Abuse in the Catholic Church Switzerland

Editorial comment

Hardly a week goes by without priests or bishops being accused of criminal conduct.

According to a report published on 19 November 2023 by the RTS programme «Mise au Point», nine priests are alleged to be involved in cases of sexual abuse within the Abbey of Saint-Maurice (VS).

A Catholic bishop in France is being investigated for attempted rape. The bishop of La Rochelle in western France is accused of having attempted to rape an adult man in an ecclesiastical setting, the public prosecutor's office in Paris announced on 20 November 2023.

Headlines of this kind barely shock anyone any more; they read as something approaching «courant normal».

Recently, the University of Zurich published a report documenting 1’002 cases of sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy, church employees and members of religious orders in Switzerland since the mid-20th century. Abuse involving infants and pre-pubescent children through to post-pubescent young adults is said to represent only the tip of the iceberg.

Catholic Church

Even as a child and adolescent, I perceived the institution of the Catholic Church as something fundamentally illegitimate. I reluctantly attended the cannibalistic, alcohol-tinged ceremonies and fairy-tale sessions on Sunday mornings. Back then, it was still possible for parents to compel you to attend “church services” until the age of 16. 

During Catholic religious education classes, the parish priest would creep up behind you to give you a knock on the head whenever he disagreed with something.

Later, as a teenager during my year in French-speaking Switzerland at a Catholic institute in Estavayer-le-Lac, we were taught by a paedophile teacher/friar.

All these years up to the present day, I feel disgust for the Catholic Church, which has mostly built its buildings on the sacred sites of those who were far closer to the truth. 

Hubertus Masses

The Catholic Church provides a stage for every kind of nonsense. Murderers are permitted to celebrate Masses. Everything is transfigured. The faithful are shamelessly deceived. Hubertus Masses, which are largely co-organised and attended by hobby hunters, are incompatible with the Christian ethic of respect for life. They frequently serve as the prelude to particularly cruel driven hunts and battues as well as special hunts, during which senile hobby hunters roam the forests in a manner that constitutes animal cruelty, harassing, terrorising, injuring and killing countless wild animals. Upon close analysis, these hobby hunters are members of a criminal organisation.

It is written nowhere that Jesus Christ, whom both denominations venerate as the Son of God, ever hunted animals. That would indeed be very contradictory, for God's 5th Commandment reads »Thou shalt not kill«. Yet every hunt is associated with killing.

The meaning of the Hubertus legend is surely this: that human beings should live in harmony and peace with nature and animals. They should not be the hunter, but the protector and friend of animals. As it is so beautifully stated in Mark 16:15: »Go out into all the world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.« This surely does not refer to hunting.

The Pope

Former Pope Benedict Ratzinger XVI suffered from sleep disorders for years. Medication had initially helped the late Pope Emeritus, but then reached “its limits.” Benedict wrote to his biographer Peter Seewald that the medication had been increasingly unable to “ensure his availability.” Finally, during his apostolic journey to Mexico and Cuba in March 2012, a serious incident occurred. On the morning after the first night, he had reached for his handkerchief. It had been “completely soaked in blood.” Shortly thereafter, he found himself compelled to resign.

Democracy makes it possible for naive people to elect a proxy for God. How convenient. Since the beginning of time, the course has been set under these proxies for barbaric behavior toward animals and humans.

In Switzerland, democracy enables livestock farmers and hobby hunters to dominate politics. These are not good signs.

In the USA, democracy produces presidents that make one wonder: what is the point?

Church bells

I understand why more and more people are becoming incensed by church bells that ring pointlessly at all hours, even robbing one of sleep in these hectic times. One associates nothing positive with them, and does not wish to be constantly reminded of the misdeeds committed beneath the church steeple.

For many spiritual people, the Catholic Church has deteriorated into a place of disappointment. A place of preachers rather than practitioners. A place where pied pipers deceive people who hypocritically collect their blessing every Sunday. The cross is a negative symbol of suffering, destruction, fear, and death of the sect, and attracts corresponding energies accordingly.

One can pity the disoriented priests; they hold storybooks in their hands in which the truth is distorted. Christians and Jews believe that a messiah or savior will forgive their sins. Unfortunately, no such thing exists or has ever existed. How about simply not committing sins in the first place? As you sow, so shall you reap. That is a cosmic or karmic law that one must face. Everything else is hocus-pocus. 

Have prophets not repeatedly given us guidance in the past, for example in the form of commandments for righteous living? It is up to us to practice them. Heaven and hell are science fiction invented by preachers to suppress people through fear. Everyone can shape their own heavenly environment even within this lifetime. For some, it may already feel like hell; for others, differently. That will not change in the future either.

Not religion but spirituality is the path to salvation and resurrection.

Many people are unaware that the Taliban and the Palestinians have ancient Jewish roots but converted to Islam. Or that Jesus Christ likely spent a great deal of time in northern India. Early Christian historical writings also make it clear: Jesus was a vegetarian and devoted his life to the welfare of animals. The Bible is a politically falsified book. The Romans were well known as heavy meat eaters, and the absolute pacifism of the early Christians was equally a thorn in their side. The writings of early Church Fathers, however, are unambiguous testimony to a vegetarian proto-Christianity.

Vegetarianism

Life in its infinite forms exists as an organic unity. We are a part of it. That part should feel reverence for the whole. That is the idea of being human. It simply means not destroying life. It means that life is God. Avoid destroying it. Otherwise you destroy the ecology itself. And behind this lies something deeply scientific.

It is no coincidence that all religions that originated in India are essentially vegetarian, and all religions that originated outside India are not vegetarian. But the highest peaks of religious consciousness were reached in India and nowhere else. Vegetarianism acts like a purification. When one eats animals, one is more subject to the law of gross matter. One is heavy. One feels more drawn to the earth. When one is a vegetarian, one is lighter. And one is more subject to the law of grace, under the law of strength. One begins to move toward the heaven of the divine. Food is not merely food. It shapes you. What one eats, one becomes. If one eats something that is fundamentally based on killing, on violence, one cannot rise above the law of non-violence. One will remain, more or less, a predator.