stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

SODOMY AND GOMORRAH 269
taken to ensure that the abuse “would never happen again.” (The
same promises were, of course, later grossly broken.)
Many argued that the hierarchy’s handling of abusive priests
revealed systemic problems with their Church. “It isn’t just
the cardinal; it’s the way we operate.... There are structural
issues. What is it that has made us priests be so [unwilling
to] speak out when something awful is happening, and not to
cover up?” (Boston Globe, 2003).
Amazingly, even after the Inquisition, even after the wanton
burning of witches at the stake, even after countless holy wars and
crusades, the depths of cruelty and evil perpetrated by our world’s
“safe,” traditional religions—never mind its potentially harmful
nontraditional groups—still surprises us. Yet, there is nothing
whatsoever “new” in something like the recent Catholic scandals.
That is so, first when compared with the fear-ridden constraints
and “skillful” cruelties of the centuried guru game, and the rampant
alleged sexual abuse by “divine” gurus of their own disciples,
in “compassionate, tolerant” Buddhism and elsewhere. It is also
true when viewed in terms of the Church’s own millennia of canonical
laws directed toward (and thus admitting the existence of)
pedophilia among their clergy.
When Pope Alexander VI [d. 1503] marked the final victory
of Catholic Spain over the Moors, he did so not with a Mass
at St. Peter’s but with a party in the piazza in front of the
church. Flagons of wine flowed among the honored guests,
women from Rome’s most elegant brothels offered their services
and children were passed freely among bishops and
priests celebrating Catholicism’s latest triumph with a sexual
bacchanalia (Bruni and Burkett, 2002).
If we have learned one thing specifically from the Catholic
Church, though, it is that there is no hope whatsoever of our
world’s religions changing for the better, without their evils being
publicly exposed:
No problem is ever solved discreetly any more, especially in
the Catholic Church. The problems are only solved when the
Catholic people say out loud and on the record what a lot of
them are thinking privately, and aim their message directly