Catholic Priest Controversy
On 20 May 2011 Herman Spronck, the head of the Dutch arm of the Salesian Catholic order, confirmed to RTL Nieuws that a priest under him had been on the board of MARTIJN until the Van den Berg raids. He added "Of course we reject this and distance ourselves from this personal initiative". RTL obtained interviews both with Spronck and the priest (73-year-old "Father Van B.") in which the two defended adult-child sex as not always damaging. The priest concerned has prior convictions for child sex abuse.
Read more about this topic: Vereniging Martijn
Famous quotes containing the words catholic, priest and/or controversy:
“The Catholic Church has never really come to terms with women. What I object to is being treated either as Madonnas or Mary Magdalenes.”
—Shirley Williams (b. 1930)
“Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)