fact, life for these priests comes at the expense (either financially or in experiential terms) of their congregations.
People cry to God for help, but if there is no God, who answers? Even the criminals cry to God and in their despair, turn to crime. In jail, I’m sure they turn to him again.
As for the sex abuse scandal currently tormenting the Christian world, abuse victims have come forward so far in 19 of the 27 dioceses in Germany, also in Austria, Holland, Ireland and the USA. The Catholic church is facing a crisis, and may soon be cash-strapped as investigations reveal the full extent of this mess, and the law suits, many likely to be class actions, begin.
Read more here: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/italy/100311/pope-brother-catholic-church-sex-abuse
Christians will argue that Roman Catholism is not in fact true Christianity. Of course not. But I doubt the Bredasdorp murder/rapist was a Catholic. The bottom line is Christianity, the belief in a saviour, a personal intercessor, underlies the beliefs of all who turn to Christ. And all are equally deceived, miserable and desperate as a result. The real world offers salvation, if one has the courage to face it. Belief in a saviour that never turns up is a recipe for hell on earth, hell in families, a personal hell, and when one dies, a rather awkward vacuum.
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