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"There was something going on that was not familiar
American territory about dealing with tragedy. There were things about that day that you weren’t supposed to say, you weren’t supposed to see." – Tom Junot, The Falling Man
I've seen the mentality to which Junot refers in the
pedophile priest crisis, and as a result we get news like this:
Cardinal
Vincent Nichols wants to ban employers asking about criminal records - Tue 06 Sep 2016 By Antony Bushfield - The leader of Catholics in England and Wales
says employers should not be allowed to ask about a person's criminal record on
a job application form. Normally applications require a declaration of
any past dealings with police but Cardinal Vincent Nichols said people should
not be compelled to disclose their conviction. Speaking at the Conference of Prison
Chaplains, he said stopping the practice would allow convicts to "put
their past in context and show who they really are. It is hard to envisage the crushing
disappointment of someone who has worked hard to move away from crime and learn
new skills, only to be rejected for job after job and never even given the
opportunity to explain how he or she has changed since being convicted years
before. (Read the entire story here at Premier UK.)
The British Cardinal delivers a wonderful well-timed,
compassionate argument but-
Did any reporter ask the Cardinal if pedophile
priests are included in his advocacy for recovering criminals?
In the USA we have not been willing to "show who we really are," as the Cardinal says, for decades. Instead we think if we act like something
is not there, it will go away, an attitude that was blatant in the pedophile priest crisis. I think this refusal to admit our wrongs and make
amends is at the root of all America’s problems, the whole country needs
to learn from a program that works and do the Fourth Step all the way to the Ninth Step, starting with the Catholic Church.
Journalist Tom Junot talks about this phenomenon of not facing
the truth in The Falling Man documentary from 2006.
In the film we see that as the Twin Towers burned, people
were jumping out of the buildings, an image that few of us can forget who
watched that day. But as shown in the film,
when Junot tried to write about the people who were in the images, no one
wanted to talk about the people who jumped, or even admit the jumping happened.
This is dialogue from the film:
Junot: I never saw that picture again.
Narrator: Newspapers and magazines decided not to run
it again. No one wanted to confront the
existence of the jumpers. Americans had
recoiled from the falling man, but now pictures of heroes were something people
could celebrate and rally around.
Junot: The images that lasted are in the most case heroic
pictures. There was a spin that came out
of our feeling of being so deeply wounded which was that we're Americans… the
American spirit shall prevail. Whereas Richard Drew’s picture, the Falling
Man picture became for whatever reason
the one that nobody wanted to look at.
Narrator: But Tom Junot decided to investigate why the
jumpers had been air brushed from the day.
Junot: The coroner said nobody jumped that day. They
were blown out, they were forced out, we don’t say that they jumped, nobody
jumped. That just made me feel that there
was just something going on that was not familiar American territory about
dealing with tragedy. . . . There were just things about that day that you weren’t supposed to say, you weren’t supposed to see, you weren’t supposed
to talk about and for me that resistance wound up centering on and attaching itself
to Richard Drew’s picture.
(From Falling Man, the documentary released in 2006)
The same thing happened when Nancy Pelosi first took
the gavel as Speaker of the House in 2007. First words out of her mouth were
“Impeachment is off the table.” We never faced the war crimes of the Bush Administration and today we are still embroiled in the Middle East and those Bushwacko war criminals are still calling the shots.
The U.S. is not going to recover until we stop
pretending we can vibe our problems away. Thinking good thoughts to make everything all right does not work.
There's a defeated sense in the land, where we don’t want to look at crime if it is at such a high level that prosecution will be. . . work.
There's a defeated sense in the land, where we don’t want to look at crime if it is at such a high level that prosecution will be. . . work.
Globally the Roman Catholic Church protected thousands
of priests who were molesting children, and aided and abetted their crimes, with
the same pattern of criminal activity and cover-up in countries all over the
world.
And yet Catholic Church hierarchy are the people
we have advising us on morals and civil behavior?If so, then the Church should lead the way and start admitting it aided and abetted pedophile priests, tell "the exact nature of its wrongs" per the Twelve Steps as opposed to deflective media events, then start making amends. Globally. Maybe then the rest of the world will follow.
The full film 9/11: The Falling Man is available on YouTube for free
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Posted by Kay Ebeling
City of Angels blogger
not just L.A., the city of angels is everywhere
Post Note: The "jumpers had been air brushed from the day" and now will hundreds of thousands of pedophile priest victims / survivors be air brushed from church history?
.
