Health professionals blast sex-abuse prevention model

Interesting story out of the U.S. about sex-abuse prevention programs potential harm.

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (Our Sunday Visitor) – When the U.S. bishops created a program to protect children from sexual abuse in the wake of the scandal that rocked the church, they included a mandate that children be taught sex-abuse prevention.

Now, as the bishop's landmark response, "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People," nears its fifth anniversary, one group of Catholic health-care professionals has declared the prevention programs ineffective and potentially harmful and has called on the bishops to rescind the mandate.

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Dr. Lynne Bissonnette-Pitre, a physician-psychiatrist and lead author of the study, told Our Sunday Visitor that the child-empowerment models, which teach children to recognize things like "bad touch" and other potentially dangerous behaviors, rely on children to do the policing and introduce concepts that can be frightening.

"It causes children to be very confused. You could have a child who is 6 years old hearing about sexual abuse. It's a deviant, perverted form of sexuality that has nothing to do with love and marriage and chastity and responsibility for others. It's very frightening for the child and causes them to have confusion as to who is a safe person and who isn't," said Bissonnette-Pitre.

"A trusting relationship with parents and with trustworthy adults is a real protective factor for children and they need it to develop. We should not be giving children information earlier than they can handle it," she said

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Witchdoctor puts Voodoo curse on Bush

Here's all the more reason why we need to pray for our leaders.

A renowned black magic practitioner performed a voodoo ritual Thursday to jinx President George W. Bush and his entourage while he was on a brief visit to Indonesia.

Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, stirred their blood with spice and broccoli before drank the "potion" and smeared some on his face.

"I don't hate Americans, but I don't like Bush," said Pamungkas, who believed the ritual would succeed as, "the devil is with me today."

He said the jinx would send spirits to possess Secret Service personnel guarding Bush and put them in a trance, leading them into falsely thinking the president was under attack, thus eventually causing chaos in Bogor Presidential Palace, where the American leader was scheduled to meet President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Monday

The Anchoress writes:

It is an ancient knowledge: there are things visible and invisible. Many of us realise that forces of dark and light have always been engaged and that for the past 6 years that engagement has been greatly intensified in ways we cannot always comprehend. And a great deal of the battling has centered around George W. Bush, and - to a lesser but still apparent extent - Tony Blair, two men who have deeply embraced supernaturalism (in the form of Christian faithfulness) and been very public about it.

It’s interesting, that’s all. I draw no conclusions; feel free to draw your own. I simply know what I know. Bush knows it, too. So does Blair. So does Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So does Benedict XVI: there are no accidents, everything is engaged, all the time, and while most of us are not looking - while we’re fussing deadlines, banging out our pithy opinions, cleaning house or watching Stephen Colbert sing, whole worlds are at play - battles are being won and lost - and prayers and curses are breathed and go constantly forth.

Stingray writes:

To western minds — even to Christian western minds — this whole idea sounds silly. We either believe that there is no devil (and thus no demon minions) or we believe that demons are found in only isolated instances, like the Charles Manson murders. Even most conservative Christians are taught to believe that the devil and his demons are pretty much limited to tempting us and that anything more is the result of a fervid imagination or one too many slices of pizza before trundling off to bed.

Most of the world does not believe that way.

They believe in good and evil spirits — mostly evil ones who can sometimes be placated or manipulated — and they see the actions of these spirits, or what they believe are the actions of these spirits, in their day-to-day lives.

To my surprise, I found out from talking to former missionaries 25 or so years ago, and many times since, that they usually return from the missionary field believing in the direct actions of demons in everyday life. They are mostly quiet about it because it upsets the mission boards of the big denominations but it’s the rule rather than the exception that they enter the missionary the missionary field with nice, quiet, western Christian beliefs and leave the missionary field with their eyes wide open to the supernatural.