After "Will You Hold My Hand?"

When I was a kid, I loved to read the stories in my multi-volume collection of Uncle Arthur's Bedtime Stories.

There was one bittersweet story in the collection about a bunch of orphans whose parents had been killed by the bombing in England during World War II.

They would be getting on this big ship and going to live with new Mommies and Daddies.

Before the ship left the harbor, the kids were given a drill on what to do in case there were a shipwreck--and there was one little guy who couldn't have been older than six who looked very, very frightened.

One of the staff came over and reassured him that it was very unlikely that they would be in a shipwreck. But he calmly helped the little boy to know how to put on his life-jacket and get in an orderly line to get on his assigned lifeboat.

When the staffperson asked him if he were okay now, the little boy said that he guessed so--but that he'd really be okay if the man would come hold his hand if a shipwreck were to take place. The man told him that he would be right there.

Fortunately, the story concluded, there was no shipwreck, and all of the kids got safely to the new land to go live with their new families.

There was a picture at the end of the story showing several of the kids--including the scared, little boy--getting off of the boat with happy grins on their faces and their eyes wide and bright with anticipation!

I always loved reading this story!

Years pass, and I'm in my 50th year of life.

It's a Sunday evening, and 60 Minutes is about to come on. I've just notified Roger that I've just noticed in my TV schedule that one of the segments is going to be about some orphans being abused over in Australia.

As the story unfolds, I realize that this is what REALLY ended up happening to those precious orphans--including that sweet, little six year old boy--I'd read about as a child!

These kids--not that many of them, anyway--never went into homes to live with new Mommies and Daddies.

Instead, they ended up working like the Children Of Israel back in ancient Egypt building buildings, landscaping, farming, etc. for the local headquarters of the Catholic Church.

Let me say right here and now that I'm not being anti-Catholic in the light of all that has been going on with some of their priests. Protestant churches also have skeletons in their closets. Other religious and non-religious institutions do, too.

But--I'm sorry if I end up offending anyone--this just happened to be done by some people within the Catholic Church who had chosen to do some undesirable things.

There was not only the problem of overworking the kids but, also, most of them were physically-abused, and some of them were even sexually-abused.

Years later, it was learned that the majority of them weren't even orphans. They were kids who had been taken away from their folks using false-pretenses (e.g. "We'll take care of your kids while you get back on your feet after losing your job.") and then not giving the kids back while telling the kids they had become orphans.

Although too many of the parents had long since passed away, there have been at least a few happy family reunions where middle-aged kids and their elderly parents were finally reunited!

Uncle Arthur wasn't aware of this; the kind staff-member who reassured the little boy wasn't aware of this; I wasn't aware of this--and I doubt if the majority of the population of the United Kingdom was aware of this.

And I don't believe that most of the Catholics--including the various popes and archbishops--were aware of this, either.

But there were DEFINITELY some people TOTALLY aware of this--and those were the brains behind this glorfied slavery and pimping operation.

And, sadly, there might have been others who knew to some degree--but something held them back from telling.

What held them back from telling?

A number of things!

Take some of the priests and archbishops, for instance. One motivation they might have had for keeping this a secret was that they didn't want there to be known scandal woven into the Catholic Church, because, if there were, it might result in hundreds upon thousands of members losing part or all of their Faith.

So they felt they had to choose between the majority of their worldwide members and some kids who came from poverty-line/below-poverty-line homes to begin with and had a good chance of growing into the ne'er-do-wells of society.

And take the run-of-the-mill people who feel comfortable in thinking that our large institutions (e.g. the Catholic Church, government, those in the teaching profession, those in the medical profession) are made up 100% of upstanding people who will take care of them and keep them safe. So they blind and deafen themselves to possible flaws in the pure fabric of those large institutions.

How do we solve this problem?

One way is to realize that everyone from the Pope right down to the worst serial killer on death-row is a human-being with good and bad points.

We should become a society that will extend a hand instead of pointing a finger so that people won't have to feel ashamed to admit to their flaws and seek help for them instead of doing their perverse sinning in secret.

We need to remember that people with major flaws in their personalities come from communities with rolling, landscaped lawns and 50-room mansions as well as from deteriorating housing projects--and that some very wonderful people also come from the latter.

And, speaking of wonderful people, we need to understand that, in one or more ways, even the worst of us is a wonderful person, while the best of us have at least one undesirable trait.

When we begin to think along those lines, we'll truly learn how to live in peace and to help each other live life to the fullest!!!